After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many countries saw the importance of defending civil society. Today, however, many countries are defunding civil society. Using all sorts of pretexts, governments that feel threatened by such organizations impose restrictions on them, writes Douglas Rutzen, CEO of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). These governments are able to do so in part because the cornerstone concepts of civil society are still being developed, debated, and—at times—violently contested. The outcome of this debate will shape the future of civil society for decades to come. If there was a global associational revolution in 1994, by 2004 the global associational counterrevolution had begun. More information is available for here.
[Democracy Digest]
