State, Civil Society and Democratization in the Third World

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,0, Stockholm University, language: English, abstract: In this course report I will focus on the relationship between civil society and democracy on the national and global level. The discussion is based upon the hypothesis that civil society can only constitute itself and act within democratic structures and will address the problem of the civil society in failed states which is not able to facilitate democratization there due to a lack of statehood and on the global level where democratic structures can¿t be found.

In the last ten to fifteen years, accompanied by the contemporary issue of globalisation and several civil movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there has been an increasing interest and body of literature related to the term of ¿civil society¿.

Civil society develops and acts within a certain context and environment. Because of that, concepts of civil society facilitating democracy can¿t be applied on developing countries in general but have to take into account the level of statehood and existing democratic structures in which civil society acts. It is not all about the structure of civil society but also about the existing level of statehood.