For the most part, civil society is encountered by the public and political institutions through its manifestations as NGOs/INGOs. An issue linked to this, these titles define the organisations through a semantic negation; they are ‘non-governmental’ but what does civil society stand for in a positive sense?
This negative definition is a vulnerability. As a result, civil society must perpetually and tirelessly work to actively define the role and relevance of NGO/INGOs in all settings and interactions, as any passivity opens space for being defined by others into a role contrary to the normative role of civil society. For youth organisations, this definitional vulnerability is multi-faceted; anything labelled as ‘youth’ has to overcome an initial stigma of its presence being perceived as a tokenistic concession. Before even beginning to actively define its presence, youth organisations face the inertia of dispelling this stigma (it is an issue not limited to youth, but extends to any other group not traditionally seen by the political class as a political actor).
In this context, the growing presence and prominence of grassroots democratic youth movements within social and mass media and in political and civic dialogue can be a trigger for further introspection and self-regulation by CSOs on the structures, role and relevance of youth organisations in civic and political landscapes. This brief article will use the growing prominence of youth climate movements as a lens to review the space traditional youth civil society is holding.
First, some definitions for clarity:
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs):
- The institutionalised (read: formal structure, often possessing legal personality, recognised by political institutions, either representing a class/social group or orienting themselves around a single issue, a degree of long-term integration into the civic machinery of their political setting) facet of civil society, which in turn is the civic space in society wherein citizens link themselves via common interest and collective activity. Family is excluded from all definitions (as a result of the the links needing to be voluntary) and business/commercial interests are often excluded in definitions by international governmental organisations.
Youth Organisations:
- The youth sphere of CSOs, characterised by representative structures advocating on issues which are relevant to young people (and on this basis are granted access to political institutions and decision-makers). Youth is a transversal identity group, intersecting with many other identities and social groups. As such, these organisations have a wide mandate to speak on a range of when considering the needs and rights of youth. Ideally but not universally youth-led.
Youth (Grassroots) Movements:
- The non-institutionalised (read: informal networks oriented around single or limited issues)(and consequently mostly decentralised) facet of youth civil society – most prominently represented by the youth climate movements, yet youth movements are not new, having played a role in multiple political upheavals and holding civic space before the rise of civil society in national and transnational space. Often entirely youth-led and absent of structural support from States.
Youth Organisations and Youth Movements; room for symbiosis and conflict
This section of the article will explore the relationship of the two facets of youth civil society, before proposing several pathways to more effective use of our shared civic space.
Exploration of the relationship:
Alienation via Institutionalisation:
Strikingly and seemingly paradoxical, there is often a general disdain among young people for any youth organisation claiming to represent them or their interests. This is paradoxical when set in contrast with the reception of youth movements (indicated by their rapid decentralised spread) by many young people. It appears young people can identify with these movements and feel represented by them, in the absence of the broader democratic/representative mandate of youth organisations. We can see this critique and dismissal of the legitimacy of youth organisations as inconsistent, or it can be taken as an exposition of institutionalised (youth) civil society’s failure to position itself effectively in a political moment distinct to that in which it emerged.
More appropriate to critique than traditional civil society’s ineffective positions, is the conflict between our 20th Century political institutional structure and our 21st Century communication and political culture. What does civil society look like and where does/should it stand in an age of social media, global identity and online immediate dialogue? Youth movements have been faster to answer this question than CSOs.
Instrumentalisation; more than a buzzword:
There is a finite amount of civic space, and less so for specific areas – such as youth. The space is limited by resources, but also by the capacity of institutions to engage with organisations. With this framing, there is effectively a competitive market within civil society for access to decision-making process. Yet, distinct to a commercial market, when an advocacy moment within the civil participation market is missed, it hurts the entire relevant sector.
Market dynamic parallels are also visible when comparing youth organisations and youth movements relationship to decision-makers. This can be explored by using a spectrum to define youth organisations and the nature of their relationship to states/institutions/IOs/etc. At one end is the “liberal adversarial” role and at the other is an “institutional enabling” role. The liberal adversarial CSO exists to challenge and displace interests within state political organs (or state interests within IOs in the transnational CSO context) and drives a political agenda both within and external to political processes. A CSO erring on the institutional enabling side of the spectrum cooperates with political bodies to achieve common goals and exists politically primarily via mediation of a political institution with action external to formal political processes limited.
The usefulness of this spectrum, or the accurate placing of CSOs on it, is an open question. The more valuable point is what the public perception of CSOs is within this framework, irrespective of what the most accurate perception would be, as this would be a tool to explore the public-CSO relationship and the youth-youth CSO relationship. Regardless of the reality, there appears to be a perception of insitutionalised youth CSOs as more enabling of political norms (due to their integration into them) and lacking of an externally visible adversarial relationship.
This connects into the previous alienation point, it is easier for young people to connect and identify with the very visible, primarily adversarial and targeted, yet vague, messaging of the youth climate movements – easier than to connect with than representative structures which are inherently slower in their responses and, due to the degree of integration to and dependence on political institutions, more reticent to directly critique on a systemic level. A climate striker can make a disparaging and highly visible online statement against the entire system propagating the climate crisis and amass support rapidly – meanwhile a youth CSO, which may be communicating more thorough position and proposing clear solutions and policy positions, with a representative mandate, is often less visible due to its response time, its messages direction (to decision-makers) and the perception of its support for political norms due to its integration into them, finds less traction. Despite being in a political culture influenced by the digital age, we still need traditional paths of civil participation and dialogue, and organisations advocating within them, due to our current political institutional structure.
Ability to self-regulate and covert costs to civil participation
Civil society organisations, through their democratic structures, have the ability to self-reflect and self-regulate, an ability which sets CSOs apart from many other political actors and a basis for their integration into decision-making structures at all levels. CSOs are granted access on the basis of this representation, so while CSOs must ensure they are representing, it must also ensure that civil society being seen to represent – which is reinforced through the self-regulation of their structures – as this aids in allaying the prevalent concern of States that particular organisations, INGOs and coalitions are communicating the interests of a few individuals rather than the interests of communities and is the foundation for further integration into decision-making processes.
The climate strikes are a grassroots decentralised democratic exercise on a scale never seen before, however the conflation of, or even supplanting, of traditional youth CSOs with climate strikers without a representative mandate holds implications for civil participation. Institutions and civil society, in the interests of the long term space for civil society organisations, must maintain the norm that civil participation is based on representation, in both the interests of effective use of civic space and also to ensure that a norm does not develop regarding state and political institutions choosing which organisations to engage with, or even designating a representative, rather than through the mediation of representative structures. Maintaining and building the perception of youth as a credible and legitimate political actors and civil society organisations as our point of mediation with political actors, should be a central consideration of a normative youth civic space and this should not be diluted by the desire to capitalise on media attention.
Proposals for more effective use and safeguarding of youth civic space:
Appropriate roles:
While being cautious around the supplanting of representative civil society, we should also recognise decentralised youth movements as having a central role in youth advocacy machinery. The climate strikers have the attention of mass and social media and have proven their strikes as powerful framing devices, framing climate change as the climate emergency it is. Youth organisations should facilitate these movements to this end with the resources they can, including their institutional access. However decentralised movements without democratic checks or a representative mandate should not take a share of civil participation at the cost of traditional CSOs. Instead CSOs should build on the framing and development of political will by youth movements and carry it into policy action. Each should hold their space and reinforce the other, but not overstep their mandate.
Dropping ‘NGO’ and ‘INGO’ from our vocabulary:
The most powerful framing tool we have for CSO action is the name we allow ourselves to be called by state actors. A negative definition is a wasted opportunity and a vulnerability, the term Civil Society Organisation (or Transnational Civil Society Organisations), with the active connotations of public interest separate from commercial or state gives a positive definition without excluding third sector actors.
Regionalise and localise institutionalised civil society
Youth organisations can and should be movement builders, but this cannot happen in hierarchical top down organisations. Structural funds are mainly given to networks holding national or international structures, which has resulted in top-heavy organisations unable to effectively engage with grassroots. If municipal authorities were to give structural support to organisations, then youth organisations could effectively link in with present and future grassroots movements and absorb them into their structures. National/international level organisations can often see themselves defined and coerced by financial exigency into an institutional enabling role, which may be a factor in the space which opened up for decentralised youth movements. Youth civic space driven by the grassroots would have limited delineation between youth movements and youth organisations – which would be the ideal relationship between the two.
Robert Nesirky 