Critical friend or absent partner? Institutional and organisational barriers to the development of regional civil society

Abstract

The role of civil society in enhancing the quality of democracy has become institutionalised within many developed states. However, within states where programmes of regionalisation, federalisation or devolution are being implemented, how does an already institutionalised civil society respond to new arrangements of governance? This paper demonstrates that the historical institutional and organisational civil society context of newly devolving or regionalising areas inhibits the growth of strong civil society in those areas. It detects a limiting effect on the development of effective policy-making and scrutiny functions, and a prolonged period of time taken to develop effective civil society mechanisms at a territorial level. It concludes that civil society development in developed, regionalising contexts is vulnerable to strong, centralised institutions, and that a lack of civil society organisational engagement to the regionalisation of government ultimately fosters a weakness in the resulting regional civil society.