Making civil society from the outside challenges for donors

This article explores critically donor efforts to strengthen civil society from the outside. In developing programmes to foster civil society in aid‐recipient countries donors make certain assumptions about the relationships between civil society, state and market. These assumptions not only depoliticise civil society but also give rise to particular contradictions and dilemmas in the operational process. These include the illusion of plurality and inclusion, locating the forces of political change, donor dependency and the universality of civil society. It is suggested that donors need to be more realistic and modest in their goals and base their interventions on more refined analyses of the local dynamics of social and political change.