Search Results

This chapter focuses on the influence that the Black Power movement and rise of employment discrimination litigation had on the Vulcan Society and Black firefighters across the country. The dialectical relationships between the civil rights and Black Power movements and the Vulcan Society’s old and new guard eventually transformed the organization and its objectives and helped facilitate the IABPFF, a national Black caucus group formed to combat discrimination and increase Black representation in — and community control of — urban fire departments. Both the IABPFF and the Vulcan Society embraced “separatism without separation,” and used their “outsider status within a white-dominated institution,” as well as shifts in employment discrimination case law, to “reveal the inner workings of institutional racism” within the FDNY and urban fire departments more generally. This shift was instrumental in the fight to establish legal remedies to address institutionalized racism and its impact on the racial composition of urban fire departments and became the primary method used by the Vulcan Society and the IABPFF and its local affiliates to make fire departments more representative of and responsive to the people and communities they served

The concept of Society has a history, a historical function within a determinate context, in a particular part of the world. This chapter explores the implications of one of the basic concepts, that of Society, precisely because the term carries with it a freight of connotations of which one remains largely unconscious. The concept of Society, seen as a whole, a totality, a system, poses its own problems. The sense of Society—the one that interests social scientist—beyond the association of those infused with the Holy Spirit, is Civil Society. This study also examines reasons that make the concept of Society so difficult to apply in the very different morphologies of non-Western civilizational systems and cultural orders. The attempt to understand what humans do and conceive economically, politically, socially, cognitively, and emotionally all at once is always a hallmark of anthropology, and that goal remains a usable and productive program.

This chapter describes Octave Chanute's search for accomplishments beyond a successful career. While the engineering profession gave him administrative experience, personal contacts, and status, he strived for higher goals and wanted to emulate European civil engineers, who did not just design public works but sought new challenges and possessed the energy to fight for innovation. Envisioning his career, Chanute wanted freedom to realize his personal capabilities. He wished to solve problems, to attract clients who would seek his advice as the authoritative voice on special projects, and to advise in lawsuits as an expert engineering witness. Chanute also sought recognition and respect from his peers. The chapter details Chanute's membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers; his involvement in the evolution of New York City's urban transit system; his interest in aeronautics; and his life as an independent consulting engineer.

The democratic quality of civil society input cannot be deduced from the analysis of their participation in EU governance. Rather, it is necessary to know whom they represent. The chapter scrutinizes the NGOs’ claim that they function as transmission belts between citizens and EU decision-makers. NGOs have benefitted from the turn to participatory governance; they have received support, funding, and often a privileged access to the European Commission. This did not make them dependent but turned them into EU minded actors. Based on the parameters of organizational theory (formal decision-making structures, institutionalization, specialization, resources, demography, and location) the authors demonstrate that EU-level NGOs are well positioned to hold their ground in the competition with other interest groups. But the flip side of the coin is that the democratic participation at the grassroots level is negatively affected.

Over the years, the European Commission has intensified cooperation with social actors. This chapter gives an account of the shifting aims and patterns of civil society consultations and of newly established procedures and instruments. The authors analyze the dynamic evolution of the Commission’s consultation regime in terms of principles and norms, which reflect the concept of participative and/or deliberative democracy. They are therefore able to uncover qualitative changes from “generation” to “generation” and evaluate each generation according to their goals, the degree of commitment, formalization, area of application, addressees and accessibility. The chapter gives a differentiated picture that draws attention to general characteristics but also to the different ways individual Directorate-Generals respond to the specific needs of their policy field. It shows that the Commission has further developed the practice of consultation mainly in order to achieve (not quite successfully) classic democratic principles of representativeness, transparency and inclusiveness.

Hegel represents the apotheosis of the bourgeois world of early modernity in its confidence and optimism. His image of civil society, or burgerliche Gesellschaft, was the site of the rule of law, the market economy, and a world governed by individual self-interest, and free “subjectivity.” Hegel’s historical interpretation of modern civil society drew on the works of modern secular thinkers like David Hume and Adam Smith, but he also traced the modern bourgeois world back to Christianity, with its belief in the freedom and dignity of the individual. He gave modernity a theological interpretation that was furiously resisted by Marx and later Nietzsche. Hegel anticipated many of the problems of the modern marketplace, especially poverty and the creation of a permanently unemployed underclass, but this did not stop him from regarding the modern world as the pinnacle of world history.

Using theoretical framework expounded by Evans in Chapter 1, this chapter examines how a classic developmental state – South Korea – has, in the wake of the 1997-8 Asian financial crisis, transformed itself from an ailing crony state into a participatory democracy through simultaneously reinvigorating civil society, restoring markets, and strengthening the role of the state. These processes have further empowered the chaebols (large diversified family-owned conglomerates), while democratization has weakened the foundations of a developmental state based on authoritarianism and repression of civil society. This case study provides a helpful comparative model for Hong Kong.

This chapter makes the case for Ferguson as a partisan for civilisation and sees him not as a critic of modern commercial society, but rather as someone deeply aware of its fragility. The benefits of civilisation are wealth and freedom, and Ferguson defends both of them. The chapter argues that Ferguson’s theory of the evolution of nations and their institutions sits alongside his attempt to educate the virtuous gentlemen necessary to make the right decisions to maintain the benefits of wealthy and free societies. Ferguson’s theory of corruption is not nostalgic republicanism, but rather a clear-eyed analysis of the present situation in Hanoverian Britain.

The second chapter gives an account of how and why the ideas of civil society participation and participatory democracy became prominent in the EU. In less than a decade, actors which previously were classified as interest groups became the beacon of hope for democracy, and stakeholder governance began to compete with the deepening of representative democracy. The author employs John W. Kingdon’s multiple stream approach and thus arrives at a sound theoretical explanation why the principle of participatory democracy was institutionalized and why in the course of implementation it was reduced to a concept of participatory governance. She traces the political discussion of the concept from the beginning of the century to its practical application and explicates how the conflicting positions of relevant actors finally converged.

The last chapter addresses the overarching question of the book, that is, whether civil society participation in EU policy-making furthers participative democratic governance. Based on the thorough analysis of the previous empirical chapters, the author comes to a well-balanced though disillusioning conclusion: Despite open consultations and the support given to NGOs, civil society participation achieved little to redress imbalances in the presentation of social interests and did not close the gap in core-periphery interest representation. The engagement of civil society organizations did also not reverse the limited public awareness of EU politics, the distance to the citizens, and the lack of public accountability. More participatory consultations further pluralism in EU lobbying but also have side-effects with dubious democratic implications by favoring centralization and lending legitimacy to unelected bodies.

When it comes to constitution-writing, the model developed in the Atlantic revolution remains the dominant template in the world. Drawn from the titles of the US Constitution of 1787, the acronym LEJFARC summarizes the template, with variations on presidential/parliamentary system, mono- or bicameralism, judicial review, and federalism. There is no other template available, but the concept of Civil Society (CS) provides a counter model where the constitution in examined from the bottom up, focusing on anti-subordination review options for the citizen and the sub-national groups, and on ways to prevent those who are “in” government to keep “out” those who are outside it.

Chapter 4 introduces the primary, secondary, and administrative organs of both CARICOM and the OECS. It examines their natures, competences, and decision-making processes. It contrasts the qualified unanimity voting rules required for decisions in the supreme organs of both organizations, with the qualified majority voting allowed for CARICOM’s secondary organs. It briefly analyses the potential of CARICOM’s Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians and the Charter of Civil Society, and of the OECS Assembly and Commission. It suggests that these more representative bodies, and the human rights enshrined in the Charter, could serve to enhance both regional organizations by introducing democratic and rights-focused discourses.

This chapter provides a concise history of the Greek Orthodox Church in the 19th century and an interpretative approach to the problem of the emergence of autocephalous churches in Southeastern Europe. It deals with the procedures of the recognition of the Greek Church on behalf the Ecumenical Patriarchate as well as on the subjugation of the Church to the State. The former should be understood as an endeavor the problem of the national hybridity to be solved through nationalization of religion, but that means a selective diffusion of the 19th century Greek nationalism with aspects of imperial nationalist ideology (Megali Idea) as well as the main cause of Patriarchate's identification with various versions of Ottoman and Russian imperialist discourses which produced a new type of religious ecumenism in the age of nationalism. The latter (the subjugation to the State and the transformation of the Church to a state mechanism) took place in exchange that the Church would continue to regulate the great part of civil law cases (family law, Inheritance law etc.) to influence the formation of the civil society's associations. The Orthodox Church in Greece emerged as sovereign of the political scene keeping the right to alternate its position from the public to private sphere and vice versa.

This chapter provides an overview of the Arab communities and population of New York in the period between 2009 and 2012. Quantitatively, it analyses demographic statistics for all five boroughs to document the diversity and spread of people of Arab origin. Qualitatively, it documents the lived geography of the three most prominent Arab neighborhoods, Bay Ridge and Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, and Astoria, Queens. In addition, it explores the variety of community organizations and activist groups that work in Arab communities, and introduces the three key fieldsites for the book as a whole: the Arab American Association of New York, Adalah-NY: The New York Coalition for the Boycott of Israel, and Al-Awda NY: The Paletine Right to Return Coalition.

Drawing from a comprehensive data base, this chapter offers a longitudinal analysis of those policy fields which are especially of interest for a broad range of civil societal actors (Social Affairs and Inclusion; Health and Consumers). It investigates which consultation instruments are used, which groups are reached with different consultation instruments, and if biased and unbalanced consultation of specific groups is discernible. It is shown that in the beginning of the policy process, civil society is more involved in online consultations, as there is a low threshold of participation. In the later stages of the policy process, however, stakeholder and expert involvement is dominant. In terms of the participative quality, the analysis shows that despite an extension of consultation instruments, this has not alleviated or eradicated imbalances in the participation of different actors.