Barry Knight

Just as economic developers need ‘infrastructure’ such as roads, railways and telephone lines, civil society developers need infrastructure such as information, intelligence, training, technical assistance and opportunities for networking. Thomas Nunn saw this as long …

This book has chosen a self-consciously provocative title because it sees itself as a full-frontal assault on the orthodoxy of including ‘participation’ as a necessary ingredient of development programmes. ‘Participatory development’ involves including people who …

One hundred and fifty years ago, Marx and Engels produced their Communist Manifesto, a document that shaped history, though not in the way the authors would have liked. Now, we have a Community Manifesto, a …

How do citizens see NGOs? What can NGOs contribute towards a good society? Recent research suggests that in general NGOs are peripheral to the way citizens think about their societies and how to improve them. …

‘Rarely has there been a concept in the development field that has grabbed people’s attention so quickly and become so widely used in such a short space of time as the concept of civil society,’ …

The relationship between globalization and civil society is the theme of this collection of essays. The book originates from a symposium of political scientists, economists, philosophers and sociologists held at Michigan State University in March …

When I am asked whether a perfect civil society has ever existed, the answer often surprises people. A study by Charles H Fairbanks showed that it existed in Kosovo in the middle years of this …