This article is written by Cristina Buzasu, Principal Manager for Civil Society Engagement at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Citizens and civil society organisations play an important role in helping public institutions become more transparent, accountable and inclusive in their decision-making processes, services and projects. By strengthening institutional accountability, and thus supporting good governance, informal citizens’ groups and established civil society organisations (CSOs) make governments more responsive to society’s demands.

As such, a vibrant civil society is an essential component of democratic societies and sustainable, inclusive and well-governed economies.

Citizens speak up

In recent years, innovative patterns of civic participation, self-organisation and social mobilisation are becoming more prevalent. In Europe and across the world, we are witnessing many new forms of civic activism, which are more participatory, informal, local, issue-focused and widely networked.

Citizens no longer want to be passive observers within mass membership organisations, but rather want to shape outcomes and play a more active and participatory role in decision-making processes. Thus, citizens are getting together in local groups in spontaneous and informal ways — including via social media — to debate and tackle specific problems.

Although citizen groups and civil society organisations have a huge potential to improve societies and economies, they also face significant needs and challenges, such as weak capacity, insufficient resources, and in some countries also poor access to information and restrictive political and legal environments. These challenges often prevent CSOs from engaging constructively with public institutions.

Civic groups and social movements have found new ways to reconnect with the general public, often through the use of technologies.

CSOs also suffer from the lack of stable funding and a subsequent dependency on donors and/or governments. As a way of helping to offset a decline in donor funding, civic groups and social movements have found new ways to reconnect with the general public, often through the use of technologies. Mobile phones, social media and internet-mediated platforms, such as crowdfunding, are used to finance civic initiatives, as making individual donations becomes quicker and easier.

Despite these challenges, the potential remains for both traditional and new civil society organisations to influence social change, improve policymaking through evidence-based and policy relevant knowledge and provide a variety of social services — particularly to disadvantaged and vulnerable people.

How civil society can flourish

Civil society stakeholders also provide important perspectives and suggest innovative approaches to local problems, through their local knowledge, insights and technical expertise. In this regard, they promote public dialogue about decisions that affect the lives of local people and environments and hold governments and policymakers publicly accountable.

CSOs also contribute to the generation of social capital and trust that underpins cohesive societies. Distinct comparative advantages of CSOs include the ability to bridge gaps among different sections of society and to provide a crucial link between authorities, businesses and citizens.

They can moreover help facilitate greater participation and engagement of citizens in the process of political, social, economic and governance reforms. As such, civil society actors are key social stakeholders, with an important role to play in society.

Civil society should be empowered, and CSOs need to play a more prominent role in democratic governance, decision-making and monitoring.

The conditions needed for civil society to fulfil its potential include: ensuring the enabling environment by governments; volunteering and financial contributions by ordinary citizens; support by high-net worth individuals, private foundations and international donors; and a closer co-operation with businesses. Civil society should thus be empowered, and CSOs need to play a more prominent role in democratic governance, decision-making and monitoring.

When it comes to CSO engagement by governments and public institutions, going beyond consultations and into building deeper co-operation and partnerships with civil society are important for achieving a broader societal buy-in and increased local ownership of reforms.

Across the “engagement continuum”, several best practice levels of engagement with civil society can be identified:

  1. Outreach and disclosure — disclosing pro-actively and upon request information about projects and services, in line with good international standards.
  2. Dialogue — engaging in dialogue with citizens and CSOs, both through high-level exchanges about strategic issues, as well as at the working level in relation to specific projects and services.
  3. Consultations — conducting formal consultations with citizens and CSOs in relation to major institutional strategic issues, projects and services.
  4. Co-operation and partnerships — pro-actively cooperating, raising awareness and transferring knowledge to local community groups (including informal groups of citizens) and CSOs.

On the civil society side, innovative and promising activities of citizens and CSOs are emerging from the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), as well as a changing pattern of CSO-business improved cooperation.

Several leading international businesses are adopting more pro-active approaches of collaborating with CSOs. As the expansion of internet access, technological advances and the use of social media have enabled CSOs to launch influential global campaigns quickly and at almost no cost, major multinational corporations and large CSOs are setting a new trend of forming strategic partnerships.

Below is a good illustration from the recent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in Romania.

Civil society and the coronavirus pandemic: an example from Romania

Civil society has been quite pro-active in contributing to solve the socio-economic problems generated by the Covid-19 pandemic, including by partnering with public institutions and private companies to join in the fight against the virus.

Through a fairly collaborative approach, many CSOs have (re-)focused their activities on service delivery, in order to help provide and distribute medical supplies, including through crowdfunding and partnerships with businesses.

In Romania, several prominent CSOs have started campaigns to raise money for purchasing medical equipment and supplies, mainly protection equipment for doctors and nurses, who have been severely affected by Covid-19.

Society is changing all around us, and it’s clear that the old ways of policymaking won’t suffice any longer.

The most pro-active has been the Red Cross Society of Romania, which has substantive expertise in preventing and combating disease, working in permanent collaboration with central and local authorities and offering logistical support in the fight against the coronavirus.

Red Cross Romania signed a memorandum with the government and launched a national fund-raising campaign. The CSO actually managed to gather substantial donations from various private sector companies.

Moreover, in partnership with public authorities, Red Cross Romania launched a national campaign to inform and raise awareness of the population in order to limit the spread of the coronavirus, as well as to combat fake news spreading online. The Romanian government also organised several public consultations with professional associations and CSOs, in order to integrate their input and feedback in setting up socio-economic measures and a comprehensive economic recovery plan.

Most of these consultations were organised through video-conference, showing that digital platforms have become central to the good co-operation between citizens/civil society and public authorities, facilitating a more direct relationship and more frequent interactions.

This is an illustrative example of the valuable contribution that citizens and civil society more broadly can bring in providing feedback on projects and services, as well as creating local ownership of public policies among the general population.

A new age of collaboration?

This is just one of the many examples of governments and civil society collaborating in a pro-active and down to earth way. Countless other examples abound, as there has recently been an important shift in citizen and civil society engagement by several governments and public institutions, from a reactive approach (focused on responding to complaints and information requests), to truly pro-active arrangements through modernised tools and instruments of engagement.

These novel CSO engagement practices have been largely taken up by international financial institutions. For instance, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has recently launched its civil society capacity enhancement framework. This is an innovative grant-based programme, which enables the EBRD to engage more pro-actively and provide support to a wide range of civil society groups and organisations in its countries of operations.

The framework utilises the EBRD’s technical cooperation funds to provide training and support in order to enhance civil society stakeholders’ technical knowledge, outreach and project management skills, governance and organisational capacity, specifically in three main policy areas: 1) sustainable energy and resources 2) economic inclusion and 3) good governance.

As a result, since mid-2013, around 30 completed and active projects have improved the skills of over 13,000 direct CSO beneficiaries through tailored training and mentoring in over 20 countries. Moreover, thousands of local community and civil society representatives have benefited indirectly from EBRD technical co-operation projects.

Through these promising initial results, the framework provides the EBRD with a useful tool to bring together – through civil society organisations — the general public, particularly youth, women and rural population, relevant authorities, businesses and other stakeholders. As such, the framework helps achieve the long-term development priorities of the countries and regions where the bank operates.

Society is changing all around us, and it’s clear that the old ways of policymaking won’t suffice any longer. Citizens want a say, and governments should include them in the process. With the emergence of new digital tools, they can no longer say it’s too hard or too costly. Citizens and civil society are ready to play their part, but only time will tell if governments will rise to the occasion.

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