Conferences

Having forcefully entered social science discourse in the 1990s, civil society today constitutes a major concept and issues in a broad range of theoretical, methodological and policy-related concerns. Prominently among them are topics related to the complex transition from industrial to post-industrial society, national to transnational policy arenas, social sustainability, or the development of democracy. In examining these phenomena, civil society is implicated in three broad perspectives that have become influential in recent years: first, in the welfare state reform literature, the contribution and potential of civil society is discussed as part of new public management regimes and a mixed economy of quasi-public goods; second, civil society is seen as central to social capital approaches, specifically the Neo-Tocquevillian emphasis on the nexus between social capital and social participation as well as cohesion; and third, civil society institutions are part of a wider social accountability perspective that sees them as instruments of greater transparency, heightened accountability and improved governance of public institutions in postmodern societies, including their democratic potential. All three approaches make strong and specific claims about the role of civil society, involve different theoretical expectations, and, consequently, different methodological and measurement implications.

The proposed session will focus on the methodological and measurement challenges involved, assess the utility of existing measures, including their theoretical fruitfulness, and explore the need for as well as the potential of new ones. Existing measures and approaches include: measures of membership, participation, trust and confidence in the World/European Values Survey, the European Value Survey; the Civil Society Index; the World Bank’s Governance and Transparency indicators; and a range of civic engagement indices. Many of these measures face conceptual and methodological challenges, which the session hopes to explore.

Thus, the aim of the session is to assess the current state of the art of measurement of civil society and to discuss ways of future improvements. Indeed, the session could serve as the kick-off event for a collaborative process leading to the development of an indicator system for civil society — a system of reliable and valid measures that can be applied cross-nationally and that invite much needed comparative research in this field.

The session is closely connected to several others scheduled at this conference, both conceptually as well as methodologically. Prominently among them are: “Measuring the Quality of Democracy by means of Survey Data,” “Trust and Trustworthiness,” plus sessions concerned with cross-cultural comparability and with measuring latent constructs.

We are inviting papers addressing problems of measuring civil society, and are particularly interested in conceptually informed and creative contributions. The session will provide ample time for discussion.