CSI Index: Civil Societies in Madurodam

April 29, 2011 - PSO in cooperation with CIVICUS has organized a seminar and workshop on the concept, relevance and use of the Civil Society Index (CSI). The day was attended by over forty key-staff from mostly PSO member agencies. The relevance was clear from the reference that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made to the CSI in their guidelines on monitoring and reporting for civil society organisations.

In consultation with Partos, PSO took the initiative to invite key-staff of CIVICUS to the Netherlands and staged a seminar with representatives from government, private sector and civil society to reflect on the concept of civil society space. In three contributions each of the contributors gave their perspective on space for people, profit and power.

Clampdown on civil society
The seminar started with a welcome address by Margo Kooijman, Director of PSO who welcomed CIVICUS as well as the active participation from the PSO membership and representatives of the Ministery of Foreign Affairs. The key-note address was delivered by Netsanet Demissie Belay, the Director of Policy and Research of CIVICUS, who gave an extensive update on the trends in civil society space and the international regulatory frameworks for civil society organisations. The evidence presented illustrates that despite current developments in the Middle East and Northern Africa, civil society space is still shrinking as it is suffering from securitization measures by governments legitimized by the fear of terrorist threats.

PSO Director, Margo Kooijman gave all attendees a warm welcome.

Exploring civil society space
In an afternoon workshop session over the participants explored civil society space in the Netherlands. Positioning organisations in a triangle between government, private sector and family, participants distributed different voluntary organisations (political, environmental, trade-unions, religious groupings) within civil society. During the plenary the dimensions of the CSI featured as an explanation for the position of each of the organisations, which results from mission (constituencies and their shared values), vision (objectives in the external environment), strategy (that determines the best structure) and objectives (that need to anchor the impact). Both the way organisations manage to connect to their constituencies, peers and other actors within civil society as well as the positioning of organisations within the space determine the strength of civil society (structure, values, environment, impact).

Tailoring of the CSI
The CIVICUS team showed similar examples of social forces analyses that will help to visualize strength of civil society. Another element that came out clearly during the workshop is that the current CSI is all about perception and even self-perception of civil society organisations. The way the CSI process has bee set-up at the moment involves quite a massive amount of qualitative data in need for analysis, providing a snapshot every two and a half year. Instead of asking 2000 people a focus group methodology could be used and by asking the same group of people again and again you can track trends and changes. There will be standardization, scoring and comparability. Light versions could be alternated with more in-depth surveys. The CIVICUS staff considered it possible to tailor the CSI process to potential use in sectors and programs. It is also clear that to bring out this suite or toolbox on a very short notice will be quite a challenging task.

The workshops had people standing on tables.

The ministry commented that the most important use of the leading questions on strengthening civil society  is that it should  support  MFS II- organisations to reflect on the  role and contribution of partnerorganisations within civil society and on chosen interventions, within its changing context. In that sense it  is used as monitoringinformation, to support (re)directing the implementation of the programme and learn from the findings.  The reporting on this part of the monitoringinformation will also feed into the policy dialogue with the ministry on strengthening civil society.

With respect to the evaluation on strengthening civil society, there is a need to measure results achieved by MFS II-organisations on strengthening civil society, and to demonstrate  in which way the monitoring information has  supported MFS II-organisations in reviewing strategies and choosing alternative interventions based on this analysis that will increase effectiveness for the purpose of strengthening of civil society.

More information
View the presentations, workshop and other documentation of the event.

Read more on Vice Versa (Dutch)

Komt het maatschappelijk middenveld in gevaar? 

De Civil Society Index, wat kunnen we ermee?