NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes 3030718611, 9783030718619

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NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes ac a r k u tay

NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes

Acar Kutay

NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes

Acar Kutay Department of Political Science and Public Administration Istanbul Kent University Istanbul, Turkey

ISBN 978-3-030-71861-9 ISBN 978-3-030-71862-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71862-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book builds on my previously published research articles, which apply interpretive approach to the concept of civil society, civil society organizations, and in broader terms, to changes in the state. These articles appeared in the following journals. • How does the European Commission create a European Civil Society with Words: A Discourse Theoretical Inquiry, Journal of Common Market Studies: JCMS, 55(5), 1094–1109, 2017. • Limits of Participatory democracy in European governance, European Law Journal, 21(6), 2015. • A Critical transnational public sphere: Bringing back common good and social ontology, Globalizations, 13(1), 2016. • After Governance: A Normative Reflection on Civil Society Participation in Policy Processes, Politik, 18 (2), 2015. • Managerial Subject Formations and Coupling among the State, Civil Society, and the Market, Critical Policy Studies, 8(3), 2014. Here, I significantly extended, restructured, and, where necessary, revised my arguments presented in these articles. This book, contextualizing its major arguments within governance theories and interpretive approach, is inspired by Mark Bevir’s governance theory and Michel Foucault’s insights. However, the analysis conducted here also engages with other influential authors and thinkers. v

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I want to extend my gratitude to editors in Palgrave Macmillan who made this book possible. I do also appreciate their patience, as completing the manuscript during the pandemic period was extremely challenging. Without my wife and our kid’s support, I would not have the endurance and stamina to complete the manuscript. This book is thus a product of exceptional times. Istanbul, Üsküdar, Turkey January 2021

Acar Kutay

Contents

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1

Introduction

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Interpreting Civil Society

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Interpreting with Foucault

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Defining and Constituting NGOs

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Civil Society, NGOs, and Governance

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Governing Through Civil Society

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Management, Managerialism, and NGOs

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Global Governance, Public Sphere, and CSOs

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Civil Society in European Governance: A Case Study

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Conclusion

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Index

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In democratic countries the knowledge of how to form association is the mother of all knowledge since the success of all others depends upon it. Among the laws governing human societies, one in particular seems more precise and clearer than all the others. In order that men remain or become civilized, the skill of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as the spread of equality of social conditions. (Tocqueville, [1840] 2003, p. 600, Vol. 2, Part. 2. Chapter 5)

Since the 1990s, we have witnessed a massive growth in NGOs in most parts of the world. This growth represents a historical moment, described as an “associational revolution” (Salamon, 1994). International organizations (IOs) and states have appealed to civil society actors, particularly non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) to transfer or share the traditional responsibilities of the state with non-state actors (Allison et al., 2020; Brass et al., 2018; Haque, 2010; Maltseva, 2016).1 The involvement of CSOs in public policies has 1 Following Mercer (2002, p. 6) “[t]he term ‘NGO’ is understood here to refer to those organizations that are officially established, run by employed staff (often urban professionals or expatriates), supported by domestic or international funding, and are relatively large and well-resourced. NGOs may be IOs or they may be national or regional.” The term covers a variety of organizations “with respect to scale, size, purpose, staffing, funding, and operations,” “including Community-based Organizations (CBOs), International NGOs (INGOs), Government-run NGOs (GONGOs), Donor-organized NGOs

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Kutay, NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71862-6_1

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soon become one of the core ideas, proposals, and practices of governance. Civil society actors have found resources and opportunities to engage in decision-making and policy implementation. Some authors defined the involvement of CSOs in governance mechanisms as a participatory governance practice (Fung & Wright, 2003; Gaventa, 2004; Leal, 2007). Participatory practices have been widespread in both the North (advanced democracies) and South (developing countries) (Fischer, 2006; Gaventa, 2004; Mercer, 2002; Swygedouw, 2005). IOs, such as the World Bank, the EU, and national governments, have augmented the norms and procedures for civil society’s participation in governance to build influential civil societies in the context of economic development in the global South. Advanced democracies’ public policies have also oriented to reinvigorate civil society and the community (Fyfe, 2005; Putnam, 1993). Collaboration between governments and CSOs has been a common characteristic of governance worldwide (Anheier (2004, p. 114).2 Most scholars view the recent extensive increase in the number of CSOs across the globe as a positive sign of political change toward the emergence of a global civil society (Bartelson, 2006; Keane, 2003; Scholte, 2011). They consider CSOs to be an essential component of democratization. Engagement with CSOs, in this narrative, can help citizens participate more effectively in the self-governance of their societies and restrict the excesses of the state and the business/corporate sector (Kaldor, 2005). These views see potential in civil society to integrate structurally differentiated spheres in society. Some define civil society as a social sphere vis-à-vis the state (Cohen & Arato, 1992; Edwards, 2004). Some theorists, following the lead of Habermas, characterize civil society as a space of free communication that generates the public sphere(s) (Habermas, 1996). Most authors use civil society to describe a set of

(DONGOs), Advocacy NGOs (ANGOs), National NGOs (NNGOs), Social Movement Organizations (SMOs), and most broadly, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)” (Kamat, 2004, p. 172). In this work, NGOs are not considered synonymous to the concept of civil society, which would be a misleading conflation. Rather, they are conceived as part of civil society, among other actors and spaces, such as media, trade unions, universities, and workplaces. In order to save space and improve readability I will mostly use throughout the book only CSOs, thus will incorporate the NGOs into CSOs. 2 We can illustrate the collaboration between CSOs and governments in country-specific research that focused on countries such as the United States (Berry, 1999), Germany (Anheier & Seibel, 2001), France (Archambault, 1996), or the United Kingdom in the field of social services (Morrison, 2000).

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intermediary associations, building trust and solidarity, and aggregating their members’ interests (Putnam, 1993). Some authors associate civil society participation with building the general will from the “bottom-up.” Others claim creating social capital is necessary for political legitimacy and for this reason they support encouragement of deliberative spaces within which citizens can talk about politics and social issues (Fukuyama, 2001). Civil society and governance theories that aim to envision more democratic political systems through CSOs tend to overlook how new governance reforms emerge and affect civil society actors’ identity and institutional structures. The new governance reforms have transformed from the hierarchical structures of state-led policymaking processes toward a more horizontal policy framework. Under new governance reforms, however, CSOs are often required to work professionally in coordination with the state and private sector institutions in governing society. More importantly, they adopt managerial organizational structures (Kutay, 2014; Roberts et al., 2005). Nonetheless, in contrast to these expectations that anticipate democratic self-government in and through CSOs (or a bottom approach), we often see the manufacturing of participation or what is generally labeled “participatory engineering.” Most of the CSOs have not emerged spontaneously, and many of them depend on external funding from the government, bilateral aid agencies working in international development, IOs (the World Bank and United Nations), the European Union (EU), and political and private foundations (Reimann, 2006; Salamon, 2010; Swyngedouw, 2005; Walker, 1991). For their part, progressive authors and skeptics of civil society discourse have confronted those theories and policies that invoke civil society for better democracy and society’s effective governance. They have observed a problematic affinity between neoliberalism, governance reforms, promotion of democracy, and invoking civil society in the developing world by IOs. They pointed out several issues. They have addressed the perils of exporting a Western state-society model to the global South and reinforcing neoliberal policies by privatizing the public sector and structural adjustment policies (Della Porta, 2014; Mercer, 2002). They have also expressed concern about socially embedding neoliberal capital accumulation by including the third sector in new governance (Porter & Craig, 2004). Some even consider the discourse on participation, relating to the necessity to engage civil society in governance, as a “new ideology” (Cooke & Kothari, 2001).

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Progressive and skeptical perspectives tend to explain the emergence of civil society discourse and the activities of NGOs according to structural factors: they either imply NGOs are puppets of powerful states (from a realist perspective) or act as instruments of ideological manipulation (in the context of global capitalism). However, financial support to civil society actors does not inevitably make civil society actors the orbits of political authorities or instruments of ideology. Nor can the rise in the number of civil society actors be viewed as an indication of the advancement of democracy. This book aims to contribute to civil society and governance research by adopting insights from interpretive theory and applying these insights to contemporary civil society discourse. An interpretive approach poses new questions that will help us contextualize the recent political discourse on civil society within new governance practices and examine civil society actors and stakeholders’ agency in creating and revising governance practices. Yet, with the existing approaches, we cannot examine the agency of NGOs fully and focus on the contestations and dilemmas that stakeholders may hold when involved in new governance practices. An interpretive theory provides us with theoretical and methodological tools through which to achieve these objectives. A set of philosophical insights—contingency, anti-essentialism, antinaturalism, nominalism, constructed nature of social reality—advanced by interpretive theorists inspired me to see civil society as a socially constructed feature of political reality (Bevir, 2004; Bevir & Rhodes, 2005, 2011). Starting from the insights of interpretive theory, in this book, I examine how new governance practices organize and affect civil society and civil society organizations. A turn toward an interpretive theory, I argue, would allow us to conceptualize civil society as a historical, thus not a naturally given fact because what constitutes civil society changes with historical and cultural contexts. Our notions of civil society have undergone radical changes, including structural changes in CSOs. To explore these changes and locate them into the general transformation of patterns of rule, I focus on three main research ambitions: 1. To explore the rationalities (practical reasoning) and technologies (skills, expertise, instruments) that international organizations and states employ when they mobilize NGOs in the new governance

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2. To examine the background political traditions, or discourses, against which stakeholders construct their narratives about governance and NGOs 3. To identify the contestations and dilemmas of practitioners about involving NGOs in new governance practices with other stakeholders

Logical Steps of Argumentation This project begins from the philosophical insight that social and political reality are contingent and linguistically expressive—a conclusion often named the interpretive turn and supported by a large variety of philosophical schools of thought, including ordinary language philosophers (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969), discourse theorists (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985), hermeneuticists (Gadamer, 1989; Taylor, 1971), neo-Aristotelians (MacIntyre, 1967), pragmatists (Bernstein, 1976), and Wittgensteinians (Winch 2008) to name only a few. These philosophical arguments are well-known in the human sciences. However, what is novel about this project is that it applies this insight to the debates surrounding the concept of civil society. Applying interpretive theory to the concept of civil society allows us to make several claims. Most researchers employ either a reified and ahistorical conception of civil society or operationalize an outdated understanding of civil society. Following the meta-theoretical assumptions of the interpretive theory, one can argue that civil society is a discursively constructed and contingent concept. We can better understand what civil society is if we study the discursive construction of civil society and if we situate the contemporary civil society discourse in the new governance. Civil society has re-emerged as a political discourse since the 1980s around two major political processes: regime changes and new governance practices including neoliberal reforms and prevalence of networks as a new pattern of rule. An interpretivist analysis incorporates this historical and social context into the analysis of civil society. It follows a three-tiered research strategy. – Contextualizing civil society in the changing patterns of rule and practices

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– Examining scientific rationalities and related technologies employed in new patterns of rule – Identifying practices, instruments, and discourses that organize civil society actors. Each part appears to flow in three different directions, but actually, they are related, and it is this connection (or holism) that gives meaning to civil society. The task of the analysis of this book is to establish this connection and convince the reader that one can have a better (or only) understanding of civil society if civil society is analyzed in this proposed way. This theoretical attempt involves at least three further considerations. The first one is to decenter civil society by rejecting to take it as a granted object of inquiry one which is, as it were, already being there and have existed in a single form. The second aspect of examining organizations in civil society entails moving outside of CSOs to find broader social and historical events that affect CSOs and technologies of power that organize and conduct CSOs. Technologies here denote a set of rule-governed, reproducible and principled practices that have emerged outside CSOs but were applied to civil society. The third way of decentering civil society involves examining civil society by questioning the functions attributed to civil society in governance theories and practices. This decentering approach is inspired by Michel Foucault (Foucault, 2009, pp. 117–118). This analysis requires unpacking the rationalities and technologies of power employed in new governance practices that invoked civil society and citizens’ organizations. Civil society is an extremely broad topic; thus it is necessary to draw this book’s boundaries. The focus of civil society is here situated within governance. Governance broadly denotes administering the state, market relations, and society both with the state and non-state actors. The concept of governance is used in various fields and contexts in different ways, including global governance (international relations) (Scholte, 2011), good governance (political development) (Smith, 2007), public administration (the new governance, system of governance, metagovernance) (Bevir, 2010; Kooiman, 2003; Jessop, 2003, respectively), corporate governance (management), and multi-level governance (political science) (Hooghe & Marks, 2003). The concept of civil society and NGOs/CSOs is related to each of these fields and contexts.

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This book is situated within the interpretive theory of governance; particularly, Mark Bevir’s theory of governance and Michel Foucault’s ideas provide the key theoretical inspiration for the analysis. The arguments of the book are thus positioned against other theories of governance: namely, rational choice theories (Brennan, 2000; Dowding, 2009; King, 1975), new institutionalist theories (Pierre, 2000; Pierson, 2000), system theories (Esmark, 2009; Kickert, 1993), and regulation theories/meta governance (Jessop, 1995, 2003). Rational choice theories and new institutionalist theories influenced and contingently aligned with the emerging patterns of rule since the 1980s under the new governance reforms, which aimed to replace bureaucratic hierarchies with a more democratic and innovative regime. Whereas rational choice theories, especially when they are aligned with neoclassical economics, have a more direct link to neoliberal reforms (Amadae, 2003; Monroe, 1991), new institutionalist theories prompted networks and public–private partnerships to allay the damaging effects of neoliberal reforms (Powell, 1990; Thompson et al., 1991). Meta governance focused on explaining the underlying mechanisms and structures that gave way to governance and new state forms. Governance theories involve images of civil society: these images influence governance practices, or they are connected to the exercise of power. Rational choice theories and new institutionalist theories, directly affecting the new governance practices, incorporated their image of the state and society into governmental rationalities and techniques (Cameron, 2000). Rational choice theory joined neoliberal rationalities in dismissing society both as an object of scientific inquiry and an object of government. It concentrated on the interest-maximizing individual as the unit of analysis, thereby proposing public policies to satisfy this economic man’s interests and needs in social relations organized by the market’s principles. These policies did not aim to enhance the welfare of society, understood as collectivity and a theoretical concept, but directed on individuals. New institutionalists have challenged neoliberal reforms, relying on networks instead of markets, and prioritized social inclusion and social justice in public policies that arise from the new governance. The image of society in new institutionalist theories is a single sphere, separate both from the state and economy. This image reflects the modernist social theory and liberal theory, which define society as a self-regulating sphere of social interaction. Nonetheless, the use of such an image of society has proven insufficient to mitigate or undo the harm

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inflicted by structural changes. Things have changed. Classical political economy, or self-regulating markets, has transformed into neoliberalism, which implies a more constructivist approach to markets (that is, markets and economic man can and must be built). Modernist social sciences also have been subject to criticisms of interpretive theories, which deny reification, essentialism and determinism. An interpretive theory of governance, which I draw here by building on Mark Bevir’s theory of decentered governance (Bevir, 2010, 2013) and Michel Foucault’s insights, examines civil society methodologically in a different way than foundational, structural, and determinist approaches. Decentered approach shifts the focus on inquiry from institutions to socially constructed practices, discourses, and meanings in action. The focus on the interplay between scientific theories and political power explains how new governance practices such as involving NGOs in the delivery of services and decision-making processes connect to political sovereignty and governmental rationalities. The focus on practices prompts us to scrutinize rationalities and technologies employed in mobilizing NGOs. The focus on how power relations affect subjects problematizes new identities, or subject formations, in civil society. Genealogy looks into the changes in civil society discourse. A historical approach demonstrates the link between human sciences and new rationalities and technologies that affect civil society and CSOs (e.g., social capital, legitimation, limiting sovereignty). Narratives explain civil society discourse by connecting a set of practices and social facts. Meaning-holism requires us to locate civil society within a web of beliefs and practices. To examine civil society discourse as one of language-game means connecting words, actions, and actors in a set of practices. Problems This book engages and contributes to several issues and problems in politics and social and political sciences. To start with, organizations in civil society are often narrowed to NGOs (Lang, 2012). They are also often treated as interest groups. In such research, the focus is merely on organizational characteristics. Decentered approach links managerial CSOs and NGOs to changes in patterns of rule and broader technologies of power, such as performance, efficiency, and effectiveness. The second issue concerning civil society discourse is that some governance scholars treat CSOs functionally as if they created discursive or

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functional links between the political authorities and citizens. On this account, practitioners have invoked civil society to govern societies more effectively or in a legitimate way beyond the supposedly inefficient or corrupt state (Ayers, 2006). In contrast, decentered approach does not take for granted any function of CSOs; it treats functions attributed to CSOs as socially constructed. Decentered approach confronts those perspectives suggesting or implying a reified conception of civil society and that takes the conceptual link between civil society and other concepts, including NGOs, participatory democracy, social capital, and political legitimacy at face value. Instead, decentered approach claims discourses on and about civil society is historical, because they are situated in a social context. Competing and contested discourses define and constitute such link. The second issue is that civil society participation brings dilemmas and conflicts. A key dilemma concerning CSOs’ engagement in governance networks and policy and law-making processes is the accountability of CSOs. Practitioners and scholars believed CSOs lack accountability because they are not elected. Then, practitioners and scholars proposed solutions to resolve the presumed accountability issues of NGOs in terms of managerial principles. What is more, when NGOs participate in governance, this practice often takes the form of neo-plural interest intermediation. Instead, decentered approach draws attention to how managerialism and participation in the form of interest intermediation result in the domination of bureaucratic and neoliberal rationalities within the CSOs. Participatory engineering, the legal norms of participation and current participation practices in governance define and prescribe the boundaries of a legitimate civil society on neo-liberal grounds and in a de-politicized way. This form of participation fits into market principles and neoliberal rationalities. Managerial practices lead to organizational isomorphism that affects public institutions, corporations and CSOs. The result is to restrict, exclude, and de-legitimize other civil society groups when politics is narrowed down to technical and administrative practice, but not understood as a partisan competition and public deliberation. The third issue is that techno-administrative governance and managerialism affects both the state and civil society actors. Managerial organizational values, norms, and goals have increasingly coordinated public organizations and many non-state organizations. Managerial principles and norms help to extend neoliberal political rationalities to wider areas

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of the world. Here, we will take his process seriously because managerialism organizes social organization: managerialism does not only refer to a process wherein public organizations adopt a set of principles from corporations. Managerialism is a technology of government because it implies governing society by managers and even governing in terms of managerial principles. Managerialism denotes the knowledge of management most effectively and efficiently governs society. NGOs and CSOs are subject to this type of knowledge, which suggests managing any organization or a social issue by applying generic procedures, logics, and strategies. Managing an organization or dealing with a social problem most effectively and efficiently is an end itself. Managerialism colonizes the social world. The procedures and formal structures through which civil society has been integrated into the institutional settings of governance foster new managerial actors within civil society who are willing and able to participate in society’s governance. The fourth issue related to contemporary civil society discourse is that many treat the CSOs now engaged in governance are representative of an autonomous civil society. This view is more or less common sense. However, an act of representation does not follow any pre-given definition; rather, it is related (or endogenous) to its linguistic formulation and practical use in a given context. To clarify: there is no standard definition or act of civil society’s representation. NGOs/CSOs represent the interest of their members and often work for a general cause. But above all, they stand as representatives of a non-state sphere, which involves actions, ideas, and practices. I believe this is the least problematized issue about CSO’s representativeness: CSOs symbolically represent civil society, that is, they make the idea of civil society present (Pitkin, 1967, p. 92). CSOs give this idea an (institutional) form. The fifth issue involves the contingent and historical nature of the concept of civil society. When civil society was re-invented in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War, scholars in Central and Eastern Europe adopted a more philosophical and theoretical approach to civil society. They invoked civil society strategically in order to challenge an oppressive state. Nonetheless, such an emphasis has left a legacy of neglecting or eroding other meanings of civil society. For instance, the Enlightenment thinkers elaborated civil society as an emerging commercial society and a site for an economic man. They dealt with civil society as a sphere that embedded the desires and interests of newly emerging groups and the economic man. Contemporary conceptions of civil society often avoided

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taking civil society as a sphere of the system of needs (as Hegel and Marx understood it). Instead, they adopted a civil society concept constituted by intermediary associations of citizens. The dominant view of civil society in political science, both descriptively and normatively, relies on a particular (liberal) conception of civil society, which was articulated by the nineteenth-century political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville’s observations of civic associations in the America of the 1830s and 1840s describe what we now call civil society as autonomous, i.e., independent of the state, and composed of spontaneous and voluntary organizations. However, these associations have evolved into very different type of organizations (Wierda, 2018). Decentered approach unearths the contestations over civil society’s meanings and links these meanings to rationalities of government. Interpretive Encounters The interpretive approach is a theoretical and methodological frontier to engage with foundational, structural, and reified approaches in political science. There is no overarching interpretive theory. The interpretive theory involves a set of theories that share the view of meanings are constitutive and which share the philosophical presumptions of contingency and anti-essentialism. In particular, Foucault’s insights on power and knowledge help us unpack how this influence occurs and can be understood. Foucault decentered institutions by moving beyond them and looked into related and broader techniques of power existing in society. He moved beyond functionalist approaches starting from practices. He adopted a bottom-up approach examining microphysics of power. Invoking civil society and organizations in civil society also relates to governmental rationalities. Foucault elaborated governmental rationalities in history to separate the reason of state, pastoral power, and liberal government. When Foucault elaborated on political rationalities, he underlined totalization and individualization as the two distinct effects of political rationalities that emerged under the modern state. However, he dismissed the institutionalizing technologies in civil society that characterized both feudal societies and liberal societies. Tocqueville, perhaps without guessing his ideas a century later would influence social sciences and governance practices, described citizens’ tendency to establish associations as the new science.

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His approach to civil society re-emerged under the new governance and this time aligned with neoliberal reforms and networks. Foucault’s work helps us examine how human sciences connect to broader political processes, political practices, and the exercise of political authority. On his account, scientific theories influence politics, but they do not connect to broader changes in the state and governance by creating blueprints for practitioners. Scientific theories do not determine but influence the actions of practitioners. The point is that now the prevalent way of talking about civil society treats this concept as if it is an objective fact and has an essence. Nonetheless, civil society is a historical, contingent, and contested concept. Decentered approach to civil society begins from the contemporary appeal to civil society under the new governance. These practices are connected to the problems of governance without or beyond the state in an efficient, economic, and legitimate manner. Decentered approach moves beyond the institutions in civil society in order to explain how scientific discourses and certain technologies of power organize associations in civil society, first and foremost the NGOs. Focusing on historical meanings would not merely serve as a review of the debates about civil society in the history of political thought. The aim is to suggest that the meaning of civil society has always been connected to a particular political problem. The Enlightenment tradition situated civil society within the problems related to liberal art of government: namely, those problems involving limited government, the emergence of political economy as a field, separation of the state and economic relations, the growing influence of the bourgeoisie class, and the problems of reconciling the particular interests of the bourgeois class with those of the common good. The modern concept of civil society emerged within the context of political economy. Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith described modern society with theoretical concepts such as economic man, spontaneous order, and limited government. Hegel and Marx defined civil society as a system of needs, and they considered civil society as a sphere of inequality. Such a focus on civil society disappeared. When civil society has been rediscovered in the 1990s, it was rejuvenated in connection to a new set of problems regarding the changes in the state and governing societies. The new art of government has oriented toward governance without or beyond the state. When civil society was rediscovered, scientific discourses and practitioners have either appealed to an anti-statist meaning of civil society or focused on NGOs and other associations. When civil society has reappeared, the concept has found a different context than the early

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Enlightenment. Unlike classical liberalism, neoliberalism does not rely on a theory of self-regulating civil society and market relations. In contrast to modernist accounts of liberalism, the neoliberal political reason is constructivist: its vision is to build markets and spread market principles in society (because neoliberalism does not anymore consider them possessing in-built laws and regularities). As a result, neoliberal political reason does not consider civil society as a sphere of activity independent from the state. Contribution This book aims to bring new insights into our understanding of civil society in at least three ways. First, its major innovation is it applies the interpretive turn in philosophy to the debates in political and social science surrounding the concept of civil society. Second, its originality derives from the interdisciplinary nature of the research: that is, it draws on disparate literatures, those including social and political theory, public administration, international development, global governance, and critical management studies. It engages with governance, global governance, and development studies literatures around the axis of civil society, CSOs, and NGOs. It reflects upon the effect of new governance reforms and neoliberalism on the emergence of new subjectivities within civil society by drawing upon social theory (primarily upon the insights of Michel Foucault). It examines the new characteristics of state and society relations by benefiting from the ideas of political theorists (e.g., Mark Bevir). Third, this research can reconsider the state–society relationship by emphasizing changing the interplay of an image of society and the exercise of political power. There has been a shift from the Enlightenment framework that connected civil society to a set of problems about liberal art of government to neoliberal rationalities. This shift connects civil society to a new set of new problems related to making and enhancing markets. Whereas the Scottish political economists focused on moral sentiments in a self-regulating commercial society, neoliberals dismiss the concept of society. Instead, they emphasize choice and attempt to rebuild trust and solidarity in a given community through associations. While classical liberalism attempted to reconcile an emerging bourgeois class’s interests with the common good, neoliberalism focuses on the management of diverse interests through markets without or beyond the state. In the latter case, no single institution can represent the public good because the public

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good is realized when particular individual interests are met. Individual interests are met by market relations. This book speaks to and is in dialogue with various fields. Those who conduct interpretive research would like to see how the interpretive approach is applied in the particular case of civil society. Those who conduct civil society research may read this book as an alternative theoretical/methodological framework. Those interested in a critical investigation of civil society will see how an interpretive theory denaturalizes much taken for granted assumptions about civil society and how civil society is connected to power relations. Political theorists can read this book to see how the concept of civil society connects to changes in political rationalities. Democratic theories can see some criticisms about linking the actions of CSOs as a participatory democracy practice. In addition to Mark Bevir’s theory of governance and Michel Foucault’s insights, I am also inspired by several other influential authors. Their ideas, one way or another, are reflected in different parts of argumentation. Governmentality studies have remarkably influenced the approach of this book to civil society. In my previous research, I adopted this literature more closely and conducted more sociologically oriented research. In this book, I want to focus more on social and political thought and discuss normative implications of adopting a governmentality approach. To that end, this book starts with emphasizing the underlying philosophical assumptions that inspire the analysis of this book (chapter I). It elucidates how speech act theory and the concept of performativity, in particular, the way Judith Butler applies them can help us grasp how the concept of civil society connects to individual NGOs/CSOs like a language game (Chapter 2). It interprets the historical changes in civil society discourse with Foucault by focusing on how distinct images of (civil) society contingently align with political rationalities and relevant technologies (Chapter 3). It contextualizes civil society within the new governance or new patterns of rule, including neoliberal reforms and networks (Chapter 4). It elaborates on what it means to take civil society discourse as a governmental technology (Chapter 5). It questions how managerial practices affect civil society by drawing upon Max Weber, Herbert Marcuse, and critical management (Chapter 7). It elaborates how managerial practices challenge CSOs’ potential to establish public spheres and why other theories fail to conceive and confront these challenges (Chapter 8). It focuses on the case of European governance

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to demonstrate the implications of conceptual/theoretical argumentation (Chapter 8).

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Della Porta, D. (2014). Democratization from below: Civil society versus social movements? In T. Beichelt, I. Hahn, F. Schimmelfenning, & S Worscech (Eds.), Civil society and democracy promotion (pp. 137–149). Palgrave Macmillan. Dowding, K., & John, P. (2009). The value of choice in public policy. Public Administration, 87 (2), 219–233. Edwards, M. (2004). Civil society. Polity. Esmark, A. (2009). The functional differentiation of governance—Public governance beyond hierarchy, market and networks. Public Administration, 87 (2), 351–371. Fischer, F. (2006). Participatory governance as deliberative empowerment: The cultural politics of discursive space. The American Review of Public Administration, 36(1), 19–40. Foucault, M. (2009). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the College de France 1977–1978, ed. M. Senellart [Transl. by G. Burchekkk], pp. XVIII– XXXIV. Palgrave Macmillan. Fung, A., & Wright, E. O. (2003). Thinking about empowered participatory governance. In A. Fung & E. O. Wright (Eds.), Deepening democracy institutional innovations in empowered participatory governance (pp. 3–45). Verso. Fukuyama, F. (2001). Social capital, civil society and development. Third World Quarterly, 22(1), 7–20. Fyfe, N. R. (2005). Making space for “neo-communitarianism? The third sector, state and civil society in the UK. Antipode, 37 (3), 536–557. Gadamer, H. J. (1989). Truth and method, 2nd rev. edn. (1st English edn., 1975, Trans. by W. Glen-Doepel, ed. by J. Cumming and G. Barden), revised translation by J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall. Crossroad. Gaventa, J. (2004). Towards participatory governance: Assessing the transformative possibilities. In S. Hickey & Mohan (Eds.), Participation: From tyranny to transformation: Exploring new approaches to participation in development (pp. 25–41). Zed books. Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms. Contributions to a Discourse theory of law. MIT Press. Haque, S. (2010). Non-governmental organizations. In M. Bevir (Ed.), The sage handbook of governance (pp. 330–342). Sage. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2003). Unraveling the central state, but how? Types of multi-level governance. American political science review, 233–243. Jessop, B. (1995). The regulation approach, governance and post-fordism: Alternative perspectives on economic and political change? Economy and Society, 24(3), 307–333.

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Jessop, B. (2003). Governance and meta-governance. On reflexivity, requisite variety, and requisite irony. In H. P. Bang (Ed.), Governance as social and political communication (pp. 101–116). Manchester University Press. Kamat, S. (2004). The privatization of public interest: Theorizing NGOs in a neoliberal era. Review of International Political Economy, 11(1), 155–176. Kaldor, M. (2005). The idea of global civil society. In G. Baker & D. Chandler (Eds.), Global civil society: contested futures (pp. 103–112). Routledge. Keane, J. (2003). Global civil society? Cambridge University Press. Kickert, W. (1993). Autopoiesis and science of (public) administration: Essence, sense and nonsense. Organization Studies, 14(2), 261–278. King, A. (1975). Overload: Problems of governing in the 1970s. Political Studies, 23, 284–296. Kooiman, J. (2003). Governing as governance. Sage. Kutay, A. (2014). Managerial formations and coupling among the state, the market, and civil society: An emerging effect of governance. Critical Policy Studies., 8(3), 247–265. Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. Verso. Lang, S. (2012). NGOS, civil society, and the public sphere. Cambridge University Press. Leal, A. (2007). Participation: The ascendancy of a buzzword in the neo-liberal era. Development in Practice., 17 (4/5), 539–548. MacIntyre, A., & Bell, D. (1967). Symposium: The idea of a social science. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 41, 95–132. Maltseva, E. (2016). Transnational civil society and the world bank: Investigating civil society’s potential to democratize global governance. Perspectives on Politics, 14(2), 610. Mercer, C. (2002). NGOs, civil society and democratization in the developing world: A critical review of the literature. Progress in Development Studies, 2(1), 5–22. Monroe, K. (Ed.) (1991). The Economic approach to politics: A critical reassessment of the theory of rational choice action. Harper Collins. Morrison, J. (2000). The government–voluntary sector compacts: governance, governmentality, and civil Society. Journal of Law and Society, 27 (1), 98–132. Pierre, J. (2000). Debating governance. Oxford University Press. Pierson, P. (2000). Increasing returns, path dependence and the study of politics. American Political Science Review, 94, 251–267. Pitkin, H. F. (1967). The concept of representation. University of California Press. Porter, D., & Craig, D. (2004). The third way and the third world: Poverty reduction and social inclusion in the rise of ‘inclusive’ liberalism. Review of International Political Economy, 11(2), 387–423.

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Powell, W. (1990). Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization. Research in Organizational Behaviour, 12, 295–336. Roberts, S. M., Jones Iii, J. P., & Fröhling, O. (2005). NGOs and the globalization of managerialism: A research framework. World Development, 33(11), 1845–1864. Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press. Reimann, K. D. (2006). A view from the top: International politics, norms and the worldwide growth of NGOs. International Studies Quarterly, 50(1), 45– 68. Salamon, L. M. (1995). Partners in public service, government-nonprofit relations in the modern welfare state. Johns Hopkins University Press. Salamon, L. M. (2010). Putting the civil society sector on the economic map of the world. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 81(2), 167–210. Salamon, L. M. (1994). The rise of the nonprofit sector. Foreign Affairs., 73(4), 109–122. Schnable, A., DeMattee, A., Robinson, R. S., & Brass, J. N. (2020). International development buzzwords: Understanding their use among donors, NGOs, and academics. The Journal of Development Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 00220388.2020.1790532. Scholte, J. A. (Ed.). (2011). Building global democracy? Civil society and accountable global governance. Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University Press. Smith, B. C. (2007). Good governance and development. Palgrave Macmillan. Swyngedouw, E. (2005). Governance innovation and the citizen: the Janus face of governance beyond-the-state. Urban Studies, 42, 1991–2006. Taylor, C. (1971). Interpretation and the sciences of man. Review of Metaphysics, 25, 3–51. Thompson, G. Frances, J. Levasic, R., & Mitchell, J. (Eds.) (1991). Markets, hierarchies, and networks: The coordination of social life. Sage. Tocqueville, A. de. (2003). Democracy in America. Penguin Books. Walker, J. L. (1991). Mobilizing Interest groups in America. Patrons, professions, and social movements. University of Michigan Press. Wiarda, H. (2018). Civil society: The American model and third world development. Routledge. Winch, P. (2008). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy. Routledge.

CHAPTER 2

Interpreting Civil Society

Civil society is often thought of by social scientists as citizens’ activities outside the state or official governmental organization. However, the analysis that is advanced here moves beyond overly simplistic and ahistorical conceptions of civil society. It begins from the philosophical insight that social and political reality is contingent and linguistically expressive—a conclusion often dubbed the interpretive turn. This philosophical argument is defended by the philosophy of language (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969), phenomenologists and hermeneuticists (Heidegger, 1962; Gadamer, 1989; Taylor, 1971), pragmatists (Bernstein, 1976), and discourse theories (Howarth, 2000; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985), neoAristotelians (Alastair MacIntyre), pragmatists (Bernstein, 1976), and Wittgensteinians (Winch, 2008) to name only a few. These philosophical arguments are well known in the human sciences. However, what is novel about this project is that it applies this insight to the debates surrounding the concept of civil society. It applies interpretive theory to civil society in two ways: • It examines scientific discourses and ideas that define and constitute civil society actors • It analyzes and evaluates how the new governance and neoliberalism organize civil society.

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The book advances philosophically and theoretically oriented arguments: 1. When it is compared with the positivist approach, the interpretive approach provides us with appropriate theories, concepts, and methods to analyze the concept of civil society and CSOs. It also helps us examine how scientific theories play a role in establishing the meanings of civil society, how those meanings are connected to distinct forms of voluntary organizations, and how various meanings of civil society and particular forms of CSOs are linked to the exercise of political power in the new governance. 2. Interpret approach rejects positivist social sciences because they cannot understand and explain social reality. Positivist social sciences emulate natural sciences; they presume individuals’ pure experience grounds objective knowledge, and such experience is unmediated by beliefs, meanings, and discourses. Positivists rely on logics of verification and logic of falsification. These meta-theoretical assumptions do not apply to explain the social world because pure experience is not plausible. Whereas positivism relies on brute facts, laws, and regularities to explain individuals’ actions and social phenomena, interpretive approach draws on meanings and narratives. Interpretive approach takes meanings as constitutive of actions. Narratives establish relationships with different social facts and events. 3. Naturalist approaches (i.e., positivism, rational choice theories, behavioralism), some new institutionalist theories of governance (in particular those that are functionalist), and some civil society theories (e.g., those inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville) occlude the fact that civil society is a historical and contingent concept. Thus it is constructed and contestable. 4. If civil society is itself a socially constructed feature of political reality, those theoretical and practical meanings of civil society that rely on and promote taken-for-granted assumptions about, or reified essentialized and ahistorical concepts related to civil society do not explain that concept as if it were an objective reality existing independently from meanings, discourses, and beliefs. Positivist and modernist theories do not merely distort the meaning of civil society because of their meta-theoretical assumptions. Civil society’s meanings that these theories establish also influence practitioners’ actions whose objective is to govern the state and its population.

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5. Scientific theories are thus productive and constitutive because they connect ideas and concepts to specific social and political problems. 6. Civil society discourse not only influences the actions and desires of civil society actors (i.e., NGOs), they also constitute particular NGO forms and prompt distinct identities in civil society in the first place. 7. Interpretive approach to civil society then examines how the practitioners’ beliefs, scientific discourses, new governance practices, and materials related to NGO management and capacity building construct and organize civil society and civil society actors. The innovative aspect and contribution of this research to the literature can be identified as in the following. Argument I: Challenging dominant approach to civil society in social and political sciences A set of philosophical insights—contingency, anti-essentialism, antinaturalism nominalism, constructedness of social reality—advanced by most interpretive theories inspired the analysis conducted here to take issue with the dominant approach to civil society in social and political sciences and social and political theory. Dominant theoretical and practical approaches to civil society distort our way of thinking about civil society as a single, autonomous (from state and economy), ahistorical, reified, and unified discourse. A set of naturalistic and behaviorist theories apply this view in their analyses. Naturalist theories assume the possibility of pure experience. They often take the prevalent political discourse on civil society at face value, thereby discarding beliefs, discourses, and civil society theories. Civil society research, which adopts naturalist theories, focuses on creating an index, operationalizes variables to test or measure a hypothesis, and looks into the organizational characteristics. What is philosophically problematic from the viewpoint of interpretive theory is that much of the literature tends to draw on a concept of civil society that takes civil society as an ahistorical and fixed concept. For instance, a dominant notion of civil society, intermediary associations between citizens and the state, inherited from Alexis de Tocqueville, has made students and scholars of civil society too quick to assume a natural, ahistorical dichotomy between society and the state. Similarly, a set of naturalistic and behaviorist theories essentializes and reifies civil society

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into a single meaning when they operationalize civil society’s dominant meaning. Social and political theories of civil society also often imply a concept of civil society that is single and embodying norms and law-like mechanisms separating them from the state, economy, and the family and regulating social relations. Social and political theories often define civil society as a social sphere vis-à-vis the state, or a space of free communication that generates public sphere(s), or a community of intermediary associations building trust and solidarity and aggregating the interests of their members (Cohen & Arato, 1992; Habermas, 1996; Putnam, 1993). Most of these theories either reify civil society by attributing it structural or systemic characters of embodying functions within the general system of society. Or, they take the relationship between citizens’ associations and the concept of civil society as something given but not discursively constructed. This dominant view of civil society and CSOs/NGOs in political and social science research occludes that we increasingly live within a particular and highly contestable way of imagining and constructing civil society. A more interpretive, historically sensitive approach claims that civil society is a socially constructed feature of political reality. A turn toward an interpretive theory would allow us to argue that civil society is not ahistorical, naturally given fact but a contested, discursive feature of reality. In other words, what constitutes civil society changes with historical and cultural context. Our notions of civil society have undergone radical changes, including structural changes in CSOs and NGOs’ nature. Such massive structural changes greatly problematize the older liberal view of a simple split between state and civil society actors, which remains dominant in social and political science and social and political theory. Argument II: Civil society is constructed and contestable The second argument is that once we accept that civil society is constructed and contestable, interpretive researchers adopt critical research to decenter or unearth or unmask civil society. Interpretive research’s focus on meanings does not merely involve mapping out different meanings of civil society. Interpretive research unravels, exposes,

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and demonstrates beliefs, discourses, and theories. However, an interpretive researcher’s focus on meanings does not mean that interpretation is merely a descriptive approach and interpretive analysis cannot explain. This perception of interpretive approach is misleading. Although some influential ethnographers emphasized “thick descriptions,” recent interpretive theories focus more on the explanatory and critical potential of interpretive research (Bevir, 1999a, 1999b; Glynos & Howarth, 2007; Han, 2002; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). Following Mark Bevir, here I suggest a version of the interpretive theory that draws on the contextual theory of meaning and embraces the agential capacity of individuals with a notion situated agency. Interpretive approach provides explanations that are contextualized (Davidson, 1980; Quine & Ullian, 1970; Wittgenstein, [1953] 2001). Contextualized meanings look into how different meanings and usages of civil society are related to social facts and events where civil society is mobilized. These social facts and events here involve the new governance, which encompasses neoliberal reforms and the rise of networks, and regime changes in transitional and emerging states. Civil society is also connected to other concepts and practices, including participation, development, third sector, and inclusion. Civil society’s meaning is thus linked to contexts in which it is located and enacted and is contingently linked to other concepts. Although the analysis conducted here has a strong preference for drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Mark Bevir’s governance theory, it starts from interpretive theory because it is an umbrella approach (or a meta-theoretical frontier) that involves a set of theories positioned against positivist theories including rational choice, behavioralist, and institutionalist theories. Mark Bevir and R. W. Rhodes have done excellent work by applying interpretive theory to governance and gathering other interpretive theories in handbooks and edited volumes (Bevir & Rhodes, 2011, 2016a). This book in part serves to widen the application of interpretive approach in social and political sciences.

Interpretive Theory Much social science is now under the hegemony of positivist, or postpositivist, or naturalist methodologies. They comprise behavioral, rational choice, and institutionalist theories. These theories commit to a common epistemological belief in rationally acting agent, an alleged pure experience, and an explanatory framework that defines causality akin to natural

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sciences. In contrast to rationalist and behaviorist theories, interpretive approach “focuses on the meanings that shape actions and institutions, and the ways in which they do so” (Bevir & Rhodes, 2016b, p. 3). Other theories may also focus on meanings. However, the interpretive theory suggests that meanings are constitutive of actions. In common, interpretive approaches challenge taken-for-granted knowledge by refuting foundationalism and fixed, reified, ahistorical, and metatheoretical perspectives. Instead, they claim that the social reality is radically contingency; it is contested and contestable (Bevir & Rhodes, 2005, p. 172). This position as a criticism of naturalism in human sciences is vividly pronounced by interpretive theorists and methodologists (Bevir & Blakely, 2018; Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012). Naturalism entails applying the scientific standards of natural sciences to social sciences (Ayer, 1936; Hempel, 1942; Popper, [1962] 2002). Interpretive methods claim that human sciences need a radically different approach (Taylor, 1971). Interpretive theory involves a set of theories sharing these philosophical assumptions. These theories are inspired by language and discourse theories, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and post-structuralism. These philosophical arguments resonate in the linguistic philosophy (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969), phenomenology and hermeneutics (Heidegger, 1962; Gadamer, 1989; Taylor, 1971), pragmatics (Bernstein, 1976), neo-Aristotelian (MacIntyre & Bell, 1967), and Wittgensteinian philosophers (Winch, 2008). These theories in common inform an interpretive approach to human sciences. Interpretive approach has been influentially challenging the hegemony of positivist and behaviorist theories in social sciences in recent years. There is no single interpretive theory but a set of theories that have a family resemblance. Interpretive theories have different standpoints about methodological issues concerning structure, agency, and meaning. Whereas some theories prioritize actors’ intentionality and a contextual theory of meaning (Bevir, 1999a), post-structural discourse theories are informed by semiotics and adopt a relational and differential theory of meaning (Howarth, 2000; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Torfing, 1999). Here, the analysis follows the contextual theory of meaning, while rejecting structuralism and autonomous agency. Rejecting an autonomous agency does not, however, require abandoning agency entirely; people are not structured or determined by contexts but are always situated in them.

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All interpretive theories agree that meanings are constitutive of action. Focusing on meanings requires employing different research strategies than those offered by naturalist theories. Naturalist theories emulate natural sciences. These theories provide explanations by verifying or falsifying their theories by observing objective facts. They imply, however, people can have pure experience. By way of contrast, interpretive research focuses on meanings and the meaning-making process. Interpretive researchers reject the possibility of pure experience. They argue that actions and practices of humans are always shaped and informed by a web of beliefs, discourses, and traditions. People take part in language games a la Wittgenstein: it is through these games that we try to make sense of and change the world. Interpretive approach provides us with a contextual analysis of civil society. Interpretive approach differs from idealism (“Ideas structure historical progress and make the social world”), just as it differs from naturalist approaches to concept formation (Bevir & Kedar, 2008). The analysis that is conducted here is not idealist because it investigates the meaning and changes in the concept of civil society by taking both practices and ideas as its vector of analysis. A contextual analysis situates ideas and pertinent scientific theories such as social capital and governance within these practices and broader technologies, which practitioners mobilize on and about civil society and organizations in civil society. It situates because theories, discourses, and beliefs influence practices. However, the contextual analysis applied here also differs from other contextual analyses that do not focus on practices and meanings. Political theorists and historians of intellectual thought often examine a concept and the change of its meaning at the level of ideas. For instance, the most popular contextual analysis employed by the Cambridge school (Skinner, 1988; Pocock, 1972) studies a thinker’s ideas within existing debates in that period. Studies of this kind often lack an analytical perspective for understanding facts, events, and processes, including imperialism, decolonization, post-colonialism, and global governance. It is on this ground, Mark Bevir (2011a, p. 11) argues, “In the absence of renewed theoretical debate, contextualism may lapse into naive empiricism or bland eclecticism.” In other words, if the historical-contextual scholar intends to examine how a particular context and ideas present in a given historical period are related, then such analysis must also involve an interpretation and reflection about that context.

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The contextual approach also resembles and overlaps with Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history or Begriffsgesichte (Koselleck, 1982: see also Richter 1995 and Palonen 2000). Contextualism is, however, not limited to semantic analysis of value systems and ideas, which is the central focus in conceptual history. The contextual approach has more substantial stress on analyzing the change in the meaning of ideas. It does not take the context as a set of independent events from the value systems and concepts. In its account, values and ideas are constitutive of institutional structures (e.g., constitutional forms and governance arrangements) and historical processes (e.g., colonization, free trade, global governance). This methodological choice will enable a linking of historical events and processes to value systems and ideas. The contextual analysis applied here holds a clear preference for a contextual theory of meaning (Davidson, 1980; Quine & Ullian, 1970). This analysis decenters ideas by starting from practices and relevant strategies and tactics surrounding given ideas. Perhaps, one can refer to Foucault’s inquiry of the clinic, medicine, and hospital, where scientific theories are embedded within their social context. To illustrate this point with Foucault’s investigation of criminology, new ideas and theories about confinement and discipline emerged not because philosophers advanced revolutionary insights taken later by practitioners. Instead, new theories emerged as a response to the need to govern more effectively. A contextualized analysis of civil society examines new civil society subjectivities that arise in the new governance context. More specifically, contemporary civil society is in part constructed by way of the practitioners’ beliefs and speech acts, scientific discourses, new governance practices, and materials related to NGO management and capacity-building programs. Because there exists no foundation or pre-given conception of civil society, one can only conceptualize civil society by analyzing beliefs, speech acts, scientific discourses, practices, and materials. Interpretive theories focus on the philosophical/meta-theoretical aspects of governance. This focus does not mean that interpretive theory does not have a research agenda or does not deal with real-world problems. On the contrary, interpretive research claims to demonstrate human life’s complexities by engaging in a contextualized analysis. Naturalist or modernist researchers often criticize interpretive researchers as if they conduct unconvincing or sloppy research. This criticism relies on a misunderstanding of interpretive approach or rejection of its meta-theoretical

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assumption. Interpretive research aims to stand as an alternative to positivist and naturalist social science but do so by developing its own criteria for the validity of analyses. The criteria of objectivity and trustworthiness of interpretive approaches are different. In a positivist approach, the validity of an argument depends on the operationalization of measurement criteria that are derived from the theory, which often contain deductive or inductive statements to explain social phenomena (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012, p. 92). Proponents of interpretive approach deny using modernist criteria of the logic of verification and falsification. Interpretive research is evaluated based on its trustworthiness, systematicity, reflexivity, and transparency (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012, pp. 90–114). It is not interested in measuring, in contrast to naturalist social sciences, but examining meaning-making in context. Interpretive social science contextualizes social reality, and this approach differs from how natural sciences explain nature. In contrast to natural scientists, interpretive social scientists examine the meaningful actions of human beings. Social scientist can explain people’s beliefs and actions by locating them in a wider context of meanings. Meanings cannot be reduced to social facts because their content depends on their relationship to other meanings. (Bevir, 2010a, p. 6)

Interpretive approaches provide explanations different from naturalist approaches. Their explanations, which relate one fact to another, take narrative forms. Narratives “explain beliefs and actions by pointing to historical causes,” and they “work by relating actions to the beliefs and desires that produce them and by situating these beliefs and desires in particular historical contexts” (Bevir, 2010b, p. 434). The trustworthiness of interpretive research depends on the logical coherence of the argument (Bevir, 1999a) and the coherence of evidence from various sources (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012, pp. 90–114). Interpretive theory can be applied to empirical research by drawing on contextual theories of meaning and Michel Foucault insights on how scientific theories connect to the exercise of political power. This approach involves examining, as Mark Bevir and R. A. Rhodes (2016a) underline, elite narratives, rationalities and technologies of power, and resistances. Statements about civil society are found in different texts. They are inscribed into policy papers, white and green papers, and various

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institutions’ communication papers. While it is possible to trace the historical development of civil society discourse by examining these papers, researchers can also analyze position papers, reports, and newsletters that are prepared by NGOs, as well as conduct interviews with NGO staff and observe NGOs’ seminars, conferences, and workshops in order to see how they perceive, receive and implement the discourse. These narratives and practices make up civil society discourse(s).

Decentering a Reified Conception of Civil Society Interpretive approach to civil society brings in an alternative critical analysis. Other critical approaches either tap into civil society to counter neoliberal reforms or see policies that involve CSOs to governance as part of an ideological move of the capitalist class or strong states. Interpretive theory often agrees with many of the observations made by other critical scholars: whereas encouraging citizens’ associations in principle is valuable for participatory democracy, it is also true that one cannot put a blind eye to political reforms’ instrumental motives when they appeal to CSOs. The critical purchase of interpretive theory derives from its decentering the concept of civil society. Bevir and Rhodes (2011, p. 204) suggest, “To decentre is to focus on the social construction of a practice through the ability of individuals to create, and act on, meanings.” Other theories decentered the state and the market relations (Bevir, 2020; Polanyi, 1944). This book is the first attempt, to my knowledge, to decenter civil society. Decentering civil society does not merely mean that civil society entails different groups and multiple viewpoints. No sensible author would argue that groups and institutions constituting civil society would create a monolithic entity (on par with the state) or a single voice in a given society. The question is that, despite the plurality and diversity in civil society (in scope, size, field, ideology), how one can talk about civil society as an aggregate concept. Abstractions, or aggregate concepts, cannot have intentions. Reified views define society as an objective social whole. Reification implies that aggregate concepts, or structures, can reason and act consciously to rationalize their own goals (Chari, 2010). Nevertheless, this argument does not make sense; abstractions cannot have intentions. Furthermore, naturalist and behaviorist theories cannot explain how some associations outside the state, particularly NGOs, came to be related to the concept of civil society in the first place.

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The reification of civil society happens due to philosophical presuppositions of liberal social and political thought and meta-theoretical assumptions of modernist social sciences. The liberal and modernist theories distort our thinking about civil society as a taken-for-granted, autonomous, ahistorical, reified, and unified discourse. Modernist theories here refer to a framework of imagining the social organization in spheres and imagining those spheres as if they embody a particular way of reasoning in their own sphere. These embody a function in the overall organization of society. Naturalist approaches in social and political sciences, including rational choice, behaviorism, and institutionalism, reify civil society and CSOs. These theories operationalize a conception of civil society that essentializes civil society into a reified and ahistorical meaning. When it became apparent that neoliberal reforms lack the consent of society, new institutionalist theories aspired to solve legitimacy concerns of the new governance. They turned to civil society to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the new governance (Scholte, 2002, 2007; Steffek & Nanz, 2007). Many authors and practitioners have found the new governance arrangements highly appealing to reconsider democracy and allay domination (mostly resulting from the nation-state) in an era of globalization. These debates have not only remained at the level of theoretical debate. They also informed policymakers, resulting in the flourishing of civil society actors that legitimate policy processes. These new institutional theories often draw on the traditional modernist functionalist theories attribute each sphere in society a function, where civil society’s function is to legitimate the system (Esmark, 2009; Parsons, 1961; Luhmann, 1995). In this view, civil society is a lifeworld of society and is a sphere that is undistorted by the economy and bureaucratic power. Civil society generates substantive rationalities. In contrast to civil society, systemic spheres, namely the public administration and the economy, are coordinated by instrumental rationalities. Systemic spheres also orient to achieve certain ends. They cannot, however, generate those ends. Bureaucracies are coordinated by rationallegal rationalities, efficiency, and predictability. Economy is coordinated by interest, competition, exchange, and accumulation of capital. It is civil society’s function to create norms and values, or substantive rationalities, which are required for the legitimacy of the entire system. When applied to the new governance, this view identifies civil society primarily with NGOs, and often only with NGOs. Theories of pragmatic

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governance view NGOs as a third sector, with the first and the second sectors being the state and the market (Anheier, 2004). Some normative theories see NGOs as part of civil society, transmitting to practitioners and the public the voices and interests of people (Nanz & Steffek, 2004). NGOs “act” or “stand” on behalf of the citizenry as a whole: They are often described as transmission belts, mediators, connections, and bridges. Nonetheless, such metaphors should not be taken at face value. Overall, the conceptual links among NGOs/CSOs and civil society, public sphere, legitimacy, and participatory have often been taken for granted.1 Since the 1990s, civil society’s meaning has been associated with organizations of citizens that do not orient to make a profit and that engage in issues to contribute to the public good. However, such a relationship is not a pre-given fact and can be best understood as an effect of discursive practice. Tocqueville-inspired scholars, often affiliated with communitarianism, argued that civil society associations foster trust and solidarity in a community (Putnam, 1993). In so doing, they legitimate the state and governance. However, the focus on trust in their research appears to underline the functional necessities of the system of governance (Gambetta, 1988 ed.; Kramer & Tyler, eds. 1996). It does not approach participation from the perspective of democratic self-government, political contestation, and public deliberations. Reification in civil society research also happens when researchers collapse citizens’ democratic demands to a set of interests and code them in the form of statements that are meant to express the instrumental reason of individuals and pure experience that is unmediated by beliefs, theories, or discourses. Positivist research in civil society research often looks into citizens’ associations (Heinrich, 2010). Some research projects

1 Others argue that civil society is not free from domination, as the economy cannot be expelled from civil society for the purpose of identifying civil society with the lifeworld, and instead turned to the early modern conceptions of civil society found in Hegel and Marx, or in Antonio Gramsci to reconsider civil society. In the history of social and political thought, authors also agreed that bureaucracies and the economic relations import substantive rationalities from outside of their own spheres. They discussed alternatives other than civil society to find substantive rationalities. For Hegel it was the monarch, for Weber and Schmitt it was the president and the national interest. Marcuse, in his criticisms of Weber’s reflections on proliferation of instrumental rationalities in the modern society, claimed that instrumental rationalities always required an external actor or a sphere to decide on the purpose of instrumental-rationalities mobilized by the state and the economy.

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inquired the salaried staff in the nonprofit sector (John Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project). Some research projects looked into the extent to which citizens are members of CSOs in different countries (World Value Survey). Others examined the degree of trust among citizens (LSE Global Civil Society Index). Some of the civil society indices involve the USAID’s NGO Sustainability Index and CIVICUS Civil Society Index. While valuable, such data can only give us information about these organizations’ character and membership percentage to associations. The point here is that they operationalize pre-defined categories but not meanings in action. They also discard or trivialize the values and purposes (or substantive rationalities) that organize these instrumental statements by treating them merely as means to effective governance of society. Interpretive theory helps unpack the construction of such metaphors and different meanings of civil society. The interpretive theory aims to decenter essentialized, objective, and reified interpretations of aggregate concepts such as society. Aggregate concepts, or totality, refers to a unified and complete closure of an imagined social whole in such a way as to bring together disparate phenomena, which are not related by nature but come to be seen as associated with a larger whole. Treating civil society as an aggregate concept or a totality is reification because there is no essence of civil society but many contested interpretations of that concept. Theories and practitioners contest over what is civil society. Each discourse has its own way of aggregating (social constituency and the public sphere) or disaggregating civil society (interest policy). An interpretive approach confronts treating aggregate concepts such as civil society as if they have an essence and exist independently from our perceptions of them. When a theory treats aggregate concepts as if they have an essence and can be detached from human agency, that theory reifies them. Civil society appears in different analogies, including a social constituency or a transmission belt that links the voices of imagined citizens, when taken as an essentialized, objective, and reified concept. Decentered approach does not see civil society as a reified social whole, i.e., a natural fact. It does not examine civil society as a reified concept and reflects on what happens when one reifies civil society. Civil society may be defined as a separate sphere from the state and family. Nonetheless, this does not mean that civil society, and other social spheres, namely the state and economy, have their own in-built way of reasoning and capability

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of deciding and acting. In other words, attributing a structural way of thinking to civil society is misleading. Once we reject civil society’s reification, we also problematize how an organization is identified with civil society. Such identification is not given and natural but constructed. Most theories take an NGO’s identification with civil society for granted or viewed as an empirical fact. The conceptual link between NGOs and civil society, however, has no essence. To say that civil society is a social sphere that does not have an essence means that we cannot derive the identity of an allegedly ideal civil society organization from an aggregate civil society concept as that concept has no pre-defined core. Civil society as a sphere is not a structure that has a core identity to which civil society organizations may refer and multiply in reference to that core. There exists no natural/objective/value-free explanation for how an NGO (the particular) relates to civil society (the aggregate concept). Such a link is not a pre-given fact and can be best understood as discursively constructed and articulated. To argue that NGOs’ association with civil society is a constructed one means that such an association is not necessary. The way an NGO relates to civil society is constructed because an NGO cannot be self-referential: it cannot give itself an identity. Through civil society discourse NGOs acquire a civil society identity, and individual NGOs give the abstractness of civil society a discursive form (namely, interweaving statements, actors, and actions through practices). NGOs make civil society intelligible, concrete, and governable. Without NGOs, we would not be able to talk about civil society discourse. All in all, because civil society discourses that organize NGOs’ identity precede the activities of NGOs, NGOs are to be seen as an effect of the discourse(s) of civil society but not the cause of it. Individual associations always connect to a distinct civil society concept. Civil society was defined as a single and self-regulating entity in liberal reason as part of governmental rationalities. The new governance embeds civil society to governance processes and employs political programs to design civil society. To decenter civil society, I draw on interpretive theory as a metatheoretical starting point and apply Michel Foucault’s insights and Mark Bevir’s theory of governance to civil society (Bevir, 2013). A decentering analysis does not start from searching for core features of civil society or assessing CSOs based on society’s functions. Instead, a decentered analysis moves away from the concept of civil society and citizens’ associations

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toward their contexts, and thereby examines social facts, events, ideas, and practices, only to provide a more nuanced understanding of civil society and CSOs. This strategy involves examining practices and knowledge that practitioners and scientists developed for different purposes in other contexts, which later were carried to civil society. This analysis also looks into the uses of civil society in the new governance to have a better grasp of its meaning. Put differently, a decentered analysis suggests examining the context and conditions within which contemporary civil society has emerged, technologies and rationalities that organize civil society organizations, and practices and discourses within which civil society is situated. Decentered approach explains civil society by exploring historical and political contexts within which civil society is related, scientific theories that produce statements about civil society, and policy reforms that have brought in changes in the organizational structure of the state and its population. This meta-theoretical and theoretical choice rejects reducing concepts either to ideas or materialism. Instead, the research strategy situates the contemporary meaning and use of civil society in the historical context. It connects governance practices, such as the involvement of CSOs in delivering services and consultations, to ideas and scientific knowledge that influence the contemporary governmental rationalities and technologies. This research ambition requires examining discourses, speech acts and governmental rationalities and technologies, and the effect of the interplay between power and knowledge on civil society. A decentred notion of subject, including that of an organization, is located in a network of power relations. This claim means that one dominant institution, entity, or a person (e.g., the prison, the school, the military) does not create or craft another institution, entity, or person (e.g., prisoners, pupils, soldiers) down in its entirety. An identity of an NGO is not rigid, reified, ahistorical, and cannot be de-contextualized. There exists thus nothing inherently progressive or emancipating reasoning, practices and values embodied within civil society. Subjectivities are related, inseparable, reflexive, and they are subject to the same process that influences the ideas and practices shaping societies, individuals, organizations, and the state. They are subject to a shared web of knowledge and rationalizations. Consider new governance reforms, for instance, where state institutions, civil society organizations, and even hospitals and schools are subject to a managerial model of public administration reform. Institutions such as the USAID agency, the World Bank,

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and European Commission, and the public sector at national level impose managerialism on civil society, but they adapt managerial principles in the first place themselves (Roberts et al., 2005). A decentered approach to the subject avoids two traps—voluntarism/autonomy and structuralism. A voluntarist reductionism is the primary commitment of rational choice theory and behavioral approach. On this account, it is the rational choices and interests of agents that explain social phenomena. A voluntarist approach to institutions fails in explaining the dynamics and implications of new governance on civil society, as it reduces the explanans (that explain the phenomenon) to the institutional interests. There are multifarious actors involved in forming and reforming the participation phenomenon, including the scientific community, other national governments, international organizations, and NGOs. Explanandum (that is explained) would be incomplete if we would not question the context and the meaning-making processes in which participation and NGO phenomenon emerged and evolved. The structural trap is present in those institutional and sociological approaches that take institutions and social structures as if they are reified agents. For instance, structural approaches take governance, capitalism, or neoliberalism as a monolithic and self-consciously behaving subject that can calculate, frame, and actualize its own goals and ambitions. Furthermore, they also explain actors’ actions and practices as being determined by those structures, such that they restrain or determine their actions behind their backs. A telling way to study civil society as a historical, contingent, and decentered concept is found in Foucault’s scholarship. Foucault turned to governmentality to explain how changes in power relations in society are linked to the changes in the state. Liberal art of government was a deviation from the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century governmental rationalities that merged raison d’etat with pastoral power. The liberal government invented political economy, which captured the newly emerged economic man, interests of the commercial and productive classes. Liberal government dissociated the state from civil society, and oriented to limit government.

Governmentality and Political Science Governmentality and Foucault’s other ideas, such as discourse and power relations, provide governance theorists with an alternative analytical

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approach to politics. Sociologists often use the governmentality approach. Its application to politics also opens new venues for political analysis. Governmentality approach has the potential to contribute to political science in at least three areas. First, the governmentality approach applies a genealogical method; governmentality researchers observe how concepts and practices are formed, changed, or retained their meanings. Genealogy is a historical method, and Foucault’s aim for adopting a genealogical approach was to examine the changes in regimes of vindication and changes in the exercise of political power. In his governmentality turn, Foucault sought to investigate the changes in the underlying political rationalities and technologies that affected the exercise of power by the state. When it is extended to the new governance, a genealogical method offers a critical account of the analysis of recent historical changes that are still a remembered past. The analysis conducted in the case of the mobilization of civil society discourse in the new governance is dated back to the early 1980s. Genealogy denaturalizes, defamiliarizes, and unearths the concepts, practices, and techniques which are often taken for granted or in the process of becoming fixed. Once concepts and practices appear to be fixed, their contested and contingent nature is forgotten. Genealogy recovers the contested and contingent nature of social reality. Because it exposes how seemingly natural political practices affect the interplay of scientific expertise and the exercise of power, genealogy dispels its critiques, which merely describe it as a descriptive method. Secondly, the governmentality approach offers social and political scientists novel analytical tools and concepts to analyze the state, understood as an institutional terrain, public policy, and the new governance. In particular, governmentality and governance overlap in their claim for extending the exercise of political power beyond the state to non-state actors. Governmentality approach, however, differs from rational choice, new institutional and system theories of governance. We have already underlined how these theories approach governance and how interpretive theories examine governance differently. The contribution of governmentality approach to interpretive theories provides us with an analytical toolbox to scrutinize the interaction between knowledge (scientific theories) and the exercise of political power by various social and political actors. Thirdly, one should also note that the governmentality approach differs from other social and political science theories not only simply because

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of its focus on scientific expertise and political power. Governmentality approach differs from naturalist social and political science theories, first and foremost, because it rejects the strictures of human sciences and political science. Modern social sciences presume a division of labor among the different fields, and such division is often attributed to the structural differentiation of societies. This division also works often in a disciplinary way; each social scientific discipline involves its own way of disciplining or setting the norms for acceptable and justified methods, theories, issues, and problems. Governmentality approach, just like most other interpretive theories, does not comfortably fit into such modernist categorization and compartmentalization of human sciences. It is not an alternative approach in the sense that it adds up to other theories of governance. Instead, it is an alternative approach because it aims to challenge the underlying meta-theoretical assumptions in human sciences and how they help reinforce power relations. This challenge of governmentality approach may sound like that it cannot engage in a dialogue with other approaches, as it confronts them. Some researchers who apply governmentality might tend to close the channels for dialogue with other theories. However, this should not be the aim of governmentality, I believe, nor should it be desirable. Governmentality approach and Foucault’s overall oeuvre is postdisciplinary but not anti-disciplinary (it does not imply scientific disciplines should be abandoned). Foucault’s governmentality approach is built on different fields, including the history of ideas, political philosophy, history of political economy, and social and political thought. However, Foucault’s methods were not interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, as these terms are fashionably used today. As has already been underlined, a post-disciplinary analysis goes beyond the established disciplinary boundaries, whereas interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary scientific programs operate within those boundaries. However, governmentality researchers—and this point is the most challenging and tricky part for them—are still required to engage with continuing debates within the fields with which they engage. They are required to show how their approach brings new or alternative knowledge into a given scientific field. This is exactly what social and political scientists have done. Foucault has inspired many theories, social and political sciences, including poststructuralism, New Marxism, and humanism (interpretive approaches)

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(for a review, see Bevir, 2011b). Followers of Foucault applied governmentality in various areas, including political sociology, psychology, criminology, and accounting (for a review, Rose et al., 2006). Governmentality researchers engaged with European governance (Haahr & Walters, 2004), global governance (Sending & Neumann, 2006; Joseph, 2012), and governance theory (Dean, 2007).

Conclusion This chapter explicates the underlying philosophical assumptions and arguments that inform the analysis advanced throughout the book. It explains why and how the philosophical dimensions of interpretive theories are essential to offer an alternative interpretation of contemporary civil society discourse, in particular, in the context of public policies. The new governance reforms, such as neoliberal policies and the promotion of networks, have brought radical changes in the state’s institutional structure. Market principles and values have organized these reforms. The new governance reforms affected more or less every corner of the world. Civil society discourse is part of this radical restructuring of the social and political orders.

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CHAPTER 3

Interpreting with Foucault

Foucault’s insights help us grasp and examine at least three problems emerging with the new governance. They concern the interplay between knowledge and power relations and how this interplay affects the government of the state and its population can throw light on the contemporary civil society discourses. The first problem is that liberal political reason defines society as a single sphere (Hindess, 1998; Smith, [1776] 1993). This image was a deviation from the pre-modern view, where civil society was seen as an artifact. Modern social sciences promoted this view since the late eighteenth century; political economists of the early modern era defined society, or civil society, as a self-regulating sphere, a natural entity and governed by its own laws. Such a vision of society was continued by social theorists, including structural approaches and structure theories, by portraying society as functionally differentiated spheres. This modern view affected social and political theory: the civil society sphere was described as a single sphere. This modernist view also shaped social sciences. Hindess (1998, p. 64) argues, “Knowledge of society, it seems to be suggested, is a product of liberal government and there is no liberal government without such a knowledge.” The second problem is that neoliberalism brought a new understanding: Rose (1996, p. 61) calls this “government without governing

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society.” This point does not imply radical individualism. But, neoliberal political reason challenged the very foundation of society. Neoliberal political reason aims at governing by targeting individual choices and liberties as sites of political intervention. In contrast to society-centered modernist approaches, neoliberal political reason aligns with neoclassical economics and rational choice theories. The issue is not merely that neoliberal political reason brought a strong sense of individualism, as communitarian authors criticize. The neoliberal political reason, first and foremost, challenged the notion of society. It undermined the social question (Brown, 2019, pp. 23–55). Neoliberals’ challenge to an image of a single and self-regulating society is in line with interpretive theory’s emphasis on nominalism. Nonetheless, they differ dramatically. When neoliberals, such as Hayek, decentered society, they aimed to get rid of the concept of society and dismiss the notion of the social (Hayek, 1988, pp. 114–119). Thus, neoliberals did not recenter society by another concept that could replace the function of society in modern social thought. The early liberal concept of civil society was built on emerging market relations and characterized the separation of these relations from the state. The concept of civil society became gradually less relevant than the concept of society during the nineteenth century. In particular, the growing socialist ideas mobilized the concept of society in order to address the social issue, namely the social and economic inequalities in industrial societies. Neoliberals intended to get rid of this notion of society, which was integrated into the welfare state. Nonetheless, they also confronted the earlier liberal notion of society, where it was used interchangeably with civil society. Whereas the earlier political problem of liberal government was to limit the exercise of sovereign power in civil society, for the welfare state, the problem was to maintain capitalist relations without or minimal poverty and unemployment. Thus, the welfare state required the state’s power for redistribution purposes and integrating the working class in society. When neoliberals challenged the welfare state, they did not turn to the classical liberal concept of self-regulating civil society. Instead, neoliberal rationalities mobilized the individual and the organization (including the state, NGOs, corporations) as entrepreneurial and competitive entities, thereby bypassing any abstract and theoretical references to a collective entity such as civil society and society. When civil society discourse re-emerged under the new governance, civil society referred to an aggregation of a

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set of citizens’ organizations, but not an abstract entity. New institutionalist theorists intend to revive the modernist view of a single (civil) society. Some apply this vision directly to the concept of civil society (Habermas, 1996; Nanz & Steffek, 2004). Others adopt this vision within their general theoretical framework, which starts from a presupposition of seeing the social world organized by separate spheres (Schmidt, 2008). The third problem is that neoliberal political reason empowers civil society: however, civil society is here narrowed down to a group of non-governmental organizations. Neoliberal political reason aligns with a concept of civil society inspired by Alex de Tocqueville, which focuses on intermediary associations. The appeal of this approach for neoliberal political reasoning is that, on the one hand, civil society is disconnected from political economy and social issues (e.g., social inequalities, economic production, and redistribution). On the other hand, civil society can fit into a governmental imaginary within which the political contestation and partisanship are undermined in favor of a techno-administrative regulation. On this account, when civil society organizations are characterized as a third sector, they are both disconnected from politics (a domain of partisanship) and economy (a domain of production and system of needs). They are thus isolated from areas of decision-making concerning the allocation of social and political goods in society. Positivist theories do not have tools to question this background of civil society: they adopt practitioners’ definition of civil society as if they were true presentations of the social world. Social scientific studies that adopt positivist theories examine CSOs and NGOs (Heinrich, 2010). Taken as a whole, these three problems concerning the changing image in (civil) society reflected the interplay between social sciences and the exercise of political power. In Foucault, political theory, social sciences, and political power are intertwined. This focus does not mean that social sciences became an ideological tool for a prince or a ruling class to justify and maintain their rule. Foucault was against a reified notion of political power: power was not a thing that could be possessed. Instead, political power was more of a practical concept. Whereas in Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault implied that social sciences help normalizing political power, in his later work, he focused on how social sciences served to open a discursive field within which and through which the government of the state and its population was made possible (Foucault 1991, 2008). The new image of civil society under the new governance, which is based on neoliberalism and networks, serves to make the government of

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the state and of its population practicable. This image of civil society also serves to reinforce neoliberal political reason’s post-ideological and non-partisan politics. Neoliberal political reason disavowed political contestation and conflict in favor of consensual politics and expert-based decision-making (Crouch, 2004; Honig, 1993; Mouffe, 2005; Rancière, 1999). The political here refers to partisan contestation, deliberation, and competition. However, Foucault did not cover this aspect of the political in his conception of political power and political reason. For Foucault, political reason meant the secularization of political power. Yet, in contrast to moralist political philosophers who examined the principles—such as legitimacy, sovereignty, and political obligation rationalization—that ought to guide or restrain political action, Foucault investigated the rationalization of political action intrinsic to society. Instead of focusing on a context-independent reason, Foucault situated rationalization into concrete social problems. Thus, Foucault was concerned about distinct rationalities, and such focus resulted in a research program involving the interplay between knowledge and power. With Foucault’s approach to political rationalities in mind (what he focused on and what he omitted), one can argue that neoliberalism’s attempt to discard partisan politics is not merely an effect of neoliberal policy reforms. A preference for non-partisan politics has been part of liberal rationalities, and neoliberalism has adopted and revised this legacy of classical liberalism. It was the aim of liberalism to protect the privileges of an emerging bourgeois class against popular demands of democratic self-government and political equality. Neoliberal reforms turned to experts, unelected institutions and agencies, and sometimes to courts to avoid or circumvent democratic claims. All in all, civil society discourse is situated within a web of meanings, discourses, and political rationalities. Foucault’s insights help us to unpack these complex relationships. The first section elaborates on how Foucault’s discourse analysis helps us grasp the discursive dimension of civil society. The second section discusses how one can examine institutions by applying Foucault’s insights. The third section situates civil society discourse into changing political rationalities. The fourth section reflects briefly on how modernist social science defines civil society. The fifth section looks into the implications of neoliberal rationalities on the concept of society more closely.

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Foucault, Discourse and Power For Foucault, discourse analysis grasps power relations, but he does not reduce discourse to linguistic statements. Foucault mentioned discursive practices starting with Archeology of Knowledge (Foucault, 1974). Foucault’s approach to discourse entails a specific focus on practices; meanings arise from the interweaving of linguistic statements, actions, and practices. In this book, I focus on involving civil society actors in pragmatic governance (i.e., service delivery, decision-making for providing input and legitimacy), and CSO’s managerial practices. Following Foucault, I suggest that to analyze these practices, one must move beyond the institution(s) and functional approaches to civil society and decenter the concept of civil society; this involves moving away from institutions and does not concentrate on the functions of the institutions. This focus connects scientific discourses concerning the civil society’s involvement in pragmatic governance to pre-defined governance problems. New issues in governing society here involve growing anti-statism, retrenchment of the welfare state, extension of markets to broader fields, privatizing public enterprises, the emergence of public–private partnerships in larger areas of governance, and the emergence of networks. Civil society has been appealing for practitioners under these circumstances as new governance arrangements have moved political sovereignty and authority away from the bureaucracies of nation states upwards (supranationalism, internationalism, transnationalism), sideways (by involving actors other than the state to decision-making and governing practices under pragmatic governance), and downwards (by empowering actors in spheres of local and regional governance). The new governance has caused legitimacy problems. Emergences of new actors other than the elected politicians and appointed bureaucrats within the field of the state have created concerns about political legitimacy and accountability. Modernist theories offered solutions to resolve these problems, and here organizations in civil society acquired critical roles. Modernist theories often adopt a functionalist approach. Different spheres that constitute the social world acquire relevant functions for the proper functioning of the system of governance. Associations in civil society legitimize governance by generating social capital for citizens and representing groups’ various interests (Baccaro, 2006). The prevalent approach to civil society has been Alexis Tocqueville’s approach to civil society. This approach resonates with those approaches that define civil

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society as a sphere of intermediary associations. It highlights the importance of social capital and trust emanating from associations. This view is most vividly represented by Robert Putnam (1993). Foucault’s insights help examine how scientific theories translate to political programs. This point links to Foucault’s focus on governmentality. Scientific theories concerning civil society are related to governmentality in two ways. First, Foucault separates the notion of government from that of the state because governing activities are not restricted to the state. For Foucault, government is a form of power: he describes such power as conducting others and oneself, or conduct of conduct. Government differs from sovereignty and discipline, but it does not replace them. In a narrower sense, government applies to any activity that involves an action upon others’ actions that is calculated, systemized, and that involves rules-governed, reproducible, and principled techniques. The second-way scientific theories (e.g., human sciences) concern governmentality involves the connection between knowledge and political sovereignty. In this case, it is the state as an institution that is decentered and examined beyond an institution-centered approach. Foucault suggested that he aimed to examine it similarly to how he investigated the hospital and the prison. He was aware of the paradox that emerges from such an attempt: if various technologies of power existing society one way or another link to the state, how would it be possible to move beyond the state if one decides to examine it? Either way, the point here is governmentalization of the state. Foucault’s ideas also help to connect the focus of civil society to neoliberal political rationalities. Political rationalities refer to systemized practicable knowledge that organizes and coordinates social organization, including the governance of the state, of institutions, and of the individual (Barry et al., 1996; Hamann, 2009; Foucault 2008; Lemke, 2001). Foucault and his followers claim that neoliberal rationalities have opened a discursive field in the twentieth century. These rationalities influenced the new governance reforms in various ways. The focus here is connecting all forms of governance to market principles and marketbuilding purposes while extending market principles to wider areas of life (Brown, 2015, 2019). For instance, this rationality redefines economic man. Classical liberalism identified the economic man with his interests in a newly emerging commercial society and market economy, where civil society separated from the state in the seventeenth century (Foucault 2008).

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Since the 1990s, political institutions and international agencies have aimed to mobilize civil society associations to take governing responsibilities, which have been under the responsibility of the welfare state. Political interventions have also mobilized civil society actors to legitimate the structural adjustment policies and growing marketization of societies (Porter & Craig, 2004). Political intervention in civil society merges with pragmatic accounts of new governance. Governance discourse has been ubiquitous since the 1990s. National governments and international organizations appealed to the concept in order to reflect and deal with the changes in the state. Neoliberal political rationalities have organized the political intervention on civil society by providing the practitioners with the knowledge and justification of dismissing the concept of society, in favor of a distinct understanding of civil society, and of abandoning the state’s responsibility of care for its citizens, as this task could be transferred to non-state actors. Practitioners have been invoking organizations in society for governance beyond the state by mobilizing managerial and project-based funding technologies. Invoking civil society is a political program that resorts to certain techniques and targets to achieve certain ends. Practitioners have used managerial technologies to mobilize civil society associations, particularly for administering civil society building policies and NGO support funds (Dauvergne & LeBaron, 2014; Eagleton-Pierce, 2020). Managerial technologies entail organization management strategies such as resultsbased management, log-frame, and project cycle management. These strategies are used by corporations and have also been imported to the public sector since the 1980s.

Foucault and Institution Foucault pointed out the totalizing and individualizing technologies in the liberal art of government (Foucault 1979). He engaged with Smith and Ferguson to understand the rationalities of the liberal art of government (Foucault, 2008). Nonetheless, he did not engage more in detail different reflections on civil society in the nineteenth century, moving rapidly to ordo-liberals in Germany and the neoliberal thought collective organized under the Mont Pelerin society. Foucault discarded views on civil society developed by Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Tocqueville. He was too quick to move from classical liberalism to neoliberalism. Nonetheless, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Tocqueville also left an enduring legacy on social

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and political thought. Each addressed a major issue: the tension between the particular and universal, the objective and subjective, domination and exploitation, and private and public. The effect of nineteenth-century authors has never entirely disappeared.1 In contrast, neoliberal rationalities challenged the welfare state and the modernist understanding of society. The nineteenth-century social and political thought reappeared when neoliberal reforms have shown signs of failure and were not endorsed by the people. When classical liberal ideas re-emerged, they did not bring an alternative social and political imaginary to oppose neoliberal ideas and practices. To use a term borrowed from Hegel, they did not negate neoliberalism. Rather, classical liberal ideas were recalled only to modify neoliberal reforms. Political discourse on civil society, whether in the form of the public spheres (Kant’s legacy) or a social sphere (Hegel’s legacy) or intermediary associations (Tocqueville’s legacy), has been incorporated into the hegemonic neoliberal discourses. I will open this debate further in the book. Now, I only underline that the new art of government was not only totalizing and individualizing, as Foucault argued. It was also institutionalizing. The modern state established rational-legal bureaucracies, and technologies of institutionalization were spread within society as part of governmental rationality. Institutionalization, understood as forming stable and organized associations, extended to the sphere of civil society. Political institutions see the organizational structure of the CSOs as sites upon which practitioners can act and conduct. This action adopts a similar way to neoliberal rationalities that see the individual from the perspective of human capital, whose skills can and must be developed to make an individual fit for the labor market and market relations. In the case of the political intervention on civil society, the site of political intervention is organizations: practitioners promote policies, guidelines, tool kits for NGO or CSO building or capacity building. One cannot act upon an organization because an organization is not a person with intentions, beliefs, and reasoning capacity. 1 Hegel positioned civil society in between the family and the state; it involved corporations. These corporations, such as the guilds, did not abandon their feudal vestiges as of the early nineteenth century in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. The remnants of feudal organizations continued under the liberal principles of formal political equality before the law and the constitutional state. At the same time, civil society was also host to the newly emerged bourgeois associations that organized the interests of the commercial, industrial, and productive class.

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When practitioners mobilize associations in civil society and act upon these associations, they can only do this by mobilizing individuals who are members of these associations. The new governance, both in its neoliberal and network governance forms, coordinates organization-based activity. This has also brought a change in political participation. Liberal democracies have been built on political representation. Here, citizens elect their representatives in elections, and legislators have used to be accountable to citizens. Appointed bureaucrats and recruited practitioners have been indirectly accountable to citizens via their elected representatives. In the hierarchical mode of governance, it was easier to determine whom to keep accountable. Pragmatic governance mobilizes organizations beyond the state. However, it is not easy to identify the responsible organization for public policies because governance processes (decision-making, implementation, and evaluation of policies) have become more complex than it was under the hierarchical governance regimes. Civil society associations offered solutions for legitimacy issues in new governance resulting from weakening accountability mechanisms and becoming more difficult to spot responsible actors behind decisions. An interpretive theory inspired by Foucault examines the interplay between power and knowledge and how this interplay affects the new governance and civil society. Once it has become almost common sense that bureaucracies, hierarchies, public ownership of some sectors in the economy, state’s responsibility of pastoral care are inefficient, undesirable, and they belong to the past, scientists and political and social actors believed that the transformation of the state was urgent and necessary. Human sciences provide a rationale for the government of the state and of the population. The main function of a social scientific theory is not to normalize a disciplinary regime. Rather, theories open a discursive field within which political programs are rationalized and through which political and non-state actors coordinate governmental rationalities and technologies. In this case, scientific theories involve governance theories (e.g., rational choice, institutionalism, system theories) and globalization theories. The concept of governance merged with another popular concept, namely globalization, since the 1990s. Concepts of governance and globalization have shaped the grid of our perception of the social world. They have influenced governmental rationalities and technologies by opening a space for political intervention.

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The term “good governance” has extended the new governance into the post-colonial countries and transitional states (Weiss, 2000). Good governance has been especially promoted by International Organizations, including the World Bank, IMF, and the UN. Good governance required institutionalization of liberal democracy and required the establishment of markets and privatization (Ayers, 2006; Ayers & Saad-Filho, 2014). New-Marxist authors affiliated good governance with the expansion of neoliberalism globally in the sense that the normative framework of good governance provided capitalism with an ideological gloss. For newMarxists, invoking civil society must be situated and interpreted within this framework. The neoliberal and network governance also involved managerial knowledge. In this case, we refer to management as a distinct field of scientific knowledge. Management has particularly become relevant for the new modes of governance. The new governance aimed to change the hierarchical, bureaucratic structures and the more traditional way of coordinating and monitoring public policies by the law’s coercive power. The new governance introduced new mechanisms of coordination, such as performance management. One major experiment of this mechanism was the EU’s Open Method of Coordination in social policies (Mosher & Trubek, 2003). Non-coercive methods have even spread to refugee governance, such as to Global Compacts. Management provides this new mode of governance the expertise of administering, enhancing, evaluating, and monitoring. It also provides the new governance with a leadership model, namely the manager; managers replace the old-fashioned bureaucrats with the flexible and innovative entrepreneurial leader model. Management is a highly relevant scientific field for neoliberal rationalities because it prompts a distinct technical knowledge form. Managers can administer any type of organization; technical knowledge of management is independent of the substance of management. Because management is a technical knowledge that is reproducible, rule-governed, and calculable, it can be applied in wider areas of social life where there exists an organization or need to form organizations. This management feature makes it highly useful for neoliberal governmental rationalities; the technical nature of management minimizes, or dismisses contextual knowledge altogether.

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Foucault and Political Rationalities Foucault did not focus on a reason or rationality as such, for instance, how Max Weber treated rationality. Rather, Foucault focused on how distinctly rationalized discourses come to be true in a contingent way (regimes of verification) and shaped jurisdiction or norms (regimes of codification). In Foucault’s account, power and knowledge are closely linked to each other. Without the accompanying constitution of an area of expertise, in this view, there is no power relationship. There is also no knowledge that does not imply and involve power relations at the same time. Power relations and scientific discourses are mutually constitutive because scientific theories make the social reality both knowable and manageable. Scientific theories expose new areas of investigation. Nevertheless, these new areas are often the products of power relations, which have marked them as potential or existing social-political issues wanting, in the first place, governmental intervention. In this view, it is only possible to exert power over something that “techniques of knowledge and procedures of discourse were capable of investing in” (Foucault 1978, p. 98). To say that scientific expertise and power relations are interweaved implies that human sciences incorporate into the programs of government. These programs do not merely contain the intentions of rulers (Gordon, 1980, p. 248). They also presuppose knowledge of the field of reality on which a political program is to act and arrange reality in the form of a programmable entity. Foucault first associated scientific discourses, where his focus was more on the exercise of power by the hospital and the prison on bodies and issues such as madness and delinquency, to disciplinary control in capitalist societies. He turned to political rationalities when he began examining the exercise of power by the state. The liberal government relied on governing with freedom. It depends on an image of society that is self-regulating. Here, rationalities of liberal government of the state and of its population did not rely on the theory of police, although it adopted the aspect of pastoral power from that theory. The theory of police relied on a shepherd/flock metaphor, which characterized the underlying reason of government of each and all individuals in a given community by a method of gathering and storing detailed information about them. Theory of police and such exercise of pastoral power were disciplinary, as the shepherd governs not by presupposing the freedom of the flock members. The shepherd commands the flock.

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Foucault developed governmentality to connect his previous work in power, subject, and reason to the state, particularly to the changes in state (Foucault 19912009). Foucault was criticized for focusing on the microphysics of power in daily social relations but not dealing with the state’s political power (Gordon, 1991, pp. 3–4). Foucault introduced government as a novel form of power, one which is different from sovereignty and discipline. Sovereignty refers to the political action of merely preserving the office of the prince (or of his throne). Discipline, in general, refers to social control technologies. When implemented by the modern state, disciplinary power involves the techniques of pastoral power. Foucault elaborated such power with the metaphor of the relationship between the shepherd and flock. Pastoral power first emerged in the ancient Mediterranean cultures, especially as reflected in the Hebrew religion. It was later integrated into the Christian culture but was restricted to the religious sphere and did not become part of political government until the emergence of the early modern state. Pastoral power was all about providing the community members with food, shelter, and spiritual guidance. It aimed to save each and all both in this and the other world. The early modern state adopted pastoral power techniques but rationalized it for serving more mundane and practical purposes related to improving the wealth and the strength of the state. Being adopted by the early modern state, pastoral power became both political and rationalized. It became a political issue because pastoral power was connected to the exercise of political power. It was also rationalized because applying such power was not justified externally by natural law or religion’s cosmology. Rather, pastoral power was connected to mundane and practical issues connected to government of the population and community members. Pastoral power was also a form of disciplinary power and was related to the theory of police (or policy). Here, government aimed to care for each and all members of the population. To that end, a governmental action required extensive information of each person and the population. Liberal government relied on a new understanding; the theory of police was governing too much. Liberal government did not have to govern the population and its members by taking care of each individual and all community. This objective was demanding, costly and unfeasible for the modern state. Liberal government mobilized political economy as a new theory for the government of the modern state and of its population. Political economy brought the understanding of separation

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of the state from civil society and civil society from state. As this new knowledge introduced a new image of society as a self-regulating sphere, liberal government focused on governing the conditions required for this sphere’s self-regulation, including the protection of market relations against political interference, the freedom of the individual for participating in market society not only to buy–sell commodities but also his/her labor to newly emerged property owners, and on securing the property owners of the threat of those groups without property. Foucault insists that the development of a distinctly liberal rationality of government is responsible for the discovery of society (in the modern, sociological sense of a substantial and enduring entity, independent of government, whose boundaries nevertheless coincide with those of the state and national economy) and therefore also for the emergence of the sciences which claim to study its workings. (Hindess, 1998, p. 64)

The rationality of the neoliberal government dismissed society’s image as a self-regulating sphere in liberal government while bringing in power techniques. More specifically, the exponents of Chicago School in neoliberal thought discarded society and in its place placed the individual as an object of governmental intervention. New technologies targeted human resources and human capital. Neoliberal political rationalities interrupted mobilizing the modern social thought’s image of society. New scientific theories, neoclassical economics, and rational choice theorists, too, halted a tradition of examining society as an object of scientific inquiry (sociology has been seen as an irrelevant discipline). These theorists brought a new image of the social world, constituted by the individual’s choices and interests, the economic man. Liberal government is traditionally against partisan politics, which here means competition for power. This strategy was required to remove the political competition from decision-making because political contest threatens liberal stability (Schmitt, 1988). Liberal governments and many liberal authors tried to avoid partisan politics and democracy to avoid instability and chaos. Most authors take the current relationship between liberalism and democracy at face value. However, these concepts have different histories, and they merged only recently under modern constitutionalism during the American and the French Revolutions. Before these revolutions, democracy implied chaos and mob rule, and it is difficult to find a single liberal author supporting democracy. After

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the revolutions, liberals continued to be skeptical about democracy. Liberals advocated restricting voting rights to the propertied class (e.g., Constant) and sought ways to restrain the dangers of majority rule (Constant and Tocqueville). It would take another century to introduce universal suffrage under these circumstances. After the Great Depression and the devastating impact of WW II, liberalism aligned with the welfare state. Consequently, the liberal notion of equality extended from political/formal equality to socioeconomic equality. Liberalism tried to avoid partisan politics and democratic political contest. As a replacement for partisanship, the liberal image of politics involved mobilizing civil society. Liberalism is revealed, not so much as seeking to reduce the size and the scope of government in its broadest sense, but rather as aiming to change its form: it is a tactics of government that operates by shifting the work of government from state to non-state agencies. (Hindess, 2005, p. 395)

The practice of invoking civil society within the framework of the new governance builds on this historical legacy of the liberal art of government. Because the new governance brings in a framework of social organization where CSOs operate within a field that is cleaned of political competition, CSOs are compatible with liberalism’s suspicion for partisan politics. This practice is compatible when CSOs are seen as third-sector associations and when the new governance merely refers to techno-administrative structures.

Modernist Theories and Civil Society Civil society is a constructed and contestable concept. It is an outcome of political and theoretical imagination. This image was adapted to the changing political and social conditions. Modernist theories, which conceptualize civil society as a collective whole and as a sphere separate from the state and the economy, make it possible to represent civil society as a single concept. Even if NGOs appear to reflect merely their members’ interests, NGOs’ connection to civil society is still what gives a political meaning to this particular act. When modernist theories consider civil society as a singular and objective concept, they reify civil society. Civil society is seen as a self-regulating sphere of social interaction, wherein individuals’ free choices organize

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the interactions of actors in the market relations to produce wealth and prosperity. Contemporary social theorists identify civil society with the lifeworld but continue defining it as a singular sphere. Civil society is seen as the sphere of undistorted communication: bureaucracy with its instrumental rationalities and economy with its profit-oriented action distorts communication. The substantive values of the political community could only derive from the sphere of civil society. However, a reified and structural concept of civil society is not tenable. Civil society is not a natural entity that can be taken for granted as if it exists there with an essence. This view has been the legacy of the Enlightenment thought of considering civil society as a natural entity. Some scientific theories and public policies also presume a naturally given relationship between NGOs and civil society. This choice is in part a result of positivist theories, which lead researchers to adapt a reified and objective approach to the analysis of social science concepts. Researchers employing positivist theories overlook or reject beliefs, discourses, and background theories that play a role in the constitution of a distinct understanding of civil society and its connection to governmental technologies. Instead, positivist researchers often take the dominant view of civil society, as practitioners use at face value. They claim to operationalize an objective knowledge: however, these theories draw upon a distinct theory of civil society, which finds its inspiration from Alex de Tocqueville. This understanding does not reflect true nature of civil society but characterizes a historically conditioned image of a state-society relationship. Rational choice theories, because they do not mobilize structures or systems to explain the social world, depart from other modernist approaches that treat civil society as a singular and self-regulating sphere. They focus on the organizational characteristics of individual NGOs and other voluntary organizations. However, because they examine NGOs to say something about civil society’s features in a given country, they identify NGOs with civil society. One can argue that their image of civil society is an aggregation of a set of NGOs. New institutionalist theories employ the modernist theories to explain the effects of structural differentiation on societies and develop new practices and norms of political legitimacy that can be used in network governance. New institutionalist theories mobilize the social capital approach and Habermas’s deliberative theory. As Robert Putnam uses it, the social capital approach prompts Tocqueville’s civil society approach as intermediary associations. Habermas’s theory is compatible, or a variant of, structural approaches.

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When they focus on political legitimacy, new institutionalist approaches prioritize Habermas’s theory of civil society to connect differentiated spheres of the state (or bureaucratic administration) and economy by civil society. This communicative function of CSOs is further strengthened by their potential for promoting trust in the system of governance and social capital that citizens acquire by participating in the activities of organizations. New institutionalist theories, thus, draw upon both traditions of civil society. When new institutionalist theories focus on more pragmatic aspects of governance to govern societies more effectively, they are less distinguishable from neoliberal reforms and neoliberal governmental rationalities. Neoliberal reforms attack both politics and the social by replacing partisan politics and political deliberation with society’s techno-administrative management. To the extent that governance networks replace partisan politics and class politics with governing by experts and managers, they align with the neoliberal imaginary of politics. In such a frame, the function of civil society appears to legitimate a form of governance that is shaped by neoliberal rationalities and policies. A decentered approach criticizes both of these modernist approaches.

Neoliberal Rationalities and Society Liberal government and modernist social science left a legacy of a singular image of civil society, or society, as a self-regulating sphere of interaction. Neoliberal rationalities challenged this unsustainable view. Liberal rationalities have an aim to govern the conditions required for a self-regulating society. Neoliberal governmental rationalities depart from such aim. They aim to govern without a notion of society. Brown (2019, p. 28) argues, the existence of society and the idea of the society—its intelligibility, its harboring of stratifying powers, and above all, its appropriateness as a site of justice and the commonweal—is precisely what neoliberalism set out to destroy conceptually, normatively, and practically.

This view was reflected in neoliberal theorists and practitioners in different ways. For Thatcher, there was no such thing as society. The term Big Society denoted a new social organization where the task of the welfare

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state is distributed to non-state actors through privatization and partnerships in the UK. For Hayek, society does not exist, and there was even no need even for sociology. Like the ‘naturology’ that once pretended to replace all specialised investigations of nature, sociology proceeds in sovereign disregard of knowledge gained by established disciplines that have long studied such grown structures as law, language, and the market. (Hayek, 1988, p. 51)

This challenge of neoliberal government has at least two consequences. First, when governmental rationalities do not directly manage the conditions of society, it turns directly to the population inhabiting the state’s territory. This turn is reminiscent of the theory of police, which characterized the earlier modern political rationality of the state. The theory police drew upon disciplinary technologies to collect substantial information about each and all individuals who were subject to the government of the state. Foucault described this pastoral power as having both totalizing and individualizing effects (Foucault 1979). Neoliberal rationalities aim to manage the population and the individual without a theory of society, a theory that produced liberal rationality of power. Neoliberalism employs totalizing and individualizing power within a corporatized and privatized state. The second challenge of neoliberal government is the singular view of society underlying the liberal government of the state and of its population. Neoliberal theories rejected this structural and reified notion of society. Nonetheless, this rejection was not an attempt to decenter society but meant to imply society’s dismissal as a theoretical object of investigation and governmental intervention. This move of neoliberal theory prepared the ground for reforms in dismantling welfare reforms, targeting the state’s redistributive functions. Dismantling of the welfare state has been realized in part due to the disappearance of “social” questions and dismissing the concept of society. I have seen it suggested that ‘social’ applies to everything that reduces or removes differences of income. But why call such action ‘social’? Perhaps because it is a method of securing majorities, that is, votes in addition to those one expects to get for other reasons? This does seem to be so, but it also means of course that every exhortation to us to be ‘social’ is an appeal for a further step towards the ‘social justice’ of socialism. (Hayek, 1988, p. 118)

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Neoliberal political reason thus attacked society and the term of social not because of meta-theoretical reasons to favor nominalism and reconsider reified structures. This attack primarily targeted the political, or more ideological, connotations and uses of these concepts. Neoliberal political reason challenged the idea that social and political orders will be organized by taking these concepts as reference points. The confusion that it spreads, within the very area wherein [social] is most used, is partly due to its describing not only phenomena produced by various modes of cooperation among men, such as in a ‘society’, but also the kinds of actions that promote and serve such orders. (Hayek, 1988, p. 114)

In political thought, society and the state have always been linked to the common good. Neoliberal reason focuses on the norms and values of the economy such as efficiency and competition: it requires the government of the state according to the economic norms. Political economists of the Enlightenment tradition suggested that a civilized society beyond feudal relations would emerge within the market exchanges. Individuals would interact in the market. Terms of contributions and needs of economic man and market relations would not be restrained either by mercantilist policies or the norms of the guilds and feudal corporations. Liberalism defined civil society as an object of political intervention and scientific inquiry. Political economy dealt with these problems. Neoliberalism does not ground on exchange in the market: its organizing principle is competition (Brown, 2015). Economic man requires being competitive to defeat his competitors in the market relations under neoliberal rationalities: that neoliberal theory divests economic relations and liberty from political concepts that refer to any collectivity including civil society, understood as a system of needs and self-regulating sphere of social interaction, citizenship, and popular sovereignty. Before the Enlightenment tradition, society was an artifact and an extension of politics. It was the Aristoteles’ view of societis civillis dominant until civil society was separated from the state. The Enlightenment tradition identified civil society with the emerging market relations and commercial society, but it has also brought that self-regulating market would serve best the common interests unless they are intervened by political institutions (Ehrenberg, 2017).

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Neoliberal reforms and network governance arrangements mobilized the concept of civil society and NGOs/CSOs. They have employed distinct rationalities and technologies for this purpose. States and international agencies started funding campaigns for NGOs in the global South and democratizing countries in Central and Eastern Europe. They have prepared manuals for NGOs’ capacity building and project management. Practitioners developed new procedures to involve NGOs in governance processes such as consultations, multi-stakeholder seminars, and conferences. Meanwhile, several universities in the West started NGO management programs to train a new generation of experts to manage the growing NGO industry. These policies and practices have brought a distinct concept of civil society. Governing civil society required distinct scientific expertise and relevant knowledge about this field. New institutionalist theorists continue adopting a modernist image of the social world, an image that sees society being composed of structurally differentiated and self-regulating spheres. This image allows them associating a legitimating function to civil society and CSOs: that civil society generates values through communicative interaction undistorted by the bureaucratic instrumental rationalities and vested interests of business groups (Habermas 1987; Schmidt, 2008) and civil society organizations create solidarities and a sense of belonging to the political community through engaging in organizational activity (Putnam, 1993). However, this view overlooks the implications of neoliberal policies and rationalities. It can even be argued that they reinforce neoliberal policies by aligning with neoliberalism’s attack on politics and the social question. Technoadministrative governance, undermining partisan politics, removes from the state’s responsibility of governing the social sphere. Neoliberal rationalities seek to “govern without governing society” (Rose, 1996, p. 61), and the changing theoretical image of society enables this. Neoliberal political reason treats society as an empty concept, or civil society is understood not as an abstract, theoretical concept but an aggregation of associations. A neoliberal governmental reason requires each organization’s detailed information to govern this image of civil society, as neoliberalism does not anymore have an abstract civil society theory, namely structurally differentiated or self-regulating spheres. Rational choice theories and neoclassical economics influence governmental technologies of gathering information about NGOs’ characteristics (how many members an NGO has, how it is structured, how

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it is governed). Donors use this information to assess the accountability and transparency of NGOs. One point that needs to be addressed is that Foucault’s writings on governmentality provide us with an analytical framework to explicate the rationalization of NGOs’ emergence and the knowledge that is used to create, control, administer, and spread NGOs. But governmental technologies, in this case, are not strictly liberal in the sense that the conduct of NGOs is based on the choice of the NGO members. A focus on choice is not the most effective way of explaining and understanding the actions of the NGOs. The neoliberal art of government, in this case, does not orient to regulate the conditions of self-regulating spheres. It aims to regulate the actors within the field of civil society directly. Neoliberal rationalities similarly see civil society to how the earlier modern governmental rationalities characterized the population. The point here is that when civil society, or society, is divorced from abstract and theoretical knowledge, what is left behind from civil society is an aggregation of associations, and what is left behind from society is population. The theory of police depended on disciplinary techniques, so is the neoliberal rationality of invoking civil society. In global governance, neoliberal governmentality adopted the modernist legacy of progress, where it was presumed that each society goes through certain stages of development until they reach civilization (read: urbanization, industrial society, established markets). This view guided the imperial and colonial powers when bringing civilization to less civilized societies. The modern view of progress and the self-authorized task of the developed states to bring civilization to the less developed world continued guiding Western states and international agencies’ actions after the decolonization (Tully, 2008). It gained new momentum under global governance.

Conclusion All in all, the most effective way to focus on the debate of contemporary civil society is to explore the shift in the interplay between governmental rationalities and theories of social science affecting both the state and civil society. Neoliberalism departed from liberalism’s image of civil society as a self-regulating sphere. The problem here is not only restricted to neoliberalism’s stress on individualism. Neoliberal political reason also departs from the concept of a substantial and enduring concept of society. The new governance’s appeal to civil society and NGOs/CSOs connects

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to a governmental technology of governing without governing society. Neoliberal rationalities draw on NGOs/CSOs to govern not only beyond centralized, hierarchical authorities: they also serve to neoliberalism’s aim of governing without governing society. Once neoliberal rationalities dismissed the idea of a self-regulating society, states and international agencies were required to govern NGOs/CSOs. Just like neoliberal rationalities focused on conducting individuals’ desires and skills, they also focused on conducting the actions and capacities of NGOs.

References Ayers, A. J. (2006). Demystifying democratisation: The global constitution of (neo) liberal polities in Africa. Third World Quarterly, 27 (2), 321–338. Ayers, A. J., & Saad-Filho, A. (2014). Democracy against neoliberalism: Paradoxes, limitations, transcendence. Critical Sociology, 41(4–5), 597–618. Baccaro, L. (2006). Civil society meets the state: Towards associational democracy? Socio-Economic Review, 4(2), 185–208. Barry, A., Osborne, T., & Rose, N. (Eds.). (1996). Foucault and political reason: Liberalism. University of Chicago Press. Brown, W. (2019). In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. Columbia University Press. Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos, neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. The MIT Press. Crouch, C. (2004). Post-democracy. Polity. Dauvergne, P., & LeBaron, G. (2014). Protest Inc.: The corporatization of activism. Polity Press. Eagleton-Pierce, M. (2020). The rise of managerialism in international NGOs. Review of International Political Economy, 27 (4), 970–994. Ehrenberg, J. R. (2017). Civil society: The critical history of an idea. NYU Press. Foucault, M. ([1969] 1974). The archaeology of knowledge. Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Allen Lane. Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality: An introduction, volume I . Allen Lane. Foucault, M. (1979). Omnes et singulatum. Towards a criticism of ‘‘‘political reason’. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values Delivered at Stanford University. October 10 and 16, 1979. Retrieved: from foucault81.pdf (utah.edu). 26. 01.2020. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gorden, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: The studies in governmentality (pp. 87–104). The University of Chicago Press.

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Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. (2009). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the College de France 1977–1978, Ed. M. Senellart (Transl. by G. Burchekkk), pp. XVIII– XXXIV. Palgrave MacMillan. Gordon, C. (1980). Power/knowledge. Pantheon. Gordon, C. (1991). Governmental rationality: An introduction. In G. Burchell, C. Gorden, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: The studies in governmentality (pp. 1–53). University of Chicago Press. Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action, Vol II: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms. MIT Press. Hamann, T. H. (2009). Neoliberalism, governmentality, and ethics. Foucault Studies, 6, 37–59. Heinrich, F. V. (2010). Civil society indicators and indexes. In H. K. Anheier, & S. Toepler (Eds.), International encyclopedia of civil society (pp. 376–380). Springer Science & Business Media. Hayek, F. (1988). The fatal conceit: The errors of socialism. Routledge. Honig, B. (1993). Political theory and the displacement of politics. Cornell University Press. Hindess, B. (1998). Knowledge and political reason. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 1(2), 63–84. Hindess, B. (2005). Politics as government: Michel Foucault’s analysis of political reason. Alternatives, 30(4), 389–413. Lemke, T. (2001). The birth of bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality. Economy and Society, 30(2), 190–207. Mosher, J. S., & Trubek, D. M. (2003). Alternative approaches to governance in the EU: EU social policy and the European employment strategy. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 41(1). Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. Routledge. Nanz, P., & Steffek, J. (2004). Global governance, participation and the public sphere. Government and Opposition, 39, 314. Porter, D., & Craig, D. (2004). The third way and the third world: Poverty reduction and social inclusion in the rise of ‘inclusive’ liberalism. Review of International Political Economy, 11(2), 387–423. Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rancière, J. (1999). Disagreement, politics and philosophy. University of Minnesota Press. Schmidt, V. A. (2008). Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse. Annual Review of Political Science, 11(1), 303–326.

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Schmitt, C. (1988). The crisis of parliamentary democracy. MIT Press. Smith, A. ([1776] 1993). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Oxford University Press. Rose, N. (1996). Governing ‘advanced’ liberal democracies. In A. Barry, T. Osborne, & N. Rose (Eds.), Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neoliberalism and rationalities of government (pp. 37–65). University of Chicago Press. Tully, J. (2008). Public philosophy in a new key. Cambridge Univ. Weiss, T. G. (2000). Governance, good governance and global governance: conceptual and actual challenges. Third World Quarterly, 21(5), 795–814.

CHAPTER 4

Defining and Constituting NGOs

This chapter makes four claims to decenter civil society: 1. As they are used in much contemporary political discourse, NGOs and CSOs symbolically stand for civil society. 2. NGOs have been identified by social scientists and practitioners, often with civil society. They define civil society narrowly as a sphere constituted by a set of NGOs and CSOs, and other voluntary organizations (Lang, 2012). 3. On the one hand, it is only within a political discourse particular NGOs are associated with a general, abstract, and theoretical concept such as civil society. On the other hand, when civil society is characterized as a social sphere that is constituted by a set of NGOs, CSOs, and other voluntary organizations, its meaning is connected to these organizations’ practices. 4. Civil society discourses involve a set of theories, practices, techniques, and materials which render distinct images of civil society intelligible and governable. In previous chapters, I focused on how interpretive approach helps us examine civil society and how Michel Foucault’s insights help us analyze the interplay between power and scientific theories. In this chapter, I focus on how particular NGOs are connected to the concept of civil society. To © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Kutay, NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71862-6_4

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that aim, I resort both to Foucault’s discourse analysis and Judith Butler’s performativity theory. When performative utterances define and constitute, they interpellate actors into subject positions. Interpellation does not dismiss the agency of actors; they have agency, but not autonomy. Agency of actors is always situated in a social context: they can always resist, modify, and bring in new discourses and practices. Nonetheless, actors’ intentionality is always influenced by their background theories, beliefs, and social facts. These insights allow us to theorize how public policies can act as performative utterances and, thus, define and constitute NGOs and the conceptual link between NGOs and civil society.

Speech Acts The analysis here gets inspiration from Foucault’s discourse analysis to examine the association between NGOs and civil society, or identity formation. The previous chapter already started explaining Foucault’s approach to discourse. It has been mentioned that Foucault’s focus on discourse was not limited to investigating linguistic statements. He was particularly interested in analyzing “the conditions of possibility for producing particular statements” (Torfing, 2011, p. 192). His focus throughout his research period was always examining a particular aspect of how linguistic utterances, actors (or subjects), and actions were related. He initially focused on how epistemes influence knowledge production and power relations in different sites, such as in the hospital. His genealogies looked into how power relations emerged in different sites such as prisons, schools, and armies are connected to broader technologies of power in society and regimes of truth (Howarth, 2000). From an account of Foucault’s discourse analysis, civil society’s association with participation, social capital, and democratization involves at least six aspects. First, statements (i.e., theories and policies) about participation, civil society, or democratization provide a particular form of knowledge about them. Second, the hegemonic understandings of these concepts prescribe specific ways of talking about them, thereby excluding alternative understandings and theories. Thus, hegemonic discourses regulate what is sayable or thinkable about participation, civil society, social and economic governance, ethics, and democracy. Performative utterances can be effective only under the presence of hegemonic discourse or the intersection of multiple discourses. Third, subjects (activists, social actors, participants, engaged citizens) that in certain

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respects actualize the civil society discourse are informed and motivated by the attributes that civil society and governance theories would expect them to have. Fourth, hegemonic theories of participation, governance, and civil society claim authority over the truth about participation, civil society, democracy, and the state. Fifth, policymakers realize these theories. Scientific theories, however, are not blueprints. They set a mindset. For instance, this mindset contains such a statement: “For a healthy democracy, we need a well-functioning civil society, and active NGOs constitute a well-functioning civil society.” Sixth, discourses about participation and civil society are historical. This claim means that they will eventually transform in time; they are not here to say forever. A historical examination or a genealogical study of civil society and participation is thus crucial. Such historical examination recognizes the agency of social actors: that actions, imaginations, and creativity of social and political actors are not pre-determined and exhausted by a discourse or a political ideology. Foucault examined serious speech acts in his archeologies. These acts may also be seen as statements whose criteria, whether true or false, are defined in terms of the rules laid down and occur in a historical context. The analysis here is particularly interested in speech acts: they are performative utterances that define and constitute. Speech act theory was one of the earlier theories of the linguistic turn in the twentieth century together with Saussure’s semiology and Wittgenstein’s theory (1958) that connects language and action through language games. An NGO does not have a meaning in its own right outside of a civil society discourse to stand as a civil society subject. For instance, from structural-functional and new institutionalist theories, NGOs/CSOs are seen as part of the civil society sphere or the third sector. Rational choice theories do not draw on macro concepts and explanations such as systems, structures, and society (Arrow, 1994; Binmore, 2007; Black, 1948; Dowding & John, 2009). How they define civil society and how they connect NGOs/CSOs to civil society is less obvious. They have to presume such a connection. We can only understand how rational theories define civil society by looking at rational choice methodologies in civil society research. Rational choice researchers often focus on NGOs’ organizational characteristics or examine how membership to an association is common in different countries. They often operationalize Tocqueville’s definition of civil society by adopting his contemporary follower Robert Putnam’s influential research (Putnam, 1993). They aim to create indexes

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to measure, test, and compare civil societies in different countries (for a review Heinrich, 2010). Therefore, rational choice approach examines individual NGOs/CSOs only to make claims about civil society. Although their methodologies differ, rational choice and new institutional theories in common invoke a singular image of civil society as an aggregate concept wherein NGOs/CSOs do not merely represent their members’ interests. They also symbolically represent an imagined civil society. NGOs/CSOs stand for the concept of civil society. The organizations of citizens and the practices of governance give this abstraction a sense of factuality. Researchers thus imply a concept of civil society by the actions of CSOs and their involvement in governance, which often involves the aggregation of interests through consultations. Decentered approach unearths this taken-for-granted assumption about characterizing civil society with intermediary associations. Decentering civil society involves examining public policies and expert statements about civil society as speech acts and performative utterances. Decentering civil society also involves focusing on governmental rationalities and technologies and the interplay between scientific theories and the exercise of political power. Scientific theories inform practitioners who prepare policies. Policies work as performative utterances. It is, however, practices that give meaning to these linguistic statements. A discursive practice entails words, materials, and actions. Each time practitioners initiate a new NGO support program, they intend to act not only on the NGOs (tangible and material) and civil society. Practitioners engage in policies and programs oriented toward the NGO often for civil society support and democratization. Policymakers’ acts upon NGOs have meaning, however, only within the frame of civil society discourses. The language games of Wittgenstein illustrate this point with an example of how a builder and his assistant build with various sorts of stones: A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs, and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words ‘blocks’, ‘pillar’, ‘slab’, ‘beam’. A calls them out; B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such and such a call…. I shall call the whole, consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven, ‘the language-game’. (Wittgenstein, 1958, p. 3)

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What this example suggests is that it is not the idea (i.e., that of building stones), but the materiality of the stones and the very practice of building at the same time that make different linguistic elements meaningful (i.e., blocks, pillar, slab, and beam), and constitute an object (i.e., building a wall). Just as the “idea of building-stone, as far as we know, has not been sufficient to construct any building” (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p. 108), the idea of a CSO does not make up civil society. It is only through discursive practices that one can establish the link between NGOs and civil society, and operationalize this link within public policy. If you are not satisfied with such an interpretation, consider Hanna Pitkin’s (1967) views, the author of The Concept of Representation, the seminal book on political representation. Pitkin follows Wittgenstein’s views on language: she suggests that we should investigate the use of political representation to grasp its meaning in different contexts. We must do this because an act of representation does not follow any pregiven definition; instead, it is related (or endogenous) to its linguistic formulation and practical use in a given context. To clarify: there is no standard definition or act of representation. Following Pitkin, NGOs stand as representatives of citizens in the civil society discourse, yet what matters most is the symbolic implications of this act, i.e., the idea that civil society is being made present (Pitkin, 1967, p. 92).

Performativity The concept of performativity denotes how performative utterances define and constitute civil society subjects. Austin’s (1962) seminal work, How to Do Things with Words, suggests that some statements are not mere descriptions as they create and constitute. For instance, when a priest declares the establishment of marriage between a man and woman, he does not merely utter words. He also engages in the constitution of marriage as an institution. The policies concerning civil society are just this kind of speech acts. When applied to civil society discourse in the new governance, performative utterances do not merely define and constitute civil society subjects. They establish a discursive link between NGOs/CSOs and civil society. Only performative utterances or discursive practices can establish that link because neither NGOs/CSOs nor the concept of civil society have a naturally given substance from which one can derive statements about them.

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Performative utterances rely on prior beliefs, theories, or discourses. As Mark Bevir and R. W. Rhodes (2005, p. 114) argue, “People can adopt beliefs only against the background of a prior set of theories, which at least initially must be made available to them by a discourse or tradition.” When this is applied to NGOs, the critical point is that NGOs’ consideration as civil society actors is not a brute fact but a social construct because it is not possible to make such an association without prior theoretical knowledge or belief. NGOs/CSOs are seen here as the effect of civil society theories and beliefs of actors, because civil society theories precede NGOs’ actions and governance practices. Butler’s gender theory (Butler, 1988, 1999) helps grasping how speech acts and performativity affect NGOs’ organizational identities. Even though, there are challenges in extending a gender theory to characterize an organizational identity. First and foremost, the identity of humans and the identity of institutions may seem incomparable. This obstacle can be allayed in an interpretive approach that prioritizes human agency and does not treat institutions as structures. For instance, Mark Bevir’s interpretive approach focuses on practices instead of institutions. Similarly, Foucault’s analysis of power relations also starts by moving away from institutions and examining discursive practices that bring together statements, actors, and actions. Once we accept that performativity utterances are also discursive practices and adopt a bottom-up approach instead of an institutional analysis, there is no reason to prevent us from employing performativity on NGO identity. Secondly, a Foucault-inspired interpretive approach can get inspiration from Butler’s gender theory to deal with the concept of identity. For Butler, gender identity is “an identity instituted through a stylised repetition of acts” (Butler, 1988, p. 519). Butler also suggests that the body is “not a self-identical or merely factic materiality; it is a materiality that bears the meaning, if nothing else, and the manner of this bearing is fundamentally dramatic” (Butler, 1988, p. 521). When explicating gender identities, Butler argues that the possibilities of these identities “are necessarily constrained by available historical conventions” (Butler, 1988, p. 521). As with gender, to suggest that there is no body prior to cultural inscription will lead Butler to argue that sex as well as gender can be performatively

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reinscribed in ways that accentuate its factitiousness (i.e. its constructedness) rather than its facticity (i.e. the fact of its existence).” (Salih, 2007, p. 55)

If we take this interpretation not just as a statement about gender theory but also as a general claim about all social identity, it can be possible to extend Butler’s theory to expound NGO identity. In this light, the materialization of an NGO identity and linking this identity to civil society discourse is dependent on the performative acts of NGOs and the larger audience (policymakers, academicians, and the public) that internalize and normalize those acts and behave accordingly. On this account, NGOs are under the influence of discourses and instruments (policy initiatives, scholarly discourse, manuals, guidelines, etc.) that emerged at a particular historical instance. Governance arrangements set the stage for civil society involvement in public policymaking processes regulating these processes and consultation mechanisms. Political programs set the rules and norms of civil society actors’ engagement in policy processes. Among others, these programs involve the criteria for CSOs’ representativeness and toolkits for NGO and project management. Their purpose is to make NGOs and CSOs transparent and accountable. The concept of performativity is useful to claim that an association between an NGO and civil society is a linguistically and practically constructed one. This association is not pre-determined; the contemporary hegemonic meaning and use of civil society as intermediary organizations find its origins in Tocqueville. This association is also made possible through repeated daily practices. An NGO does not merely refer to concrete organizational materiality (that is, an NGO is not just an organization) because it has a particular meaning and practical use when associated with civil society. Discourses precede actions: “… there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed-the deed is everything” (Nietzsche 1989, p. 45). One can find such an attempt to interpret political phenomena such as the relationship between governance, civil society, and the NGO in terms of a speech act confrontational. However, the assertion is straightforward: An NGO is not self-identical. Most social and scientific approaches presume NGOs as actors of civil society. They consider this linguistically and practically constructed association between NGOs and civil society as pre-determined, fixed, and ahistorical. These approaches cannot capture the point that a particular NGO, similar to gender identity, has meaning

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only when positioned within other NGOs and scholarly narratives about civil society as intermediary organizations. A wider web of meanings informs NGOs that participate in governance settings of beliefs and discourses. Thus, they do not have autonomy. Nonetheless, rejecting autonomy does not require rejecting agency. It is true that policymakers—as we will see in the following pages—often impose a specific type of organizational knowledge upon NGOs. They thus set the stage (consultations, forums, seminars, conferences) and inscribe the script (rules of policy conduct, appropriate civil society engagement). Nevertheless, this still does not confer determination, domination, and enforcement. NGOs are not passive recipients of a bureaucratic or ideological blueprint, even though their being and actions do not precede the political projects and programs or the contemporary neoliberal reforms that have aimed to restructure the state. Butler (1988, p. 526) claims: “Actors are always already on the stage, within the terms of the performance. Just as a script may be enacted in various ways, and just as the play requires both text and interpretation […].” If we apply this statement to NGOs, an NGO operates in a restricted (but not determined) organizational space of governance. Butler’s gender identity “enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives” (Butler, 1988, p. 526). Similar to gender identity construction, NGOs’ association to the notion of civil society and participatory democracy follows already established beliefs and meanings. Therefore, it is performative. Butler’s gender identity, established by an association between the body and the social construction of gendered roles, “is real only to the extent that it is performed” (Butler, 1988, p. 527). Salih (2007, p. 55) asserts, “[…] gender is not something one is, it is something one does, an act, or more precisely, a sequence of acts, a verb rather than a noun, a ‘doing’ rather than a ‘being’” (p. 55). NGOs’ connection to civil society is also real to the extent that they are performed and practitioners and scholars continue to reproduce this connection. Gendering statements are performative as they “effectively constitute the identity they are said to express or reveal” (Butler, 1988, p. 528). Discourses about NGOs are also performative as define and constitute a civil society identity. The performativity of NGO identity suggests, “there is no pre-existing identity by which an act or attribute might be measured,” because without discourses about NGOs, civil society, and participation, “there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts” (Butler, 1988, p. 528). What is

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more, NGOs’ association to the concept of civil society and governance is created and reproduced via recursive performances of NGOs at the stage of governance settings. The argument advanced here matters because of the ideas and policies that foster a true or an idealized nature of NGOs. Civil society and participation often hide the NGO identity’s performatives and the discursive construction of such identity through the discourses on civil society and governance. Public policies, which are the manifestations of political programs, are performative utterances that define and constitute civil society subjects. They position NGOs to a subject position as civil society actor and participants in governance. The notion of performative utterance implies that civil society’s idea does not constitute a civil society: civil society has to be performed. NGOs and other citizens’ organizations perform a civil society actor role in governance settings, but they have to repeat these discursively constructed practices. The association between an individual NGO and civil society has meaning only if such association is performed. Once we accept that there is no pre-existing NGO identity, we look into competing theories about what such identity could be. These theories contain statements about the identity of a civil society actor. There are different civil society theories and meta-theoretical approaches to knowledge production that affect civil society research. Theories build on contested images of civil society: they also define different roles for civil society actors. The functions of NGOs/CSOs also vary in each civil society theory. At least four functions and characterizations of civil society actors from civil society theories can be drawn: they create and carry public discourse (Habermas, 1996), they occupy a sphere of self-constitution different from the state, market, and the intimate (private) spheres (Cohen & Arato, 1992), and they promote the public good (Barber, 1984) and represent interests as intermediary associations (Putnam, 1993). These narratives stem from different theories that study what a good society might be and how to imagine the social world. Each civil society theory defines its own view of an ideal civil society and draws the boundaries of legitimate civil society. Contested subject positions in these theories, such as interest representation, social constituency, public discourse, and public good, offer NGOs’ alternative identities.

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Interpellation Performativity and identity formation by speech acts resemble subject formation by interpellation. The subjection of actors as civil society organizations and participants of governance requires accepting the norms and practices by them. The subjection of NGOs happens when they respond to a governmental call to fulfill a civil society subject. Here, there is a resemblance between the process of identity formation and Althusser’s concept of interpellation, which works in the following example: a policeman, who senses that a crime is being committed, shouts, “Hey, you there” toward a crowd. Someone turns and says, “Yes?” thereby making herself subject to the law and the alleged crime (Althusser, 1971, p. 174). In the context of governance, interpellation by NGOs is more complicated. An NGO sector has to be created to be subjected to the discourse. Thus, NGOs are created and interpellated at the same time because there should be some actors to fulfill a subject position in the first place. The notion of participatory engineering (Zittel & Fuchs, 2007) nicely captures such synchronization of creation and interpellation. As Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory implies (1985), “discourses always designate positions for people to occupy as subject” (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002, p. 41). Civil society theories prompt distinct understandings of NGOs/CSOs, which also offer accounts for explaining how NGOs/CSOs are linked to a concept of civil society. States and international agencies encouraged and financed NGOs, thereby actively engaged in the creation of NGOs. The practitioners invited NGOs to new governance settings. NGOs replied to the request of practitioners who encouraged them to engage in governance as civil society actors.

Situated Agency The performativity of NGO identity is also compatible with a view that rejects an autonomous agency but takes agency as always situated. Adopting a situated agency view requires rejecting the autonomy of actors, whether institutions or individuals. Because existing ideas, beliefs and concepts always inform social actors, institutions or persons cannot be autonomous. Neither institution nor person could have a sovereign capacity to create and determine a political program: there is never a mastermind behind a discourse or a governmental technology.

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The autonomy of the institutions is rejected, but this does not require rejecting their agency. Institutions are influenced by theories and established practices when they develop policies. Civil society-oriented policies incorporate various social trends, such as the reform of good governance, intermediation of interests, and civil society actors’ involvement in governance. Governance arrangements and many authors often associate NGOs with civil society identity and treat their involvement in governance processes as instantiations of participatory democracy. These beliefs are often derived from theories that characterize intermediary organizations with civil society. Rational choice and new institutionalists mobilize these theories to evaluate and measure the actions of NGOs. This interlinking of various scientific and political texts written on civil society in different contexts is intertextual. Intertextuality can be illustrated by the reference system of a scholarly book where the author draws upon several resources in order to place the book in the context of prior literature. Just as a book “is a node within a network” (Foucault, 1974, p. 23), civil society policies developed by states and international agencies and scientific research on civil society connect through to a prior web of meanings (see also Kristeva, 1980). Policy statements are intertextual because they are built on prior texts (scientific or political) or because they presume that policy statements will make sense to the audience. Practitioners thus presume an established understanding of meanings. Situated agency and intertextuality imply that institutions of (global) governance did not come up with the idea of using civil society out of nowhere. To illustrate, by the 1990s, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the World Bank had resorted to civil society actors in terms of neoliberal structuring of the statehood (Porter & Craig, 2004), and a rich corpus of scholarly literature on global civil society existed by the time the EU tapped into it (Anheier, 2004; Kaldor et al., 2003; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Lipschutz, 1992). The EU borrowed the civil society discourse and adapted it to European politics. In line with the World Bank’s policies, the EU suggested that the involvement of CSOs would bolster the legitimacy of the EU. The political economy aspect was present in the European context; the discourse of involving organized actors of civil society in European governance appeared right after the Maastricht Treaty (1992). Jacque Delors mentioned his vision to create a European social and economic space. This vision involved a relationship between creating a space of political intervention, which is organized by

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principles of economy and market relations, and civil society discourse. There has been a connection between defining Europe as an economic space and mobilizing civil society theories. This vision brought together aspects of governing social policies, creating a constituency, building a transmission belt between governance institutions and citizens, and legitimacy of the EU. Thus, when the EU first invoked civil society, there was a global context within which involvement of civil society actors, not least the NGOs, to governance settings had already been put into practice, and scholars were already engaged in a debate about the merits of such practice (Mercer, 2002; Cooke & Kothari, 2001).

Power Relations A performative utterance that defines and constitutes is an expression of power relations. When (or if) a political agent describes and prescribes a particular interpretation of governance, (then) this restricts or limits possible alternative forms of political participation and civil society subjectivities that might emerge. Civil society discourse is productive because it produces citizens’ organizations. Although NGOs are informed and shaped by discourses, they have agency to act, decide, and perform within a pre-defined frame. NGOs are subject to various technologies of power, through which they are made civil society subjects. Guidelines and manuals of NGO management are instruments guiding the actions of NGO networks. These guidelines and manuals do not tell NGOs what to say and what to do. They regulate the organizational structures of NGOs and orient to capacity building. Donors supporting the NGOs often use management frames such as project cycle management (PCM) and log-frame analysis (logframe). NGOs are required to follow these frames based on evidence and activity-based management (Bond, 2016; Gasper, 2000). Thus argued, civil society becomes an object of government under the new governance, good governance, global governance, European governance, etc. This development is unique to the twentieth–twentyfirst century. When the state and civil society had separated thoroughly from the seventeenth to the late eighteenth century, this separation also meant the separation of civil society from the state. The Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers reflected upon this new condition from different aspects. The Scottish political economists (Ferguson and Smith) understood that civil society was now the sphere of material interests,

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market relations, trade, and commerce. Kant (1991) proposed to resolve the perils of an interest-driven civil society on the common good by resorting to moral philosophy. Hegel (1967) read the Scottish political economists and agreed to consider civil society as a system of needs. He saw the poverty and social and economic inequalities as a threat to the common good. Hegel’s solution was to resort to the state. For Marx ([1843] 1978), Hegel’s turn to the state was a false universal because Marx considered the state as part of the reason for poverty, exploitation, and inequality. Marx planned to democratize civil society; thus, he turned to civil society for his ideal of emancipation from domination. It was Tocqueville (2003) who broke with the Enlightenment debates concentrating on political economy and idealism and who associated civil society with intermediary organizations. Tocqueville’s narrative is alive under governance and good governance; nonetheless, we now observe a different story. Many institutions and governments tapped into civil society and the NGOs; however, they have arguably had in their mind the historical evolvement of civil society. Whereas the earlier debates focused on civil society’s autonomous nature and the separation of civil society from the state, now we observe the making of civil society through a programmatic political action. In other words, we see governing of civil society. How is it possible for policymakers to govern an abstract concept such as civil society? This question brings us to square one: to the association of the NGOs with civil society. More tellingly, one can in practice, govern through tangible and material things. Civil society is an abstraction; the NGOs are not. Because NGOs are conceptually linked to civil society, a political act upon NGOs is an attempt to govern civil society. To govern an abstract concept such as civil society requires something tangible and material (i.e., NGOs). To define and constitute the NGOs as agents of civil society help imagining civil society as an actuality. It is possible to talk about civil society development programs, for instance, through the NGOs. Policymakers aim to create civil society through NGO support programs. The role that international organizations and national governments play in promoting NGOs and civil society requires further elaboration. It is true that political institutions actively engage in creating NGOs. Nonetheless, neither the contemporary NGO identity can be explained by actions of the political institutions or the political influence of these institutions over the NGOs, controlling all NGOs’ actions.

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NGOs cannot be seen as by-products of political institutions because of the following three reasons. First, political institutions are not the intellectual centers that generated civil society’s meanings and participation, though they accord a particular conception a hegemonic nature. Citizens can always redefine these concepts or reclaim alternative historical conceptions because political institutions cannot determine the NGO identity and civil society discourse. Practitioners as well are informed by civil society theories and available discourses. Indeed, scientists are often invited as experts to provide input into the policymaking processes under governance settings. Research councils and other funding institutions have supported many projects about civil society. Furthermore, civil society is a historical concept that can be even be traced back to ancient Greek thought, while participation has been a key concept in democratic theory. Contemporary practitioners selected a specific meaning and use of civil society, which is neoliberal, managerial, and depoliticized. Second, the concepts of civil society and participation are contested and contestable. The NGOs are not puppets of political power, as power and resistance are correlated (Rose et al., 2006). Although institutions of governance promote NGOs, the NGOs have free space for fulfilling the content of their work. In other words, political power restricts but not determines. Yet, it is also true that the hegemonic conception of civil society constraints alternative forms of participation and often excludes civil society actors that are not fit for the managerial structures and are unwilling to justify inequality creating regimes. Furthermore, civil society theories do not involve practical details concerning how NGO participation in governance can be put into practice. This point leaves room for interpretation, reflection, and adaptation for policymakers. To realize participation, policymakers create spaces for NGOs and citizens. Policymakers even formulate criteria for the NGOs’ representativeness when their participation in governance is seen to lack accountability and legitimacy. Policymakers also engage in shaping the organizational structure of NGOs by developing NGO management guidelines. Hegemonic discourses of participation and democracy thus influence policymakers. Tocqueville’s reflections about the USA’s associational life in the nineteenth century now amount to the hegemonic theory of civil society. However, Tocqueville cannot be held responsible for the spread of managerialism within the NGOs and for a neoliberal strategy of transferring the state’s responsibilities in service delivery to the NGOs.

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Third, language alone cannot explain the constitution of NGOs as civil society subjects. Although the discursive construction of the social world involves speech acts and performative utterances, such focus on language does not mean that it is possible to achieve social and political ends with the appropriate language formulation. The meaning and use of the NGOs must be considered within larger contexts: restructuring the statehood, neoliberal capital accumulation, the emergence of the Third Way, global governance, creation of dependencies between the developed countries and the global South in the post-colonial period all matter. It is these contexts that give meaning to the NGOs and civil society. Linguistic statements alone cannot alone explain NGOs’ identity and actions and the meanings of civil society. The comparison of three different models of meaning clarifies this point. Hall compares three different ways of meaning present in the literature: reflective, intentional, and constructionist. Reflective meaning is “thought to lie in the object, person, idea, or event in the real world, and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world” (Hall, 1997, p. 24). Intentional meaning is about what the speaker says, nothing more, nothing less. Constructionist meaning offers an alternative. Reflective meaning presupposes that language is a neutral medium. However, language is never a neutral medium. We cannot either explain the meaning by the sheer intentions of actors. Otherwise, in this case, communication would be impossible if each individual makes her own meaning. Only shared codes help make sense of what each person says (Hall, 1997, pp. 24–25). Constructed meaning criticizes both intentional and reflective meaning-making. Constructed meaning entails “…we can no longer assume that the universe contains meanings that are just ‘there’ to be construed by us in language” (Carver, 2002, p. 50). However, Hall’s unfortunate choice of the word intention to imply the sovereignty of the agents in meaning-making does not suggest that any constructionist meaning must deny agency. To assign autonomy to social actors implies that they can act outside all contexts. Instead, actors always act in a social context, which involves theories, beliefs, desires, and discourses. A decentered approach denies the autonomy of the subjects because pure experience is not possible (Bevir & Rhodes, 2005, p. 172). It embraces intentionality but rejects the sovereign subject. For instance, when one suggests that an X organization does this or that, this does not mean that that organization holds sovereign subjectivity. When an organization defines participation and civil society, the explanation for

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such a defining act cannot be reduced to that particular organization’s intellect. All actors, including practitioners, are informed by and subject to the broader web of meanings, languages, narratives, and discourses. All practices are situated in a historical and social context. The theories and practices relating to participation and civil society cannot be attributed to a particular organization. Another point in Hall’s reflection on meaning-making theories is that he mentions only a semiological account of meaning-making within the scope of constructed meaning. Post-structural discourse theorists draw on this semiological theory of language. However, there are other ways to think about constructed meaning-making. While philosophical theories of language suggest a contextual theory of meaning (Davidson, 1980; Quine & Ullian, 1970), a contextual theory of meaning suggests that it is not the language system but actors’ background theories that give meaning to actions. A contextual account of meaning may well be drawn from Foucault’s approach to discourse, as well. Foucault’s approach to discourse is often criticized that his approach neglects real-world practices by studying only ideas and linguistic aspects. This accusation is misleading. Far from neglecting the empirical world, Foucault examines practices and power techniques in his analysis. Practices and technologies of power provide context for his serious speech acts.

Conclusion This chapter theorized how practitioners’ and experts’ statements define and constitute civil society actors and link citizens’ institutions to the concept of civil society. NGOs and other citizens’ organizations are often connected to concepts such as participatory democracy and active citizenship. A decentered approach unpacks these associations: it offers a historical and constructionist analysis of NGOs, CSOs, and the concept of civil society. To argue that NGOs’ association with civil society is a constructed one means that such an association is not pre-determined. This argument rejects an objective relationship between an NGO (the particular) and civil society (the aggregate concept). An NGO cannot be self-referential in the sense of giving an identity to itself, in this case situating itself into the category of civil society. Individual NGOs’ actions cannot account for a general concept of civil society, either. An NGO’s identity cannot be self-referential; a single NGO finds itself already within pre-defined scripts that define and prescribe what an ideal

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NGO ought to be, how an NGO must act, and the functions of an NGO. Single NGO’s actions cannot account for a general theory of civil society because one would still need a concept of civil society to interpret those actions. In other words, political discourse and scientific theories on civil society and NGOs always precede NGOs’ action. Through the interplay between scientific theories and practices, it is the exercise of power, which locates any organization into a civil society identity, or a subject position. On this account, there is no objective basis for the association between NGOs and civil society, or such association is based on the essential features of either NGOs or civil society. Such a link is not a pre-given fact and can be best understood as an effect of a discursive practice. The actions of a set of NGOs and governance practices establish this linkage. The actions of NGOs gain meaning against the background of civil society theories and governance practices. If theories and practices had not connected NGOs and other voluntary actors to the concept of civil society, there would be no need to separate an NGO from a regular interest group.

References Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In L. Althusser (Ed.), Lenin and philosophy and other essays (pp. 127–186). Monthly Review Press. Anheier, H. (2004). Third sector-third way: Comparative perspectives and policy reflections. In J. R. Lewis (Eds.), Surrender welfare state change: Towards a third way? (pp 111–135). Oxford University Press. Arrow, K. J. (1994). Methodological individualism and social knowledge. The American Economic Review, 84(2), 1–9. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Harvard University Press. Barber, B. (1984). Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age. University of California Press. Bevir, M., & Rhodes, R. A. (2005). Interpretation and its others. Australian Journal of Political Science, 40(2), 169–187. Binmore, K. (2007). Playing for real: A text on game theory. Oxford University Press. Black, D. (1948). On the rationale of group decision-making. Journal of Political Economy, 56, 23–34. Bond. (2016). Adaptive management: What it means for CSOs. Bond. Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519–531.

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Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble. Routledge. Carver, T. (2002). Discourse analysis and the ‘linguistic turn’. European Political Science, 2(1), 50–53. Cohen, J., & Arato, A. (1992). Political theory and civil society. MIT Press. Cooke, B., & Kothari, U. (2001). Participation: The new tyranny? Zed. Davidson, D. (1980). Essays on actions and events. Clarendon Press. Dowding, K., & John, P. (2009). The value of choice in public policy. Public Administration, 87 (2), 219–233. Foucault, M. ([1969] 1974). The archaeology of knowledge. Tavistock. Gasper, D. (2000). Evaluating the “logical framework approach” towards learning-oriented development evaluation. Public Administration and Development, 20(1), 17–28. Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms. Contributions to a discourse theory of law. MIT Press. Hall, S. (Ed.) (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Open University. Hegel, G. W. F. (1967). The philosophy of right. Oxford University Press. Heinrich, F. V. (2010). Civil society indicators and indexes. In H. K. Anheier, & S. Toepler (Eds.), International encyclopedia of civil society (pp. 376–380). Springer Science & Business Media. Howarth, D. (2000). Discourse. Open University Press. Jørgensen, M. W., & Phillips, L. J. (2002). Discourse analysis as theory and method. Sage. Kaldor, M., Anheier, H., & Glasius, M. (2003). Global civil society. Polity. Kant, I. (1991). Political writings (Ed. Hans Reiss). Cambridge University Press. Marx, K. ([1843] 1978). On the Jewish question. In R. Tucker (Ed.), The MarxEngels reader (pp. 26–46). Norton & Company. Keck, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Transnational activist networks in international politics. Cornell University Press. Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in language: A semiotic approach to literature and art. Columbia University Press. Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. Verso. Lang, S. (2012). NGOs, civil society, and the public sphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lipschutz, R. D. (1992). Reconstructing world politics: The emergence of global civil society. Millennium—Journal of International Studies, 21(3), 389–420. Mercer, C. (2002). NGOs, civil society and democratization in the developing world: A critical review of the literature. Progress in Development Studies, 2(1), 55–22–22. Nietzsche, F. (1989). On the genealogy of morals and ecce homo. Vintage Books. Pitkin, H. F. (1967). The concept of representation. University of California Press.

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Porter, D., & Craig, D. (2004). The third way and the third world: poverty reduction and social inclusion in the rise of ‘inclusive’ liberalism. Review of International Political Economy, 11(2), 387–423. Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press. Quine, W., & Ullian, J. (1970). The web of belief . Random House. Rose, N., O’Malley, P., & Valverde, M. (2006). Governmentality. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2, 83–104. Salih, S. (2007). On Judith Butler and performativity. In K. E. Lovaas, & M. M. Jenkins (Eds.), Sexualities and communication in everyday life: A reader (pp. 55–68). Sage. Tocqueville, A. de. (2003). Democracy in America. Penguin Books. Torfing, J. (2011). Discourse. In K. Dowding (Ed.), Encyclopedia of power (pp. 191–196). Sage. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations. Basil Blackwell. Zittel, T., & Fuchs, D. (Eds.) (2007). Participatory democracy and political participation: Can participatory engineering bring citizens back in? Routledge.

CHAPTER 5

Civil Society, NGOs, and Governance

There is considerable elasticity in the way that governance is used. The term is now employed in a great many settings including international relations (global governance), development policy (good governance), European Union studies (multilevel or European governance), finance and management (corporate governance), and at many levels of public policy (e.g., urban governance). Obviously, the meaning of governance changes as we move from one policy area to the next. Nevertheless, there are also continuities, certain core ideas, assumptions and propositions which attach to the term as it moves from one locale to the next. (Walters, 2004, p. 28)

NGOs and other forms of organizations within civil society have significantly increased since the 1990s, and some commentators even call this process an associational revolution comparable to the emergence of the nation-state in the nineteenth century (Salamon, 1994). The evidence of this growth involves the dramatic rise of the number of NGOs, the large amount of funding provided to the NGOs, involvement of NGOs in governance practices, and the rapid increase in academic research focusing on NGOs. This process is not limited to the context of the political development in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Many political administrations in Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand also promoted NGOs and their involvement to governance (Anheier, 2004).

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The associational revolution, pragmatic governance, and the entrenchment of neoliberalism are connected. Governance depends on external contributions to policymaking processes and the delivery of services (particularly in health and education). Practitioners encourage NGOs to become involved as partners within new governance constellations. NGOs and other non-state actors are taking over some of the roles of the state, thus weakening or dismantling the hierarchical bureaucracy and the state’s involvement in economic and social governance. In that sense, pragmatic governance has largely aligned with neoliberal policies: it is helping to hollow-out the state and sharing its core functions among nonstate actors. Pragmatic governance is coordinated by neoliberal political rationalities. In this chapter, the first section contextualizes civil society discourse and NGOs’ involvement in governance within theories and practices of governance. Next section elaborates on the criticisms of civil society discourse and NGOs’ engagement in governance. The third section looks into the implications of neoliberal reforms on civil society more closely. The fourth section offers decentered approach as an alternative to functional and instrumental criticisms of civil society. The final section connects a decentered analysis of the new governance and civil society to broader changes in governmental rationalities.

Theories and Practices of Governance The scope of governance changes has involved political interference to civil societies by states and international agencies. Such intervention is informed by rational choice and new institutionalist theories of governance (Cameron, 2000). Rational choice theories of governance, prioritizing neoclassical economics and individual choice, dismissed the idea of self-regulating society in classical liberalism. Scientific experts and practitioners in the World Bank and the IMF have mobilized neoclassical economics and rational choice theories and prompted neoliberal reforms to deal with the issue of poverty in the developing world (Cameron, 2000). Although neoliberal rationalities implied governing without governing society when they dismissed the concept of a selfregulating society, the global governance institutions and states have invoked civil society to govern states and their population. Thus, it appears that there emerged a conflict between the underlying theoretical knowledge that shapes political action and actual political programs

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employed by practitioners. More tellingly, the disappearance of liberal political reason’s distinct concept of a singular and abstract image of society coincided with the rising popularity of civil society discourse and the Third Sector approach since the 1990s. Rational Choice and New Institutionalism Rational choice theories, given their clear preference for an individualcentered social ontology, fit uncomfortably with theories of society and civil society (Hay, 2006; Gould, 1978). Rational choice theories and neoclassical economics do not provide us with a coherent account for why practitioners invoke civil society and CSOs. These theories, which influence much neoliberal reforms, prompted marketization, privatization, and a consumerist understanding of citizenship. Where does, then, an appeal to civil society come from? Perhaps, the strongest answer is neoliberal reforms’ anti-statist position and rolling back of the welfare state as well the disintegration of the hierarchical bureaucracies urged states to open up governance processes to non-state actors. Civil society actors, in this view, have emerged within the state’s restructuring process under the new governance. Civil society actors fulfill some of the traditional roles of the state under the new governance such as in service delivery, health, and education. Nonetheless, it would be incorrect to describe this process as merely one of responsibility transfer from the state to civil society actors. This transfer of state’s responsibilities to non-state actors is part and parcel of a social process affecting the government of the state and of its population. This social process involves substantive changes affecting the government of the state and of its population. Rational choice theories may explain why states were retreated and the new governance has come to extend beyond state institutions. They cannot, however, explain the theoretical appeal of civil society and justify the roles and functions of civil society in the new governance. New institutionalist theories responded the dilemmas brought about by neoliberal reforms, when neoliberal policies caused social unrest and created democratic deficits. New institutionalist theories reflected the Third Way’s ideological promise of reforming both neoliberalism and social democracy. New institutionalists agreed with the main objectives of neoliberal reforms that the hierarchical state and Keynesian welfare state policies belonged to the past. They also agreed the state should

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share some of its responsibilities with non-state actors. Civil society was often described in the new institutionalist phase as the third sector. The underlying logic that inspired the Third Way drew on the third sector to modernize the state and society. New institutionalists thought that social capital and trust would replace the markets as organizing principles of networks. Differentiated Systems: New Institutional Approach When neoliberal reforms encountered legitimacy problems and public protests, neoliberal reforms adopted a more inclusive vocabulary since the 1990s. The practitioners of neoliberal reforms started talking about inclusive and participatory governance mechanisms. Governance and globalization became popular political discourses. Whereas it was rational choice and neoclassical economics explained the underlying abstract theoretical thinking informing the neoliberal art of government, governance, and globalization discourses were more vividly reflected in new institutionalist network or pragmatic governance theories. New institutionalist theories aimed to break with the hegemony of neoliberal ideology with their emphasis on participatory governance of common issues affecting societies such as environmental issues and migration. Civil society organizations (CSOs) and NGOs gained even more importance in this new institutionalist turn, because they could now act as transmission belts between law-makers and citizens (Nanz & Steffek, 2004). New institutionalist theories continued with the earlier modernists’ theoretical move to define society (and civil society) as single and abstract self-regulating spheres. New modernist theories placed a stronger emphasis on the division of labor happen in contemporary societies under the technological progress. They remobilized the social theory of structural differentiation in society to characterize and reflect on the consequences of such change. It was fashionable in the 1960s, and 1970s after Talcott Parsons introduced such theory. System theory further continued this theoretical move to imagine society to be constituted of separate and self-regulating spheres. New theories were functionalist in the sense that they give each sphere that constitutes society (state, society, economy, and family) distinct functions (administration, norm-creation, production and exchange, and reproduction, respectively). According to the structural-functionalist reading that informs new institutionalist theories of governance, CSOs were part of the society

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sphere, and under the governance arrangement in the 1990s they gained two roles compatible with the theories of structural differentiation and new institutionalism. First of these roles involved distributing the state’s responsibilities (post-WWII period) to CSOs and the third sector, in particular, in the provision of services. This role was further strengthened by social capital theories: Robert Putnam reintroduced Alex de Tocqueville’s insights concerning the intermediary organizations’ role in building democracies. Social capital emerges, according to this theory, from citizens’ interactions in associations. As citizens interact with each other to manage their common affairs without a need for a central control of the state, they would develop or strengthen their belonging to a given community. Local organizations also bridle the state’s undesired interference and arbitrary power. New institutionalist theories adopted social capital theories to find alternative grounds of legitimacy for new governance, where decisions are often taken by unelected actors together with the practitioners who are publicly responsible. New institutionalist theories presumed that social capital and trust within governance actors and citizens’ trust to them may replace, or compensate, legitimacy structures established by liberal representative democracy. In liberal democracy citizens elect politicians who are responsible for and accountable to citizens. When participatory governance involved democratically un-authorized actors to decision-making processes, governance structures had to deal with the new dilemmas resulting from the legitimacy of governance. Social capital theories were functionally mobilized to find out, if governance networks were organized by trust instead of profit, or if there existed none or weak trust, how it could be created. The second role stressed by new institutionalist theories drew upon CSOs’ function in connecting the structurally differentiated spheres. Part of the legitimacy problems, new institutionalist theorists in agreement with some democratic theorists argue, derive from the disconnection of structurally differentiated structures. New institutionalists, either directly referring or alluding to Habermas’s public sphere, theory, characterized CSOs and NGOs as organizations that are up to the challenge to act like a transmission-belt or bridge between citizens and policymakers. These organizations also create an immune space for undistorted communication for citizens in their lifeworld, a space which is otherwise under constant threat of both bureaucratic administration and economic power. New institutionalist theories influenced the social democrats’ response to neoliberal policies. Civil society discourse and participation practices

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have been even more strongly emphasized by new institutionalists and the Third Way politics. A prominent scholar of civil society argues, “Clearly, the Third Way and the third sector are in close policy vicinity of each other, especially in the areas of civil society and welfare reform” (Anheier, 2004, p. 112). The Third Way drew upon the third sector to reform the state and society. Some argued that the Third Way “is still an emerging political vision to modernize ‘old-style social democracy’ that rested on solidarity and state led welfare, and seeks to develop a comprehensive framework for a renewal of both state and society to counteract neo-liberal policies that are regarded as socially blind, simplistic, and unsustainable” (Anheier, 2004, pp. 111–112). The exponents of Third Way argued that the state was not to be seen as a welfare provider, but as a risk manager and enabler. This approach amounted to the key reformulation of the social democratic welfare state (Anheier, 2004, p. 112; Gidden, 1998). One of the major elements of the Third Way’s ambition to reorganize the state was to establish links with civil society. I will quote two extracts below, which are highly illustrative of demonstrating how scientists treated the relation between the Third Way and third sector, and connected this relation to the change of the state. The Third Way foresees a reorganization of the state that requires a renewal and activation of civil society, social participation, the encouragement of social entrepreneurship, and new approaches to public–private partnerships in the provision of public goods and services. Specifically, the framework involves a renewal of political institutions to encourage greater citizen participation; a new relationship between government and civil society that involves an engaged government as well as a vibrant set of voluntary associations of many kinds; a wider role for busineses as socially and environmentally responsible institutions; and a structural reform of the welfare state away from “entitlement” toward risk management. (Anheier, 2004, p. 112) [Many authors] expect third sector organizations to be efficient providers of services in the fields of health care, social services, humanitarian assistance, education, and culture, and agents of civic renewal by forming the infrastructure of burgeoning civil society. The fact that Third Way and neo-liberal approaches alike harbour such expectations basically suggests

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that the growing economic and political role of the third sector is somewhat independent of ‘new politics’ and part of more fundamental changes taking place in post-industrial societies. (Anheier, 2004, p. 113)

As the above quotes point out, neoliberalism and Third Way coincide about their expectations on the functions of organized actors of civil society. The challenge for a critical examination is how one can differentiate social democratic or radical ideas and policies from neoliberal reforms when they all lead to the same organizational changes that, as necessary and inevitable, influence both the state and society. The Third Way policies do not oppose key aspects of the neoliberal restructuring of governance. It is on this ground some authors argue that the Third Way was not an alternative to neoliberal governance, but a market correcting approach. They consider the Third Way a guise of neoliberalism (Anderson, 2000; Hall, 2011). The new governance, the emphasis given to civil society organizations due to their potential to foster social capital, and the Third Way policies are connected. The state does not merely share its responsibilities with non-state actors, but also receives new roles which it executes in different ways. Transition from top-down management to non-hierarchical or heterarchical governance processes from the 1980s onwards in advanced countries aims to underline this change in the political sphere. Institutions of global governance aimed to transfer this frame of particular governmental rationality in the context of development, or post-colonial states through good governance discourse, which involves strong emphasis given to participation and bourgeoning of a strong civil society as preconditions of effective governance.

Criticisms The World Bank and other international agencies have actively promoted participation in the global South. These organizations often connected participation, civil society, and NGOs to good governance. International agencies resorted to various roles of NGOs such as delivery of welfare services, project implementation, and democracy facilitators. They also concentrated on “building the capacity of NGOs to perform these functions” (Fisher, 1997, p. 441). Many authors criticized the way of practicing civil society, participation, and NGO discourses. It was, however, development studies that

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raised the most serious criticism on these themes. These critiques agree that NGOs have been involved in government of states and of populations of the global South, and have played an important role in the development policy field. Most authors addressed that NGOs have been the vectors of managing the transition to the new governance. This transition does not only entail the institutional restructuring of the developing state, it also involves the changes in how other actors of governance are organized and how the individuals who take part in governance processes adopt new values, norms, and skills. New-Marxist scholars argue that dominant hegemonic forces have strategically created discourses and practices for involving CSOs and citizens to the new governance organized around ideas of neoliberalism. The objective of these discourses and practices were “to create and maintain a social consensus around the interests of the dominant power” (Cox, 1999, p. 111; see also Demirovic, 2003; Leal, 2007, p. 543; Petras, 1999). States or international agencies, for new-Marxists, use NGOs to serve for the interests of capitalist class by helping prevent citizens’ resistances and protests against neoliberal reforms (Cox, 1999; Leal, 2007). Others portrayed participation as a new tyranny, the new form of social control and reproduction of hegemonic relations (Cooke & Kothari, 2001). Leal (2007) claims that the World Bank sought to introduce counter-ideology into the system with this strategy, because political institutions has learned that any frontal attack further enhances and legitimizes opposition in society’s eyes. Political institutions involved opposing voices, actual or potential, within the ruling bloc as part of the dominant ideology (Leal 2007, p. 542). Counter-ideology would not thus threaten neoliberal policies. Some authors characterized NGOs as a constituent of the counter-ideology, or as the radical wing of the neoliberal establishment (Petras, 1999, p. 440). For these authors, NGOs focus on the needs of the people excluded from society, people leaving in abject poverty, and groups exposed to gender and racial discrimination. However, they are not able to confront “the social system that produces these conditions” (Petras, 1999, p. 435). Some also claimed that the World Bank have used the discourse on participation strategically as a “justification of the removal of the state from the economy and its substitution by the market” (Leal, 2007, p. 544). In contrast to the view that conceives of the practices of

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involving NGOs to the new governance as a way of realizing participatory democracy or inclusive governance, critical authors suggest that “depoliticised versions of participatory action inevitably serve to justify, legitimize, and perpetuate current neo-liberal hegemony” (Leal, 2007, p. 544). Participation has, thus, become a buzzword (Schnable et al., 2020). The focal point of the new-Marxist scholarship is the transformation of the regimes of capital accumulation and changes in the state forms. They connect recent appeal of practitioners to civil society and NGOs and CSOs within this frame. NGOs and CSOs either gain new roles in new regimes of production and capital accumulation. They can organize microcredits that are provided by IOs and donor agencies (Brigg, 2001; Elyachar, 2005). They can also assume the state’s welfare management responsibilities or assist policymakers to justify privatization and commercialization of the public sector (Porter & Craig, 2004). Some new-Marxist theorists relate recent interest on NGOs to the changing form of the state under the new regimes of capital accumulation. Jessop (2002, 2007) observes a transformation from a Keynesian National Welfare State (KNWS) to a Post-national Schumpeterian Workfare State (PSWS). The KWNS denotes the characteristics of the traditional welfare state and fordist production. The PSWS reflects the implications of globalization and new governance on political rule, gives importance to innovation in economy, and arranges the welfare state in accordance with norms and values of human resource management. This transformation has widely affected the global North. The changes in the regimes of capital accumulation transformed the statehood in Western Europe and North America. New statehood involves the devolution of the responsibilities of the state to private actors in the context of (good) governance (Lemke, 2002; Power, 2011; Springer, 2012). In this view, non-state actors receive the conventional tasks of the state in management of the welfare of the population and also partake in supply side of policy processes by providing policymakers with expertise and local knowledge. The new governance has also put greater emphasis on “the techniques of participation, rather than on its meaning” (Leal, 2007, p. 544). The new governance practices often treat participation of CSOs as a technical activity than a way of the people’s self-government. This observation, a criticism of instrumental rationalities, is informed by Weber, the Frankfurt School, and Habermas. The main point here is that instrumental rationality spreads to wider areas of social life, or colonizes the lifeworld or

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civil society. In contrast, Foucault’s criticism is not directly against the prevalence of instrumental rationalities as such. His focus is on distinct rationalities that make the government of the state and of its population possible. Foucault’s insights provide us with a more nuanced analytical framework to examine how social sciences influence the way practitioners mobilize participation, civil society, and NGOs with an aim to govern societies effectively. Critical authors concentrated on emancipatory dimensions of the involvement of NGOs in the new governance. Radical authors and activists value voluntary associations of citizens for a different reason than the new institutional theories of the new governance. Whereas the new institutional theories focus on citizen’s organizations as part of a civil society that interacts with the state, radical authors see them as a part of a social process through which these organizations could transform both the state and society. The agency of NGOs here implies creating alternative discourses and practices of development. They could thus rejuvenate local knowledges. These scholars, campaigners, and militant opponents of neoliberal development policies think NGOs are important for their capacity to politicize problems that were not historically politicized or that were paradoxically depoliticized by development discourses or “democratic” participation. Radical authors thus look for other options to development agendas promoted by international agencies, while they are suspicious of alleged democratic participation practices brought on by the new governance (Fisher, 1997, p. 445).

Neoliberal Reforms and Civil Society The need to integrate the reforms in capitalism into society is one of the reasons raised by the scholars of political economy to justify the rising importance given to participation. Porter and Craig (2004) examined the Poverty Reduction Strategies in the World Bank’s documents and Social Inclusion policies in the New Zealand government Third Way oriented policies. The authors offered a nuanced explanation for how participation discourse has been connected to changes in governance. They linked civil society discourse to the changes in global economy, where neoliberal economic policies initially detached the economy from a society. Economic transformation was embedded to society via social inclusion-oriented welfare policies and participation practices.

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Porter and Craig’s analysis is not contradictory but complementing interpretive theories. They have found that the documents of the World Bank and New Zealand government demonstrate how participation was discursively formed, being appeared in different texts and connected to metaphors such as putting a human face on neoliberalism via social inclusion policies. Porter and Craig claim that the governments of the Third Way and the World Bank have funded and bolstered practices of participation to alleviate the adverse effects of neoliberalism and repair its so-called unjust image to justify and retain (economic) liberalism. Their thesis is participation reforms and joined-up phase of the new governance aims at re-embedding liberal hegemony as neoliberal reforms of the 1980s, which were deregulatory and market-driven, disaggregated society from the political institutions (Porter & Craig, 2004, p. 391). This re-embedding move entails two movements: The ‘inclusive’, embedding turn, we think, has two vital, formative dimensions: the first, a defensive or reactionary one best understood via Karl Polanyi (1944), and the second, an ‘expansion of inclusions’, best seen as both a project of re-framing and reconstitution of society and political economy as a series of plurally institutionalized and ‘joined up’ liberal domains, programmes and subjects. (Porter & Craig, 2004, p. 391)

Economic liberalization has brought down or disintegrated the technologies of disciplinary social control by market relations. This change allowed accelerated, unbridled expansion of markets. These changes disembedded markets from society, Porter and Craig (2004, p. 391) argue, thus a further movement was required to re-embed markets, after mass protests “to mitigate the social disruptions of market-led liberalization.” The defensive or reactionary phase involves the resistance and protests of the masses to the liberalization of the markets and structural adjustment programs from the late 1980s to late 1990s. The structural adjustment programs aimed at prompting neoliberal governance by imposing the countries to which these programs targeted a set of policies including privatization of public assets, denationalization of sectors owned by the state, abandoning government subsidies, and implementing austerity for tightening budgets. These reforms were in line with those governance reforms adopted in the developed world, in particular in the UK, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. When imposed to the developing

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world, the reforms also included the requirement of trade liberalization (Leal, 2007, p. 542). Neoliberal policies catalyzed the frustration of the masses and triggered anti-structural adjustment program riots. The first wave of riots took place across the world such as in Caracas in 1989, Tunis in 1984, Nigeria in 1989, and Morocco in 1990. Neoliberal economic policies also fostered a series of economic crises that happened around the world in the late 1990s, starting in 1997 from the so-called Asian tigers, and in the early 2000s expanding to Turkey, Brazil, and Argentina. These reactions to the SAPs and enduring economic crises during the 1990s forced the practitioners to realize that mere market-correcting or market-building reforms would not be sufficient to ensure the success of neoliberal governance reforms. It became apparent that neoliberal governance lacked legitimacy, and if neoliberal reforms did not find a way to gain the citizens’ consent, they would not have lasted long. Nonetheless, neoliberal governance did not have theoretical tools to acquire the consent of citizens. It was informed by rational choice theories and neoclassical economics, and these theories surpassed the category of society, understood as an enduring and substantial theoretical concept, in favor of an image of social organization organized by market principles and values and encompassed by individuals who are rational and autonomous. If neoliberal reforms were to endure, they were required to make sense to citizens. Neoliberal reforms depended on scientific theories that dismissed society. Political actors of the new governance had to restore some notion of society as a collective entity of citizens before practitioners experiment with new practices to engage citizens. This challenge of linking the new governance with people seemed to be taken up by new institutionalist theories. New institutionalism advocated the replacement of markets by networks as an organizing framework for new governance relationships. It introduced new or reformulated concepts and practices such as participatory governance and joined-up governance. New institutionalist theories also appealed to concepts such as civil society and the third sector. New institutionalist theories did not only aim to reinstate society as a separate sphere, they also strived to bring back the social issue, i.e., social justice, as a governmental concern, given that neoliberal rationalities dismissed the social problem along with the concept of society. The social inclusion policies were markers of the new institutionalist turn of the new governance.

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Political economists explain this new institutionalist turn in the new governance from the perspective of market/society relations. Their account makes clear that the inclusive turn of the new governance has not opposed neoliberal changes. This turn contained more egalitarian components and pointed to the terms of justice only in order to make the main policy goals of neoliberal reforms, such as privatization and commercialization, more practicable and seem more sensible. In the current case, the enlightened reactionaries are as likely to be functionaries within international financial institutions or central governments seeking to restructure social services, as activists within increasingly engaged NGOs, seeking partnership around poverty issues. They might equally be framers of competition and trade regulation, ordinary left voting constituents, or public health activists, aware of rising health inequalities and clients falling through service gaps. Each in various ways contests and regulates the market orientation, giving it a human face or policy limit. (Porter & Craig, 2004, p. 391)

Others also considered the participation discourse employed by the World Bank as a strategy to control the collective resistance to neoliberal economic policies. Leal (2007) argued that the World Bank mobilized participation discourse and NGOs in the Third World when the people challenged the structural adjustment programs starting from the late 1980s. It would become indispensable for the international agencies to pursue some sort of remedy in order to place a human face on unjust policies, or at least to build the perception that they were not insensitive to the misery imposed on the lowest of the poor by the current neoliberal governance, since the structural adjustment programs policies of the 1980s and 1990s would only help to raise widespread opposition throughout the Third World. Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, a World Bank Report prepared in 1989, proposed developing new participatory practices and enhancing civil society organization. Practitioners suggested that these organizations would establish participatory practices by forming links both from citizens to political institutions upward and from political institutions to citizens downward. The report also entailed a claim of CSOs could voice local problems more effectively than grassroots organizations (Leal, 2007, p. 542).

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Elyachar, who conducted an ethnographic research in a neighborhood, el-Hirafiyeen, to examine the integration of the poor by microcredits provided by the international organizations and donor agencies, concluded that one of the central focuses is the role of NGOs in distributing these credits. She argues that NGOs of this kind are widespread in the developing world. They train their member enterprises in marketing, accounting, and banking. They prompt an image of the market as a system of social coordination that best serves the interests of the poor. Her argument is that NGOs do not always challenge the capitalstate nexus. Rather, they may well reinforce this nexus as she found in her case study. To that particular end, NGOs assisted individual projects to derive rents from informal economy and microenterprise and to establish relations with local state officials (Elyachar, 2005, pp. 10–11). The author concludes: [NGOs] targeted by IOs or states as part of the informal economy or as microentrepreneurs are not of interest as citizens of a sovereign state. Population—not citizenry—is the object of programs intervention that were initiated by IOs to “alleviate poverty” or to help the poor help themselves. The object of these acts of governing is clearly not to increase the sovereignty of the state. (And without the state it makes little sense to talk about citizenry). (Elyachar, 2005, p. 92)

Beyond the Instrumental and Functional Criticism For skeptics of political development, participation and civil society discourses have been functional for receiving the consent of citizens for political transformations; decentered theory goes beyond instrumental and functional approaches. Those who treat participation discourse and NGOs in an instrumental way imply as if NGOs and civil society discourse serve some role in realizing the pre-defined objectives of an actor or a structural logic. Instrumentalist reasoning works in the following way: political elites use any particular means to achieve a pre-defined end, or a structural logic selects or mobilizes necessary means to enable the functioning and transformation of the structure. Instrumentalist approaches assume that practitioners, or let us call them more provocatively as ruling elites, already have a well-planned strategy of realizing their projects that always orient to maximize their interest (elite theory) or realize the interests of the capitalist class (a variant of Marxist theory). If these plans

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encounter any resistance from the masses or the working class, they also have a pre-projected back-up plan. When this reasoning is applied to the particular case of civil society discourse, instrumental approaches, thus, imply that ruling elites of global governance detailed a well-planned strategy to transition to neoliberal governance. They had also known already that they could turn to more inclusive policies if the neoliberal blueprint fails. Such explanation is historically wrong and conceptually untenable. The transition to neoliberal governance was a result of the dilemmas resulted from the failures or crises of the preceding mode of governance. The instrumentalist reading, however, reifies the institutions, thus fails to grasp the contingency of social relations, and rejects the agency of social and political actors. Participation and civil society discourses have not been mere manipulation or empty talk. Citizens’ associations and participatory practices may have played a role in taming public protests to neoliberal reforms. Concepts such as participation, civil society, and NGOs, as they have been used in the new governance, however, contain symbolic and practical aspects. The new governance’s participatory practices in part serve to give an impression of popular government. This symbolic use of these concepts serves to suppress public protests against neoliberal reforms, but they do this by normalizing a form of non-oppositional political participation that is preferred by states and international organizations. Practitioners and experts characterize oppositional movements and groups as anti-systemic actors when they organize the boundaries of the system of governance with neoliberal rationalities. Radicalizing progressive demands against the destruction of the nature and social and economic inequalities, neoliberal governance normalizes NGO and third-sector style citizen participation. Participation and civil society discourses involve practical aspects. Decentered approach, relying on governmentality, helps us see the more practical aspects of these concepts and related practices. In this perspective, NGOs’ involvement in the new governance is considered as a technology of the new governance. One can only have a better understanding of NGOs and civil society discourse if one connects them to other practices of governance including managerialism, technocratic administration, entrepreneurialism, and elitism. Decentered approach suggests philosophically plausible and a nuanced approach to the interplay between political power and scientific expertise. Interpretive theorists often reject reification, structuralism, essentialism,

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and reductionism. Interpretive theorists, who are influenced by Foucault, often treat power relations either by emphasizing disciplinary mechanisms or by focusing on more productive accounts of power. Foucault implied in his pre-governmentality work that scientific expertise helped normalizing disciplinary power. He examined changing epistemes. In his governmentality analysis, however, he connected the social sciences to the exercise of power. He adopted a practical perspective in his analysis of the state and investigated, in very broad terms, the question of what social and political actors actually do for governing the activities of a population. His interest in liberal art of government inspired Foucault to take political economy seriously as a new knowledge of society and thus read Ferguson, Malthus, and Smith. He suggested that political rationalities of liberal government depended on the new knowledge of society, which is abstract and theoretical. Society was self-regulating and involved its own laws of development and order. It was the new social scientific theories and political economy provided government with such knowledge. Government, thus, did not require managing each member of the population and apply disciplinary control. Liberal government instead focused on managing the conditions of society’s self-regulation. Power relations manifest in the case of the contemporary political discourses of civil society, participation, NGOs and inclusive governance. Rationalities and technologies of government mobilize scientific expertise, which opens a discursive field of political action. I do not want to rehash my arguments in the previous chapters, but there is more to say here in terms of the interplay between power and knowledge. NGOs are not disciplinary institutions that can be compared with hospitals, schools, prisons, and the military. The leadership of NGOs may sometimes act autocratically, but this is a debate for another discussion. The point here is one can examine the relations between international agencies, and international NGOs and the NGO community in the emerging and transitional states in a new perspective by underscoring the influence of social scientific theories and the rule governed, reproducible and principled technologies employed in the process of invoking civil society and civil society actors for the government of states, understood as a set of institutions, and of their populations. This argument uses the analytical toolbox of governmentality, but a focus on governmentality must not ignore or is used to hide disciplinary power, hierarchical relations, and the resilience of conventional

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knowledge of society. International agencies, donors, and social scientists gather detailed information of NGOs, thereby they do not aim at governing the conditions of a self-regulating society. Rather, they act directly on individual NGOs. Hierarchical relations stem not only from funding mechanisms; donors also claim superiority over the populations of developing societies, just as the shepherd assumed superiority over his flock. The theory of police drew on pastoral power and aimed at developing the well-being of the population. The focus on NGOs stemmed from an economy-based approach to development for reducing poverty and from restructuring the state in the global North (Francesco & Guaschino, 2020). In both cases, a political rationality of government initially dismissed a theoretical concept of society and directly appealed to NGOs as intermediaries between the political institutions and citizens. Nonetheless, such political rationality had to evoke a theoretical notion of society along with re-problematizing the social issue when the new governance reforms lacked legitimacy. Governmentality approach does not treat ideas and political programs as mere instruments of a ruling or vested capitalist class. It does not study political institution from an institutionalist or state-centric approach, either. Governmentality approach moves way from the state and political institutions in the sense that it looks into rationalities and technologies of power that makes the exercise of state’s power within different sites and practices in civil society possible. We are not required to stop referring to aggregate or abstract concepts including the state, market, and civil society. Nonetheless, they are not to be taken as reified concepts. These abstractions, understood as markers of modernist social theory, when used to explain self-regulating structures, or systems, assume that they have an underlying organizing mechanism. This mechanism regulates the actions of individuals and institutions occupying each sphere. Both social capital and public sphere theories adopt this view. Governmentality decenters the concept of civil society and pursues a research strategy that moves away from the institutions of civil society to grasp technologies of power developed elsewhere beyond CSOs and NGOs and transferred to CSOs. Political power exercised by the state and international governance organizations can be decentered. Decentering governance is often adopted by the followers of Michel Foucault, who continue Foucault’s insights concerning genealogy of governmental rationalities (Rose & Miller, 1992, 2008). When a decentered approach is extended to global

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governance, it draws attention to how states, international organizations, and other non-state actors such as multinational corporations engage in governance of the global South without a central guiding institution. A decentered approach takes a distance to instrumental approaches to NGOs if such approaches deny the agency of NGOs and if they reify structures and institutions. Instrumentalist approaches treat participation discourse in such a way that as if this discourse is used to mobilize couple of NGOs in order to simply sell neoliberalism or conceal a hidden truth behind neoliberalism as agents of propaganda, where they are regarded as blueprints of an ideology implementing a social engineering plan formulated at the headquarters of IMF, World Bank, or the EU. Decentered approach suggests that civil society discourse and NGOs cannot be examined merely by looking into their functions in the system of governance, either. A decentered approach unpacks somewhat hegemonic conceptions and definitions of civil society which have been used in the new governance. It denaturalizes, defamiliarizes, and problematizes civil society discourse. Some commentators (Jessop, 2011; Stenson, 2005; McKee, 2009) criticized this decentered approach to political power: decentered approach, they argue, overlook the political power retained and used by the state. Criticisms directed against decentering the state claimed that the state still continues to hold a central role in controlling, organizing, and regulating political power, although it is true that the state has shared traditional responsibilities with the several non-state actors and within various scales. Decentered approach does not suggest something like hollowing out the state, as if the state became unimportant under governance reforms and globalization processes. Instead, it focuses on the ways in which government of the state (understood as a set of institutions) and of its population is made possible without continuous control of the state (Rose & Miller, 2008). Contemporary scholarship focuses on the various aspects of liberal and neoliberal governmentality. Most studies expand governmentality from the view of governments’ invocation of liberties and freedoms to govern societies in an effective way. Nonetheless, such focus on liberties shadows those dimensions of liberal government that do not promote liberties but mobilizes coercive strategies and disciplinary technologies. These aspects have been and are still mostly clearly reflected in the relationship between the global North and the global South. Political programs, however, do not result in domination of the subjects upon which political power acts.

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They are not meant to exhaust the choices and alternatives of actors. They are thus alterable, temporal, and prone to failure and resistance. Governmentality perspective’s focus on the exercise of political power does not either suggest that we live in a totally controlled and programmed world. Rather, as Rose and Miller (1992) suggest we live in a world of political programs, or in a programmable world. Political programs are not ideological blueprints (e.g., as if neoliberalism as ideology contains an aspect of invoking civil society) or manifestations of the alleged underlying objective features of the social reality (e.g., society or civil society is a naturally self-regulating sphere or civil society is antidote to the state’s and the market’s dominating power). Political programs may reflect the intentions of the practitioners and may contain all these elements illustrated in previous sentences. Political programs are not blueprints, but connect scientific expertise and reasons for political action. Whereas scientific expertise provides the government of the state of its population a rationale for action, the exercise of government as a form of productive power provides the purpose and institutional settings for translation of scientific knowledge to practices. For instance, Foucault argued, medicine offered the capital and the state an image of society that is programmable as a body. Medicine produced a rationale and techniques for actors of government for intervention into society.

Conclusion This chapter contextualized associational revolution, pragmatic governance, and the entrenchment of neoliberalism. Contextualization here involves locating and civil society discourse and NGOs’ involvement in governance within the theories and practices of governance. Contextualization is not merely a descriptive activity; it also leads us to critical political analysis. Others criticized civil society discourse and NGOs because they either served to the interests of capitalist class or powerful groups. Decentered approach’s critique agrees with many of these criticisms. However, it rejects a general theory to characterize all NGOs as instrumental to some dominating actors or functional to some structural logic. It also connects the appeal to civil society and NGOs to governmental rationalities and technologies.

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References Anderson, P. (2000). Renewals. New Left Review, 11(1), 5–24. Anheier, H. (2004). Third sector-third way: Comparative perspectives and policy reflections. In J. Lewis & R. Surrender (Eds.), Welfare state change: Towards a third way? (pp. 111–135). Oxford University Press. Brigg, M. (2001). Empowering NGOs: The microcredit movement through Foucault’s notion of dispositif. Alternatives, 26(3), 233–258. Cameron, J. (2000). Development economics, the new institutional economics and NGOs. Third World Quarterly, 21(4), 627–635. Cooke, B., & Kothari, U. (2001). Participation, the new tyranny? Zed Books. Cox, R. (1999). Civil society at the turn of the millennium: Prospects for an alternative world order. Review of International Studies, 25, 3–28. Demirovic, A. (2003). NGOs, the state, and civil society: The transformation of hegemony. Rethinking Marxism, 15(2), 213–235. Elyachar, J. (2005). Markets of dispossession: NGOs, economic development, and the state in Cairo. Duke University Press. Fisher, W. F. (1997). Doing good? The politics and antipolitics of NGO practices. Annual Review of Anthropology, 439–464. Francesco, F., & Guaschino, E. (2020). Reframing knowledge: A comparison of OECD and World Bank discourse on public governance reform. Policy and Society, 39(1), 113–128. Giddens, A. (1998). The third way and its critics. Polity. Gould, C. (1978). Marx’s social ontology: Individuality and community in Marx’s theory of social reality. MIT Press. Hall, S. (2011). The neo-liberal revolution. Cultural Studies, 25(6), 705–728. Hay, C. (2006). Political ontology. In R. Goodin & C. Tilly (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of contextual political analysis (pp. 78–97). Oxford University Press. Jessop, B. (2002). The future of the capitalist state. Polity. Jessop, B. (2007). State power: A strategic-relational approach. Polity. Jessop, B. (2011). Constituting another Foucault effect: Foucault on states and statecraft. In U. Bröckling, S. Krassmann & T. Lemke (Eds.), Current issues and future challenges (pp. 56–74). Routledge. Leal, P. A. (2007). Participation: The ascendancy of a buzzword in the neo-liberal era. Development in Practice, 17 (4–5), 539–548. Lemke, T. (2002). Foucault, governmentality, and the critique. Rethinking Marxism, 14(3), 49–63. McKee, K. (2009). Post-Foucauldian governmentality: What does it offer critical social policy analysis? Critical Social Policy, 29(3), 465–486. Nanz, P., & Steffek, J. (2004). Global governance, participation and the public sphere. Government and Opposition, 39, 314. Petras, J. (1999). NGOs: In the service of imperialism. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 29(4), 429–440.

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Porter, D., & Craig, D. (2004). The third way and the third world: Poverty reduction and social inclusion in the rise of “inclusive” liberalism’. Review of International Political Economy, 11(2), 387–423. Power, M. (2011). Foucault and sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 37, 35– 56. Rancière, J. (1999). Disagreement, politics and philosophy. University of Minnesota Press. Rose, N., & Miller, P. (1992). Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government. British Journal of Sociology, 43(2), 172–205. Rose, N., & Miller, P. (2008). Governing the present: Administering economic, social and personal life. Polity. Salamon, L. M. (1994). The rise of the nonprofit sector. Foreign Affairs, 109– 122. Schnable, A, DeMattee, A, Sullivan Robinson; R., & Brass, J. N. (2020). International development buzzwords: Understanding their use among donors, NGOs, and academics. The Journal of Development Studies. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00220388.2020.1790532. Springer, S. (2012). Neoliberalism as discourse: Between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism. Critical Discourse Studies, 9(2), 133–147. Stenson, K. (2005). Sovereignty, biopolitics and the local government of crime in Britain. Theoretical Criminology, 9(3), 265–287. Walters, W. (2004). Some critical notes on ‘governance’. Studies in Political Economy, 73, 27–46.

CHAPTER 6

Governing Through Civil Society

This chapter applies governmentality approach to civil society research. This analytical framework casts light on the case of how civil society discourse connects to the new governance. The practice of involving CSOs in the new governance, whether as actors delivering services or as participants in decision-making, connects to new institutionalist theories. Social and political actors invoked civil society in an environment of antistatism, which was opened by neoliberal theories. Furthermore, practices of conducting civil society organizations become the subject of formalized knowledge. This knowledge combines elements from different theories such as new institutionalism, rational choice, managerialism, communitarianism, and social capital theories. Theories and practitioners typically select some of these theories’ components according to the social context and the issues on which they invoke civil society. Naturalist and behaviorist theorists are unable to explain this process. For them, social scientists must exactly explain social phenomena as natural scientists observe nature. Much science research presupposes pure experience and strives to find true meaning on objective facts. Naturalist theories take civil society as an ahistorical phenomenon as if civil society is a natural object and is waiting to be involved in governance settings. This meta-theoretical assumption leads naturalists to ignore contextuality, contingency, and constructedness of social reality. As a result, they concentrate on developing protocols and indexes to test their hypotheses © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Kutay, NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71862-6_6

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without questioning how a particular concept of civil society and an organizational type have become hegemonic in the first place. Governmentality approach does not take state, market, and civil society as social facts or reified objects. It decenters them. Governmentality approach focuses on how contemporary social and political changes restructure civil society and CSOs. The distinctions among the state, market, and civil society blur under the new governance. I define this process with the concept of coupling, which I loosely borrow from system theories. A governmentality approach rejects an exogenously related trichotomy of the state, the market, and civil society. It aims to problematize, defamiliarize, and denaturalize an ahistorical conception of and the taken-for-granted truth about civil society. Governmentality approach examines the contested, contingent, and contestable nature of civil society. For instance, classical liberalism, generated within the Enlightenment tradition, entails the maxim of non-intervention of the state in civil society and civil society’s strict autonomy (Ehrenberg, 2017 Fine, 1997; Kumar, 1993). Pragmatic governance appears in different names such as good governance and the system of governance. However, in practice, both deviate from and reinforce this maxim. It deviates from the maxim because it advises and fosters intervention in civil society by political and economic means, thereby dismantling the rigid boundaries between public/private and state/civil domains. It reinforces the maxim because the policies targeted toward appealing to civil society promote a liberal conception of an autonomous civil society; even this promotion has become an end in itself, particularly in economic development. Governmentality approach also helps to elucidate the making of an NGO subjectivity. By utilizing the toolbox of governmentality, one can examine how practitioners incite citizens to be involved in governance settings through CSOs/NGOs and how capacity-building programs, NGO training initiatives, and the NGO management frameworks intend to create capable individuals who can make sound contributions to governance settings. Governmentality approach helps us study the rationalities and technologies of invoking civil society. NGOs now involve in governance, but they must be rendered capable and willing in the first place. Capability and willingness are interconnected. They can be best grasped within the framework of governmentalization of governance. Theories and practices that the new governance mobilizes eventually influence the

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NGOs’ organizational structure and the procedures through which the NGOs participate in governance.1 The chapter begins by summarizing the key insights of governmentality approach. The second chapter looks into the concept of political rationalities, a key concept in governmentality approach. The third section focuses on how governmentality can be relevant for civil society research. The next section focuses on an illustrative case study and examines how managerialism as a governmental technology is spread in NGOs.

Governmentality Foucault’s interest in governmentality is related to his earlier work on power, discipline, knowledge, and the subject. With this concept, he emphasizes the linkage between the processes of state-formation and the constitution of the self. There are at least three usages of governmentality: (1) examining government as a form of power; (2) examining the exercise of state power; and (3) characterizing a family of governmental rationalities in a given historical period (Walters, 2012, pp. 11–12; see also Barry et al, 1996; Lemke, 2002, 2007; Rose and Miller, 1992; Lemke, 2002; Rose and Miller, 1992; Simons, 1995). First, Foucault examined government as a different form of power than sovereignty and discipline: he claims, “In contrast to sovereignty, government has its purpose not the act of government itself, but the welfare of the population, the improvement of its conditions, the increase of its wealth, longevity, health etc.” (Foucault, 1991, p. 100). Foucault did not restrict the term of government to the state and institutions of the state. For him, government is a general notion that entails the government of the self, of the soul, of the household, and of the state (Foucault, 1991). Government as an action draws on ideas, is expressed by language, and is actualized by practices. Foucault observed that two distinctive doctrines of government, or political rationalities, emerged with the early modern state in Europe: reason of state and the theory of police. The reason of state implied the change in how the exercise of sovereign power was defined. It meant merely securing a given territory by a ruler and focused on maintaining 1 This re-composition of the ethics of the self and mode of governance prioritizes style and quantifiable characteristics over content and value commitments (Bevir, 2010, Hajer, 2009).

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sovereign authority under external or internal threats. Reason of state was an initial move in the secularization of power: the legitimacy of state was not tied to divinity but was explained intrinsic to the state’s activities. However, the reason of state was soon revised to involve a new doctrine, the theory of police. Here, police refer to the policy or, more specifically, policies that concentrate on the population’s well-being. The theory of police was built on an understanding of pastoral power applied in the institutions of Catholic Church before being implemented more efficiently by the state. Pastoral power targeted governing all aspects of the individual, i.e., body, soul, wealth, and health. Whereas reason of state was connected to the sovereignty of the prince, the theory of state mobilized disciplinary power intending to govern each and all (Foucault, 1979). The microphysics of power was added to juridico-political power. Government differed both from the reason of state and theory of police: it was connected to liberal art of government. Broadly, government refers to conduct and conduct of conduct: it involves governing the self and governing of others, and governing of the state (Foucault, 1991). As a verb, conduct “means to lead, to direct or to guide, and perhaps implies some sort of calculation as to how this is to be done”: as a noun, “conduct refers to our behaviors, our actions, and even our comportment, i.e., the articulated set of our behaviors” (Dean, 1999, p. 10). Government, applied by various social and political agents, aims to make actors (or subjects) prone to take part in a particular activity, not merely by pressure or force, but by mobilizing their desire, influencing them to refine their abilities, and even allowing them to have access to public policy processes (making, implementing, evaluating, and revising). 2 It is productive, thus not restrictive, and recognizes individuals’ freedom. Whereas the theory of police was dependent on disciplinary mechanisms to control and enhance each and all’s well-being, the liberal art of government left the mechanisms of control and surveillance within civil society. Government is connected to political power because these ideas, utterances, and practices are always informed and shaped by governmental rationalities and technologies. Governmental rationalities and technologies make it possible to administer political institutions and govern the population, groups, and individuals and the interactions between state 2 See Avelino and Rotmans (2009) for a theoretical discussion of different interpretations and Detel (2005) for a Foucault’s account of power from a philosophical perspective.

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and society. We are at a better place to grasp state power compared to other theories of governance, when we apply his insights into the new governance and civil society and when we examine how a set of ideas interlinks them through speech acts, and practices. Foucault’s approach to the state differs from mainstream political science approaches and social and political theories. Foucault defines the state as a polymorphic entity: he examined governance beyond the bureaucratic institutions in an assemblage of plural actors, ideas, and things. To Foucault, the modern state […] has come to be through the development and adaptation of various techniques of government, none of which are integral to the state nor necessarily products of intentional activity. Techniques of government are not tied to a centralised state power but rather at work in diffuse and varied ways throughout society. (Bevir, 1999, p. 353)

Foucault links his insights concerning power relations and subject formations to how state exercises power when he used governmentality. Governmentality draws attention to “reciprocal constitution of the power techniques and forms of knowledge” (Lemke, 2002, p. 191). Foucault argues that techniques of government are linked to scientific theories and rationalizations because “to speak of a technique or art presupposes that the practice in question has been subjected to a certain degree of investigation, critical reflection and calculated refinement” (Walters, 2012, pp. 11–12). Conduct of conduct is a form of power connected to political technologies because it establishes continuity among the government of the state, of its population, and of the self. This form of power, Foucault observes, arises around the eighteenth century with the emergence of liberalism. Just as Foucault examined the state’s emergence differently from most political philosophers by focusing on practices that made the state possible and by focusing on the state’s effects, he also examined liberalism not merely as an abstract theory or ideology. Foucault focused on practices to explain how rationalized, calculable, and principled ideas operate in the social world. His ideas about liberalism and liberal art of government are built on this underlying framework. Foucault argued that after the eighteenth century, the key political issue in the western world was not the statization of society, but the governmentalization of the state. Rose (1996, pp. 41–42) suggests that “the ‘power of the State’ is a resultant, not a cause, an outcome of the composition and assembling of

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actors, flows, buildings, relations of authority into relatively durable associations mobilized, to a great or lesser extent, toward the achievement of particular objectives by common means.” He defines the process through which political rationalities guided or converted into distinct practices by the concept of translation: The translation of political programmes articulated in rather general terms—national efficiency, democracy, equality, enterprise—into ways of seeking to exercise authority over persons, places and activities in specific locales and practices. The translation of thought and action from a ‘centre of calculation’ into diversity of locales dispersed across a territory—translation in the sense of movement from one place to another’. (Rose, 1996, pp. 41–42)

Foucault investigated how regimes of vindication (truth claims resulted from scientific expertise) and various power techniques that randomly emerge in civil society have come to connect to the state, and how they influenced regimes of codification/juridification (legal norms). Power techniques and scientific expertise make the state, understood as a set of institutions, possible and state’s power practicable. Foucault’s point is that technologies and rationalities of power do not originate from the state. Nonetheless, the state absorbs them, or the state is governmentalized. Governmentality is often used to denote one particular family of rationalities and technologies of government. Reason of state, the theory of police, liberal art of government, and neoliberal governmentality constitute one family. Neoliberal governmental rationalities involve the domination of market principles over the political and the social. They also connect the liberalization of the markets to the autonomization and responsibilization of individuals and organizations (Dean, 2010). A significant change in governmental rationalities also involves the prevalence of performance management. Neoliberalism reprograms liberalism: it denotes new political rationality whose effect goes beyond transforming capitalism and influencing economic policies. Neoliberal political reason involves a normative vision to govern by market principles. The state does not only engage in disseminating market principles in society but also adopts these principles to organize public administration principles. Furthermore, the state and its institutions spread market principles across society; various non-state actors and institutions such as schools, corporations, factories, hospitals, and CSOs engage in spreading them.

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Neoliberal principles reconsider classical liberalism’s vision of economic man. Whereas liberal thinkers located the economic man in civil society or in a system of needs organized by market exchanges, neoliberalism revised this image of economic man and brought a new image of civil society. It located the economic man in a competitive market place. Whereas liberalism defines markets and civil society as self-regulating, neoliberalism adopted a constructivist understanding. On this account, markets must be built, and the economic man was also required to adopt this new image of society. Neoliberalism’s theoretical change concerning society’s image and its new constructivist social theory aligned with a normative vision to circulate market principles on widest possible spheres in society. Neoliberal political program entrepreneurialized the subject, transformed labor into human capital, and reorganized and transformed the state (Brown, 2019, pp. 18–21).

Political Rationalities Governmentality draws on the interplay between political rationalities and the strategies that seek to govern society with systemized knowledge. Political rationalities involve at least three features. First, they involve a moral aspect that coordinates the selection of appropriate ideals and governance principles. Dean (1999, p. 12) argues that the art of government is an “intensely moral activity” in two senses. On the one hand, it involves a telos of “making oneself accountable for one’s own actions”; on the other hand, policies and practices of governments are moral because they “presume to know, with varying degrees of explicitness and using specific forms of knowledge, what constitutes good, virtuous, appropriate, responsible conduct of individuals and collectivities” (Dean, 1999, 12). Secondly, political rationalities have an epistemic dimension. They rely on and promote distinct theories of the objects (nation, population, economy, society, community) and of the social and political actors (citizens, NGO members, donor–recipient, and activists). Political rationalities are both political and rational. Thirdly, political rationalities “render reality thinkable and practicable, and constituting domains that are amenable—or not amenable—to reformatory intervention” (Rose, 1996, p. 42). Political rationalities are not ideational structures: they are applied in daily practices, guide actions, and motivate our ambitions, intentions, and desires.

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For Foucault, political rationalities’ political character emphasizes both the secular and radically contingent nature of the exercise of political power by the modern state and its justification with mundane practices. This political view separates the modern view of politics from the medieval understanding of the exercise and justification of power by divine sources. However, Foucault finds both the Machiavellian and moralist responses that aimed to grasp the secular turn in politics limited. Machiavellians adopted a very narrow understanding of politics by restricting political power’s exercise to the prince’s strategies to stay in power and secure the territories. Foucault’s resort to pastoral power or the theory of police aimed to enhance our knowledge of how the state worked. Meanwhile, he also rejected the moralist accounts of political power. He did not directly engage with moralist authors who focused on justifying sovereignty, political obligation, and liberties before politics. However, we can deduct from his writings that his approach to politics was different from those of moralist philosophers; his ideas ran counter to them by situating politics and rationalities into the historical and social context. Foucault’s focus on rationalities is also context-dependent; he reflected on how instrumental and substantive rationalities affected modern societies. However, his main problem was not a form of rationality, which distorts or colonizes society or leads to political domination. Instead, he focused on distinct rationalities. For instance, he explored how particular systemized knowledge enables instituting a disciplinary society or helps governing societies from a distance by resorting to individuals’ freedom. Thus, political rationalities are not pure or neutral knowledge that simply re-present the social reality. Instead, political rationalities arise often from a problem which social and political actors aim to solve. Political rationalities organize practices. Social and political actors translate them into technologies, including instruments, procedures, mechanisms, vocabularies, and techniques that enable the political rationalities practicable (Dean, 1999, p. 31). Political power manifests itself through these practices. Governmentality mobilizes “political rationality not as an exterior instance, but an element itself which helps to create a discursive field in which exercising power is rational” (Lemke, 2002, p. 55). Foucault initially concentrated on restrictive power applied on bodies, but he realized that such power limits the agency of individual. In his later works, he focused more on the productive consequences of power and emphasized individuals’ freedom. Foucault connected, starting from

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Society, Population, and Territory, governmental technologies to systemized or scientific knowledge: he was interested in continuity between how individuals govern themselves and how the institutions of the state were administered. Foucault focused on the link between power relations and subject formation (Heller, 1996). Foucault’s post-structural methodology informs his approach to power. He endorses neither structuralism (e.g., that of Althusser) and historical materialism. He avoided reductionism and reification: he discarded both structural and voluntarist explanations. He did not follow realist ontology of science, either (Bevir, 1999, p. 347). He scrutinized the totality of power relations; he embedded the state in a network-like configuration: Power relations are rooted in the system of social networks. This is not to say, however, that there is a primary and fundamental principle of power which dominates society down to the smallest detail…It is certain that in contemporary societies the state is not simply one of the forms or specific situations of the exercise of power—even if it is the most important—but that in a certain way all other forms of power relations must refer to it. But this is not because they are derived from it; it is rather because power relations have come more and more under state control [….] power relations have been progressively governmentalised, that is to say, elaborated, rationalised, and centralised in the form of, or under the auspices of, state institutions. (Foucault, 1982, p. 793)

Foucault’s usage of power differs from an instrumentalist understanding, i.e., direct and determining control of the person or institution “A” on “B.” Foucault rejects this explanation by arguing that power cannot be possessed because it is not a thing (Foucault, 1982). For Foucault, power is not merely repressive, even though it might be exercised often in that vein. He also considered it as a medium of social relationships. Particularly after the 1970s, when he turned to genealogy and was influenced by Nietzsche, he concentrated on productive power relations. Some governmentality scholars limit their inquiries to mentalities of political programs. They are not primarily interested in the effectiveness of political programs (Rose et al., 2006, p. 100). Others (Stenson, 2005, 2009, McKee, 2009), on the other hand, do not limit the inquiry of governmentality to the programmer’s mind-sets. They examine the implications and realizations of governmental programs. They also examine how governmental rationalities and technologies are received and

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perceived by the actors exposed to them. They also reject the argument that the state has become epiphenomenal.

Governmentality and Civil Society A focus on how civil society discourse connects to the new governance does not mean that political institutions create this discourse and influence civil society actors’ actions and practices alone. Large international NGOs, consultancy firms, and universities through their NGO management graduate programs also govern civil societies. These actors act on civil society’s actions via guide books, toolkits, capacity-building programs, courses such as access to funding and project management. All in all, when a political discourse on civil society is understood as governmental action, it operates similar to the language games of Wittgenstein, thus involves ideas, words, and practices. Genealogy examines the conditions of the possibility of the modern state. A genealogical method and Foucault’s insights, more specifically, provide us with analytical inspiration to examine the conditions of possibility of the new governance. A genealogical analysis of the new governance examines the changes in ideas, statements, and practices that organize governance. In our particular case of civil society discourse, these theoretical insights guide us to look into civil society discourse as part of the conditions of possibility of the new governance and connect this discourse to other ideas and practices that appeared or have become prevalent under the new governance. For instance, one may mention the proliferation of new public management (Considine & Painter, 1997), the hegemony of neoliberal policies (Harvey, 2005; Cahill et al., 2018; Mirowski et al., 2020), the popularity of social capital approaches to associations (Putnam, 1993), the prevalence of (good) governance in political development policies (Weiss, 2000), and incorporation of participation discourse into the new governance (Fung, 2006). Governmental rationality promotes institutional isomorphism in managerial knowledge and practices: managerialism organizes new forms of governance, managerial public administrative reforms, and the management of organizations. Managerialism involves episteme (or set of principles and frameworks), telos (a final cause), techne, and identities (Dean 1999). Managerialism organizes the link among the self (as a human capital, results-oriented, skilled, entrepreneurial subject), organization (as managerial organization that mimic corporations), and social organization

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(that is built on the assumption of governing society through managers and managerial expertise). We have underlined that knowledge (rationalities and the systematization of a particular collection of rules), values, concepts, and visualizations constitute a discursive field. When this statement is applied to civil society, the discursive field involves different images of society. Theorists promote images of society that are often connected to particular rationality of government of the state and of its population, including the state of nature, natural, and self-regulating civil society, structurally differentiated systems, or even a need to eliminate society as a theoretical category. Under liberal and neoliberal art of government, these images influence political programs that effectively and frugally govern society. Governmentality approach takes issue with the prevailing prescriptive normative interpretations regarding the NGOs. These interpretations view NGOs’ actions and NGOs’ involvement as categorically good and necessarily conducive to democratization (Anheier, 2004; Kaldor, 2005). A governmentality approach to civil society resembles the thoughts of Gramsci. Classical liberalism envisages civil society as a realm that is functionally autonomous from the state and economy. Gramsci criticized this view with his conception of an integral state, where civil society is conceived of as an extension of the state and the institutional infrastructure of counter-hegemony. Neo-Gramscians (Colas, 2005; Cox, 1999) advanced and applied this argument to global politics by suggesting civil society does not, by definition, amount to a pre-determined foundation in terms of its constituent actors or of an underlying reasoning or autonomous ontology. From this perspective, civil society is not a spatially and temporally fixed phenomenon that is naturally positioned against the state and economy. It does not by definition restrain the destructive effects of political and economic power either. Instead, as Gramsci and Gramscians suggest, civil society is a contextually transformed and shaped concept that cannot be studied independently of a historical context and social dynamics. For example, the emergence of political parties, trade unions, and voluntary associations during the late nineteenth century arose from the industrialization-driven social transformation. Governmentality approach shares with the Gramscian perspective of civil society. Both governmentality approach and Gramsci draw attention to power relations and historical change that affects civil society. However, governmentality approach contextualizes civil society in connection to political programs, and rationalities and technologies of

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governance that aim to govern society by drawing upon scientific expertise. Here, political power refers to the influence of political discourse that affects individuals’ beliefs and desires and defines subject positions in society. For Gramsci and Gramscians, political power refers to, broadly understood, mobilization of intellectual means (e.g., ideology) by the ruling class to gain the masses’ consent. Conduct of conduct is a productive power, as it does not orient to restrain but constitute. Government (conduct of conduct) denotes here the encouragement of NGO involvement in governance. The notion of (political) power inherent pertains to the production and dissemination of the ethos, mores, and technologies of government that invoke citizens’ associations to govern the state and its population. This production and dissemination are realized by encouraging actors to involve themselves in governance settings. This form of power has productive implications globally (Lipshutz, 2005); that is, it creates, molds, and shapes without dominating and restricting. This type of power contrasts with disciplinary power. Disciplinary power aims to govern all the behaviors of subjects “in the most continuous, homogenous, and exhaustive manner” (Foucault, 2009, p. 66), as in the treatment of prison inmates. Government does not aspire to manage all aspects of subjects’ lives, but to conduct their conduct. It entails acting “on the possibilities of action of other individuals” (Davidson, 2009, p. XXII). Government goes beyond the controlling power of political institutions over civil society; it implies the rendering of a particular frame of participatory mechanism and the articulation of a specific relationship among the state, the market, and civil society (Swyngedouw, 2005, pp. 1996– 1999). Thus, the values, aims, and organizational structures within civil society and how civil society actors perceive and receive social reality are not pre-determined or inherent but are shaped through technologies of power. Such shaping involves the political intervention of governments, IOs, and donor institutions through political programs. As a form of power, government describes and assumes what civil society (actors) should be, guides and activates certain actors according to particular rationality, and promotes managerial subject positions, thereby aiming to effectively and democratically govern societies through autonomous civil society actors. Political power stimulates NGOs’ willingness to involve themselves in governance settings and concentrate participants’ abilities and capabilities to make sound contributions to these settings. This form of power technologies includes capacity-building

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programs, training initiatives, and the NGO management frames implemented by political institutions. In other words, government does not take for granted that civil society is, and has always been, there and waiting to be involved in governance settings; it acts upon groups of societal institutions in such a way as to form them. In turn, NGOs are often incorporated into governance mechanisms as particular forms of civil society actors because they have been subjected to a discursive field of rationalization and material practices upon which a governmental rationality has problematized and acted. For example, this productive form of power creates responsibility among governance actors through agency and performance technologies. As stated earlier, different usage perspectives of governance commonly suggest making civil society (actors) responsible for effectively solving social problems, along with other actors of governance, including political authorities, business groups, lobbying consultants, and academia (Dean, 2002; Pierre & Peters, 2000, Rhodes, 1996). Although governance associates the incorporation of civil society (i.e., actors, such as NGOs) in policymaking and policy implementation with responsibility, it does not problematize how responsibility has been or would be ascribed to actors in the first place. The responsibilization of individuals and social groups necessitates what Mitchell Dean calls calculated political intervention that amounts to technologies of agency (Dean 2010, p. 196). Dean (2010, p. 197) indicates that technologies of performance follow technologies of agency; that is, experts and professionals (and in the context discussed in this article, NGO actors) are transformed into calculating entities. As a technology of agency, responsibilization stimulates the willingness and strengthens actors’ ability as agencies of a presumed civil society. Responsibilization envisages creating performance-oriented subjects within a managerial structure. That is when NGOs are driven to organize by performance-oriented work, they are incorporated into formal calculative regimes (Rose & Miller 1992), which are based on the economic rationalities and practices used in the private sector; such rationalities and practices include efficiency, goal orientation, and (better) performance of social actors (Dean, 2010).

Circulation of Managerial Technologies Managerialism in NGOs is an illustrative case to expound how governmental rationalities and technologies are circulated in society by various

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actors. We will have a closer look at the implications of managerialism on civil society next chapter. Here, the focus is more on the circulation of managerial technologies in civil society. The aim is to illustrate how various actors are involved in spreading managerial technologies in NGOs and how they intend to influence people’s actions and capabilities. One can emphasize four aspects to explain how managerialism as a technology of government is spread in NGOs: the requirements of grant management, the environmental impacts of larger-frame public administration reform, standardization of the management culture, and the transmission of the norms and practices by the NGO networks to other networks, or government by the same kind. These four aspects can shed light on the adaptation and internalization of managerial practices by NGOs.3 First, grant management prerequisites, including introducing norms that force NGOs to adopt a formal statute and a transparent internal governance structure and follow project cycle management and logical frame analysis, reinforce a structured frame for management. For instance, the European Commission has clarified how the grants are administered and the Commission’s role vis-à-vis benefits. As these statements illustrate, the European Commission imposed a managerial way of organization. Regarding funding, the NGOs must accept, for example, that there will always be a legitimate need for the Commission to impose certain conditions and controls to safeguard community funds. NGOs have a duty to demonstrate that they have the expertise, management systems and internal quality control systems appropriate to the work they are undertaking in behalf of the Commission. (Com, 2000, p. 7) As the taxpayer’s money must be spent in a judicious, economic and transparent way, the award and management of EU grants are subject to specific conditions and requirements to be fulfilled by the applicant organisation, notably in terms of its capacity, both operational (technical and 3 These four aspects are inspired my empirical work which appeared somewhere else (Kutay, 2014). I examined EU’s institutional discourses and their perception by an NGO network. I observed how peripheral institutions in EU institutional setting, for example, European Social and Economic Committee and Committee of Regions, define the objectives of EU’s civil society discourse. I examined statements about civil society discourse in the documents, webpages, but I do also examined techniques such as guidelines, manuals, and management frames to understand how they have influenced the individuals by shaping their cognitive and practical frames. I argued that EU institutions have aimed to European civil society through the intersection of scientific expertise and techniques.

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managerial) and financial. This means that the Commission must be able to assess the capacities of NGOs in order to ensure that they are capable of carrying out the projects entrusted to them and also of accounting properly for the funds involved. (Com, 2000, pp. 16–17)

Direct political intervention of national governments and IOs aims to include NGOs in governance processes (Porter & Craig, 2004). As previously discussed, national governments in the North have been actively introducing programs of cooperation with NGOs. The idea of engaging organized actors of civil society in governance and the adoption of managerial knowledge is further transmitted to other locales in the context of development by the World Bank, the UN, the EU, and donor institutions (Ilcan & Phillips, 2008); the thrust on involvement is also spread to Eastern Europe and the EU’s neighboring countries, under the principle of democratic assistantship and effective governance. The emphasis on creating civil societies in the context of development also deliberately pursues this ambition, including the provision of political guidance to NGOs that will organize and work when they become involved in governance processes; an example of such guidance is the Poverty Reduction Strategies and Country Assistance Strategy (Porter & Craig, 2004). NGOs, which have been willing to participate in new governance structures, have often organized based on managerialism (Roberts et al., 2005). This tendency is attributed to the fact that managerial practices are a prerequisite for NGOs to obtain funding from donor institutions; they are requirements for effective management and accountability. A noteworthy issue is that international and national developmental aid agencies (African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, EC, UNDP, UNICEF, World Bank, CIDA, DANIDA, DFID, Irish Aid, MFA Netherlands, NORAD, SIDA, and USAID) are intensely engaged in formulating and dispersing NGO management frames, such as Logical Framework Analysis, with how-to guidelines, toolkits, and reference papers and manuals. This process, established in the field of development, suggests that within the frame of a particular conception of civil society, IOs and national governments privilege managerial organization in governance settings. This privilege is becoming increasingly synchronized because of the alignment of donor institutions to render economic development governable. National governments and IOs have agreed on donor

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harmonization and alignment following the Paris Declaration (2005) and Accra Agenda for Action (2008) (Giffen & Judge, 2010, p. ii). One of this agreement’s features is a common approach to civil society policies, aligning aid effectiveness policies and practices; this approach involves the dispersion of a common organizational knowledge. The emphasis placed on the role of national governments and IOs does not center (or reduce) the subjectivity of political power on political institutions in the sense that the mechanisms through which managerialism is contemplated, formulated, and implemented. Thus, managerialism is explained not only by the acts and interests of political institutions. As Foucault argues: It is certain that in contemporary societies the state is not simply one of the forms or specific situations of the exercise of power—even if it is the most important—but that in a certain way all other forms of power relations must refer to it. But this is not because they are derived from it; it is rather because power relations have come more and more under state control … power relations have been progressively governmentalized, that is to say, elaborated, rationalized, and centralized in the form of, or under the auspices of, state institutions. (Foucault, 1982, p. 793)

Foucault’s statement illustrated that political institutions are neither epiphenomenal nor the sole driving force—the unique explanans or agents—of managerial formations. Second, regarding environmental impact, we need to consider the role of the NGOs in the New Public Management (NPM). The NPM is associated with managerial principles in the sense of taking administration knowledge from the private sector. It has become common in public administration and policymaking processes. Therefore, the rationalities and practices behind the constitution of managerial subjects in civil society cannot be explained by EU institutions’ actions alone. For instance, the EU Commission implemented administration reform after 1999 favoring an activity and management-based management approach (Kassim, 2008). It also adapted the tenets of good governance (openness, accountability, effectiveness, participation, and coherence) initiated by the UN and the World Bank, by launching the White Paper on Governance in 2001 (Com, 2001). EU institutions, particularly the Commission, can best be seen as an agent in governance networks. EU institutions transmit

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and carry the practices and values of the new governance, including CSOs’ involvement in public policy, into the European context. Third, standardization of the managerial culture is prompted globally in different ways. Formal education on NGO management at universities, think tanks, and consultancies spread managerial practices in civil society (Roberts et al., 2005). A reserve of NGO managers who graduate from NGO management programs at universities are engaged in training programs provided by think tanks and consultancies. NGO managers and experts are not only recruited by NGOs. It is not uncommon for these experts to build a career in different sectors in governance networks. An NGO expert can also work in think tanks, consultancy firms, and international organizations (Stone, 2008). In my case study on a significant umbrella NGO network in European governance, the Social Platform of European NGOs, I observed that after their tenure in this NGO network, the presidents ended up in various posts. Some became a member of the World Economic Forum advisory committee. Some continued working in other NGO networks. Others launched innovative initiatives such as think-do tank (the organization’s self-description) in Brussels called the “Centre,” which operates at European public policy and communications (Kutay, 2014). One commentator observes that global policy networks give prominence to the fields of law, business, and economics (Stone, 2002). Scientific expertise also has an authoritative voice in the new governance and plays a role in spreading management. For instance, following the White Paper on Governance (European Commission, 2001), the EU funded several framework programs for civil society and governance research. These programs allowed the scientific community to serve as stakeholders of governance and encouraged scientists to engage in dialogue with policymakers by supporting the policymaking process with scientific evidence. Scientists, however, have not merely provided evidence for policymakers but have also engaged in formulating ideas about the means for reinforcing civil society and guidance of NGOs; they have achieved this goal by participating in NGO seminars and conferences in Brussels, as well as preparing commissioned toolkits and strategies for capacity building. Consequently, political programs do not directly act on the subjects whose behaviors are shaped but act brokers of conduct and political programs. In this process, political power acts on the processes through

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the agencies of scientists and intermediary NGOs. The scientific community and NGO networks, which are part of the assemblage of governance, are empowered to attain a master-like position vis-à-vis subjects, whose behaviors are shaped. Through this position, governance at a distance (indeed a considerable distance in terms of global governance) is possible. In turn, the capacity-building and empowerment activities of states and civil society actors (those specifically aiming to disperse a particular organizational management style) constitute crucial techniques given that these activities normalize and actualize managerial formations within new governance arrangements. The fourth aspect, the promotion of managerial practices by intermediary actions of NGOs, deserves detailed examination. Building on my case study on the Social Platform and others’ observation, I suggest a model to grasp how international NGOs, NGO networks, and other NGOs engaged in capacity building transfer managerial knowledge. Three ways may do this. First, a larger NGO or an NGO network adapts managerialism by itself : Most international NGOs and NGO networks adapt managerial structure in the first place before they engage in capacity-building activities. The management documents, working programs, and annual reports of these NGOs are often rich in material to provide information about how a given NGO adapts managerialism. These NGOs often follow a results-based management structure and logical frame analysis as their administrative approach. Such an approach requires achieving particular objectives that are calculable and auditable in a given period. Thus, the NGO networks have already adopted managerial principles before engaging in capacity-building activities with the NGO community. Second, the virtual and cyber communicative infrastructure created by a given NGO network creates sites for disseminating managerial knowledge. Larger NGOs disseminate and explain managerial knowledge and practices through face-to-face interactions, such as in the General Assembly, seminars, conferences, Steering Group and Working Group meetings, and electronically distributed publications. Most NGO networks publish guidelines, manuals, and toolkits for their members; arrange training programs, and organize conferences and seminars. Thus, the NGOs that are members of a network interact within that network’s cyber and physical communicative structure. For instance, they attend the conferences, lunch meetings, and seminars organized by the NGO

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network, and they follow each member’s activities through the newsletters and webpage. Nonetheless, in these interactions, the NGOs’ headquarters, often called the Secretariat, does not always play a neutral role. NGO networks transmit managerial knowledge from professionals within these physical spaces and the cyberspace of interaction that it has established. The international NGOs’ headquarters often play a significant role in determining what is to be exchanged by imposing a set of problematization. The NGO networks’ capacity-building initiatives often tend to harmonize the organizational structure of the NGO community. This leads civil society actors dramatically transform into corporate and enterprise entities oriented to act and think by economic rationalities. Third, managerialism in NGOs globally proliferates, and this process is part of the new governance. Some supranational intermediary and local NGOs assume a broker role in linking grassroots actors to international funding agencies (Roberts et al., 2005, p. 1846) while transmitting governance norms and practices to peripheries.4 This role is performed in at least two ways. First, these intermediaries are encouraged to act as interlocutors that transmit and disperse rationalities and norms of governance, endeavoring to shift civil society’s interests to justify and normalize governance (Carrol, 1992; Ilcan & Phillips, 2008; Stone, 2002; World Bank, 1995). Intermediary NGOs are then expected to render governance structures visible, knowable, and intelligible and convey political rationalities to encourage civil society to engage in new governance arrangements. Second, these intermediary NGOs often adopt the managerial principles themselves in the first place before contacting other local NGOs (Roberts et al., 2005, p. 1849). Therefore, they facilitate the global dissemination of this hegemonic managerial subject position in their administrative bodies, manifesting a prototype organizational model for governance;

4 From a Gramscian view, the manipulation of NGO interests encourages the dispersion of the hegemonic discourse on governance, as well as the necessary knowledge for restructuring capital accumulation; that is, reinforcing neo-liberalism through the devolution of the responsibilities of the state through public–private partnerships and supporting integration in global capitalism with trade and foreign direct investment arrangements. In Gramscian reading, therefore, these networks help maintain political integrity and stability vis-à-vis any popular discontent in such context given that governance has been confronted with problems in governing. Incorporating NGO participation into new governance mechanisms is an attempt to integrate them into the historical bloc, where they are defined as the constituents of the new establishment.

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that is, they function as corporate enterprises endowed with economic rationalities. Open Forum, a supranational civil society initiative that emerged after the Accra Agenda to promote an effective civil society, powerfully illustrates how an intermediary organization receives and perceives the role of an agency of government (conduct of conduct) (www.openforum. com). Open Forum aims to advance NGO effectiveness and attempts to foster shared principles and frameworks of NGO management through the toolkits and guidelines (among others) recommended by the EU (European Commission, 2004) and the World Bank (2006). The Forum defines the roles of NGOs (according to its terminology CSO) in the governance of development policies thus: As development actors, CSOs enjoy significant trust by the public and local stakeholders. Most CSOs practice high standards of management and probity. CSOs are, also, continuously responding to legitimate calls to improve their accountability and transparency practices. They have done so by strengthening oversight by elected Boards of Directors, ongoing transparent dialogue with program partners, clear communications with constituencies, accessible program reports and external financial audits, compliance with government regulatory oversight, and through a variety of CSO-managed Codes of Conduct and transparency mechanisms. CSO accountability mechanisms must also address the multi-directional nature of their accountabilities, often in both donor and developing countries—first to primary stakeholders, but equally to peers, partners, public constituencies, public and private donors. (Bermann-Hermans & Murad, 2012, p. 79)

This definition provides a clear insight into what is at stake in involving NGOs in governance settings via managerial knowledge and establishing trust and enhancing accountability and transparency via managerial practices. The influence of the emphasis on clear communication and accountability mechanisms is problematized in the next section. Before proceeding with the third approach to circulation of governmentality, I note that similar messages regarding the internalization of managerial practices as observed in the Open Forum definition can be found in the toolkits and guidelines of similar intermediary NGOs that work in the fields of development and global or European governance.

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Conclusion This chapter elaborated on how governmentality can be applied to civil society research in the context of governance. The focus here is mainly on the exercise of political power beyond the state. It is argued that NGO participation in governance necessitates that NGOs be endowed with the appropriate knowledge, skills, and motivation. This act requires the mobilization of various actors for circulating governmental technologies. Such mobilization can be grasped by a narrower understanding of government or conduct of conduct, as this act involves changing individuals’ actions and capabilities. This narrow understanding of government connects to a broader one, which connects political programs to scientific expertise. The chapter titled, Interpreting with Foucault, explored this broader dimension. This chapter links to that discussion by showing how managerialism and management expertise are connected to the new governance.

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CHAPTER 7

Management, Managerialism, and NGOs

The traditional, dominant normative view of civil society relies on a particular (liberal) conception of civil society articulated by the nineteenthcentury political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville’s observations of civic associations in the America of the 1830s and 1840s describe what we now call civil society as autonomous, i.e., independent of the state, and composed of spontaneous and voluntary organizations. However, the beginnings of civil society that Tocqueville observed have evolved to a very different organization type. Today, CSOs are often imposed upon societies with no history of spontaneous association with the deliberate political intention to create a civil society where it does not exist. Moreover, there has been increasing incorporation of some CSOs into new governance settings that exhibit technocratic and managerial tendencies that do not reflect our original idea of how civil society emerges in a society and by what norms they operate. This re-defining of the normative ideas and civil society’s functioning constitutes nothing short of a revolution in their role in any given society. What is more, new governance opens up decision-making processes to non-state actors, including civil society, that have been the traditional domain of the governance sector. The traditional approach of civil society does not support such practice: these associations have long been considered essential for democracy because they create and strengthen civic bonds in a given community (Putnam, 1993; Habermas, 1992, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Kutay, NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71862-6_7

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1996; Baccaro, 2005). In other words, not only is the Tocquevillian view of civil society incompatible with new governance, it is arguably now counter-factual. We need to rethink the traditional liberal approach that defines the state, the economy, and civil society as autonomous entities or as structurally differentiated domains. This assertion is particularly true when non-state actors such as CSOs share political power by taking public administration and governing responsibility. The meshing of the technocratic style of policymaking and managerial organization with the new governance also blurs the distinction among state, economic, and civil society actors because each of these actors in this new arrangement is administered by common organizational values, norms, and goals. The procedures and formal structures through which civil society has been integrated into the institutional settings of governance may foster the formation of new managerial actors within civil society who are willing and able to participate in society’s governance. This claim means that CSOs now engaged in new governance are not representative of an authentic or autonomous civil society. Non-governmental organizations adapt to managerialism under governance mechanisms. Managerialism is an emerging governance effect that paves the way for a particular relationship among the state, the market, and civil society. Such a relationship, defined here as coupling, is formed and perpetuated through managerial knowledge, professionalized communication techniques, and the reflexive surveillance mechanisms inherent in governance settings. This argument suggests that economic and market rationalities now penetrate wider fields of social life, notwithstanding actual and possible contestations, resistances, and failures. How does new governance restrict and constitute civil society? Why should we consider NGOs engaged in new governance as new civil society actors? As part of my response to these questions, I argued that because new governance prefers willing and capable actors and aims to detach politics from administration, CSOs engaged in governance are expected to act in a depoliticized manner. Yet, civil society’s depoliticization and professionalization are heightened by another social process that has been coupled with new governance: managerialism. This term refers to the domination of the idea that social issues can be more efficiently organized and governed by professionally educated managers. For example, consider business school graduates, who are trained to manage any kind of organization by the particular expertise of managing. This approach is

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now connected to New Public Management (NPM), whose managerial norms and practices are now moving from the corporate sector to public institutions and civil society. Different disciplines have outlined various negative consequences of managerialism, including critical management (Parker, 2002), governmentalization of civil society (MacKinnon, 2000; Morrison, 2000), and the replacement of voluntary spirit in CSOs with a management mentality (Skocpol, 2003). Managerialism is transforming social activists into problem-solving managers. It also hinders the development of civic bonds and community building, which are thought to be intrinsic to civil society’s ideal concept (Skocpol, 2003). Furthermore, managerialism is understood as the management of any institution that operates by rules and assumptions regardless of who or what is being managed (Burnham, 1942; Parker, 2002). By applying similar management skills to all areas of social concern, managerialism also restricts creativity and the potential for the emergence of communicative rationalities (Parker, 2002). The relevance of examining management, communication tools, and reports and of questioning the “logic” behind organizational structuring is as follows: The impact of the rationalities and technologies of political intervention on a subject can be traced by revealing the domains in which political programmes shapes, guides, and conduct. On this account, political power does not directly act upon the subjects: it acts on their actions, mentalities, and even logic, such as through the “aid to thinking” toolkits. This act corresponds to a form of power that does not constrain agencies’ actions and discipline by the threat or use of violence. Moreover, this form of power does not use the subject as a mere instrument for achieving political ambitions. Instead, as a form of power, government empowers agents before incorporating them into the governance of society. Managerialism thus shapes the agents’ actions by encouraging them to use managerial logic while keeping them under surveillance. In turn, a new form of government arises: governing civil society and governing through civil society on managerial knowledge and practices. In this chapter, I discuss the implications of new governance and managerial thinking and civil society practices. The first section evaluates the strategy of involving NGOs in new governance. The second section examines the implications of the procedures and formal structures through which civil society has been integrated into the institutional

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settings of governance. This section elaborates on three factors that reinforce coupling: the emergence of managerialism as a mediating system, the spread of professional communication practice, and the existing observance practices inherent in governance mechanisms. The third section reflects upon the general effects of managerialism and new governance on civil society.

Management, Managerialism, and NGOs Management denotes two intertwining contemporary social processes: managing any organization like a corporation and believing that social progress can be made possible by trained managers. First, frequently associated with NPM, managerialism refers to the use and proliferation of corporate management knowledge and practices in the public sector and other segments of society, including NGOs (Yeatman, 1997). Bevir (2010, p. 71) suggests that managerialism is the “commonly preferred method of public administration in the NPM arrangements, which suggests adapting ‘best practices’ from the private sector with respect to financial management, human resources, and decision making” to the public sector. Bevir (2010, p. 71) continues to state that managerialism “encourage[s] [public sector actors] to think of themselves as more like private sector organizations.” The last statement is critical because it highlights encouragement as an external intervention that guides and shapes the behaviors of actors of governance (i.e., the conduct of conduct). Managerial knowledge orients toward efficiently and effectively administrating an organization based on systemized rules, norms, formulas, and logic, which are taught at (for example) management departments (Parker, 2002). Policymaking and organizations that are based on managerial knowledge and techniques have often relied on a range of results, activities, and evidence that revolve around performance (Head, 2008; Milani, 2009). Although results and activities initially amount to performance technologies, they also serve as evidence of organizational performance. Parallel to neoliberal economic reforms, some national governments and international organizations (e.g., the United Nations, the EU, and the World Bank) have favored the adoption of managerial principles in public administration and policymaking in line with the new public management reforms (European Commission, 2011; Kassim, 2008).

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The new governance refers to recent changes in public administration and policymaking. It has brought about the weakening of the state by devising its responsibilities among non-state actors and has aimed to execute non-partisan politics. It prioritizes the outcomes of policymaking and administration over politics. On the other hand, managerialism suggests an organizing principle for society and an ideology that implies that any organization (the state, corporations, NGOs, and even supermarkets) should be managed according to the same type of management principles, policies, and tasks. Managerialism is embedded in the new governance and tends to exalt certain features and standpoints of managerial knowledge and network. The new governance often draws on universally applicable management expertise while deriving organizations’ practices and values from the private sector. When it is applied to NGOs, managerialism establishes the basis for practices such as “strategic planning, Logical Framework Analysis, project evaluation, and organizational assessment” (Roberts et al., 2005, p. 1849; see also Bond, 2016; Dart, 2004; Dauvergne & LeBaron, 2014; Gasper, 2000; Joachim & Schneiker, 2018). The propagation of managerialism has been concentrated in the global South and affected “even the smallest NGOs” (Roberts et al., 2005, p. 1849). Some commentators observed that NGOs in the North have also been exposed to the same process (Eikenberry & Kluwer, 2004; Salamon, 2002; Skocpol, 2003; Maier & Meyer, 2011). Managerial norms and practices, namely project cycle management and logical frame analyses, were first developed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). They are now commonly used by institutions supporting NGOs in developing countries for effective project management and accountability (Roberts, Jones III & Fröhling, 2005).1 They are also intended to shape these organizations’ structure: even the way NGOs communicate with the public and other stakeholders by reports, newsletters, webpages, and position papers are subject to these managerial techniques. Managerialism in NGOs was disseminated globally, including the US (Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004; Salamon, 1997; Skocpol, 2003; Weisbrod, 1988), the UK (Morrison, 2000), Austria (Maier & Meyer, 2011), the global South (Roberts et al., 2005), global governance (Roberts et al., 2005), and EU governance (European Commission, 2011).

1 See European Commission (2004).

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The second connotation of management refers to describing the characteristics of a social process broader than a mere transfer of corporate knowledge and practices to other sectors. It denotes that “only personnel with certified training can accomplish organizational goals” (Srinivas, 2009, p. 619, Parker, 2002). On this account, efficient management of organizational tasks enables social change. In its second usage, managerialism is not necessarily meant to describe a situation that is peculiar to the contemporary era. As first advanced by Burnham (1942), the concept denotes a revolution-like social change that started at the end of the nineteenth century. Through this revolution the responsibility of management in disparate fields (including that of firms, farms, and public institutions) was transferred by rulers and capitalists to experts. Burnham argued that the Soviet revolution and Nazi aggression relied on managerialism. What is peculiar and new in recent developments is the tendency of managerial rationalities to penetrate the state and civil society (Lemke, 2002). This argument does not attempt to generalize and verify a hypothesis about the finalization of managerial formations among NGOs and other actors on a global level. The argument instead addresses the formation and circulation of managerial knowledge that govern all organizations as corporate enterprises with market norms and values. The effects of such governmental rationalities are incomplete, diverse, and experienced by different sectors in different ways (Mercer, 2002, p. 10). The reception and perception of managerial knowledge and practices have not been uniform; understanding these concepts “includes promotion, resistance, adoption, circumvention, contextual adaptation, or some combination” (Roberts et al., 2005, p. 1848). The emergence and implementation of managerial principles within NGOs and governance networks link to the interplay between power and knowledge. Political power (conduct of conduct, or guidance of individuals and institutions) aims to affect public administration and policymaking, as well the organizational activities of civil society actors and the identity of the individuals. Social and political actors draw on neoclassical economics, rational choices, and new institutional theories to apply new public management reforms and neoliberal policies. However, they also draw on management’s knowledge to regulate the networks and new patterns of rule. Management is not new science or practice. However, the new governance mobilizes management as the key systemized knowledge for the government of the state and other social and non-state actors

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involved in public policies. Thus, managerialism does not merely refer to the spread of corporate management instruments in the public sector and civil society. Management understood as the underlying scientific theory of managerialism also informs an ideological discourse about government of the state and of its population. Neoliberal political rationalities foster market relations and economic values. They rely on management to organize a particular form of state, market, and civil society relationship. Management serves to establish this relationship by replacing the images of ineffective public servants and threatening activists with managers’ image. Management mediates functionally differentiated spheres through managerial knowledge. Managerialism makes the new governance possible with performance-oriented ethics and techno-administrative organizational techniques. Observance practices in policymaking processes help reproduce managerial relationships.

Coupling Among the State, the Market, and Civil Society In this section, I problematize the tendency of contemporary governmental rationality to promote managerial subjects within civil society by acting on the organizational and management structures of NGOs/CSOs. Managerialism leads to coupling among the state, the market, and civil society. The meaning of coupling here is used closer to how it is referred to in system theory (Maturana, 1975). It implies the engagement of a given phenomenon (in this case, the state, the market, and civil society) with either its environment (system of governance) or another phenomenon (managerialism). The concept of coupling suggests co-evolution, in which interacting systems reinforce for one another a relationship of reflexively generated transformation. The coupling of the state, market, and civil society through managerial knowledge and practices makes the new governance effective and practical. Managerialism emerges as a medium of coupling in the system of governance, once each actor of the new governance adopts managerial principles, and performance indicators and rationalities of corporate organization and administration proliferate among organizations. I should note that I am neither offering a new interpretation of system theory nor attempting to integrate system theory into Foucault’s theory. Instead, I engage with system theory to elaborate on how new governmental rationalities affect the state, the market, and civil society. Whereas

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system theorists and other modernist social theorists focus on structural differentiation, I engage with the society’s underlying modernist vision as a complex system that constitutes self-regulating spheres only to confront and decenter that vision. The argument is that self-regulating spheres are not self-regulating; they are not strictly separate from each other, and they do not embody distinct laws specific to and coordinating actions in a particular sphere. Coupling offers a heuristic tool to reveal the fields of congruence between the state, the market, and civil society and the fields in which their previously prescribed roles and functions merge. To that end, this section locates NGOs’ participation in governance within a larger context of the interplays between the constituent actors of governance and the rationalities and technologies that guide the behavior of these actors. The following discussion underscores at least three factors that reinforce coupling, the process that entangles managerialism, instrumental-formal rationalities, and social regulation in a subject formation (i.e., managerial civil society). These factors are managerialism as a mediating system of coupling, professional communication, and surveillance. Managerialism as a Mediating System for Coupling The proliferation of managerialism in civil society is related to the process of the coupling of civil society with public administration and market forces at a global scale. This argument can be elaborated by engaging with an old debate in social theory. This debate includes Weber’s remarks on the iron cage of bureaucratic rationality, Marcuse’s criticism, and Habermas’ admonition of the colonization of the lifeworld. First, Weber observed that bureaucracies took over the normative and administrative responsibility of governing societies from religion and dynasties in favor of societies’ self-regulation. Technocratic administrative rationalities dominated in society. Nonetheless, instrumental-formal rationalities have involved a side-effect that threatened the overall structuring of social relations. Social interactions and value rationalities weakened because of the spread of bureaucratic technocratic solutions into broader societal domains. Weber addressed the perils of the proliferation of bureaucratic rationalities in wider domains of social life. They imply that systemized rules and norms can solve social problems without regard for traditional society’s values (Kalberg, 1980). For Weber, this process eventually eroded the need for intimate social interactions and the need

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for community values. It eroded because technical-formal procedures desubstantialize the ethos and mores of a given polity when they assume the responsibility of governing society and socially integrating structurally differentiated systems (state, economy, culture, science, law). Weber’s pessimistic views have been influential on social theory but not immune from critique. Marcuse (1972) criticized Weber’s treatment of instrumental rationality as a self-standing and context-independent universal reasoning. For Marcuse (1972), instrumental rationality— similar to Foucault’s view on political rationalities—is always applied to a particular problem, and values, norms, or substantive rationalities always coordinate instrumental rationalities. Marcuse (1972) stated that Weber interpreted capitalist rationalities in a Hegelian sense as if these rationalities were the march of Reason. Weber thus did not mention a universal reason but particular reasoning driven by the rationalities of capital accumulation. This reasoning, however, Marcuse argues (1972), is formed by social interactions and practices. Thus argued, perfectly rational bureaucracies will not suffice to entrench self-regulating societies. Weber’s own social theory was also aware of the limits of bureaucracies, thus incorporated the claim that society is guided and directed by an irrational element in the final instance: a charismatic leader who represents national interest. The current dynamics of the spread of technical–administrative rationalities under managerialism can be conceived differently from both Weber’s iron cage thesis and Marcuse’s emphasis on the rationalities of capitalism. The iron cage point is insufficient, and Marcuse was mostly right. Formal rationalities have indeed spread to larger domains of social life under the new governance. This process has caused significant consequences on social relations and politics, the proliferation of corporate management knowledge as the knowledge of public administration reveals the fact that what the bureaucrats attend to in their reasoning is a particular form of knowledge that is derived from the context of corporate management, but not universal reasoning. The practices of NPM and new managerialism widely capture this process. Within the scope of NPM, the knowledge of administration used in contemporary governance arrangements has been derived from the context of corporate governance. NPM also derives values, such as efficiency and effectiveness, from the market domain. Nonetheless, Marcuse’s emphasis on the rationalities of capitalism also has its limitations. The proliferation of managerialism does not necessarily imply that politics has been subject to the capital logic or that

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the economic base determines the superstructure. On the one hand, the superstructure of politics does not have a unified subject or a center, as the new governance has decomposed it. Politics and administration were separated from each other, while governance processes extended beyond the state. On the other hand, a determinist approach presumes an objective rule inherent in the social world coordinating both economy and politics. An interpretive approach that decenters the state and governance rejects such objective or structural theories. From Foucault’s account, the main question is not whether or how the base (economics) determines the superstructure (politics). When Foucault examined political economy, he suggested that political economy emerged as a new scientific theory in the eighteenth century parallel to the emergence of a distinct image of (civil) society as a self-regulating sphere and separate from the state. Political economy and this distinct image of society served the liberal political rationality to govern the state and its population without directly controlling each member of society’s actions. The new governance and neoliberal rationalities changed this interplay of scientific expertise and the exercise of political power. What is new and peculiar about the new governance is that the separation of politics, civil society, and economics blurred. Neoliberal political rationality does not draw on a theory of self-regulating civil society. Instead, it relies on creating markets and spreading market values in broader domains of society where they do not arise on their own dynamics. Thus, neoliberal governmentality is a deviation from classical liberalism: it discards society and encourages political action for markets’ cause. In this new theory and practice, the economic sphere does not dominate but couples with the political sphere and civil society by transferring a corporate organization and market values (effectiveness and efficiency) to other domains in society. Thus argued, neoliberal governmentality influences the overall social and political composition. Political institutions or citizens’ organizations remain intact, but their substance changes: they become economized. Economic values and principles colonize their organizational identity. The knowledge of management is a key to spread economic values in social and political spheres. Managerialism operates in the structurally differentiated spheres of society (political administration, production, civil society, media, etc.). It does not, however, connect these spheres; it colonizes them. Management shapes social and political organization. Corporate management arises as an organizational model. Like

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bureaucratic rationalities, management is based on instrumental-formal rationalities; it implies regulating all aspects of social life with systemized expert knowledge, regardless of individual and the entity being managed. Management makes the new governance practicable as management’s expertise can reduce the complex phenomena to the problem of management of “things.” To illustrate, the administration of an international organization and an NGO in any country can be undertaken on the basis of similar knowledge of management. An expert can easily shift jobs within the nodes and sectors of governance (public administration, think tanks, NGOs, IGOs) thanks to the universally applicable and context-independent management features. Professionalized Communication The second aspect that facilitates the coupling of differentiated spheres is the professionalization of communication. Communication is a central principle in social theory to explain the nature of social formations and social changes. Habermas’ action-systemic approach, which originated from Parsons and Luhmann, conceives of society in terms of differentiated systems (state and bureaucracy, society, economy), each having its own functions (governance, social reproduction, and value regeneration and production, respectively). The central concern for Habermas has been to depict how these systems are integrated and how society is reproduced, transformed, and continued into succeeding generations without domination. In this account, interactions and feedback mechanisms or communication between systems and a shared communicative space (e.g., the public sphere) are key elements for integrating differentiated systems. To Habermas (1987), when money and power penetrate the lifeworld of civil society (as what happened during the twentieth century), society’s authentic values are colonized by non-communicative means of power and money. Money and political power are quantifiable media— they are non-communicative; therefore, they fail to connect structurally differentiated systems. Habermas (1975) thus argues that the dominance of bureaucratic and economic mentalities in society causes legitimation crises. An effect of coupling through management is the separation of “communication as an abstraction” of systemic necessity for functionally differentiated systems (such as that used by Luhmann) from “communication as praxis,” an activity (often conducted by professionals) based on

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systemized pre-defined norms and practices. This effect may be defined as the reification of communication (Chari, 2010). On this account, managerial features affect the organizational structures and their media of interactions (or communication as praxis) with other stakeholders and the public. These media comprise Internet communication technologies, including vivid websites, newsletters, position papers, and electronic notifications, which help represent and convey the message of the actors of governance (Dean et al., 2006). Stakeholders must also learn to use professional communication strategies or recruit experts who hold these skills to contribute to governance and compete with other interest groups. A component of these strategies is the use of approaches akin to PR and marketing. This component implies that “undistorted communication” within governance settings is possible with sophisticated verbal skills and highly qualified visual illustrations. The coupling of the state, the market, and civil society through the mediating system of management in a Habermasian account can then be viewed as non-communicative as managerialism distorts communication by colonizing the lifeworld of civil society. It has implications for conceptualizing the interactions among the state, the market, and civil society. According to professional PR, communication becomes an action that entails systematic expert knowledge about conveying a message independent of its content. That is, the practices and knowledge of communication emerge as a technical concern. In other words, the current emphasis on professional communication renders communication in itself a profession and communication that is akin to PR-marketing techniques. In turn, the craftsmanship of communication is associated with knowing how rather than knowing what. This process leads to abandoning a sense of human agency and context to the extent that the very act of communicating becomes an object of performance administrative practice. In doing so, PR-focused communication mechanically articulates information under attempts at organizational management that prioritizes technique over substance. A decentered approach agrees that managerialism has damaging consequences on social organization and democracy. Nonetheless, its approach to management and coupling differs from system theories. Because decentered approach does not take systemic interactions to take place between pre-defined systems, it defines coupling as a contingent effect of the new governance. On this account, management connects differentiated spheres that are not reified structures, while it also transforms them.

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Management can transform differentiated spheres where social and political actors rely on management expertise to govern things, people, and organizations. The transformation of differentiated spheres in this way is a manifestation of power. As Ball (2000) argues, a crucial feature of power is that it can only affect people’s beliefs, desires, and actions through communication. Communication is thus an essential practice in a decentered approach as well. A decentered approach takes communication between differentiated systems to be under such a productive notion of power. From this perspective, the non-communicative means of Habermas, markets, and political power also communicate; they couple with one another and with civil society. Managerial knowledge and practices circulate through communication. In other words, they are translated into technologies and practices only when they are transmitted, made visible, and received. Panoptic Surveillance Another factor that underlines the coupling of the state, the market, and civil society through managerialism is observance practices that have emerged under the new governance. These practices lead to new subjectivities, namely, managerial-performance-oriented actors. These subjectivities are related to at least two concerns—accountability and transparency. First, the symbiotic relationship between performance and management technologies makes observance possible through practices, including auditing, reporting, and PR activities. Managerial strategies involve setting long-term objectives that focuses on a set of performances. The mentality that underlies performance management and PR activities aim to make performance visible. It is such visibility that enables audit and surveillance possible.2 These technologies help document outcomes of management and set a cognitive frame whereby individuals relate to social phenomena by interpreting and processing social realities as calculable things. Second, the technologies of transparency and publicity prompt new subjectivities in the new governance. NGOs/CSOs monitor policymaking 2 An important note is that this process does not naturally lead to a necessary colonization; some may have treated reporting merely as an act performed to satisfy donors. For instance, the ATTAC, which received financial support from the Commission, played an active role against the European Constitution’s referendum in France in 2005.

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processes and therefore facilitate transparency in the governance system (Keane, 2009). This monitoring of political authorities amounts to a way of observance. Some elements of policy processes (agenda-setting and policy implementation) are accessible to NGOs for transparency purposes. Because not all NGOs can follow political processes and messages, some groups are encouraged, empowered, trained, and sponsored to perform this task. As a result, being “in touch with” the political system and performing the following policymaking process leads to new subjectivities in civil society. Accountability and transparency are new disciplinary techniques, which are present in governance networks. Indeed, some commentators have addressed the disciplining instruments in contemporary organizational relations by drawing on the Panopticon model advanced by Bentham and Foucault (McKinley & Starkey, 1998). It was planned to be employed in penitentiaries (Foucault, 1977). Panopticon has never been used, but the importance of this model for Foucault manifests the practices of disciplinary gaze prevalent in society. Foucault focused on the Panopticon not from the point of view of its function but from its being an illustrative model to clarify the existing power relations. Although observance in governance networks preserves the traditional Panopticon’s main features, it also differs from it in certain aspects. Governance networks preserve the main features of the Panopticon because just as guards in the traditional Panopticon are also subjected to the disciplinary gaze and inmates, participants of governance networks are also subjected to the disciplinary power of continuous observance. Governance networks, however, differ from the Panopticon because the gaze performed by the traditional Panopticon aims to discipline and control all the possible actions and behaviors of those observed (e.g., prisoners, patients, and students). By contrast, the system of governance disciplines and governs social and political actors’ conduct by placing the entire system of governance under scrutiny where each actor can (in principle) observe the actions of others. Foucault (1977), drawing on Bentham’s model (1995), suggests that traditional surveillance by an inspector concerned the “most effectual contrivances for seeing without being seen” (Flint, 2012). However, governance networks bring in a transparent mechanism also for the observers such as donors, auditors, stakeholders, researchers, and the state to promote transparency, accountability, and publicity. This visibility is provided and sustained via performance indicators and communication

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tools. In governance networks, inspection is therefore decentered, and the evaluating gaze is being dispersed between different actors. Surveillance in governance networks is exerted on free agents, who are empowered in the first place to calculate their actions, present their goals, and then document their achievements in a calculable manner. The contemporary observance practices are thus positive and productive, instead of being a negative and restraining gaze. Social and political actors are required to perform in the first place in order to be audited. Observance practices are embedded within the system of governance. Whereas inmates were traditionally isolated from the outside world and could only communicate following the rules of hierarchy with their superintendent(s) (Flint, 2012, p. 827), governance networks, however, are based on a model of continuous and horizontal communication between and within social and political actors. The distinction between the observer and the observed in governance networks is blurred or entangled in organizational terms when each actor use the same managerial knowledge.

What Does New Governance and Managerialism Do to Civil Society? New governance not only rationalizes, but also justifies, normalizes, and moralizes managerialism in social action. Managerial practices of Project Cycle Management (PCM) and Logical Frame Analysis (LFA) have been developed and implemented by government and international agencies, including USAID and other national and international development donor organizations (Roberts et al., 2005). LFA, which is defined as an aid to thinking by these institutions (AusAID, 2005; Bakewell & Garbutt, 2005; Com, 2004; World Bank, 2000), “establishes a logical hierarchy of means by which the objectives will be reached” and “how outputs and outcomes might be best monitored and evaluated” (AusAID, 2005, p. 1). It also lays out an activity description, the components of the activity, roles and responsibilities of the units and management arrangements, the activity rationale, the nature of the situation in which the activity is embedded, the cause/effect logic in the activity, and expected results. In the frame of PCM and LFA, overall activities and communication instruments, such as reports, policy reflections, webpages, and media releases, are related to performance technologies. As both the episteme and the means of performance, LFA establishes a symbiotic relationship between technologies of performance and formally bureaucratized

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organizational structures. One can observe the implications of a professionally calculating and managerially thinking subject by looking into how the NGOs disseminate their activities through their communication tools and how they present their objectives in their reports. Since these tools provide continuous information about the NGOs’ behavior, they can also be seen as indicators of performance. The universalized managerial management frame that is fostered by LFA, for example, on a global level, implies that the NGOs’ organizational structures, working methods, communication methods, and even ways of thinking and acting have been exposed to instruments of political programming. NGOs, then, have been forced to adopt these norms and formal procedures to strengthen the legitimacy of their presence in governance settings by improving their accountability and transparency along the lines of managerial principles (Roberts et al., 2005). This is how new governance directs the interests and desires of people. At least four effects of the implementation of managerial knowledge and practices on NGOs can be outlined. First, new governance is not solely a concern of political institutions—it also concerns the ethics of the self. It intertwines the governance of the self (as an active and responsible citizen), collective action (as results-based and results-oriented stakeholders who do not engage in contentious social conflict or activism), and governance models (as evidence- and activity-based management). Second, new governance and managerialism have implications for the moral foundations of society. Both treat discourses of social movements, such as the values of equality, solidarity, environmentalism, and human rights, not as ends in their own right. They do so by reinforcing a universal organizational and rationalization framework for all kinds of social discourses (Srinivas, 2009). This type of management framework prioritizes know-how and privileges form over the content. The domination of managerial understanding in civil society leads to the normalization of instrumental rationalities or the cost–benefit approach to solving society’s problems. Kalberg argues that this normalization is applied “to the degree that sheer calculation in terms of abstract rule reigns, decisions are arrived at ‘without regard to persons’” (Kalberg, 1980, 1158; see also Parker, 2002). Yet, this runs counter to the normative perspective that conceives organized civic action intrinsically as embodying political rationality, i.e., one representing public reason and thus reinforcing social progress. A consequentialist view of civil society also conflicts with the view that finds the merits of association within the

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associational life itself. In critical theory, civil society is not restricted to a utilitarian vision that aims merely to produce effective policies to satisfy everyone’s happiness. The third effect of implementing managerial knowledge and practices on NGOs suggests that new governance and managerial practices make control and auditing possible. They aim to translate the activities of CSOs (goals, outcomes, results, and outputs) to calculable and measurable performance indicators by advancing models that specify how to quantify the actions of CSOs. Numbers also make auditing and the control of CSOs easier and less costly (Power, 1999). However, the strong emphasis on performance as the consequence of action suggests that ideas or values that are not represented, or that cannot be represented as performance are either empty or nonsensical. For example, when a managerial approach is applied to NGO management, the NGOs’ ideas are valid only to the extent that they can be translated into or represented in a tangible form, such as policy suggestions, reports, or communication tools. This is problematic since such a managerial approach reduces common good and civic discourses to utilitarian ethics. However, the merits of the common good and civic values cannot be assessed by consequentialist criteria—they have merits in their own right. For instance, a social movement protesting a nuclear plant building does not require professional organizational knowledge or management based upon technocratic business approaches. The same is true for groups such as human rights organizations, gender groups, and social groups that advocate the common good and aim to transform power structures. Of course, this claim does not imply that civil society actors or social movements should obviate any organization and operate spontaneously at all times. The point is that one must question the emphasis on cost–benefit approaches (“instrumental rationalities”) and find alternative ways of organizing without having to implement managerialism and business approaches—they are not our destiny. They are a choice. It is fair to say that critical management studies have focused remarkably on advancing such alternatives, such as promoting non-elitist and democratic organizations to counteract managerialism. In order to research these issues constructively, future studies could identify those alternatives and discuss their potential. As the fourth effect of the implementation of managerial knowledge and practices on NGOs, one can emphasize that the involvement of CSOs

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in new governance may reinforce the status quo or is used to legitimize socially unacceptable public policies. This is all the more serious because managerial norms and practices rely primarily on consequentialist ethics: they aim to legitimize the social purposes of organizations in terms of the outcomes of their actions, in this case, practical problemsolving. Such a view suggests that we are supposed to judge the merits of participatory governance merely in terms of its outcomes or consequences, which detaches the practice (managerial governance) from an action (problem-solving). However, outcomes alone cannot hold any purpose; they are not independent of the practices. Morally speaking, it would be more appropriate to suggest that purposes should determine outcomes because organizational outcomes are neither neutral nor apolitical. Otherwise, from a Marxian perspective, the exchange value of managerial participation in new governance (consultancy, the symbolic use of participation, and the prevalence of public relations technologies) dominates the traditional usevalue, or purpose, of civil society—i.e., restraining power, channeling public discourse, and reinforcing progressive social change. This argument implies that the methodology of social action (i.e., ways of doing things) and the ontology of social activism (i.e., social issues that call for the mobilization of social action) are never neutral or apolitical; in this case, they are shaped and restricted by managerialism and neoliberalism, respectively.

Concluding Remarks This chapter elaborated on how governmental rationality has linked participation with organizational knowledge and practices in the context of governance and NPM. It theoretically examined the coupling of the state, the market, and civil society as a form of governmentality through managerialism. Coupling denotes the relational, procedural, and reflexive features of social transformation, and the three aspects discussed here (managerialism, professional communication, and observance) aim to encompass these features. The elucidation of these factors is an attempt to reflect on a current social process by inquiring about the circulation of ideational and practical frames about the organization and management of governance. Such organization and management are exercised (i.e., through NPM) by the spread of trained managers, the use of PR tools as

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expert instruments for communication in governance, and examining the underlying Panoptic features of governance. This argument does not pretend to be exhaustive; thus, several other effects of this process can also be observed. For example, one can argue that as “officializing strategies” (Bourdieu, 1977), “false activities” (Žižek), or a “new ideology” (Cooke & Kothari, 2001), the argument on participation may symbolically misdirect the interests and desires of people by creating a fantasy that they can initiate change by participating in managerial formations or becoming entrepreneurial individuals. One can also argue that managerial participation stigmatizes antagonism and conflict. The latter implies that social issues can be resolved with necessary technical intervention and expertise—an ideal that has been practiced through management. Civil society involvement is considered a way of politicizing governance settings in that political authorities aim to balance the influence of business interests (Keane, 2009). Yet, the paradox is under the NPM, the means of politicization (in this case, NGOs) have in fact been incorporated into governance settings in a depoliticized manner. Depoliticization here refers to stabilization and the elimination of the possibility for contention, resistance, and critique that can potentially emerge from within civil society. In this regard, NGO participation in governance suggests that engaging politically sponsored NGOs in decision-making structures is a “good” and “right” approach to mobilizing collective action, as opposed to less predictable and threatening modes of action, such as protests, informal gatherings, or spontaneous reactions. However, the implementation and implications of these ideas and practices, and their failures and resistances diverge globally (Roberts et al., 2005).

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Joachim, J., & Schneiker, A. (2018). Humanitarian NGOs as businesses and managers: Theoretical reflection on an under-explored phenomenon. International Studies Perspectives, 19(2), 170–187. Kalberg, S. (1980). Max Weber’s types of rationality: Cornerstones for the analysis of rationalization processes in history. The American Journal of Sociology, 85(5), 1145–1179. Kassim, H. (2008). ‘Mission impossible’, but mission accomplished: The Kinnock reforms and the European Commission. Journal of European Public Policy, 15, 648–668. Keane, J. (2009). The life and death of democracy. Simon & Schuster. Marcuse, H. (1972). Industrialization and capitalism. In Max Weber and Sociology Today, O. Stammer (Ed.), pp. 133–151. Harper & Row. Maturana, H.R. (1975). The organization of the living: A theory of the living organization. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 7, 313–332. Lemke, T. (2002). Foucault, governmentality, and the critique. Rethinking Marxism, 14(3), 49–63. MacKinnon, D. (2000). Managerialism, governmentality and the state: A neoFoucauldian approach to local economic governance. Political Geography, 19, 293–314. Maier, F., & Meyer, M. (2011). Managerialism and beyond: Discourses of civil society organization and their governance implications. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 22(4), 731–756. McKinley, A., & Starkey, A. (Eds.). (1998). Foucault, management and organizational theory. Sage. Mercer, C. (2002). NGOs, civil society and democratization: A critical review of the literature. Progress in Development Studies, 2(1), 5–22. Milani, C. R. S. (2009). Evidence-based policy research: Critical review of some international programmes on relationships between social science research and policy-making. UNESCO. Morrison, J. (2000). The government–voluntary sector compacts: governance, governmentality, and Civil Society. Journal of Law and Society, 27 (1), 98–132. Parker, M. (2002). Against management. Polity. Power, M. (1999). The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford University Press. Putnam, R. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press. Roberts, S. M., Jones, J. P., III, & Frohling, O. (2005). NGOs and the globalization of managerialism. World Development, 33(11), 1845–1864. Salamon, L. (1997). Holding the center: America’s nonprofit sector at a crossroads. Nathan Cummings Foundation. January 16. http://www.ncf. org/.

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CHAPTER 8

Global Governance, Public Sphere, and CSOs

The public sphere and its concomitant concept have recently become critical ideas in governance global governance (Cohen, 2010; Fraser, 2007; Nanz & Steffek, 2004; Steffek, 2010). International organizations (IOs), including the UN, World Bank, WTO, and EU, have been involving civil society organizations (CSOs) in their policymaking processes to varying degrees since the 1990s (De Schutter, 2002; Kohler-Koch & Rittberger, 2006; Weiss, 2000). CSOs have been appealing for global governance practitioners as these organizations may resolve the legitimacy of democratic deficits of global governance. When global policymaking arrangements lack democratic mechanisms, many commentators suggested involving CSOs in public policymaking processes and making these processes transparent and accountable. These practices could allow each individual’s participation and all affected interests and allay legitimacy and democratic deficits (Bexell et al., 2010; Nanz & Steffek, 2004; Steffek, 2010).1 These deficits stem from the fact that political decisions are taken without the people’s will and participation, although most of the world population is being affected (Bexell, 2014: Bohman, 1999; Dryzek, 1999; Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2008; Fraser, 2007). CSOs are considered the most pertinent agents of an informed and critical constituency for 1 Bexell et al. (2010, p. 88) suggest that “transnational actors may help hold international institutions accountable through legal redress, monitoring of commitments, and policy evaluation.”

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practitioners because they are regarded as intrinsically linked to the citizens (Dryzek, 1999; Steffek, 2010; Sholte, 2007). CSOs could enhance global governance legitimacy, scholars argue, because they link citizens’ voices from the national public spheres to the global arena. CSOs establish a global civil society and create a global public sphere as they bring general concerns to the policy agenda of international organizations. An appeal to CSOs by considering them as agents of the global public sphere has merits as the starting point of this view is to enhance citizens’ participation and curb business groups’ interest in public policies. This view also offers an alternative, more participatory view of resolving transparency and accountability issues in policy processes than managerial norms and practices, those including performance indicators and the principal–agent relationship (Benz et al., 2007). However, can CSOs be idealized as agents of critical public spheres in the transnational context? Decentered approach unearths this public sphere assumption. The argument here is this: the legitimacy of the CSOs to hold a constituency on behalf of the peoples’ actual constituency is a socially constructed assumption. Practitioners could be held accountable by civil society actors’ constituency only to a limited extent, as they are selfappointed or not politically authorized. Decentered approach helps questioning beliefs, theories, and discourses that have influenced governance models within which civil society has been involved in the first place. Of these beliefs, theories, and discourses, the underlying promise of instrumental rationality and scientism to legitimize decision and law-making stands out as the most prevailing. Nonetheless, governmental rationalities in policy processes that appeal to scientism and technologies of government involving formal rules and procedures can never be neutral. Scientific knowledge is always informed by different meta-theoretical assumptions and is always situated in a social context. Scientific knowledge also connects to power relations. In the end, a formalist account of policymaking that is coupled with positivism and a governance mechanism dismisses partisan politics. When the new governance abandons political contest, social and political actors’ demands could be reconciled by consultations and aggregation of particular interests. However, public policies are always political decisions because they always reflect a particular political discourse, worldview, or belief. Public policies can never be neutral, even when they promote scientism, neutrality, and objectivity.

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Indeed, dismissing partisan politics and the political contest is a strategical way of masking the underlying political discourse and ideology organizing the new patterns of rule. A focus on formalism, objectivity, and consensual politics collapses social issues into technical problems that can be resolved by experts and managers who apply relevant knowledge. Techno-managerial governance model that prioritizes scientism and formalism treats social issues not as a concern of political debate and contestation but as a concern for experts and managers. For instance, climate change can be stripped of any political link to capitalist production’s devastating damage. Social inequality can be stripped off from structural injustices (Young, 2001) and turned into a self-responsibility problem of adapting to the new digital-era and complex societies. On this account, one of the major criticisms of the new governance mechanisms is that they dismiss political contestation and partisan politics in favor of more consensus-oriented decision-making. When demands of social and political actors are not anymore taken to be political statements (thus not connected to partisan politics) but treated as mere interests, social and political actors cannot influence political decisions. They can only express their demands. Social and political actors are not able to challenge hegemonic discourses (e.g., neoliberalism). Practitioners could be held accountable by civil society actors’ constituency only to a limited extent, as they are self-appointed or not politically authorized. Simultaneously, the reasoning in policy processes that appeals to science and rationally established procedures cannot be neutral. Scientific knowledge is always connected to power relations, and procedures are always situated in a context and contain power relations. In the end, a procedural account of policy and law that is coupled with positivism and made without resort to political contestation creates a space between decisions and interests; the interests of powerful actors occupy this space. Beliefs, theories, and discourses always inform the decisions of practitioners. Nonetheless, scientism and a strong formalism in decision-making processes disguise these beliefs, theories, and discourses under objectivity and depoliticization. Resorting to interpretive theory is necessary to reconsider civil society, the public sphere, and participation. Therefore, we need a democratic and radical concept of civil society to respond to the current neoliberal hegemony. Theoretically, this concept relates civil society, the public sphere, and public reason to a common good notion. The conception of civil society then is guided by a normative framework that aims to transform dominant power structures to

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reinforce justice. Because this framework is historical and is based on anti-essentialism and contingency, it differs from rationalist accounts of democratic theory. The chapter begins with reflecting on practices through which CSOs are involved in the new governance and overviews how political theory considers the roles of CSOs in a just and democratic society. Next, it critically engages with those practices and ideas that apply Jurgen Habermas’s theory to justify CSOs’ involvement in global governance. The following section points out the debates that reconsider Habermas’s theory to draw principles to assess CSOs’ actions in the new governance. Engagement with the theory of Habermas continues in the next section, where we also draw attention to the shortcomings of implementing deliberative theory to the consultations in the new governance. The final section suggests a historical account of the public sphere, where CSOs are oriented to promote the common good by challenging the hegemonic discourses that impede social justice and political equality.

New Governance and Civil Society The new governance reforms tend to involve CSOs in governance networks. This practice is influenced by the normative view of civil society that defines civil society as a sphere of intermediary associations and as a sphere autonomous from the state. This view is now counterfactual, or at the least limited under governance settings. New governance is aligned with the neoliberal project when rational choice theories and neoclassical economics inform practitioners. A social democratic interpretation of governance claims to distance itself from a neoliberal model by defining governance in terms of networks (Bevir, 2010). In practice, the difference between a social democratic and a neoliberal model is not always clear. Indeed, if a social democratic approach means to imply a Third Way approach, many authors found Third Way as compatible with neoliberalism as both defend opening sectors that were previously controlled by the public institutions to the markets (Hall, 2011). In either case, civil society’s traditional conception has been changed when the state and the economic sectors expand into civil society. The traditional separation of the public and private is blurred when associations engage in public administration or delivery of services (Lang, 2012; Morrison, 2000). Network governance also blurs the division of labor between the state, productive groups, and civil society. This

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trend compels us to question the new governance and the prevailing conception of civil society today compared to the conception originally inspired by Tocqueville. Different interpretations of new governance such as “good governance” and the “third sector approach” rely on the view that civil society is inherently autonomous and “good” compared to the state. However, this view seems to stem more from hostility toward the state, which is associated with ineffectiveness and corruption, than from intrinsic features of civil society. This point will be further expanded below. The new governance is built on the widespread belief that ideological politics and representational democracy have proven inadequate to manage contemporary social issues. The new governance has adopted a post-ideological ambition to overcome the limits of political contestation and partisan politics. Nonetheless, an attempt to overcome partisan politics and representative democracy in favor of consensual politics has brought new dilemmas and problems. One of the most pressing problems of the new governance was reconsidering political legitimacy and democratic participation. NGOs and CSOs have offered alternatives. When the new governance appeals to NGOs, it often positions NGOs into the network governance. In this account, NGOs effectively solve common societal problems by sharing the state’s traditional responsibilities (Anheier, 2004; Sanchez-Salgado, 2014). Network governance also implies that social issues can be fixed by technical expertise. So, new modes of policymaking such as evidence-based policy (EBP) and consultations appear to be more compatible with the new governance than political contestation and deliberation. EBP suggests that public policy and decision-making should be accompanied by scientific evidence, or at the least by some form of evidence. No sensible author can be against scientific expertise and evidence. However, science and expertise cannot replace political contestation as a model of decision-making. In the new governance, sometimes participation, too, is considered evidence. Such a conception of participation aims to go beyond ideology; social and political actors reflect the “real” interests of the people on this view (Head, 2008). This view implies that people can have real interests and experiences outside of politics and ideologies. Once politics and ideology is being discarded, network governance collapses into a technocratic-managerial administrative model. The techno-managerial governance leads to the depoliticization of civic activism. It stigmatizes social conflicts and differences of opinion by ruling

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out or actively discouraging, threatening, and less predictable social action modes like protests, informal gatherings, or spontaneous reactions (Leal, 2007). Whereas network governance usually connects to new institutional theories, the sociological approach to governance positions functions of CSOs within the structural differentiation of modern societies. In this view, the state and the market spheres are responsible for administration and production, respectively. CSOs have distinct functions of generating substantive values and culture, and these functions are necessary for the stability of society. This functional approach to governance adopts a more sociological and systemic understanding (for a review Kohler-Koch & Finke, 2007; Kohler-Koch, 2010; cf. Kooiman, 1993). Organizations derived from civil society are established to generate norms and values that democratize the system of governance. This democratizing function of CSOs is a critical one because economic and political power cannot provide democratizing norms and values (Habermas, 1987; Baccaro, 2006; Kohler-Koch & Finke, 2007). The inner logic of economy and politics involves instrumental and strategic rationalities (Habermas, 1987; Baccaro, 2006; Kohler-Koch & Finke, 2007). Political Theory and Civil Society Normative approaches to CSOs conceive them as principal agents of participatory democracy (Gaventa, 2004), as institutional venues for the promotion of identity and democratic values (Calhoun, 1993; Putnam, 1993), and as a “transmission belt” between the citizenry and policymaking processes (Nanz & Steffek, 2004). A well-functioning civil society is considered an essential element of democratic legitimacy. The perspectives that focus on associational life benefits are twofold— the discourse and social capital approach. Developed by Habermas, discourse theory suggests that associations foster public deliberations and bring the issues of common concern into the public debate (Fung, 2003). These discourses are then transmitted to decision-making and legislative processes through elections and the media but not through associations. Here, Habermas (1996) rejects the incorporation of social groups into legislative and decision-making processes; he refutes the empowerment of associations by political power because such empowerment makes civil society vulnerable to bureaucracy and the market (Habermas, 1984). The social capital approach, which focuses on associational life’s benefits, is

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built on Tocqueville’s and Putnam’s views. At its center are the social– physiological effects of participation, such as building trust, teaching civic virtues, and developing solidarity, thus creating a demos. The second trend that accorded CSOs significant roles in democracy has endorsed the involvement of CSOs in decision-making processes. One version of this view, as espoused by Cohen and Rogers (1995) and Hirst (1994), proposes the empowerment of associations in terms of decisionmaking in their associative democracy, whereby the traditional roles of the state are outsourced, and representational asymmetries are diminished in a system of market relations. From this perspective, the democratizing function of CSOs is defined in terms of their ability to solve social problems effectively and to produce quality policies.2 The state here takes on supporting associational activities within civil society if such associations do not spontaneously emerge. Associative democracy also suggests supporting or organizing large associations that lay claim to broader civil society representation (Cohen & Rogers, 1995). To what extent does the participation of CSOs in governance follow normative theory, or are both normative and governance approaches informed by the same understanding and concept of civil society? Is civil society participation in governance always a good thing? If so, why and to what extent is that so? A proper answer to these questions requires us to engage with normative theories and consider the historical context. The argument is straightforward: if a normative view does not support the political intervention on CSOs and their involvement in governance, then the current CSO participation under new governance settings runs counter to the established norms. The concomitant argument is a more complicated one: if the social conditions that inform the normative theory have changed, we should reconsider our conception of civil society. First, there is no intrinsic correlation between associational life and democracy, as it is not always liberal or democratic sentiments that flourish within civil society and enter public discussions (Shapiro, 2003). As Nancy Rosenblum (1998, p. 17) states, “The moral valence of group life is indeterminate” (Rosenblum, 1998, p. 17). Hence, reactionary sentiments in society, including xenophobia and hatred, can also be fostered through 2 However, one can argue that it adopts effectiveness and efficiency as the norms of governance. Empirically oriented interest politics research and governance approaches can be included in this line of thought, as they both concentrate on the influence and impact of associations on policymaking processes.

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associations (Chambers & Kopstein, 2001; Ruzza, 2009). Therefore, the voices emanating from the grassroots do not nurture the formation of a democratic citizenry by their nature alone. Second, the dominant view presupposes an almost inherent association between civil society participation and democratic legitimacy, whereas theorists who place importance on citizens’ associations in a democracy have developed more nuanced understanding of civil society participation in their normative models (Baccaro, 2006; Rossteutscher, 2000, p. 173). We can mention two contemporary theory trends in broad terms: (1) those focusing on the merits of associational life and (2) those aiming at devolving some of the traditional responsibilities of the state to associations, including decision-making and the delivery of services such as health and education. All in all, there are different ways to assess civil society participation in policymaking in terms of democratic legitimacy, but not all perspectives advocate incorporating some selected organizations in governance settings. While the indeterminate nature of associational life renders it advisable to make universal claims about CSOs’ positive effects on democracy, some theorists claim that civil society is not an essential component of democracy. Instead, they view the subjects of democratic participation either as citizens or as affected interests (Shapiro 2003). The involvement of groups in decision-making and legislative processes finds a theoretical basis in associative democracy, but the discourse and social capital approaches do not advocate such a practice. Most importantly, these three different views have been developed to address democracies at the national level. They thus presuppose the basic institutions of democracy to be well-functioning (Bellamy & S. Kröger, 2013, 2014), including a well-functioning public sphere (Bader, 2001), a demos (Pitkin, 1967), a competitive electoral system, and a system of checks and balances (Baccaro, 2006). However, the extension of these national level-specific ideas to governance and global governance is hampered by several structural limits to realizing participatory democracy (Hueller, 2010).

In the Shadow of Habermas Both normative critical approaches to civil society that connect CSOs to the public spheres and the systemic approach to governance find their inspiration in Jurgen Habermas’s (1996) ideas when they connect civil society discourses to political and public spheres. Habermas (1996)

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suggests that what makes a political system democratic is the transmission of discourses that emerge from within society’s lifeworld and enter the political system and law-making structures. However, Habermas (1996, 1992) does not suggest transmitting discourses generated from civil society to decision-making structures by CSOs. In his model, this task is realized through elections, political parties, and the media. Habermas’s discourse ethics is not compatible with, nor can it be stretched to comfortably fit the network governance. In his view, social actors’ particular interests legitimize public policies if these interests express an all-encompassing or systemic understanding of democracy. Similarly, democratic procedures and principles must be practiced by CSOs in order for civil society to realize its potential. From the viewpoint of deliberative democracy (Benhabib, 1994; Habermas, 1996), associations generate public deliberations, but these deliberations are understood as either “without specific actors” or “anonymous” public conversations. Habermas is also skeptical about civil society’s bureaucratization and the imposition of economic logic on CSOs when the bureaucratic mentality and economic values dominate civil society. Under these circumstances, Habermas (1987) argues, the lifeworld of civil society is colonized. However, the term colonization cannot be restricted to the actions of political institutions alone. Managerial norms and practices are formulated by and can emerge from disparate fields and circulate through an assemblage of actors, including think tanks, universities, and private consultancy agencies. They can compromise an ideal civil society’s norms and values. The colonization of civil society also distorts the aforementioned structural differentiation of the state, economy, and civil society. Traditional structural differentiation requires that each domain functions in terms of its own internal logic. Bureaucratic mentality and economic norms are extrinsic to civil society, on this account, because they originate and infiltrate civil society from without. They are extrinsic because bureaucracy detaches the means of social action from their ends, while the economy is grounded on the principle of cost–benefit calculation. Neither of these organizing principles is authentic to civil society, which is presupposed to be the domain of communicative action. Because Habermas’s democratic theory finds bureaucratization of CSOs problematic, it would not support the involvement of CSOs in techno-administrative structures. Keeping Habermas’s contentions and how his democratic theory would see pragmatic governance in mind, we can assess the potential

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of CSO’s involvement in pragmatic governance. CSO’s participation in governance is considered a way to politicize governance by balancing business interests (Kaldor, 2005; Keane, 2009; Sanchez-Salgado, 2014, p. 344). Paradoxically, civil society has been shaped by and incorporated into governance settings in a depoliticized vein. However, depoliticization eliminates the possibility of contention, resistance, and critique that could emerge from society. Thus construed, depoliticized participation directs (or re-moralizes) the interests of CSOs toward neoliberalism’s and managerialism’s norms and values. As some commentators have observed, some CSOs even integrate into the power structures of their governments. One of the reasons for the emerging “partnership” of NGOs and power groups is status. In governance, status is conferred upon stakeholders, although as Erik Swyngedouw observes, the notion of stakeholder is “necessarily constrained and limited in terms of who can, is, or will be allowed to participate” (Swyngedouw, 2005, p. 2000). The conferring of stakeholder status contains an authoritative element that identifies governance participants: [I]n most cases, entitlements are conferred upon participants by those who already hold a certain power or status. Of course, the degree to which mobilisations of this kind are successful depends, inter alia, on the degree of force and/or power such groups or individuals can garner and on the willingness of the existing participants to agree to include them. (Swygedouw, 2005, p. 2000)

Thus, governance settings often restrict status privilege as a governance participant and all substantial funding to specific groups. Fierce competition to obtain funding, become a stakeholder, achieve status, and fit into the institutional environment fosters an institutional Darwinism: in a managerial environment, only the fittest among the institutions can survive (Jessop, 2007, p. 193). In this case, being fit is about the ability to meet the governance system’s requirements (e.g., running an organization, performing bureaucratic and reporting functions, and negotiating with other stakeholders). This claim implies that only organizations willing to play the game according to the rules remain within the institutional milieu. This “selection process” may be unavoidable because it is impossible to support and integrate all groups into governance financially. The question here is the ground on which such exclusion rests, i.e., which groups or

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civil society subjectivity is considered more compatible with governance. Not surprisingly, the voices of contentious and non-professional groups are excluded. Such exclusion is a moralizing and constitutive political act because it defines and constitutes suitable civil society actors for governance settings. In other words, the new governance does not envisage civil society as an authentic and autonomous realm. Consequently, if civil society is to be understood as an autonomous domain, and if its authenticity is to be derived from reflexivity and communicative action, we must look for alternative ways to study the legitimacy of new governance as practiced in CSOs. Under the new governance, both the autonomy and authenticity of civil society are distorted, and the various institutions of government, the private sector, and civil society generally share the same norms, values, and practices. The new governance also restricts the generation of a reason not distorted by the economic sector or by bureaucracy—from within the participating civil society. The new actors in civil society, promoted by the new governance, can be seen as part of the technocracy (Habermas), as a constituent of a historic bloc or organic intellectuals (Gramsci), or as disciplined by the power of discourse (Foucault). Even more tellingly, the new governance leaves a narrow space for CSOs to reinforce social progress. Limiting the function of CSOs as effective problem-solving actors, new governance construes the relationship between civil society and governance as one of domination. It occludes any opportunity to emanate communicative rationality, counterhegemony, or the liberty to deny the requirements imposed by political rationalities. Let us consider how civil society is conceptualized in critical theory. For Habermas (1987), civil society is the space in which communicative rationality, as opposed to economic and bureaucratic rationalities, flourishes. For Gramsci (1971), civil society is the space in which counter-hegemony is built. Foucault (2009) argues that counter-conducts, i.e., alternatives to hegemonic views on how to guide our social life and behaviors, emerge from civil society. If the critique is understood as the art of discerning, as generating an alternative way of reasoning or doing things, and as detaching from views taken for granted in any given institution, CSOs that participate in the governance system have limited space to be critical. The nature of the policymaking processes and political patronage restricts them.

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In a systemic understanding of governance, civil society should be involved in governance as both an autonomous and authentic domain. However, the norms and practices of new governance and the disparate actors’ attempts to create managers out of civic activists run counter to that understanding. In the new governance, civil society is not considered a pre-existing domain waiting to be incorporated into the governance system. Conversely, it is conceived as a domain constituted by actors that are becoming compatible with the new governance. Practical problemsolving in the new governance necessitates adopting expert skills and efficient management structures and adapting to professional communication techniques to create better impact assessments.3 Master’s degrees are often preferred to a record of traditional grassroots activism, particularly in policymaking processes, and managerialism requires CSOs to think and act like bureaucrats and to adapt to a technocratic and bureaucratic culture that is very different from that of civil society.

Reconsidering the Public Sphere Beyond Habermas Transnationalization paved the way for the emergence of networks that create arenas (face-to-face interaction) and communicative spaces (discursive spaces). Can these arenas and spaces within which CSOs participate function as critical public spheres? To answer this, in addition to taking social scientific theories that guide the new governance into account, we may need to hold specific normative criteria that do not merely contain procedural aspects, including transparency and accountability concerns. If, and when, a hegemonic discourse (e.g., neoliberalism, competitiveness, efficiency) dominates governance settings, procedural criteria are not helpful in understanding and transforming those hegemonic relationships.

3 To prove their legitimacy to EU institutions, CSOs are required to adapt formal statutes and establish a transparent internal governance structure. As a result, most of the EU NGO networks now have similar organizational structures, i.e., one coordinator, one communication officer, and several policy officers. They have “General Assemblies,” where all members gather twice a year, their “Steering Committees” make the important decisions, “working groups” produce institutional outputs, and the “Management Committee” reviews overall organizational performance. Furthermore, they exhibit similar work methods: they all write yearly “activity reports” to the Commission, “disseminate” and “publicise” their achievements through similar technologies, i.e., newspapers, web pages, conferences, toolkits, and position papers.

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To that end, Fraser’s (2007) revisiting of the public sphere theory may be a good point of departure for a proposal to integrate the effects of the power structures and mechanisms into concepts of the public sphere. Fraser (2007, p. 19) suggested that political theory should not immediately rule out the idea of a transnational public sphere: instead, it should rethink the concept in the post-Westphalian era by problematizing its critical functions to “conceivably generate legitimate public opinion, in the strong sense of considered understandings of the general interest, filtered through fair and inclusive argumentation, open to everyone politically affected [and]…sufficiently efficacious to constrain the various powers that determine the conditions of the interlocutors’ lives” (italics original). Fraser does not offer a detailed practical project about the institutional and policy implications of such a critical stance, yet two criteria she proposes—legitimacy and efficiency—are a good starting point for considering guiding norms. These norms can be used to think about civil society practices in governance settings different from those offered by the functionalist and instrumentalist theories of governance. First, it would not be logical to expect governance settings to be inclusive to involve each citizen. They cannot. Still, mass participation is possible only under universal suffrage. Global policymaking cannot foster public deliberations because this attempt requires involving the public debates in each state. Therefore, the potential of CSOs concerning legitimacy is precluded from the start as the decision-making processes in global governance bypass nation-state level public deliberations. Also, most CSOs face considerable obstacles in establishing broadly inclusive organizations because of the requirements of the technocratic nature of policymaking, which favors elite and professional engagement (Kutay, 2014). At the same time, most of these groups are filled mostly by Western, northern, white, and male individuals (Kapur, 2002). As for efficiency, the question for CSOs is to effectively challenge the dominant powers when those powers fund them and are thus restricted to a sole role of providing knowledge to practitioners (Young, 2001; Lang, 2012). The privileging of technocratic knowledge forces CSOs to act in a depoliticized manner (Jaeger, 2007). Activities of some northern civil society organizations and international NGOs are even criticized for reinforcing the World Bank and the IMF (Plehwe, 2007). Civil society’s role in (good) governance—public administration, delivery of services, and policy advice—is difficult to separate from the neoliberal motto for the

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retrenchment of the state and any collective action (Lang, 2012, p. 63). CSOs have been active in the privatization of public goods and hollowing out state processes, i.e., the particularization of common interest under “good governance” in the context of development (Kamat, 2004). This distances CSOs from a radical interpretation of participatory democracy, moving them toward justifying institutions and policies (Lang, 2012, p. 63; Young, 2001). So, a global public sphere that focuses on CSOs appears to start from the pluralization of actors who participate in the policy debate. However, this concept does not answer whether and how an increase in the number of actors involved, albeit non-state or non-market, in the policy processes would result in the transformation of self-interest behavior to promote the public good. There is no logical and empirical validity that the mere acts of engaging with policymakers would foster critical public spheres. In contrast, some actors might strategically hide their particularistic ambitions in appealing to publicness (Eriksen & Sending, 2013, p. 234).4 Others focus on the mediating function of the CSOs by creating a transnational public sphere. In this account, the public sphere’s function is to integrate the functionally differentiated spheres of economy, culture, technology, and administration (Bohman, 1999). However, adopting this theoretical framework to political systems beyond the nation-state entails serious normative and practical obstacles. There is no centralized political authority beyond the nation-state against which the public sphere would organize. There exists no global citizenship that would organize such a public sphere, either. Many authors claim that global governance mechanisms, such as international organizations, agencies, and other nonstate actors, can be considered a functioning political system beyond the nation-state without a central political authority. Nonetheless, this argument appears to gloss over hierarchical structures and neoliberal hegemony in global politics. Practitioners and critical authors often suggest CSOs are required to be transparent and accountable. For critical authors, transparency and accountability in part resolve the legitimacy of CSOs’ involvement in decision-making processes. However, practitioners refer to managerial

4 To underline this aspect, Eriksen and Sending (2013) proposed considering the public (sphere) as a consequential concept, thus validating it against empirical practices and power structures.

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practices to achieve accountability: they assess CSOs in their performances. Nonetheless, managerial principles can only lead to a distorted understanding of participation. Civil society cannot counteract the powerful states, lobby groups, big business, and the technocratic knowledge that prevail within global policymaking structures if their work is restricted to follow specific rules such as transparency and accountability. A CSO that demonstrates the most transparent working structure and proves working most effectively can fail to confront the dominant discourses in global policymaking. No sensible author can reject the values of transparency and accountability. However, a focus on transparency and accountability appears to undermine the power-challenging functions of civil society. I offer an alternative understanding of public reason that is not confined to transparency and accountability because hegemonic discourses are usually transparent: their objective is to be knowable and legible. They are often accountable in some way because the new governance aims not to eliminate accountability. So conceived, dominant discourses, ideologies, and practices are not required to be hidden or misleading; there is no contradiction in creating a hegemonic structure by transparency and accountability. The use of public reason is one of the key ideas in debates over legitimacy. Having focused mainly on transparency and accountability issues, social scientists vastly underrated public reason’s relationship to crucial moral values, such as justice, autonomy (Rawls, 1997), the common good, and equality (Rousseau, 1973). This may be due to social scientific research abandoning any political and moral judgments in empirical inquiry for objective and valid knowledge production. Moral and normative concerns have been principally left to philosophers (e.g., Pogge, 2002). This labor division has obviated researchers from tackling the thorny issues of social justice and hierarchy in global politics. The use of public reason at the transnational level would not make for an easy theoretical attempt at concept stretching. Quong (2013) addressed three hindrances for the use of public reason at the transnational level. First, a lack of shared global political culture putatively exists in the national domain. Second, pertinent agents of the public sphere (and public reason) in the international arena are states or other collective groups but not individuals. Third, a global public sphere may not be necessary given that the different public spheres of nations may

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conflict with one another, thus resolving such conflicts are politically challenging. When public reason is defined in the broader sense—as Quong explained—within the scope of a constitutional state and associated with the individuals’ reasoning and a common culture, there is little room to adapt it to global governance. However, a more restrictive interpretation of public reason related to the common good could work out more effectively by its stress on political and economic justice and challenging the dominant moral view of the market norms as organizing principles of social relationships. The use of reason for the common good means engaging with social and economic justice—in wealth, food, the environment, and human rights—in such a way to restrict the pursuit of self-interest, be it the interests of business groups or powerful states. In sum, when CSOs have been involved in policymaking and implementation processes, they encounter difficulties acting as agents of a critical public sphere both in terms of legitimacy and efficiency. Conversely, while ad hoc in nature, social movements have appeared to have more room for civil society to contest, resist, or create a public debate by raising the consciousness of the people (Castells, 2008; Young, 2001).

Beyond Deliberative Theory Deliberative democracy—an approach that, in one way or another, has been widely used in the context of global governance (Nanz & Steffek, 2004; Dryzek, 2006; Bexell et al., 2010; Bernstein, 2011; Higgot & Erman, 2010). This extant literature highlights the promise of procedural accounts of reason-giving and deliberation (or dialogical discursive interactions), elements that are considered crucial to the concept of the public sphere and the use of public reason. A deliberative perspective aims to overcome the legitimacy and effectiveness issues of public spheres addressed by Fraser (2007) by formal means, without a requirement of pre-set criteria, i.e., if the process is fair, the outcome will be fair too. Deliberative democracy defines the consensus-seeking deliberation as the mode of conduct between interlocutors. Theoretical and normative standpoints under this school follow Habermas’s view that deliberative democracy “does not depend on the collectively acting citizenry but the institutionalization of corresponding procedures and conditions of communication” (1994, p. 7). Deliberative theory abstains from imposing how and on which themes individuals ought to reason (Benhabib, 1994, p. 36). The deliberative theory

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of democracy, particularly of Benhabib (1994) and Habermas (1994), derives public reason from within authentic and process-oriented communication in civil society to create substanceless will-formation. Substanceless here implies a refutation of pre-set cultural or political values and norms by presupposing their generation during communication. Some claimed that where substanceless will-formation in international governance cannot arise from public deliberations in the national public spheres, law-making procedures in networks allow its emergence. For instance, Eriksen (2005, p. 348) argues that governance networks “inject the logic of impartial justification and reason giving unto the participants” (p. 348). Deliberative democrats privilege formal requisites that generate consensus over the contested expressions of lived experiences of inequality. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the public use of reason in such a formalistic manner does not problematize contextual influences and power structures, as this interpretation lacks the theoretical tools needed to counteract structures of domination. Deliberative settings, as Dryzek (2004) argues, “need to be held up to the tests of noncoercion, capacity to induce reflection, and ability to link the particular with the general interest” (p. 147). Some political theorists have argued that the consensus-oriented approach of deliberative theory aims to eliminate power and exclusion. However, this is untenable and may even be normatively not desirable (Mouffe, 2005; Sanders, 1997; Young, 2001). Following these theoretical arguments, one can argue that deliberative arrangements in global policymaking cannot generate critical public spheres that would contest the power structures—that occupies the space between the political decisions and political interests in their model— insofar as they remain ineffective in supporting the common good and hinder popular sovereignty. An important reason for the emergence of that space in governance and deliberative theories is that they attempt to replace popular sovereignty with reasoned arguments. However, these two may not easily be traded off; the key aspect of democracy is popular sovereignty. In the heyday of the Keynesian welfare state, the government could act as the arbiter among conflicting interests of employers and workers (Schmitter, 1974), i.e., the state could mediate between business groups and organized labor to defend the public good (the state did not leave that space to the capital). In global governance, however, there is no such arbiter.

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The lack of an arbiter is all the more serious, as the impartiality argument inherent in deliberations is threatened on at least two grounds in the context of governance. First, the asymmetry of power existing between the actors of governance cannot be eliminated. Second, the market logic and the organizing managerial principle dominating governance settings preclude resorting to the common good. As to the asymmetry of power, the recent administrative reforms of international organizations’ governance and transnational public–private partnerships are cases in point (Bexell, 2014). They contain the practice of the involvement of extra-state actors (business groups, professional lobbyists, and CSOs) in policymaking structures (Bexell, 2014, p. 290; Weiss, 2000). The theoretical critique of deliberation applies here too: how to achieve impartial reasoning in this configuration and encourage each participant to negotiate or deliberate to reason on equal terms. The paradox here is that governance settings, on the one hand, aim to open for each group a space to reinforce its interests. In this respect, there is even a research field in political science now called interest politics or interest intermediation. On the other hand, deliberative theorists expect each particular interest to act impartially during policymaking processes. In their view, particular interests could reach impartiality because, as reflected in the first section, the resort to science, rational, and technocratic policymaking would bring about objective and just governance (Milani, 2009; Head, 2008; Sanderson, 2002). In reality, however, as many have observed, global governance has strengthened business groups as a “transnational capitalist class,” as the political control of the economy is lost both at the national and the global levels as a result of economic liberalization (Streeck, 1998; Streeck, 2011; Apeldoorn, 2002; Sassen, 2014b).

A Historical Approach and Common Good The public sphere is a historical concept that emerged from a specific context. For instance, Arendt (1958) argued that modernity brought about the dissolution of the public sphere because it meant the prevalence of private economic interests and the weakening of publicness in the rise of atomistic societies. Arendt (1958) further stated that modernity eroded the distinction between the public and private due to the emergence of social and mass society, and modernity also paved the way for the replacement of politics with bureaucratic administration and the manipulation of

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public opinion. In other words, Arendt (1958) was strongly pessimistic about the idea that the public sphere, as a normative idea, could be resurrected. To a great extent, Habermas’s early views parallel those of Arendt. Habermas (1989) also asserted that the public sphere disappeared with the domination of the administration and market mentality over free speech and action. He defines this domination as the “colonization of the lifeworld” (Habermas, 1987, p. 363). Fraser (2007) reconsidered the public sphere theory developed by Habermas (1989) by showing that Habermas’s theory’s central premises are now counterfactual. Fraser’s (2007) argument focuses on an ideal public sphere within the Westphalian state–system framework, but underlying contemporary realities run counter to the theory. I will focus on only two of the issues addressed by Fraser (2007), as they concern the main argument of the present study: a reconsideration of the state’s sovereignty and the state’s control over the economy. 5 The addressee of public deliberations is considered in Habermas’s theory to be a sovereign nation-state. However, the recent trends toward governance have challenged absolute state sovereignty (if it ever existed). The state now shares its traditional responsibilities with international organizations, regional and local powers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and private corporations (Fraser, 2007, p. 15). Most scholars of global governance indeed grasp this development. Nevertheless, they focus on democratizing global policymaking and transnational public– private partnerships at a supranational level (Bexell et al., 2010; Nanz

5 Fraser (2007) reconsidered the public sphere theory transnationally to remove the artificial separation of the international governance from the governance of national territories. Fraser’s critique is based on the observation that the six building blocks of the traditional public sphere theory of Habermas have now become counterfactual. First, addressees of public deliberations are not sovereign states any more. Second, the interlocutors of public communication are not restricted to national citizens. Third, economic governances now have been open to the influence of international and extra-state actors. Fourth, the infrastructure of national communication has changed due to rise of privately owned media companies and private broadcasting that privileges more populist programming. Fifth, the public sphere is not mediated via a single national language in most countries. Sixth, the public sphere could hardly be grounded on a national vernacular literature today because of the more global and hybrid nature of the contemporary literature (Fraser, 2007, pp. 15–19). While all the points raised by Fraser influence democracy, I have focused on only the loss of undivided sovereignty and the loss of the state’s control of economic governance, which seem to be more pertinent to the main aims of the present paper.

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& Steffek, 2004; Scholte, 2002, 2007). Such a focus, while valuable, underestimates the negative impact of the loss of popular sovereignty (legitimating power of the people) on democracies at the national level, as more policies are now decided beyond the reach of public opinion and general will of individuals (Fraser, 2007, p. 15). For instance, Fritz Scharpf (2009) and Richard Bellamy (2009) argued that the EU integration structurally undermines social citizenship because EU law obligates EU institutions to follow a neoliberal path exalting fundamental market freedoms over the political liberties associated with democratic participation and political equality. In turn, Saskia Sassen (2014a) also observed that citizens, particularly workers and small enterprise owners, lost some of their fundamental rights against global corporations under free-trade agreements. The point here is that a focus on the formal aspects of decision-making in international institutions cannot grapple with and provide solutions to the erosion of gained social rights. Similarly, governance and managerial structures cannot advance projects to eliminate social-economic inequalities and poverty caused by neoliberal globalization. Neoliberalism severely affected the environment and the people’s lived experiences—by dislocating them from their living spaces (Sassen, 2014b). In addition, globalization has not withered the state away. The post-Westphalian era and globalized relationships have brought about re-territorialization (re-scaling of state sovereignty) as much as deterritorialization (breaching the national territorial boundaries and effects of state sovereignty). At the same time, denationalization (hollowing out the state) is countered by re-nationalization (new roles for the state) (Jessop, 2002, pp. 193–204). Recent globalizing trends undermine the control of the economy within the national territories by nation-states, which is one of the main assumptions of Habermas’s theory of the public sphere (Fraser, 2007, p. 17). Not only do the WTO, IMF, and World Bank shape the rules on trade, production, and finance (Fraser, 2007, p. 17; Peet, 2003), but the state also loses control over the financial flows and industrial production (Peck & Tickell, 2002; Jessop, 2007). Scholars of global governance propose controlling this development by monitoring private interests at the international level (Nanz & Steffek, 2004; Scholte, 2002). However, this proposal would remain ineffective or limited, as it could not interrogate the root causes of the problems, having considered transnationalization “somewhere above and beyond the state” (Cutler,

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2013, p. 727). The division between the transnational and the national is instead a construct, as many critical commentators underscore, most global projects are indeed shaped and reinforced inside the national (Cutler, 2013, p. 727). This point is crucial because the influence of multinational corporations and non-accountable experts makes rejuvenating democracy at the national level a challenging task (Pitkin, 2004, p. 341). Recent debates over the legitimacy and democratization of global governance should therefore take seriously how global governance is used to serve “tame politics instead of politics to tame markets” (Fraser, 2007, p. 17). Therefore, democratization attempts should be considered at a much deeper level and as more intricate issues that could not be solved by merely keeping practitioners of global governance and policymaking transparent and accountable employing managerial norms and by CSOs’ involvement in governance. I have argued for the need for an alternative way of thinking about public spheres and the public use of reason grounded on pre-set normative criteria. One such approach to public reason was advocated by Rawls (1997), although unlike his significant influence in political philosophy, his approach has not become influential in global governance. The reason may be that Rawls’s public reason suggests a narrow notion that applies reason to constitutional essentials and questions of basic justice (1997, p. 766). This argument implies that there is no need for public reasoning if there is no transnational constitution or central unit that could distribute justice. Public reason understood as a constitutional mindset oriented to reinforce justice and human dignity may provide us clues of imagining the public sphere (Koskenniemi 2007). Benhabib (1994, p. 36) suggests, in Rawls’s model, there is no space between decisions and deliberations, as he views public reason, in contrast to deliberative theory, “not as a process of reasoning among citizens but as a regulative principle imposing limits upon how individuals, institutions, and agencies ought to reason about public matters.” Guiding norms for actions are necessary to restrict the interests of business groups and powerful states for the sake of global justice and to eradicate the root causes of social-economic and political inequalities. However, the regulative feature of the public reason favored by interpretive theories differs from Rawls’ understanding. Rawls’s regulative ideal is an abstract one, consented by the people under a hypothetical

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non-contextual and ahistorical “veil of ignorance.” For interpretive theorists, public reason, like the idea of the public sphere, is context-sensitive and historical. What is more, to Rawls, public reason is restricted to the political sphere and judiciary, and the organizations in civil society attend to non-public reasons (Rawls, 1997, pp. 768–791; Charney, 1998, p. 98). However, for interpretive theorists, public reason is political, and the constitutive element of politics is conflict, not consensus. Interpretive theorists prompt the common good to reinforce political equality and justice. The public reason mobilized in public spheres involves both a negative principle of not legitimating unjust decisions and a positive principle of transforming power structures, where they exist and emerge, that violates the principle of political equality.

Concluding Remarks This chapter discussed the implications of a political vision that aims to integrate civil society into new governance mechanisms. This vision has led to a marked increase in both funding for civil society and the assignment of governance tasks to civil society organizations usually performed by the public sector. However, some of the crucial aspects of these normative perspectives are either counterfactual or limited by at least two significant factors. The prevailing technocratic style of policymaking that is used in pragmatic governance involves the proliferation of managerialism, i.e., the idea that managers must administer any social organization and that the public and civil society sectors should use corporate/business sectors’ professional management techniques and tools. Both the new governance and managerialism affect and re-define the traditional conception of civil society as autonomous, authentic, voluntary organizations that act as a check and balance on the state’s excessive use of power. Interpretive theory decenters the public sphere approach to civil society for justifying CSOs’ involvement in global governance. The increase in the number of CSOs and their involvement in the new governance is by definition cannot be a positive development. Interpretive theory can grasp and study civil society’s change because it rejects determinisms, necessities, and linear progress in history. Instead, it adopts historicism. By way of implication, we cannot think politically about civil society beyond the social context; we cannot position associations in civil society into any teleological theoretical model that suggests eliminating domination by applying universal reason or an ahistorical conception of civil society.

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Transnational governance lacks established participation practices, such as universal suffrage and general referendums, thereby preventing people from participating in will-formation processes. Most scholars emphasize the necessity of democratizing global governance. Nevertheless, scholars typically study the role of the public sphere as a carrier of public use of reason at the transnational level from the vantage points of transparency and accountability. It is a fact that global governance decisions that influence the national space expand daily, and in principle, these decision-making mechanisms must be subjected to public scrutiny. This chapter argued that when transnational public spheres and public reason are limited to accountability concerns (which are undoubtedly crucial), their critical purchase is hindered. A procedural account of the public sphere can align with neoliberalism due to its rejection of any pre-set criteria to limit the actor’s reasoning, creating a space between decision and interests. However, the contemporary context of global governance urges us to radicalize and democratize the notions of the public sphere and public reason. This goal is essential for seeking the root causes of problems during times of economic crises. In this respect, a regulative interpretation of public reason inspired by Rawls and Rousseau might be necessary to restore an appeal to the common good and justice.

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CHAPTER 9

Civil Society in European Governance: A Case Study

This chapter analyzes civil society participation in EU governance. It is argued that to do so we need to go beyond the positivist theories and naturalist (scientists) approaches and apply interpretive approach to unpack meaning-making processes on and about civil society. This requires taking distance from, or decentering of, the institutional discourse on civil society (Kohler-Koch& Quittkat, 2013; Magnette, 2003) and rethinking three key dimensions of the participation paradigm. Firstly, is participation an unqualified good thing? Or, to put it differently, does more participation always result in more and better democratic legitimacy? Much depends on what and whose participation, and on the underlying reason why people participate. Thus, decentered approach should make European institutions reconsider the far too linear connection they assume between participation and democratic legitimacy. Second, should participation of civil society in European governance be regarded as an alternative to representative democracy? Or is participation of civil society organizations considered precluding the imagination of alternative forms of participation? When evaluating participatory democracy in the EU, it is unavoidable to consider that European institutions have come to favor a very narrow and pragmatic understanding of civil society. Civil society is identified with the umbrella NGO networks. Some characterize them as standing on behalf of Europe as a whole.

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Civil society organizations are described as transmission belts, mediators, connections, and bridges. However, such metaphors should not be taken at face value. They deserve critical engagement; however, with few exceptions (Kröger, 2013), the literature thus far does not question such a conceptual relationship between civil society organizations (CSOs), participation, and representation. Third, which are the potential pathologies of participation of CSOs in European governance? Civil society participation promises the building up of the general will from the bottom up. However, we should be aware that we might find the manufacture of participation under the appearance of widespread participation, or what is generally labeled as participatory engineering (Zittel & Dieter, 2007). Political interference in fixing the presumed accountability issues of CSOs in terms of managerial principles (Com, 2000; Castiglione & Warren, 2006; Goodin, 2003) and neo-plural forms of interest intermediation might result in the domination of bureaucracy and neoliberal rationalities within the CSOs.1 Thus conceived, the legal norms of participation and current consultation practices might, in fact, be defining and prescribing the boundaries of a legitimate civil society in a depoliticized vein; in so doing, restricting, excluding, and delegitimizing other groups in civil society. Overall, this chapter aims not to suggest that the provision on participation should be deleted or CSOs should be wiped out. Instead, the democratic legitimacy of civil society involvement in EU governance must be considered with other structural factors, including the current mode of the EU integration, the roles of the EU institutions, the nature of the Commission’s consultation regime, and, not least, the place of representative democracy as it is enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty as the founding principle of the EU. The engagement in the issue of the involvement of NGOs in European public policy processes and European civil society from the perspective of interpretive theory is all the more relevant because the participation of non-state actors in European policymaking processes has now been recognized as a constitutional provision in Article 11 of the Lisbon Treaty (2007) (Kutay, 2015). However, some critical commentators, such as Kohler-Koch (2009, p. 49), suggest that “[…]nobody questioned the 1 Neo-plural interest intermediation, in this case, refers to the competition between partial particular interests to influence policies and decision-making processes. It also implies the aggregation of particular interests from the local level (Greenwood 2007).

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legitimacy of including civil society in EU affairs and no one wanted to discuss what civil society stands for.” I respond to this reflection by arguing that European civil society can be examined as a discourse within which NGOs are seen to stand for or represent European civil society. Representation here means “using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people” (Hall, 1997, p. 15). Because we can never mirror or reflect the reality in language, as Stuart Hall suggests, “language, signs, and images represent things” (Hall, 1997, p. 15). The EU invoked civil society in such a context where it was criticized for being disconnected from the European citizenry in the postMaastricht Treaty (1992) period. The Commission introduced several policies (Com, 2005, 2006a; European Parliament Council Decision, 2006).2 NGOs’ particular appeal was that they could act as a constituency of the EU institutions (Heidbreder, 2012). They would, then, help justify the authority of the EU institutions in policymaking processes (Com, 2001; Smismans, 2003; Cram, 2006). From the account of the analysis advanced here in this process, the EU, the European Commission, in particular, has defined and constituted NGOs as civil society subjects that would make Europe’s imagined civil society present. The structure of the chapter is as follows. I begin by discussing different views of European civil society and continue with an overview of the background of the participatory democracy at the EU level. Then, I will discuss the question of political representation concerning civil society participation in European governance. The next section systematically reflects on the participatory practices at the EU level. The final section offers the concluding remarks.

European Civil Society Contemporary interest in NGOs, or civil society organizations (CSOs), is associated with the concept of European civil society3 . While it is a relatively new concept, tracing back to the late 1990s, it originates from 2 ‘Plan D for Democracy’ (Com, 2005), ‘Communication Policy’ (Com, 2006a), and ‘Europe for Citizens’ (European Parliament and Council Decision No 1904/2006/EC). 3 There are significant contributions in this field, including several remarkable reviews of European civil society literature (Heidbreder, 2012; Finke, 2007; Kohler-Koch & Finke, 2007). I engage with this literature elsewhere in some detail (Kutay, 2014, 2015).

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one of the traditional political and social thought concepts: civil society. Noting the origin of the concept is essential because there are different theories on civil society; each has its own vision; and each defines different roles to civil society actors. Kohler-Koch and Quitkatt (2009) draw at least four functions and characterizations of civil society actors from civil society theories: they create and carry public discourse, they occupy a sphere of self-constitution different from the state, market, and the intimate (private) spheres, and they promote the public good and represent interests. The public good view could hardly find a role for European NGOs, as policy processes require expert input and professional organizations. In the context of European governance, the other three functions noted above refer to the following roles. Interest representation refers to NGOs’ role as intermediaries for their constituencies to give voice to the people and act as stakeholders in governance (Greenwood 2007). This view’s normative dimension amounts to applying principles of civil society involvement in governance such as equal rights of participation and the inclusion of all affected interests or parties in policymaking processes (Armstrong 2002). This view, adopted and promoted by the Commission, fits into the (good) governance approach. In this case, civil society participation refers to sharing the responsibilities of political authorities with civic actors, which, in turn, contributes to practical problem-solving and the legitimacy of governance (Kohler-Koch & Finke, 2007; Finke, 2007). More tellingly, NGOs are here considered as part of the “ecology of interest groups” (Warren, 2001) under the neo-plural interest intermediation regime of the Commission’s consultation with external parties. Indeed, the Commission’s European civil society webpage refers to these consultations.4 Scholars who are inspired by Habermas (1989) appear to conflate the first (civil society as a carrier of the public deliberations) and the second (civil society as social constituency) functions and define European civil society either as a social constituency (Fossum & Trenz, 2006) or a transmission belt of a transnational public sphere (Nanz & Steffek, 2004). Central to the former (the political sociological) view is social differentiation, which conceives of European civil society “as the structure of voice

4 http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/civil_society/, Accessed 11 August 2016.

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that is articulated in relation to EU-concerns, claims-making, and collective actions that are mobilized (or simply articulated) not within, but with reference to, European governance” (Liebert & Trenz, 2009, p. 3). Such a view sees European civil society as opposed to European governance’s political constituency and as resisting the market economy’s dominance (Della Porta & Caiani, 2010; Imig & Tarrow, 2001; Ruzza, 2011). By doing so, the social constituency view rules out European NGOs as part of an ideal civil society because of the apparent conflation of political and social constituencies that results from the EU’s engineering of these organizations and because the EU blurs the functions of public and civil organizations by considering them as governance stakeholders. The second Habermas-inspired approach to civil society considers European NGOs as public spheres—as transmission belts of public discourse and as agents that make public policy processes more transparent (Nanz & Steffek, 2004; Steffek & Nanz, 2007). Consider the following quote: If organized civil society has the opportunity to participate in international governance, it may act as a ‘transmission belt’ between international organizations and an emerging transnational public sphere. This transmission belt might operate in two directions: First, civil society organizations can give voice to citizens’ concerns and channel them into the deliberative process of international organizations. Second, they can make internal decision making processes of international organizations more transparent to the wider public and formulate technical issues in accessible terms. (Steffek & Nanz, 2007, p. 8)

As this quote illustrates, this perspective, on the one hand, presumes a homogenous image of European civil society that observes and listens to the public. On the other hand, NGOs are considered agents representing citizens and making the bureaucratic language more accessible to the general public. However, critical commentators have addressed some obstacles to European NGOs functioning effectively as civil society agents. European NGO networks are disconnected from the grassroots level, have proximity to political power, and have been professionalized (Kohler-Koch & Quittkat, 2013; Saurugger, 2010; Kohler-Koch, 2010).5

5 The magazine Economist defined the involvement of European NGOs situation to policymaking processes as Brussels talking to Brussels (Staff Reporter, 2004).

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Then, European NGOs were seen as organizations that deviate from ideal civil society functions as addressed by civil society theorists. Interpretive theory and decentred approach offer a different kind of analysis. Even if we could resolve some of these intractable issues, such as connecting European-level NGOs to the grassroots, we would still need to explain how European NGOs came to be related to the concept of European civil society in the first place. In other words, how would particular NGOs aggregate and constitute a civil society? Interpretive approach focuses on this question: it decenters taken-for-granted assumptions about civil society. On this account, the EU tries to visualize European civil society through helping to materialize an NGO community in Brussels. This analysis does not only study language (what is said), but also studies practices (what is done). Some critical thinkers have examined how the concept of civil society has been framed by EU institutions and civil society actors (KohlerKoch & Quittkat, 2009; Saurugger, 2010). There is an apparent affinity between their research and that of interpretive theory, as they also address the construction of European civil society, contrasting its different framings, or meanings, as articulated by both scholars and EU institutions (Kohler-Koch & Quittkat, 2013; Saurugger, 2010; Georgakakis, 2009).6 In this account, such research has characteristics of interpretive theory research with their focus on meanings and language. Nevertheless, interpretive theory has a distinct meta-theoretical standpoint. From the perspective of interpretive theory, “first, beliefs have a constitutive relationship to actions and, second, beliefs are inherently holistic” (Bevir & Rhodes, 2005, p. 170). The holistic nature of interpretive approach here means focusing on statements, actors, and actions that bring about practices. The philosophical foundations of interpretive theory directly affect its research agenda; the theory and methodology of interpretive theory are inseparable. Interpretive approach decenters how relevant scientific theories and social actors define civil society and aggregate civil society as an abstract theoretical concept. The view that sees civil society as a social constituency suggests contested discourses direct their claims against European governance. The transmission-belt argument suggests the inclusion of citizens’ voices within governance. The interest intermediation approach, which 6 It is also possible to add Pierre Bourdieu-inspired sociological studies to interpretive approach, as they also study civil society as a constructed field (Georgakakis, 2009).

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the Commission preferred, focuses on the interest aggregation of different groups to participate in policymaking processes (Greenwood, 2007). Social constituency and transmission-belt metaphors mobilize an abstract and theoretical image of civil society through which they aggregate civil society against European governance (understood as administrative, legislative, jurisdictional, and regulative institutional architecture). Interest intermediation approach does not draw on a theoretical concept of civil society but on groups. Interest group researchers often draw on rational choice theories or institutional theories; therefore, they do not use macro-sociological concepts such as structures, systems, or spheres. Interest group researchers, thus, do not aggregate civil society. These approaches also have some challenges in defining the boundaries of civil society. Social constituency and transmission-belt views must clarify how to include the so-called uncivil voices. Racist and discriminatory claims hardly fit into civil society’s civil character (Ruzza, 2011; Chambers & Kopstein, 2001). Interest policy research also extends and limits the boundaries of civil society. It extends because the difference between the interests of civil society and other lobbying groups becomes blurred.7 It limits because by looking at the European Commission’s funding structure, it would be fair to suggest that the Commission has had an apparent strategy of granting funding to large European NGO networks located in Brussels and those groups that work on facilitating European identity (Mahoney & Beckstrand, 2011).

From Dialogue to Legal Norm---the History of Civil Society Participation in EU Policymaking The concepts of civil society and participation at the European Union (EU) level have drawn considerable attention from both practitioners and scholars since the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) (Kohler-Koch & Finke, 2007; Kohler-Koch, 2010). Three different periods or waves should be distinguished: Firstly, the questioning of the democratic legitimacy of the EU fostered an interest in the ways that civil society could contribute to the legitimacy of the Union. The end of the “permissive consensus” was rendered

7 The White Paper on Governance (2001) in European governance includes business groups and even political parties under the definition of civil society.

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evident during the Maastricht Treaty’s ratification process. This coming immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it came naturally to think of civil society as an alternative source of legitimacy of the European Union, due to the rejuvenation of civil society in the context of democratization in Central and Eastern Europe (Armstrong, 2002; Cohen & Arato, 1992). Kohler-Koch and Finke (2007) explain that the EU’s sudden interest in organized civil society was generated by the Commission’s perception of fading permissive consent of EU citizens for the EU project in general and the failure of the Maastricht referendum in Denmark in 1992. During the 1990s, civil society’s involvement was defined as interest intermediation and adapted to legitimize social policymaking by the Commission. Legitimizing European governance became one of the priorities of the EU—“bringing the EU closer to the people was propagated [by the Commission] at the 1996 Turin Summit,” and this “became the norm to [be followed] by all EU institutions” (Kochler-Koch & Finke, 2007, p. 210). Secondly, the rise of governance as an alternative institutional and procedural paradigm further increased interest in civil society. If there is something characteristic of the various governance structures, they seem to open policy and law-making processes to actors other than the classical “state” ones, including foremost CSOs. The White Paper on Governance launching was indeed the high point of this “second wave” of interest in civil society (Com, 2001).8 The EU resorted to civil society narrative in good governance as promoted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Kohler-Koch & Rittberger, 2006). However, it also adopted and adjusted some aspects of that narrative to the context of European governance. Since the 2000s, the Commission has initiated policies concerning European civil society by merging the governance approach with that of the transmission-belt argument and input and output legitimacy to legitimize EU governance (Com, 2001). Thus, the Commission’s consultation policy is no longer based on the sheer epistemic quality of external advice; it also involves understanding the need to achieve public consent. Within the context of its education and communication policy, the Commission even taps into a narrative of activating citizens for the European project (Com, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2008). Throughout this 8 Commission of the European Communities, ‘A white paper on European governance’, Com (2001) 428 final.

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process, civil society’s involvement has been defined by or associated with different concepts, including civil dialogue, interest intermediation, consultation, and participation. The Commission’s approach, definition, scope, and even wording of non-state actors has changed in context over time (Smismans 2003). In the meantime, the foreign policy of the EU, too, aimed to promote civil society and NGOs within its neighborhood and economic development policies (Kurki, 2011). Further research may examine the link between the EU public and foreign policies. Interestingly, the EU has been informed by broader meanings and practices concerning civil society available globally. However, as its neighborhood and development policies suggest, the EU also contributes to reinforcing the civil society discourse at the global level. In both instances, the Commission considered the CSOs to bridge the EU and its citizens’ gap. To this end, DG Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion launched the “civil dialogue” in 1996, after the Social Platform of European NGOs convened the first European Social Policy Forum. Primarily focused on social policies when it was launched, this “civil dialogue” had two goals: to link the views of European citizens to European institutions and to explain political discourse to the public (Com, 1997).9 With the White Paper on Governance, the Commission expanded this bridging function that it ascribed to NGOs from social policies to the democratic legitimacy of the EU at large, with a conceptual shift from NGOs to CSOs, and this view of the Commission persisted during the 2000s. The Commission has not remained long the only institution behind the civil society discourse. During the 2000s, other EU institutions have also started to appeal to the CSOs because they have aimed at diminishing the Commission’s claim to dominate the civil society discourse, but also the motto of connecting the EU with its citizens became a standard norm to be shared among the EU institutions before the launching of the Convention on drafting a constitution (Smismans, 2003). However, other institutions’ approach has not necessarily converged with the Commission’s view. For instance, the European Parliament has been skeptical since the beginning, questioning the CSO actors’ representativeness. The Parliament initiated the practice of AGORA forums in this regard, which aimed to transcend the sector-focused approach to CSOs, fostering an 9 Commission of the European Communities, ‘Promoting The Role of Voluntary Organizations and Foundations in Europe’, Com (1997) 241 final.

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open and deliberative debate among around 500 organizations (not intended to entail large European NGO networks) oriented to inform MEPs in drafting reports.10 It was the European Economic and Social Committee, a marginal institution in the EU institutional set-up, which has supported the Commission’s approach to civil society and influenced the Commission in the development of that discourse (Smismans, 2003). The third way in the development of civil society and participation discourses in the EU is the emergence of the participatory democracy as a powerful political and scholarly paradigm, one that intertwined with the rejuvenation of civil society and that fitted to the rise of governance. The concern with “different” forms of democracy, particularly with participatory democracy, has resulted in a steep increase in references to civil society from EU institutions, assuming that participatory democracy offers a more powerful legitimating potential for decisionmaking. This is particularly true for the European Commission because broad consultations would strengthen its bargaining power against the European Parliament when it lacked a constituency (Kohler-Koch, 2010). Civil society participation has been tempting in the view of the Commission and of some authors alike (Nanz & Steffek, 2004; Rumford, 2003; Schutter, 2002), for CSOs (i.e., the networks of or umbrella European NGOs) would function as mediums for channeling the voices of European citizens and as agents for disseminating information about the EU, thus reducing public apathy toward European integration by creating a “European public space of discourse and communication” (Smismans, 2003, p. 483). The Lisbon Treaty (Article 11) recognizes the provision on participatory democracy as a democratic principle of the EU, thus constitutionally legitimizing civil society’s involvement in European governance. After the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, civil society participation is no longer an increasingly salient political and sociological concept but a key constitutional norm. Article 11 of the Treaty on European Union now says that

10 Thus far, the Parliament has organised three AGORAs: on the Future of Europe (8–9 November 2007); on climate change (12–13 June 2008); on the economic and financial crisis and new forms of poverty (27–28 January 2011).

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1. The institutions shall, by appropriate means, give citizens and representative associations the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their views in all areas of Union action. 2. The institutions shall maintain an open, transparent, and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society. 3. The European Commission shall carry out broad consultations with parties concerned in order to ensure that the Union’s actions are coherent and transparent. 4. Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties. The procedures and conditions required for such a citizens’ initiative shall be determined in accordance with the first paragraph of Article 24 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Defining participatory democracy in such a way, the Lisbon Treaty has led to a significant formal change; as such, once started as an attempt to establish a dialogue in the field of social policy, civil society participation has become a constitutional norm as a consequence of the entanglement of the “three paradigmatic waves”—civil society, governance, and participatory democracy.” However, at least three issues remain unresolved about the democratic dimension of such practice. First, it is not possible to specify precisely how the participation of civil society relates to democracy. There are different theoretical ways to institute that relation, though not all support involving civil society in governance settings. Second, having established representative democracy as the founding democratic principle of the European Union (Article 10), the Lisbon Treaty does not assess the provision of participatory democracy as an independent source for democracy. How would the role of participation be conceived in such a case: alternative yet complementary to, or within the scope of representation? Third, the putative democratizing potential of civil society participation would not be construed independently not only because representative democracy is defined as the founding principle of the EU, but civil society participation also cannot be thought of as independent from the form of the

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consultation regime, the constitutional framework, and the managerial and technocratic styles of policymaking.

Civil Society and Representation of Interests: Interests, Discourses, or Lived Experiences? In this section, I discuss how NGOs and CSOs can be placed within political representation. Alternatively, what is the same, I consider placing the CSOs in the system of political representation of the EU, and I assess such possibilities. Democratic theorists often place CSOs within the system of EU representation and treat them (often without questioning) as representatives of European civil society or European citizenry. The generally accepted definition of representation provided by Hanna Pitkin (1967)— to make something present in some sense—makes it possible to read the contentions of participation literature and the Commission’s discourse through the lenses of representation. To this end, following Plotke, this inquiry reflects upon the relational and abstract features of political representation, as the initial meaning of representation is not “to replace or omit” but “to stand for” (Plotke, 1997, p. 27). The Commission and some authors allude to this relational aspect, in one way or another, considering CSOs as agents that stand or act for the European civil society or European citizenry. For instance, when the Commission prompted the Civil Dialogue initiative under Europe for Citizens Programme, it conceived the CSOs as a link or a transmission belt between the citizens and EU governance. Thus, even if the Commission’s approach aims to identify CSOs with participatory democracy, it still relates civil society participation to political representation. How can CSOs be placed within the system of political representation in the EU? What can CSOs act or stand for? What is more, how can particular organizations’ representational claims add up to constitute a group of European-level civil society representatives? My argument is CSOs allow practitioners and scholars alike to talk about European civil society’s existence. Therefore, what is at stake here is not merely to investigate the representativeness of single CSOs, but the plausibility of talking about a system of civil society representation at the EU level, one that allows considering some CSOs to establish a transmission belt between policymakers and European citizenry, or act for European civil society (Bellamy & Castiglione, 2013).

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In the literature, I have found at least three models that characterize the link between interest intermediation and democratization in network governance. In general, both the supporters and critics of civil society participation appear to agree that CSOs bring forth the interests, discourses, or lived experiences of the citizens, which requires representation: delegate, discursive, or functional, respectively. Each of these three models will now be analyzed in some detail to show their weaknesses: (1) existence of established vertical networks aggregating interests from the bottom (delegate model); (2) the capability of EU-level CSOs to track public discourses (discursive model); or (3) the expression of the lived experiences of the people by the CSOs (functional model). Delegate Model and Interest Aggregation In the delegate model, the CSOs should mirror the interests of their constituencies by an authorized act. Provided that this condition is realized, there should then be a conceptual relationship between the fact that some CSOs act as delegates of a given constituency and the inference that such acts of single NGOs add up to entrench a system of representation, connecting the European citizenry and European governance. That is to say: A delegate model strongly depends on the authorization of a constituency, and as such, the empirical fact of bottom interest aggregation. Interest intermediation in the delegate model works in the following way. First, authorization by a constituency and interest aggregation hinges upon the success of the networks vertically connecting grassroots interests from local CSOs to national umbrella networks and then to European umbrella networks. Here, the Brussels headquarters must mirror local constituencies by merely articulating their interests, thus acting as a neutral broker or delegate. Research on the networking practices of European NGOs has demonstrated that national organizations have only a minor impact on the European headquarters’ work (mostly defined as the secretariat) in most cases (Sicakkan, 2012; Imig & Tarrow, 2001). For instance, some observed a different direction for collective mobilization, which contradicts the delegation model (Sicakkan, 2012). Although the delegation model presumes consensus among the actors that are mobilizing collective action vertically in Europe, researchers show a contradictory reality, rife with contention and contestation between the local and the European levels. Most national-level CSOs remain skeptical about

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European CSOs and instead prefer to influence national political actors and engage in horizontal cross-border interactions (Sicakkan, 2012). It has also been found that, within the civil society networks, the Southern and Eastern European organizations’ influence is limited compared to that of the Northern organizations and the supranational elite (Quittkat & Finke, 2008, p. 349). In other words, current civil society participation in European public policymaking mostly favors elitism at the Brussels level, while it replicates the regional socioeconomic differences in Europe at the heart of social movements. Consequently, findings from previous research reveal the practical limits of the delegate model. Authorization by a constituency and vertical interest aggregation fails or is challenging to realize entirely in most cases. Some authors claim that the delegate model functions better in specific fields, such as in agriculture, compared to those of environment and antipoverty (Kröger, 2013). Such a sector-specific approach would still be weak to conceptualize a systemized civil society representation and theoretically relating the EU-level CSOs to European civil society: exceptions would not make the rule. Discursive Model and Tracking of the Public Deliberations A discursive approach suggests a second model of placing CSOs in the EU’s political representation and assessing them as a promise constituting a transmission belt. Dryzek and Niemeyer suggest that “a discourse can be understood as a set of categories and concepts embodying specific assumptions, judgments, contentions, dispositions, and capabilities” (Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2008, p. 481). Defined in this way, a discursive model opens up two potentially contradictory possibilities. First, a discursive model may provide autonomy or relative autonomy to the EU-level CSOs in their operations by providing CSOs’ mandate. Another version of a discursive model may refuse the use of judgment by the EU-level CSOs, insisting that they should primarily detect discourse at the grassroots level. The first discursive model suggests that the accountability criteria of CSOs might go beyond their tangible links with their principle (represented). Here, the headquarters of CSOs might act relatively autonomous from the grassroots and be proactive in guiding, shaping, and implementing interactions with political institutions (Dryzek & Niemeyer,

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2008). In principle, in this view, CSOs might also be open to grassroots groups’ influence (or bottom-up and horizontal strategy formation). However, information flow would not be conceived here as a mere instrumentalist and strategic interest aggregation. Instead, it would be framed in terms of the contested discourses (e.g., anti-globalization, alternative globalization, anarcho-cosmopolitanism, social democracy, socialism, liberalism, and sustainable development). In the end, therefore, what is represented is not necessarily the interest of a particular organization or group but the (broader) discourse itself or the public good (Castiglione & Warren, 2006). In this case, the criteria would be that CSOs would stand for the common good by preserving their power-challenging discourses in governance settings (Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2008, p. 484). This model is promising but involves some challenges. Autonomy enjoyed by EU-level CSOs could lead to other problems (Armstrong, 2002, p. 115). Here, it would be challenging to clarify the mechanism through which the EU-level CSOs could be authorized, particularly in the case of a lack of or weakly defined principles (represented) (Smismans, 2003). The validity of authorization by the Commission and self-authorization by the CSOs to represent themselves as the natural representatives of ECS would be problematic. For instance, when some organizations were invited to participate in the Convention to draft a constitution, they campaigned to deepen the EU’s political integration and transfer political competencies to the European level, even though these were highly controversial issues in different national public spheres (Shore, 2006). Let alone, the majority of people do not want to be represented by the CSOs and their supranational extensions (van Deth, 2008, p. 325). The second model for a discursive representation proposes that supranational intermediaries’ success depends on detecting local discourses and then transmitting them in policymaking processes (De Schutter, 2002; Curtin, 1999; Steffek & Nanz, 2004). Yet, still in this model, CSOs should use judgment to identify and distill the discourses that supranational CSOs would find pertinent to act upon or stand for. The empirical question here, then, concerns how do they use such judgment? At this point, two issues emerge. First, when the NGO networks’ roles are defined as discourse collectors at the local level, a major problem appears. Civil society, or in this case, European civil society (if it even exists), is rife with conflicting

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voices, and this raises the question, with which voices should the European NGOs be linked, and who will decide that ?11 Second, contesting views hinder establishing some kind of inclusive linkage mechanism by the NGO networks, but these views can also be destructive to the EU integration. For example, competing different groups advance alternatives for the future of Europe within civil society, including a social democratic option defended by the European Social Forum and a protective option (Fortress Europe) defended by xenophobic groups (Ruzza, 2011). Furthermore, the voices of anti-systemic movements or groups that challenge the ethos of European integration, such as anti-capitalist, anti-globalization and alternative globalization groups, and anarchists and Eurosceptic groups, are, by definition, omitted from the legitimate European civil society conception. The rationale of governance requires at least a minimum level of consent to the given mode of European integration. Participation at the EU level, then, commences with a priori acquiescence to underlying norms and practices. In return, it is unavoidable that the voices of the grassroots or European citizenry at which the EUlevel CSOs would be linked become highly selective. The current form of civil society participation in EU governance, then, presupposes a very narrow European civil society definition, structurally confining the definition of a legitimate civil society to those associations that are willing and able to participate (Swyngedouw 2005). In sum, if EU-level CSOs would establish a discursive linkage, such linkage would always be narrow, exclusionary, and selective, with being established with particular views and standpoints (Mouffe, 2005). Functional Model and Representing the Lived Experiences A third way to conceive the CSOs within the system of political representation in the EU is to concentrate on their epistemic contribution or expert advice, which derives from their ability to track and detect the lived (daily) experiences of people. This model raises two important issues. First, the functional model implies that EU-level CSOs seek to represent the lived experiences of 11 For instance, the Convention method, which involved some CSOs in the preparation of the European Constitution, is considered a successful experiment. See Schutter (2002). Nevertheless, some commentators have raised critiques of this experience because only Europhil social actors could participate. See Shore (2006).

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the people by making them present as if they are brute factual realities. However, representation in such model lacks a political dimension: the functional model, stripping of the political dimension in social issues, treats critical social problems such as unemployment, precarious working conditions, social inequalities, underdevelopment, global warming, and other lived experiences of the people as if they are self -caused social phenomena. There are at least two issues with this view. First, if social problems are detached from the social and political factors that caused them, civil society participation could easily be depoliticized. Participatory practices, so conceived, avoid criticizing the dynamics that create social problems, including the hegemony of neoliberalism and unaccountable powerful elites. This approach to participation is favored by the Commission (Smismans, 2003, p. 495). Second, CSOs cannot represent lived experiences of the people as brute facts because a group’s commitment to act for or stand for others or a cause or a collective whole, such as the European citizenry itself, would not be value-free act. That is, commitments of this kind are always shaped by a particular belief system or an ideology, such as the reinforcement of a social Europe, gender equality, anti-racism, a third way, market liberalism, Keynesianism, welfare-to-work, and socialism. Thus, perspectives on a given issue, such as social policies, development, the environment, and human rights, vary significantly depending on the systematic political positions (again, market liberalism, a third way, socialism, or conservatism). However, each perspective can propose different solutions. The point here is that the proponents of a pragmatic-governance approach or a depoliticized interpretation of participation avoid contestations on any given political issue by suggesting that the groups now engaged in EU governance are connected to the lived experiences of the people regardless of any systemized ways of thinking politically (Freeden, 2008, p. 196–197). Consider also the following participatory democracy definition made by the Social Platform of European Social NGOs, which sets one of its objectives to establish participatory democracy at the EU level. Participatory democracy creates a healthy anti-silo, anti-institution mentality, both in terms of issues to be addressed and the ability to act on addressing them. Almost none of the serious problems people and communities face conform to the remits of political ideologies: By involving people

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to intervene, participatory democracy can produce solutions that are effective and legitimate, and go beyond traditional political divides. In that sense, it strengthens the legitimacy of decision makers/services providers since their decisions will be based on the real views of people. Participatory democracy therefore aims to improve trust and accountability (Social Platform, 2008, p. 5).

To conclude, now the relationship between representation and CSOs has become an issue of concern in EU governance, and it is insufficient to claim that participation is complementary to representative democracy. Still, when civil society participation is evaluated against the yardstick of political representation, new issues emerge. It would not be enough to qualify as a democratic form of representation because policymakers authorize several CSOs or CSOs authorize themselves as representatives of ECS or European citizenry. Whereas a delegate model, in most cases, struggles to establish an effective and inclusive networking system, a bottom-up discursive model does not justify the voices with which the CSO actors will be linked and thus is exclusionary. In contrast, the functional model tends to orient toward a post-ideological position, neglecting how social problems and their solutions are related to particular ideological or political standpoints. A discursive model that enables the deliberate interaction of contested discourses offers an alternative representation model; however, this would require different institutional arrangements than pragmatic governance and consultation regime, a version of which is as advocated by Dryzek and Nieyemer, for example (Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2008). Furthermore, CSOs encounter difficulties in passing democratic representation tests, but it is also ambiguous how single EU-level CSOs would stand or act for European citizenry or European civil society as a whole.

Reflecting on the Limits of Civil Society Participation in European Governance Although the Lisbon Treaty determines representative democracy as the foundational democratic source of the EU (Smismans, 2003), Article 11 points to participatory democracy as an alternative source of democracy, considering it a different yet complementary form of democracy to representative democracy. The problem here is that many authors

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and practitioners have thus far concentrated on merely fixing representativeness, inclusiveness, networking, and accountability of CSOs to legitimize participatory democracy. Valuable though, such strategy might be counter-productive, if not exacerbating democratic legitimacy, due to at least three structural issues: (1) the EU’s consultation regime, (2) the EU’s constitutional framework, and (3) the prevailing managerial style of organizational knowledge within governance. Those issues urge us to embed the function and normative validity of civil society participation to the larger framework of the nature of the EU’s interest intermediation, the democratic legitimacy of European polity, and a significant social process that affects the public and CSOs. As the first structural issue, the Lisbon Treaty now has constitutionalized consultations with stakeholders and CSO actors before introducing a legislative proposal; however, the Commission’s decision-making and legislative power, and its responsibility to protect the EU treaties, have not been challenged. Interest groups involved in the Commission’s consultations are expected to reflect upon or provide information for Commission-initiated proposals (Heidbreder, 2012, p. 5); thus, the consultation process is meant to collect constructive inputs or feedback from the participants to sustain the homeostasis of the system of European public policymaking. Carried out through an online interest registration mechanism, consultations with external actors (or lobbyists) also structurally restrict practical deliberation possibilities. In this frame, the Commission still enjoys the power of strategic selection from among the input provided by external actors, including NGOs and other stakeholders. So, all in all, the provision on participation does not reflect a linear improvement from the point where CSOs were considered mere interest groups in the EU’s legislative process to the place of empowering CSOs with full decision-making powers; thus, Article 11 allows the Commission to practice participatory democracy as part of its consultation practices. Since its inception in European policymaking, participatory democracy has been entangled in the EU’s interest intermediation, which precluded civil society participation from evolving as a self-standing practice to detach participatory democracy from other external actors’ lobbying and interest representation activities. For example, the Commission’s official website for civil society has been (and still is) linked to the Commission’s

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consultations webpage.12 On the Commission’s civil society webpage, the Commission consistently has not referred to either civil dialogue or the participatory democracy, even though the Lisbon Treaty had already established participatory democracy as a democratic source of the EU. Instead, this webpage refers to relations of the Commission with all external parties. On the previous version of the consultations site, the Commission referred to the Amsterdam Treaty (1997), which stipulated that “the Commission should consult widely before proposing legislation, and, wherever appropriate, publish consultation documents,”13 as the legal ground of its consultation practices with civil society. In return, the Commission has proved a clear intention to interpret participation (or participatory democracy) as an element of its consultations with all interest groups, but not as an independent and alternative legislation practice. More confusingly, the Commission has placed civil dialogue under “Europe for Citizens Programme” since 2007, intending to “foster European citizenship and improve civic and democratic participation at EU level” via meetings with 50 networks.14 The second structural obstacle for enhancing the legitimacy of civil society participation by merely trying to fix their organizational features concerns the general constitutional framework of the EU. If what is expected from civil society participation is to politicize EU governance by balancing the economic interests, the constitutional framework delimits civil society participation expectations because CSOs could neither influence the ethos of integration nor the policymaking (Hueller, 2010). On the one hand, civil society participation is “restrictive” because it lacks any decision-making power. Nevertheless, on the other hand, this does not matter considering EU Treaties preclude the possibility of competition of alternative political projects in the EU due to the arbitrary power of politically unaccountable institutions such as the Commission, the European Central Bank, and the Court of Justice of the European Union. As

12 For the present version, see http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/civil_society (Accessed 07 August 2014). 13 See http://ec.europa.eu/civil_society/apgen_en.htm (Accessed 23 April 2010). This clause existed in the Protocol no. 7 on the application of subsidiarity and proportionality, annexed to the Amsterdam treaty. 14 See http://ec.europa.eu/citizenship/europe-for-citizens-programme/civil-dialogue/ index_en.htm (Accessed 29 July 2014). Europe for Citizens aims to connect the EU with its citizens.

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Fritz Scharpf (2009, 2010) and Richard Bellamy (2009) powerfully argue, because the EU treaties and the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union exalt market liberties over the established political and social rights and in the Member States, the current mode of integration even exacerbates democratic legitimacy of national democracies, limiting the self-regulation of societies and the national social contracts. As the third structural obstacle, the existing organizational practices and norms of the participatory paradigm are managerial. The Commission has been promoting managerialism as a condition for financial support and legitimizing civil society participation at the EU level, thus establishing democratically administered NGOs by fixing their organizational structures, accountability, and inclusiveness (Com, 2000, 2002, 2008). The problems here are how these organizational changes would democratize EU governance at large and where the Commission derives its legitimacy from deciding on the norms that would make CSOs democratic. To start with, saving democratic legitimacy through managerial norms and practices is very risky because the repercussions of managerialism on civil society and democracy have already been well-researched. For example, to Habermas, the domination of bureaucratic and market rationalities would distort civil society’s democratic potential (Habermas, 1987), while to Skocpol, managerialism diminishes civic ties within the society (Skocpol, 2003). When it comes to the effects of managerialism on actors involving governance settings, managerial norms pave the way for a depoliticized action to the extent that they determine the source of democratic legitimacy as formal rationalities and some organizational criteria instead of political contestation and communicative rationalities. Furthermore, managerialism reinforces decomposition from within a putatively existing ideal civil society with the emergence of bureaucratically organized units, and then their re-composition into governance through managerial knowledge and practices. Decomposition in this context refers to a breaking down of civil society’s presumed democratic features (those of being spontaneous, voluntary, non-state, and non-market) due to the emergence of managerial entities with political intervention. Re-composition implies adapting those entities to governance networks, which are dominated by bureaucratic organizational schemes, results-based management mentality, and performance indicators. Actors of governance commonly share managerial norms and practices, including the Commission (Kassim, 2008).

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Put it differently, even if some commentators would like to see NGO activists as counter-elite (Imig & Tarrow, 2001), the participation of CSO actors in EU governance has widened the elite/mass split by inserting an extra elite structure into the European policy and law-making practices (Quittkat & Finke, 2008). The divide between the technocratic and counter-elite is therefore not that rigid: for instance, it is not uncommon for NGO “managers” to continue their careers in different nodes of the system of EU governance, including think tanks, consultancies, and the EU bureaucracy (Stone, 2008, p. 33–34). These three structural issues—EU’s consultation regime, EU’s constitutional framework, and managerialism—demonstrate the limits of the participatory democracy paradigm. However, the discourse on participatory democracy might itself be problematic in the sense that it may be used to legitimate neoliberal political and economic policies. Many CSOs have indeed been critical of neoliberal policies (Beyers & Kerremans, 2004). However, the point here is not to suggest that CSOs do not act critically, so they have become practitioners’ or powerful states’ puppets. One must not overlook this possibility. However, the point is the participatory democracy discourse might be used to make socially unacceptable policies legitimate by engaging the citizens or their representatives in governance. If this is true, the role of participation is not to justify an arbitrary political power or a single discourse that will emerge in the form of domination—be it discourses of efficiency, competitiveness, bureaucratic rationalities, or neoliberalism (Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2008, p. 484). Even if such critique of participation is widespread in development studies,15 European studies have not yet taken up this dimension of the participatory policies. So, a form of domination occurs, or the principle of political equality is hindered (Bellamy, 2009) when a discourse emerges arbitrarily in such a way to occlude or stigmatize alternative political projects and worldviews.16 There are different ways to assess civil society participation in European policymaking regarding democratic legitimacy, but not all perspectives advocate incorporating some selected organizations in governance settings. Whereas the indeterminate nature of associational life urges us

15 For a good review see Porter and Craig (2004). 16 Dryzek and Niemeyer (2008) even radically suggest the involvement of extremist

voices to deliberations.

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to be careful about making universal claims about associations’ positive effects on democracy, civil society is not even the most crucial component of democracy, according to some theorists, for the subjects of democratic participation are viewed either as citizens or as affected interests. The involvement of groups in decision-making and legislation processes finds a theoretical ground in associative democracy (Baccaro, 2006). However, a discourse and social capital approach does not advocate such practice. Most importantly, these three different views have been developed to address democracies at the national level, thus presupposing primary institutions of democracy to be well-functioning (Bellamy & Kröger, 2013, 2014, p. 491), including a well-functioning public sphere (Bader, 2001), demos (Pitkin, 1967), competitive elections, and a system of checks and balances. However, stretching these national level-specific ideas at the EU level encounters several structural issues (Hueller, 2010).

Concluding Remarks This chapter reflected upon the implications of the involvement of NGOs in European governance. It examined representational claims of the EUlevel CSOs and then continued with the influence of the current mode of EU integration, the EU institutions’ responsibilities, and the form of the consultation regime on civil society participation. Here, it is argued that CSOs’ involvement in governance is built on a somewhat narrow ground theoretically and empirically. The democratic representation of the EU-level CSOs is a contested issue: CSOs still have to resolve their authorization and accountability. Democratic theory does not offer an agreed position for civil society’s involvement in decision-making and legislation processes; even some normative views address the repercussions of such practice. For many democratic theorists, the subjects of democratic participation are individual citizens and affected interests, but not associations. The participatory democracy provision concerning civil society’s involvement in the EU governance is connected to representative democracy. It is also linked to the founding democratic principle, representative democracy, and political equality. Most importantly, the democratization of Europe has moved beyond sheer attempts by the Commission to a search for an encompassing democracy for Europe. This chapter underlined the discursive articulation of European civil society because the argument casts light on how civil society has been performatively constructed and related to an imagined European civil

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society. In such a discursive frame, European NGOs symbolically stand for European civil society. The association between the particular (NGO) and the whole (European civil society) has meaning only if NGOs perform such association. To view European civil society as discourse does not suggest that the discourse is merely talk, for the discourse depends on and constitutes practice materials that would render it intelligible and practicable. It would not be plausible to think about and perform European civil society without the manuals for NGO and project management, norms and procedures concerning consultation processes, and multistakeholder seminars and conferences. It is argued that when European civil society is considered an aggregate concept, it implies that it might reason and act on its terms (reification). However, concepts of this kind should be seen as socially constructed and imagined, but not as taken-for-granted or essentialized categories. This methodological and philosophical position can help us see the implications of the performative and constitutive aspects of meaning in other areas of European politics.

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CHAPTER 10

Conclusion

The philosophical dimensions of interpretive theories are essential to offer an alternative interpretation of contemporary civil society discourse, in particular, in the context of public policies. The new governance reforms, such as neoliberal policies and the promotion of networks, have brought radical changes in the state’s institutional structure. Market principles and values have also organized these reforms. The new governance reforms are ubiquitous. Civil society discourse is part of the transformation of the state. Rational choice and behaviorist theories have scarce tools to grasp this transformation. They presuppose the existence of pure experience and true meaning. They take civil society as an ahistorical phenomenon, a natural object, and is waiting to be involved in governance settings. This presumption leads them to ignore contextuality, contingency, and constructed nature of identity. They concentrate on developing protocols and indexes to test their hypotheses without questioning how a particular concept of civil society and an organizational type have become hegemonic in the first place. Interpretive approaches do not take the state, the market, and civil society as social facts or reified objects. They decenter them. Interpretive theories challenge taken-for-granted knowledge by refuting foundationalism and fixed, reified, ahistorical, and meta-theoretical perspectives. They suggest meanings are constitutive. They reject essentialism, pure experience, autonomous subject, and universal reason. They advocate the radical contingency of the social © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Kutay, NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71862-6_10

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reality: that there are no deterministic rules in the social world. This position as a critique of naturalism in human sciences and rational choice theories is vividly pronounced within the general frame of interpretive approaches. In this book, the analysis of civil society and governance is similarly informed by Foucault. It is a post-disciplinary analysis because it loosens the strictures of contemporary mainstream and political sciences and moves beyond mainstream theories. To that end, the analysis examines the meanings and uses of civil society in the new governance by drawing on disparate literature, including governance theories, civil society studies, the history of social and political thought, political economy, and management studies. The analysis situates its arguments, in particular in the governance literature and public policy, thereby engages in a debate with present debates. This debate’s primary goal is to justify the newly emerged framework of analysis to the scientific community. However, this analysis also aims to transform how other theorists, including rational choice, new institutional, and system theories, approach meanings in political analysis. A dialogue between interpretive and other theories is possible and necessary, and interpretive researchers must seek ways to enhance this communication. This attempt is necessary considering that contemporary social and political sciences are under the dominance of naturalist sciences and quantitative analysis. Interpretive theorists must avoid isolating themselves from mainstream theories. However, another peril for interpretive theories is that they could be adopted as selfcontained research fields, whose theoretical claims can be operationalized in a similar vein to naturalist theories, which test and measure a hypothesis to explain the relationship between variables. Interpretive theory, however, is not attempting to become a theoretical approach in this way. The underlying meta-theoretical commitments of interpretive theory preclude it from becoming a self-contained theory. For this reason, the book started its analysis by clarifying those commitments (radical contingency, anti-essentialism, and nominalism). In particular, the use of Foucault’s concepts in political analysis is relatively rare. A Foucault-inspired analysis opens a new narrative in civil society studies and contributes to governance theories. The analysis does not start from norms and characteristics that are supposedly found in civil society or organizations of civil society. It does not take the concept of civil society for granted, either. Rather, the analysis here draws attention to beliefs, discourses, and technologies of power and rationalities

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that are found in the broader historical and social context, which have come to be connected to civil society and make the prevalent meanings and uses of civil society possible. The analysis, in other words, seeks to examine the conditions of the possibility of civil society. The point here is the contemporary political and scholarly discourse focus on civil society without considering civil society in connection to International Organizations and states’ policies in the global South. Such discourse cannot be grasped without the policy frameworks in areas such as good governance, democracy promotion, and a broader framework of changes affecting the state, such as new managerialism, neoliberalism, and the proliferation of governance networks under the scope of anti-statism. Such focus is not merely to extend spatial and thematic fields within which civil society is related and provide the reader a background context to support the main argument. Instead, following Michel Foucault’s lead, as I elaborated here, the context, namely those ideas and practices, is not epiphenomenal. The social and historical context affecting the state; changes in governmental rationalities in society, practices, and principles that organize associations in civil society; and their communication with state and social actors are essential. They are important because they are constitutive of beliefs and actions of civil society actors, practitioners, and scholars. These ideas, beliefs, and technologies of power also constitute practices. Taken as a whole, the analysis here goes beyond the norms and features that are allegedly found in civil society, and that allegedly explain the actions of civil society actors. This move is necessary to grasp what is civil society. An analysis of civil society discourse here is not restricted to a textual inquiry of the appearance of particular rationalities and techniques in various policy documents, toolkits, and guidelines. The analysis also reflects on the effects and implications of these policies. All in all, the most effective way to focus on the debate of contemporary civil society is to explore the shift in the interplay between governmental rationalities and theories of social science affecting both the state and civil society. Neoliberalism departed from liberalism’s image of civil society as a self-regulating sphere. The problem here is not only restricted to neoliberalism’s stress on individualism. Neoliberal political reason also departs from the concept of a substantial and enduring concept of society. The new governance’s appeal to civil society and NGOs/CSOs connects to a governmental technology of governing without governing society. Neoliberal rationalities draw on NGOs/CSOs to govern not only beyond centralized hierarchical authorities: they also serve to neoliberalism’s aim

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of governing without governing society. Once neoliberal rationalities dismissed the idea of a self-regulating society, state and international agencies were required to govern NGOs/CSOs. Just like neoliberal rationalities focused on conducting individuals’ desires and skills, they also focused on conducting NGOs’ actions and capacities. A decentered approach to governance reflects upon the change in the state by referring to neoliberal policies, new public management reforms, and managerialism. Thus, it does not deal with state forms and does not examine a change from one state form to another. Instead, it examines the state’s changes by focusing on governmental rationalities and technologies that make the state and the exercise of its power possible in the first place. This focus attempts to define the state, not on moral concerns, and an organizational form separate from society. It defines on the grounds of the exercise of political power’s practical effects. To that end, it inquires theories and practices that various actors mobilize in governing the state and its population. Extending the analytical framework of governmentality creates additional dilemmas and theoretical issues. Foucault traced the genealogy of the governmental rationalities and technologies to the ancient civilizations: He picked the pastoral power from the ancient Mediterranean cultures moving through the medieval Christian doctrines to the earlier modern state in Europe, and eventually to the emergence of liberal and neoliberal government. His focus was, in particular, on Britain, Germany, and France. It is not sufficient, however, to characterize such focus as to be merely nation-centered. He also omitted important themes. He did not reflect on the relationship between government by and of empires, colonialization, and developmental thinking prevailing in human sciences in the nineteenth century. Such thinking influenced European empires’ treatment of their colonies and involved evolving human communities from one stage to another, starting from a savage stage and evolving toward agricultural and industrial societies. Liberalism was paralleled by, if not partly based on, the modern thought’s scientific belief in society’s image constituted by self-regulating spheres. A milestone of such belief reflected on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: it characterized the newly emerging market relations as selfregulated and constituted by individuals’ free choices. Markets function most effectively; this argument goes, when the state does not intervene into the self-regulating mechanism inherent to market relations.

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The state’s function here is to provide the conditions of properly functioning relations by securing the territories of the state and protecting the property rights and contracts made between free agents. This liberal reasoning claimed that self-regulating market relations without the state’s disciplinary control would best serve a given population’s common good. Liberalism understood from an account of political economy, thus brought a change in art of government. Government of the state and of its population relied on individual liberties and freedoms. Nonetheless, this did not mean that the state withdrew from governing society. Liberal governmental rationalities shifted their attention to regulating the conditions required for market relations. This shift also implied that liberal government should draw upon new knowledge that is different from knowledge and technologies of power employed under disciplinary control. Whereas disciplinary control needed detailed gathering and processing information about each community member, the liberal government required a more theoretical and abstract knowledge of society. Political economy offered such knowledge. It also left a legacy of thinking about the social world as constituted by separate and selfregulating spheres. Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers reflected on labor division in society brought by modernity, industrial and scientific revolutions, and production relation changes. The state was separated from civil society, but so was civil society from the state. Liberal government also adopted from scientific theories a developmental explanation for societies’ progress. Those societies that could not become civilized and remained savage communities (read: those that could not establish civil society) could not govern their affairs to catch up with Western states’ development. This understanding later continued under political development programs, organized by the Western countries’ political intervention and the international agencies, that target the economic development of the global South and poverty reduction in the developing world. Liberal and neoliberal rationalities of government favor governing societies through non-state organizations because liberal rationalities find partisanship a threat to the order and stability achieved under the liberal order. Liberalism wishes to dislocate partisanship: It considered promoting working class’ interests by unions and political parties as threats to liberal governments. This tendency of liberal government to dismiss partisanship is also present in the new governance, both in its

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neoliberal and network governance form. Whether organized by the invisible hand of the market relations or by networks, the new governance is at odds with partisan politics. In this light, many critical authors argue that the new governance reforms abandon politics, political deliberation, and political conflict by restructuring the public sector institutions as techno-administrative entities and in corporate organizations’ image. A governmental strategy to invoke civil society organizations as the third sector is pertinent with liberal government’s tendency to isolate or dismiss partisan politics. Neoliberal policies challenged the state’s role in providing the public and social goods while targeting the hierarchical and centralized bureaucratic structures established in the post-World War II era. These policies opened up a space for non-state actors in governance. Civil society actors and NGOs were appealing for governmental purposes, as this act to withdraw the public institutions from the provision of services such as health and education required new actors who are not driven by the incentive of profit-making and who are motivated with promoting the common good. Neoliberal governance mobilized neoclassical economics and rational choice theories. Several implications of incorporating civil society organizations into governance processes can be outlined. First, the strategy of involving NGOs in governance entails an understanding of a specific type of state/society relationship. Second, the procedures and formal structures through which NGOs have been integrated into the institutional settings of governance foster new civil society subjects who are willing and able to participate in governance or in a vision of governing without governing society. Third, civil society engagement in governance often elicits the professionalization of NGOs and their adaptation to managerialism. Fourth, the functional differentiation between the state, the market, and civil society is blurred at an organizational level because of their coupling through managerialism. The new governance runs counter to the traditional approaches of civil society. It requires civil society actors, i.e., CSOs, that are compatible with the technocratic and managerial style of decision-making. However, this does not mean that political institutions are by nature “evil” because they distort a well-functioning civil society or that CSOs are mere orbits of political power. Both political and civil society actors are subject to the same social process, which de-configures and reconfigures the boundaries between them under the new governance and managerial thinking. If

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neoliberal governance and managerialism are the “new reality,” the participation of civil society in governance might be considered a “false activity” because such participation does not result in progressive social change and, in fact, reinforces the status quo. Still, this book aims not to convince the reader that all public funding of CSOs is useless and wrong and should be suspended. Nor does it imply that all actions of CSOs are meaningless and that NGOs should be eliminated. Governments and donor institutions might use the funding to create new venues for their programs and ideological projects, and some CSOs might be willing to be instruments of political institutions to realize their goals. However, we need to address the entangled processes of technocratic policymaking and managerialism that now inform, restrict, and constitute political institutions and civil society.

Index

B Butler, Judith, 14, 66, 70–72

C Civil society, 1–14, 19–23, 25–35, 37, 41–50, 53–56, 58–60, 65–81, 85–91, 93, 94, 96–103, 107–113, 116–127, 131–134, 136–138, 140–144, 146–149, 153–165, 167–169, 174, 181–204, 209–211, 213–215 Coupling, 108, 132, 134, 137, 138, 141–143, 148, 214

D Decentered approach, 8, 9, 11, 12, 31, 33, 34, 68, 79, 86, 99, 101–103, 142, 143, 154, 181, 212 Deliberative democracy, 161, 168 Democracy, 2–4, 29, 49, 50, 53, 54, 66, 67, 78, 87, 89–91, 112, 131, 142, 157, 159–161, 169,

171–173, 181–183, 190, 191, 195, 198, 201, 203, 211 Discourse, 3–6, 8–10, 12, 14, 19–21, 23–26, 28–35, 37, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51, 55, 65–76, 78–81, 86–89, 91, 92, 94, 97–100, 102, 103, 107, 116, 118, 120, 125, 137, 146–148, 154–156, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 167, 181, 183–186, 189, 190, 192–195, 198, 202–204, 209–211

E European governance, 14, 37, 75, 76, 123, 126, 181–188, 190, 193, 198, 203

F Foucault, Michel, 6–8, 11–14, 23, 26, 27, 32, 34–37, 41, 43–49, 51–53, 57, 60, 65–67, 70, 75, 80, 94, 100, 101, 103, 109–112,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. Kutay, NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71862-6

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INDEX

114–116, 118, 122, 137, 139, 140, 144, 163, 210–212

G Global governance, 6, 13, 25, 26, 37, 60, 76, 79, 86, 91, 99, 102, 124, 135, 153, 154, 156, 160, 165, 166, 168–175 Governance, 2–14, 19–21, 23, 25, 26, 28–37, 41–43, 45–47, 49, 50, 54–56, 59, 60, 66–78, 81, 85–89, 91–97, 99–103, 107–109, 111, 113, 116, 118–127, 131–149, 154–167, 169–175, 181, 182, 184–188, 190–193, 195–203, 209–215 Governmentality, 14, 34–37, 46, 52, 60, 99–102, 107–109, 111–115, 117, 126, 127, 140, 148, 212 Gramsci, Antoni, 117, 118, 163

H Habermas, Jurgen, 2, 22, 43, 55, 56, 59, 73, 89, 93, 131, 138, 141, 143, 156, 158, 160, 161, 163, 168, 169, 171, 172, 184, 185, 201 Hegel, G.W.F., 11, 12, 47, 48, 77

I Interpretive approach, 4, 11, 14, 20, 21, 23–28, 31, 36, 65, 70, 140, 181, 186, 209, 210

L Laclau, Ernesto, 5, 19, 23, 24, 69, 74 Legitimacy, 3, 9, 29, 30, 44, 45, 49, 55, 56, 75, 76, 78, 88, 89, 96, 101, 110, 146, 153, 154,

157, 158, 160, 163–168, 173, 181–184, 187–189, 198–202 Liberalism, 13, 44, 46, 47, 53, 54, 58, 60, 86, 95, 108, 111–113, 117, 140, 195, 197, 211–213 M Managerialism, 9, 10, 34, 78, 99, 107, 109, 116, 119–122, 124, 125, 127, 132–140, 142, 143, 145–148, 162, 164, 174, 201, 202, 211, 212, 214, 215 Markets, 6–9, 13, 14, 28, 30, 37, 42, 45, 46, 48, 50, 53, 55, 57, 58, 60, 73, 76, 77, 88, 91, 92, 95–98, 101, 103, 108, 112, 113, 118, 132, 136–140, 142, 143, 148, 156, 158, 159, 168, 170–173, 184, 185, 197, 201, 209, 212–214 Mouffe, Chantal, 5, 19, 23, 24, 44, 69, 74, 169, 196 N Naturalism, 24, 210 Neoliberalism, 3, 8, 13, 19, 34, 41, 43, 44, 47, 48, 50, 56–61, 86, 87, 91, 92, 95, 102, 103, 112, 113, 125, 148, 155, 156, 162, 164, 172, 175, 197, 202, 211 New institutionalism, 7, 89, 96, 107 New public management (NPM), 116, 122, 133, 134, 136, 139, 148, 149, 212 Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 1, 2, 4–6, 8–10, 12–14, 21, 22, 26, 28–34, 42, 43, 47, 48, 54, 55, 59–61, 65–81, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91–94, 97–103, 108, 109, 113, 116–127, 132–138, 141, 143, 144, 146, 147,

INDEX

149, 157, 162, 164, 165, 171, 181–187, 189, 190, 192, 193, 195–197, 199, 201–204, 211, 212, 214, 215 P Participation, 2, 3, 9, 23, 30, 34, 49, 66, 67, 72, 73, 76, 78–80, 89–95, 97–100, 102, 116, 122, 125, 127, 138, 148, 149, 153–155, 157, 159, 160, 162, 165, 167, 172, 175, 181–184, 187, 189–194, 196–203, 215 Participatory democracy, 9, 14, 28, 72, 75, 80, 93, 158, 160, 166, 181, 183, 190–192, 197–200, 202, 203 Performativity, 14, 66, 69–72, 74 Positivism, 20, 154, 155 Post-structuralism, 24, 36 Power, 6–8, 11–14, 20, 27, 29, 33–36, 41–46, 49–53, 56, 57, 60, 65, 66, 68, 70, 76, 78, 80, 81, 89, 92, 93, 99–103, 109–112, 114, 115, 117–119, 122, 123, 127, 132, 133, 136, 140, 141, 143, 144, 147, 148, 154, 155, 158, 162, 163, 165–167, 169–172, 174, 185, 190, 191, 195, 199, 200, 202, 210–214 Public sphere, 2, 14, 22, 30, 31, 48, 89, 101, 141, 153–156, 160, 164–175, 184, 185, 195, 203

219

R Rational choice, 7, 34, 53, 67, 68, 86, 87, 136, 187

S Social capital, 3, 8, 9, 25, 45, 46, 55, 56, 66, 88, 89, 91, 101, 107, 116, 158, 160, 203 Society, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9–14, 21, 22, 28, 29, 31–34, 36, 41–48, 51, 53, 55–61, 66, 67, 73, 86–88, 90–92, 94–97, 100–103, 111– 115, 117–119, 122, 131–135, 138–141, 144, 146, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161, 162, 170, 201, 211–214 Speech act, 14, 26, 33, 66–71, 74, 79, 80, 111 State, 1–4, 6, 7, 9–13, 19–23, 28–31, 33–35, 37, 41–61, 67, 72–78, 85–95, 98–103, 108–118, 122, 124, 125, 127, 131, 132, 134– 144, 148, 156–161, 165–174, 182, 184, 188, 191, 201, 202, 209, 211–214

T Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1, 11, 20, 21, 30, 43, 45, 47, 48, 54, 55, 67, 71, 77, 78, 89, 131, 157, 159