Taking stock of civil-society development in post-communist Europe: Evidence from the Czech Republic

This article contributes to a growing literature critiquing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as civil society in post-communist Europe. From the perspective of the Czech environmental movement, although over a decade of foreign assistance and know-how transfer has resulted in a tier of professional NGOs that have obtained political influence at the elite level, these organizations have made little progress in rooting themselves in society at large. This gives rise to the claim that what exists today are NGOs without civil society. It is argued that, in light of the withdrawal of large American donors since May 2004 and EU accession, NGOs need to make links with the enmeshed community-based organizations that have emerged in recent years and focus much more on fund-raising and developing sustainable strategies for their future development. Fifteen years after communism collapsed, it is time to take stock of what has evolved under the banner of civil society, particularly in a state where the concept has been fiercely debated. At a theoretical level, it is argued that, in order to assess the capacity of NGOs to fulfil the democratic functions of civil society, we need first to acknowledge the ideological rationale that has dictated their development. It is only by returning to a more normative understanding of the concept of civil society that we gain a critical insight into the apparent disconnection between NGOs and society and their limited capacity to mobilize popular support. Keywords: civil societynon-governmental organizationsCzech Republicenvironmentdemocratization Notes 1. Mary Kaldor and Ivan Vejvoda, Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe (London: Pinter, 1999) ; Andrew T. Green and Carol Skalnik Leff, 'The Quality of Democracy; Mass-Elite Linkages in the Czech Republic', Democratization, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1997), pp. 63–87. 2. V. Tismaneanu (ed. ), In Search of Civil Society (New York: Routledge, 1990). 3. Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe (New York: Times Books, 1990). 4. The most concise depiction of the liberal view of civil society is offered by Larry Diamond, 'Rethinking Civil Society: Towards Democratic Consolidation', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1996), pp. 3–17. 5. For an overview of the aid provided for civil-society development by the big donors, see Thomas Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999). 6. T. Anderson and J. Stuart, The 2003 NGO Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Washington, DC: USAID Office of Democracy, Governance and Social Transparency, 2004). 7. Brian Doherty, Ideas and Actions in the Green Movement (London: Routledge, 2002). 8. Sarah L. Henderson, 'Selling Civil Society: Western Aid and Nongovernmental Organization Sector in Russia', Comparative political Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2002), p. 48. 9. See P. Schmitter and G. O'Donnell, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions from Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). 10. M. Kundrata, 'Czechoslovakia', in D. Fisher, C. Davis, A. Juras and V. Pavlovic (eds), Civil Society and the Environment in Central and Eastern Europe (London: Ecological Studies Institute, 1992), pp. 31–50. 11. Dahrendorf (note 3). 12. For a concise overview of the notion of civil society held by donors, see T. Carothers and M. Ottaway, 'The Burgeoning World of Civil society Aid', in M. Ottaway and T. Carothers (eds), Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2000). For an exposition of this conceptualization of democracy, see Schmitter and O'Donnell (note 9), J. Linz and A. Stepan, 'Towards Consolidated Democracies', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2 (April 1996), pp. 14–22, G. Di Palma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990). 13. Several academic analyses seemed to endorse this focus in both their methodological approach and their conclusions. See, in particular, Green and Skalnick Leff (note 1) ; Brian Slocock, 'The Paradoxes of Environmental Policy in Eastern Europe: The Dynamics of Policy-Making in the Czech Republic', Environmental Politics, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1996), pp. 501–21; Nick Manning, 'Patterns of Environmental Movements in Eastern Europe', Environmental Politics, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1998), pp. 100–134. 14. For a succinct overview of the objectives and rationale behind donor finding of civil society, see T. Carothers, 'The End of the Transition Paradigm', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2002), pp. 6–7. 15. J. Pearce and J. Howell, Civil Society and Development (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), p. 17. 16. Diamond (note 4), pp. 3–4 17. Linz and Stepan (note 12). 18. J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 176. 19. Aleksander Smolar, 'Civil Society after Communism: From Opposition to Atomization', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1996), pp. 24–38. 20. Ibid. , p. 28 21. The extent to which western environmental movements have combined strategies and retained a presence at both elite and societal level is described by M. Diani and P. Donati, 'Organisational Change in Western European Environmental Groups: A Framework for Analysis', Environmental Politics, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1999), pp. 13–34. For a broader overview of the evolution of western movements, see Doherty (note 7) and C. Rootes (ed. ), Environmental Protest in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 22. See C. Hann, 'Introduction', in C. Hann and E. Dunn (eds), Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (London: Routledge, 1996) ; V. Bunce, 'Comparative Democratization: Big and Bounded Generalizations. ' Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 33, Nos. 6/7 (2000), pp. 703–734. 23. Petr Kopecky and Cas Mudde (eds), Uncivil Society? Contentious Politics in Post-Communist Europe (London: Routledge, 2003). 24. Gordon White, 'Civil Society, Democratization and |Development (1): Clearing the Analytical Ground', Democratization, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1994), pp. 379–95. 25. See Marc Morje Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) ; Bill Lomax, 'The Strange Death of 'Civil Society' in Post-communist Hungary', Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1997), pp. 41–63; Green and Skalnik Leff (note 1) ; Ferenc Miszlivetz, 'Participation and Transition: Can the Civil Society Project Survive in Hungary? ', Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol. 13, No. 1 (1997), pp. 27–40, C. Tempest, 'Myths from Eastern Europe and the Legend of the West', Democratization, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1997), pp. 132–43. 26. Miszlivetz (note 25), p. 27. 27. See in particular, J. Wedel, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989–1998 (New York: St Martin's Press) ; Henderson (note 8) ; B. A. Cellarius and C. Staddon, 'Environmental Nongovernmental Organisations, Civil Society and Democratization in Bulgaria', East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2002), pp. 182–222; S. Sampson 'The Social Life of Projects', in Hann and Dunn (note 22) ; K. F. F. Quigley, 'Lofty Goals, Modest Results: Assisting Civil Society in Eastern Europe', in Ottaway and Carothers (note 12), pp. 191–216. 28. There is huge literature analysing the impact of NGOs and western assistance in Central Asia, the FSU and the Balkans. See, for example, R. Mandel, 'Seeding Civil Society', in C. M. Hann, Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 279–96; Roberto Belloni, 'Building Civil Society in Bosnia- Herzegovina' (Human Rights Working Paper No. 2, January 2000) ; S. Sali-Terzic, 'Civil Society', in Z. Papic et al. (eds), International Support Policies to South-East European Countries: Lessons not Learned in B-H (Sarajevo: Muller, 2002) ; D. Petrescu, 'Civil Society in Romania: From Donor Supply to Citizen Demand', in Ottaway and Carothers (note 12), pp. 217–42. 29. Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad (note 5). 30. See Hann, 'Introduction' (note 22), p. 2 31. Jonah D. Levy, Tocqueville's Revenge: State, Society and Economy in Contemporary France (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) ; Peter A. Hall, 'Social Capital in Britain', British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 29, No. 3 (1999), pp. 417–61. 32. This notion of civil society draws heavily on New Social Movement theory. See A. Melucci, 'The Symbolic Challenge of Contemporary Movements', Social Research, Vol. 52, No. 4 (1985), pp. 789–815. 33. See J. Keane (ed. ), Civil Society and the State (London: Verso, 1988). 34. See note 28. 35. The conclusions about the Czech environmental movement are based on extensive qualitative interviews with activists in both large mainstream organizations and small local groups during the period 1994–2002. In total activists from over 40 organizations were interviewed on several occasions during the research period. 36. For a discussion on the role of environmentalists at the time of communism's collapse, see Adam Fagan, Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic: The Environmental Movement in the Transition Process (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2004), pp. 62–73; Andrew Tickle and Josef Vavrousek, 'Environmental Politics in the Former Czechoslovakia', in Andrew Tickle and Ian Welsh (eds), Environment and Society in Eastern Europe (Harlow: Longman, 1998), pp. 114–18; Michael Waller and Frances Millard, 'Environmental Politics in Eastern Europe', Environmental Politics Vol. 1, No. 2 (1992), pp. 159–85. 37. Tickle and Vavrousek (note 36), p. 120 38. Fagan (note 36), pp. 85–8. 39. Adam Fagan and Petr Jehlicka, 'Contours of the Czech Environmental Movement: a Comparative Analysis of Hnuti Duha (Rainbow Movement) and Jihoceske Matky (South Bohemian Mothers) ', Environmental Politics, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2003), pp. 49–70; Fagan (note 36). 40. This claim is made on the basis of an editorial published 22 June 2003 in Lidove Noviny, in which the role of the 'community of environmental NGOs' was appraised in terms of public respect and political access. Opinion poll surveys carried out during 2002 by the Institute of Sociology also endorsed a positive view amongst citizens regarding environmental NGOs and their political role. 41. The press secretary is Karolina Silova and the policy adviser is Daniel Vondrous, a stalwart activist in FoE-CR from the 1990s. 42. The executive director of Greenpeace CR, Jiri Tutter is regularly quoted in the Czech press regarding the safety of the controversial Temelin nuclear plant, and has given evidence to the state prosecutor. Dan Vondrous, despite his capacity as adviser to the minister, continues to speak out on behalf of FoE-CR on a variety of high profile campaigns. 43. See Adam Fagin and Petr Jehlicka, 'Sustainable Development in the Czech Republic: a Doomed Process? ', Environmental Politics, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1998), pp. 113–28. 44. Organizations interviewed in November 2003 include, Chceme Metro, Nechceme Rychlodrahu ('We want trains, not the expressway'), Optim-EKO, Park Klarov, Pro Nebusice ('For Nebusice'), Flora, SDR - Obcanska Iniciativa Pankrace (Citizens of Pankrac Initiative), CSOP Troja, Oziveni Bohemian Greenways, Dvojka Sobe, Kyjsky Obcansky Klub, Zdravy Zivot, Obcanske Sdruzeni pratele Hendlova Dvora. 45. Information obtained from SOS Praha, the network organization established in May 1998 to coordinate the handful of protest organizations that were emerging in response to the ring-road construction. 46. For example, the organization Optim Eko is run by several retired volunteers. 47. SOS Praha is an initiative originally established in 1998 to co-ordinate local grass-roots activism within the Prague municipality. 48. Interview with Jaromir Strejcek, Chceme Metro, November 2003. This view was also expressed by Sona Dederova, Optim Eko and Marie Janouskova, SDR, and endorsed by Marie Petrova (SOS Praha), November 2003. 49. Interviews with Vojtech Kotecky, FoE-CR, May 2002, November 2003. 50. Diani and Donati (note 21). 51. This claim is based on research conducted in May 1999 and September 2000, in which activists from the Olomouc, Tabor and Usti chapters of the organization. Respondents wished to remain anonymous. 52. The research was carried out during the period February 2001–November 2002 and coincided with the development of new waste legislation. The NGOs referred to were Hnuti Duha (FoE-CR), Greenpeace and Deti Zeme. The small local community-based organizations that worked at the time on waste related issues were Flora and Optim-Eko. 53. The Brno branch of FoE-CR publicly supported the campaign of the local NGO Nesehnuti Duha to resist a controversial road traffic plan proposed by the municipality. But FoE did not participate in the protests directly. 54. Interview with Jaromir Strejcek, Chceme Metro, 4 November 2003. 55. Information on Arnika was obtained from two interviews with Lenka Maskova (28 September 2001; 6 November 2002). 56. For example, DANCEE, Danish Environmental Protection Agency, HCWH, Healthcare without Harm, Jennifer Altman Foundation (US), Mitchell Kapor foundation (US). 57. Rootes (note 21) ; Doherty (note 7). 58. Donations from foreign organizations, charities and foundations typically constitute over 90 per cent of an ENGOs annual budget. This has remained constant since the early 1990s. Figures published in annual reports can often be deceptive in the sense that Czech law requires foreign organizations operating in the country to be registered as a local organization. Thus, many seemingly 'local' operatives are merely intermediaries for foreign donors. A good example of this is the VIA foundation which provides funding for a host of NGOs but merely distributes foreign donations. 59. This view was expressed by various activists during the mid/late 1990s, when there was a general fear amongst NGOs of engaging with any direct action campaigns. 60. Hnuti Duha advertise in the national press for their top posts. In an advert placed in March 2002 (Lidove noviny), a specific expertise in 'project application forms' was stated as an essential skill. 61. Interview with Hana Pernicova, Nadace VIA, November 2002. 62. This claim is based on discussions with Hana Pernicova (Nadace Via), who felt that lack of local fund-raising expertise was 'one of the greatest obstacles to NGO sustainability'. 63. Interview with Lenka Maskova (Arnika), 6 November 2002. 64. Interviews were conducted with representatives from all of these foundations during September 2001. All expressed similar concerns about the value of grant schemes and the need to establish something different prior to their withdrawal. 65. For example, Soros, C. S. Mott, Rockerfeller Brothers 66. Known as NROS – 'nadace rozvoje obcanske spolecnosti'. 67. Interviews with Hana Pernicova, Director of Nadace (organization) VIA, September 2002, Novemeber 2003. Hana Silhanova (NROS), November 2003. 68. Interview with executive director of a key local foundation, Prague, September 2004. 69. For example, Care International. 70. For example, GAIA, a long-established eco-feminist organization has folded. 71. Interview with employees of both Hnuti Duha (Brno) and Arnika who wished to remain anonymous (November 2002). 72. Interview with Filip Fuchs, Nesehnuti Duha, 5 November, 2002. 73. Interview with Hana Pernicova, Nadace VIA, October, 2004. 74. The exception being the Usti nad Labem-based organization Pratele prirody (Friends of Nature), which now is almost entirely funded by local members and private sources. The change has involved a re-orientation away from national campaigns, towards community issues and local agendas. 75. Typically annual membership is 150 crowns (equivalent to about £3 or US6). 76. This is based on the information obtained from the annual reports of FoE-CR, Deti Zeme, Arnika and Nesehnuti, EKO Forum, and Tereza, together with information received in response to interview questions appertaining to funding and membership, conducted during the period 1994–2003. 77. The only ENGO that has used these techniques is Greenpeace CR which was able to rely on Austrian help to do so. 78. In late 2003, respondents from the large NGOs (Arnika, FoE-CR, Greenpeace, Deti Zeme) still claimed that levels of disposable income amongst Czech citizens negated the value of investing in fund-raising. 79. T. Anderson and J. Stuart (eds), The 2003 NGO Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia (USAID, 2004), p. 66. 80. For example, FoE-CR lists as its 'partners' and sources of revenue, NROS (EU Money), the EU, Nadace VIA (US trusts), Nadace Partnerstvi (EU derived), The Netherlands Embassy, The Nando Peretti Foundation and a host of other small foundations. 81. For a full discussion on the post-communist history of the Czech Green Party, see Fagan (note 36), pp. 162–5, and Petr Jehlicka and Tomas Kostelecky, 'Czech Greens in the 2002 General Election: a New Lease of Life? ', Environmental Politics, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2003), pp. 133–9. 82. Dalibor Strasky was an adviser to Libor Ambrosek, environmental minister from 2002. 83. The Green Party put up candidates in all 13 regional assemblies in November 2004. They failed to secure a single seat. 84. For example, Jana Drapalova, spokesperson in the party for regional development, is a respected community activist from Brno. 85. This was certainly the viewpoint expressed by Petr Stepanek, who saw the future of the party in terms of community politics. (Interview, November 2002). 86. See for example Mandel (note 28), Sampson (note 27). 87. Rootes (note 21).