Civil society organizations in failing states: the Red Cross in Bosnia and Albania

Abstract

Civil society building has become a central element of democratization programmes in regions under international administration such as Bosnia and in other countries affected by civil strife. This article explores the preconditions of civil society building, notably the preconditions for the functioning of state institutions and for a stable social order. It argues that state failure and social anomie may constitute major obstacles to civil society building in so far as they restrict the public space in which citizens may organize the common good in a universal and democratic manner.

Notes

Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen, Civil Society and Political Theory, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992.

Open Society Foundation, Bosnia – Lessons (Not) Learned, Sarajevo: Soros Foundation, 2002.

As the theoretical concept is rich and demanding there are also preconditions on the level of the individual citizen's behaviour and on the level of the organization's internal life that are to be fulfilled if a full-scale civil society is to develop. Space prevents detailed discussion here, though they certainly played a role in the author's empirical investigations.

The article is based on field research in Bosnia and Albania undertaken in spring 2000.

The Movement consists of the national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Comittee of the Red Cross. Despite their different mandates and functions all three elements work together in order to assure the international mandate of the Red Cross and to develop the capacities of the individual Red Cross or Red Crescent societies. In the following the Movement will also be called International Red Cross. See www.ifrc.org and www.icrc.org.

John Keane, Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions, London: Polity Press, 1996, p.6. Other authors propose similar definitions. The main point of all these is the autonomy of the organizations and their participatory democratic nature. The independence from the political and economic sphere (from the state and from the market) is the common denominator of liberal, neo-marxist and emancipatory civil society theories. They actually differ in the preconditions they set to the establishment of civil society and the effects to be hoped for. Most theories of civil society are macrosociological reflections; very few define in detail how civil society organizations should be internally structured. But as the concept civil society designates a sphere apart from the market and the state, as it is seen as the genuine democratic sphere and as it always reflects an emancipatory view of society, civil society organizations have to be non-profit, democratically organized associations. Jürgen Habermas goes further. In his view they have to be self-reflexive, questioning themselves constantly over their identity. All this implies a certain amount of transparency, accountability and responsiveness of the organization. See Arato and Cohen (n.1 above); Democratization, Special Issue: Civil Society – Democratic Perspectives, Vol.4, No.2, 1997; Charles Taylor, ‘Modes of Civil Society’, in Carolyn Elliott (ed.), Civil Society and Democracy. A Reader, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, p.9–24. For organizations and civil society, see: Annette Zimmer, Vereine – Basiselemente der Demokratie. Eine Analyse aus Dritte-Sektor-Perspektive [Associations – founding elements of democracy. An Analysis from Third Sector perspective], Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1996; Wolfgang Streeck and Philippe Schmitter, Community, Market, State – and Associations?, in Streeck and Schmitter (eds.), Private Interest Government. Beyond Market and State. Newbury Park: Sage, 1985, pp. 00–00. On the contribution of interest governance to social order, see also, Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms. Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996; Wolfgang Seibel, Successful Failure. An Alternative View on Organisational Coping', American Behavioral Scientist, Vol.39, 1996, pp.1011–24; Catherine Götze, Rudimentäre Zivilgesellschaften, Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2004.

In fact, the ‘history’ of the public space is quite complex as it refers on the one hand to the separation of powers during the process of state building and on the other hand on the emergence of the ‘individual’ as founding unit of the political community. See Jean Leca and Pierre Birnbaum (eds.), Individualism: Theories and Methods, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Here public space designates in a large sense the common ground of action of a society where the common good is organized.

Peter Waldmann, Der anomische Staat. U¨ber Recht, öffentliche Sicherheit und Alltag in Lateinamerika, [The Anomic State. On law, public security and daily life in Latin America] Opladen: Leske & Budrich, p.9.

Helmut Thome, Das Konzept sozialer Anomie als Analyseinstrument, accessed at www.soziologie-uni-halle.de/thome/docs/augsburg.pdf, pp.8–12.

See William Zartmann (ed.), Collapsed States. The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, London: Lynne Rienner, 1995; Christopher Clapham, Africa and the International System. The Politics of State Survival, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Zartmann (n.10), p.5.

‘IFRC Appeal 2002–03’, accessed at www.ifrc.org/where/appeals, p.2.

Sonia Combe and Ivaylo Ditchev (eds.), Albanie utopie. Huis clos dans les Balkans, Paris: Editions Autrement, Collection Monde, no.90, 1996.

Stephan Hensell, Staatsbildung und Staatszerfall in Albanien, Working Paper no.2, Forschungsstelle Kriege, Rüstung und Entwicklung, University of Hamburg, 1999.

Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius and Mary Kaldor (eds.), Global Civil Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p.268.

Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, ‘Travails of the European Raj’, Journal of Democracy, Vol.14, No.3, 2003, pp.60–74.

See David Chandler, Bosnia. Faking Democracy After Dayton, London: Pluto Press, 1999; Thomas Hofnung, Desespoir de Paix. L'ex-Yougoslavie de Dayton à la chute de Milošević, Paris: Atlantica, 2001; Knaus and Martin (n.16 above).

Bosnia Insitute, Bosnia Report, No.35, 2003.

The term ‘violence entrepreneur’ has been frequently used in the analysis of civil wars and designates individuals who by private means and for private aims steer collective violence. See Jakob Rösel, ‘Vom ethnischen Antagonismus zum ethnischen Bürgerkrieg. Antagonismus, Errinerung und Gewalt in ethnischen Konflikten’, [From ethnic antagonism to ethnic warfare. Antagonism, memory and violence in ethnic conflicts] in Trutz von Trotha (ed.), Soziologie der Gewalt, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Vol.37, 1997, pp.162–82.

Zygmunt Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, London: Polity Press, 2001.

See Nebojsa Popov (ed.), The Road to War in Serbia, Trauma and Catharsis. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000.

Bauman (n.20 above), pp.145–6.

Vesna Pesic, ‘The War for Ethnic States’, in Popov (ed.), (n.21 above); Jasminka Udovicki and James Ridgeway (eds.), Burn this House, The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1997; Friedbert Rüb, ‘Von der zivilen zur unzivilen Gesellschaft: Das Beispiel des ehemaligen Jugoslawien’, [From civil to uncivil society: the example of the former Yugoslavia] in Wolfgang Merkel (ed.), Systemwechsel. Zivilgesellschaft und Transformation, Bd.5. Opladen: Leske & Budrich, pp.173–201; John B. Allcock, John J. Horton and Marko Milosevic (eds.), Yugoslavia in Transition. Choices and Constraints. Essays in Honour of Fred Singleton, Oxford: Berg, 1992.

See Xavier Bougarel, Bosnia: anatomie d'un conflit, Paris: La Découverte, 1996; Wolfgang Höpken, ‘Gewalt auf dem Balkan, Erklärungsversuche zwischen Kultur und Struktur’, [Violence in the Balkans, explanations in between culture and structure] in Höpken and Michael Riekenburger (eds.), Politische und ethnische Gewalt in Südosteuropa und Lateinamerika, Köln: Böhlau, 2001, pp.53–96.

Philip Burnham, ‘Clan’, in Neil Smelser and Paul Baltes (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavourial Sciences, Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp.1921–4.

For the transformation of clans by new forms of obligations such as monetary ties, see Douglas Saltmarshe, Identity in a Post-Communist Balkan State, An Albanian Village Study, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, pp.88–126.

Ibid., p.207.

Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers, ‘The Enactment of Tradition: Albanian Constructions of Identity, Violence and Power in Times of Crisis’, in Bettina E. Schmid and Ingo W. Schröder (eds.), Anthropology of Violence and Conflict, London: Routledge, 2001, pp.97–119.