democracy and civil society

Civil Society and Japan ’ S Dysfunctional Democracy

Orthodox Christianity, Civil Society, and Russian Democracy

Scholars have identified numerous obstacles that appear to stand in the way of democracy taking root in Russia, including the country’s religious heritage. In an attempt to understand the role of Orthodoxy in Russian society more accurately, this article explores the civic, political, and democratic values of devout Orthodox Christians and more secular-leaning “cultural Orthodox.” The findings ...

Essays • Information Society, Capitalism and Civil Society: Reflections on Politics, Internet and Democracy in the Brazilian Reality Information Society, Capitalism and Civil Society: Reflections on Politics, Internet and Democracy in the Brazilian Reality

the internet, the one that is of the greatest interest from the point of view of this article is that of the political area, more specifically understanding how the internet can cause changes in political structures in the sense of promoting a growing democratization. When one talks about politics, there are two branches that have to be analyzed: on one side you have the State, with its structu...

Political opportunity structures, democracy, and civil war

Theories of mobilization suggest that groups are more likely to resort to violence in the presence of political opportunity structures that afford greater prospects for extracting concessions from the government or better opportunities to topple ruling governments. However, existing efforts to consider the possible influences of political opportunity structures on incentives for violence and ci...

Participatory Democracy? Exploring Peru’s Efforts to Engage Civil Society in Local Governance

As institutions are created to engage citizens and civil society organizations more directly, who participates, and what effect does participation have? This article explores two of Peru’s participatory institutions, the Regional Coordination Councils and the participatory budgets, created in 2002. Specifically it asks, once these institutions are set up, do organizations participate in them? a...

Civil Society as Idea and Civil Society as Process : The Case of Ghana

The idea of civil society contains a set of assumptions about the unity of civil society, the civility of civil society, the ‘separateness’ of civil society and the state, and the intrinsic relationship between civil society and democracy. All of these assumptions can be questioned by examining civil society in a specific country context. In the case of Ghana, processes in civil society have al...