make amid on the characteristics of a good society
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Answer:
Take a few streets in a typical town in Donegal or
Denbighshire, Devon or Dumfriesshire and you don’t
need to look far to find civil society. Whether it’s visible
on the streets or behind closed doors, every community
hosts an extraordinary array of civil society activity
including sports clubs, care for family members or local
residents, homework clubs and support networks.
As individuals, many of us are active in local groups,
charities, in churches, mosques and temples or trade
unions. We play our part in campaigns to end poverty
or combat climate change. As consumers we support
ethical products offered by co-operatives or social
enterprises.
Civil society is not governed by profit or power but
by values and enthusiasms – a word that originally
meant the god within us. Some of us are inspired by
frustration and anger, others by hope, and others still by
fun. Together, the many parts of civil society contribute
enormously to our everyday quality of life.
The good news is that right across the UK and Ireland
the daily life of civil society activity is thriving – with
no signs of long-term decline and decay, or for that
matter any rise in selfishness and other ills, despite the
pressures of recession. Civil society is made up of a
myriad of circles of freedom and circles of cooperation
that have proved to be remarkably resilient.
But it’s also clear that civil society is less than it could
be. For a century or more it has been pushed to the
margins by commerce and the state, which have
claimed the lion’s share of resources and power. It has
been paid lip-service, but generally neglected. And it
has lost ground in areas it was once strong, like finance
or childhood.
Today we can see the convergence of both long and
short-term trends which point to a major change in
the position of civil society associations. The long-term
trends can be traced back to many sources – the rising
economic importance of charities and social enterprises
globally; the counterculture of the 1960s; the global
flowering of civil society activity in the wake of 1989 and
the fall of the Berlin Wall; declining trust in politics and
the rise of a culture in which people seek and expect
expression and voice.
The short-term push to strengthen civil society comes
from the coincidence of three crises: the financial crisis
and its economic effects, which have sharply reduced
the status and confidence of market liberalism; the
ecological crisis, which has moved centre-stage as
never before in the wake of the Copenhagen Summit
at the end of 2009; and a crisis of political confidence,
particularly in Britain, because of an accumulation of
events, including most recently the scandal of MPs’
expenses.
Each crisis poses very different questions. But it
is now impossible to imagine plausible answers to
these questions which do not involve a widened role
for civil society associations – as the complement
to representative democracy; as the place where a
different kind of economy takes shape, or is being
rediscovered; and as the site for everyday solutions to
the effects of rising carbon emissions.
This makes now a remarkable time of opportunity. We
need to set our sights far beyond the narrow arguments
about contracts or fiscal treatment for the voluntary
sector, and look instead at how civil society activity can
shape our world, and how we can make the transition
from an age of ‘me’ to an age of ‘we’. Civil society was
born out of the idea that we do best when we work
with others, and when we understand our interests as
shared with others. That idea is more relevant than ever
in an intimately interconnected world.
Here the Inquiry Commission sets out an argument
for putting civil society at the centre. It’s not a
blueprint or a detailed roadmap – but describes the
directions of change, the critical choices, and the
many things which could be done by governments,
foundations, corporations and civil society associations
themselves to make the most of the moment. While
the Commission fully endorses the broad direction of
travel outlined in this report, we do not pretend that