Tuesday, June 25, 2013
C0.17 (Oudemanhuispoort)
This paper studies the relationship between civil society and the quality of democracy by looking at the development of the Portuguese civic landscape. While finding that democracy was very favorable to the whole of civil society, we also found that, from the perspective of the quality of democracy, the emerging picture is more nuanced. Unions and cooperatives declined over the democratic period; neighborhood associations saw stabilization and consolidation; and parents, students’ and women’s associations grew and expanded. These variations are explained by different pattern of state-society relations. Specifically, institutions/policies which were inherited from the dictatorship affected the workers and cooperative movement during the transition, producing a highly antagonistic pattern of civil society-state relationships. This had the consequence of making social policies regarding labor highly divisive, thus reinforcing the closing of state institutions towards these social groups. Inversely, in the patterns of civil society stabilization and growth, the enactment of social policies affecting each sub-sector was friendlier towards civil society. This happened because these policies were designed during the transition with the aim to include popular demands, in a context of alliances between political forces of the center and the left. In the long run, this had the effect of empowering civil society.
