since the 1980s. The long history of civil society is coupled with its various theorisations. According to Edwards (2014: 10), there are at least three distinct schools of thoughts about what civil society is, each of which has its own historical root, normative claims and socio-political implications.
The first one considers civil society as a part of society that is distinct from states and markets; it is a form of associational life. Its origin goes back to de Tocqueville’s view of the 19th-century US and the defence of individual freedom from the intrusion of the state. This view of civil society is particularly strong in the US and shares similar distrust of the state and desire for self-governance as that advocated by communitarians (Edwards, 2014: 7). It is, therefore, not surprising that one of its most influential contemporary advocates, Robert Putnam, has come from the US. The everyday references to, for example, the ‘third’ or ‘non-profit’ sector, which includes associations (notably, NGOs) whose membership and activities are voluntary, are often a reflection of this theory of civil society.
The second view considers civil society as ‘good society’ – as a kind of society characterised by positive norms and values, as well as success in meeting particular social goals. The third school of thought defines civil society as the ‘public sphere’. This view was first developed by scholars such as John Dewey and Hannah Arendt in their theorisations of the ‘public sphere’ as a central component of political life and democracy (Edwards, 2014: 8). It then became influential through Jürgen Habermas’s theory of ‘communicative action’ and ‘discursive democracy’. For him and other critical theorists, civil society is that which ‘is steered by its members through shared meanings that are constructed democratically in the public sphere’ (Chambers, 2002: 94). Despite the diversity of views, it is the theory of civil society as a form of associational life that has become dominant in policy discourse and popular imaginaries. As Edwards (2014: 10) puts it, ‘it is Alexis Tocqueville’s ghost that wanders through the corridors of the World Bank, not that of Habermas or Hegel’.
The understanding of civil society as associational life (that is, distinct from states and markets) resonates with the ‘third way’ politics of the New Labour government in the 1990s, which claimed to be the middle ground between the state-oriented (welfarist) and the market-oriented (neoliberalist) solution to collective problems. While, in reality, the so-called ‘third sector’ has been made financially dependent on the state and the private sector, and the boundaries between them have become blurred, it is this third sector view that is often visualised in myriad so-called ‘triple helix’ diagrams.
It is interesting to note that civil society as part of society is often conflated with civil society as a kind of society, assuming that ‘a healthy associational life contributes to, or even produces, the “good society” in ways that are predictable – while the public sphere is usually ignored’ (Edwards, 2014: 10). Such a perspective overlooks the various forms of what Chambers and Kopstein (2001) call ‘bad civil society’: although they resonate with many of the principles of what a civil society is (coherence, trust and so on), they are exclusionary of and sometimes hostile to outsiders and ‘Others’. Examples include the voluntary organisations that nurture hatred and fear.
There is another frequent conflation between civil society as an end and civil society as a means. According to Edwards (2014: 11), this is due to a number of political changes, epitomised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when civil society ‘became both … a new type of society characterised by liberal democratic norms and a vehicle for achieving it’. An example of such a conflation can be found in the range of civil society roles that have been identified by the World Economic Forum (2013: 9), which suggests that civil societies act as: watchdog (holding institutions to account); advocate/campaigner (raising awareness and lobbying governments for change); service provider (related to education, health, food and security, and contributing to disaster risk management and emergency response); expert (bringing in local, experiential knowledge); capacity builder (providing education and training); incubator (developing solutions that may materialise in the long term); representative (empowering the marginalised or under-represented); champion of active citizenship (motivating civic engagement and supporting citizen rights); solidarity supporter (promoting fundamental values); and definer of standards (creating norms that shape market and state activity).
Many of these roles assume more organised forms of civil society, known as ‘civil society organisations’, ‘non-governmental organisations’ or, in England and Wales, the ‘voluntary, community and charitable sector’. Perhaps arising from the conflations that Edwards (2014) identifies, the UK National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO, 2019) highlights the disputed nature of the term ‘civil society’, suggesting that it encompasses a breadth of organisations extending beyond legally registered charities to include, for example, trade unions, universities and housing associations. The contention about the scope and definition of civil society makes it hard to quantify the total number of organisations. For example, the NCVO’s scope is narrower than the Charities Commission as their count of ‘general charities’ excludes independent schools, housing associations and sacramental religious bodies, and instead bases its definition of general charities on the fulfilment of criteria such as independence from government, being non-profit and working for public benefit. According to this definition, in 2016/17, there were 166,854 general charities in the UK, of which 4,450 were in the North East of England, amounting to 1.7 organisations per 1,000 population – the lowest rate in England (NCVO, 2019).
Focusing on what they do rather than who they are does not reduce the diversity either; yet, in broad terms, much of their activities are directed at improving the well-being of citizens (Clifford, 2017). Despite some serious controversies around the aggressive marketing tactics of some charities and their accountability with regard to salaries, staff conduct and disciplinary policies, charities generally attract higher public regard than many other organisations, even though confidence in them may have fallen in recent years (Charity Commission for England and Wales, 2018). Keen and Audickas (2017) suggest that the sector is predominantly focused on the delivery of social services (18.2 per cent), followed by culture and recreation (8.7 per cent), which are activities that focus on well-being.
The impact of austerity on civil society organisations
The long-term contraction of the state’s social role and its capacity to deliver social services, compounded by neoliberal austerity, has significantly reduced civil society organisations’ capacity to respond to rising demands (Jones et al, 2016). This has generated feelings of disempowerment and ineffectiveness, as shown in the following statement by a welfare adviser in Hull with 15 years’ experience: ‘A few years ago, we used to be able to help people with an answer, direct them somewhere for help, but increasingly there’s not much we can do. The safety nets to which we used to direct them, which they may not have known about, aren’t there anymore’ (HRW, 2019: 15). In the North East, nearly half (46 per cent) of the organisations completing the Voluntary Organisations’ Network North East’s survey reported an 85