Civil Society and Participation in Malawi and Ireland

Abstract

It has become apparent at this stage that the potential to transform participation in the immediate term, from nominal and instrumental forms favoured by states within both processes to more transformative modes, lies with their respective NGO and community and voluntary pillar participants. As we have seen in the introductory chapter, more critical accounts of both processes argue that civil society actors have been co-opted, with this co-option foreclosing opportunities to widen development discourses within the respective processes. This argument is largely supported by the findings presented in Chapter 4, where we have seen the enablers to transformative participation in both processes transformed, over time, into constraints. In contrast to these structuralist analyses, however, the data presented in this chapter demonstrate that NGOs and community and voluntary pillar members have been active in their own co-option. Why have they chosen this course of action, and how have they managed to achieve it given their mandates?