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Research Articles
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Many scholars postulated that the general
discontent of African peoples, largely
manifest in military activity, indicated the
presence of a space available for civic participation.
Essentially, this argument was
predicated on the thesis that repression
of civic expression by years of colonial and
authoritarian rulers had not destroyed the
space available for expression, but rather
translated the means of this expression
into primarily militaristic methods. The protection
of this space, therefore, would allow
for civic expression in the form of civil
society, which would in turn precipitate
democratic reforms (Harbeson, Rothchild,
Chazan, Young 1994).
This continued examination has yielded
a variety of complementary and contrasting
concepts; however, virtually all of the
discourse regarding civic expression in Africa
has occurred within the ‘state-society’
perspective that has become theoretical
baggage carried by the term civil society.
This perspective has provided significant
contribution towards understanding the
possible avenues for civic expression in areas
where the state has held the capacity
to influence the lives of daily citizens. Due
to its popularity, civil society theory has often
been regarded as the primary means
through which theorists examine localized,
civic action in Africa. However, the state formation
process and the Eurocentric legacies
of civil society theory that presupposes
state capacity have combined to effectively
cripple our current understanding of civic
expression in those areas on the continent
where state capacity does not exist, such
as the Eastern DRC, Somalia, or the Darfur
region of Sudan.
The subsequent inadequacy of civil society
literature in areas that lack state capacity
and authority becomes manifest in two
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main ways. First, rather than acknowledging
the explicit and exclusive relationship
between local civic actors and international
institutions and organizations (the
collective international community), civil
society theorists have co-opted the global
into existing civil society theory, thus creating
a “transnational” or “global civil-society”
(Florini 2000; Ferguson 2006; Von
Rooy 2004; Friedman 2005; Karns 2004;
Oyugi 2004; Richter, Berking and Muller-
Schimd 2006; Thorn 2006). This perspective
maintains the state-society dichotomy,
thus understating the flows of power that
occur between local and global non-state
elements. Second, the merging of local and
global civic elements has resulted in NGOs
and international organizations being treated
as synonymous with civil society. This
conceptualization is problematic, because
it fails to acknowledge that NGOs often do
not reflect any localized civic will or interest.
Especially concerning areas of minimal
state capacity, scholars must maintain the
term civil society for localized interests,
rather than allowing one non-state element
(NGOs) to speak for and represent a very
different non-state element (localized civic
action). In these areas, a distinction from
state entities is not particularly useful in
understanding political dynamics, however
a distinction between local civic action and
global non-state intervention will provide a
more empirically sound concept of political
relationships and civic development capacity.
In order to understand the theoretical
means through which certain states in Africa
have lost the ability to explicitly influence
their internal populations, we must examine
the evolution of sovereignty as a concept.
This evolution largely discredits the
supremacy of the state-society perspective
in African civil society literature, since it has
effectively removed sovereignty from state