Conclusion and Debate

Abstract

While both civil society and state weakness remain highly prominent subjects in the academic as well as in the international policy discourse, research on these two issues has thus far remained largely unconnected. In order to bridge this gap, this study set out to investigate whether, and if so, how state weakness influences the ability of national civil societies to emerge and persist, exert political influence and contribute to democratization. The study’s comparative findings from Bangladesh and the Philippines clearly show that state weakness can, in fact, constitute an enabling condition for civil society to emerge and persist, confirming similar observations made by the sparse existing literature on civil society in weak states (e.g. Götze 2004, pp. 201ff.; Lorch 2006, 2008; Ottaway 2004). However, both countries have also been characterized by the existence of an ambiguous civil society, whose contributions to the national democratization process have been extremely ambivalent. More specifically, while in both countries civil society actors have exercised significant political influence, they have not always used this influence in order to promote democracy but at times also for highly undemocratic purposes. The cases of Bangladesh and the Philippines thus contradict the normative assumption that a strong civil society necessarily strengthens democracy (e.g. Ashton 2013; Cohen and Arato 1992; EC 2012; Putnam 2000; UNDP 2012; USAID 2014). Instead, both cases confirm the arguments advanced by the more empirically analytical literature on civil society that a vibrant civil society is not always good for democracy and that real, existing civil societies usually display certain dark sides, which are generally reflective of the context in which they operate (e.g. Alexander 1998; Croissant 2000; Croissant et al. 2000; Lauth 2003; Monga 2009).