Civil society, cross-national comparisons and the problem of statistical capture

✍ Scribed by Gerard Clarke

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 893 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1729

✦ Synopsis

Since the late 1980s, civil society has come to be regarded as a vital counterpart to the state and market economy in developing and transitional countries, both as a source of vital social services, and as an associational realm in which people organise to press political claims and to hold power-holders to account. Yet statistical capture of the contours of civil society, including cross-national comparisons, remains in its infancy. This article therefore considers and compares three recent indices of the cross-national strength of civil society: the 2004 John Hopkins Global Civil Society Index (JHGCSI), the 2007 CIVICUS Civil Society Index (CCSI), and the International Social Survey Programme's 2004 Survey of Global Citizenship (ISSP-SGC). The resulting analysis points to significant remaining challenges to the meaningful capture of the health of national civil societies around the world, especially in developing and transitional countries.