Civil Society and Political Participation: The Case of Development Aid

Following recent developments, civil society is now a heterogeneous set of organizations, with an ill-defined political status. Whether one approaches the issue from the standpoint of political philosophy or from the contingencies of international aid, no clear-cut answer can be given to the questions at hand: Who embodies civil society? Who can decide? Where does its legitimacy lie? How does it connect with political institutions? What can the role of NGOs from the North be in the South? In all cases, the answer is invariably that all depends on the type of organization, the field of intervention, circumstances, power relationships, even history. The desire to make participative democracy fit in with representative democracy leads to questioning more than civil society.