existence and flourishing of civil society, as it does in
established democracies, it also often perceives and treats
civil society as a rival. Consequently, it obstructs civil
society activities and its expansion through regulation,
while discrediting the NGOs ideologically as Western
‘‘imports’’ and ‘‘mercenaries.’’
With post-conflict civil societies vitally dependent on
external support, the preoccupation of scholars and practitioners
concerning modalities of assistance to effectively
and constructively contribute to post-conflict reconstruction
through civil society building including the openness
to the diversity of local grassroots organizations has been
a worthwhile effort. However, it also requires further
understanding of ‘‘uncivil society’’ and its expansion in
the post-conflict. In particular, more research is needed to
generate understanding of its interaction and interference
with peace building. The study of mechanisms utilized by
‘‘uncivil’’ society to achieve legitimation in local contexts,
and effective ways of challenging such a distorted appropriation
of the concept of civil society is long overdue.
The success of post-conflict reconstruction is dependent
on mutually supportive state and civil society
building. The asymmetric prioritization in either area
is conducive neither to democracy nor to peace. The
transnational post-conflict setting is permeated by forces
both of progressive and regressive globalization. The ultimate
challenge after a war and bloodshed is to create,
expand, and reinforce the space of civility and tolerance.
This cannot be accomplished satisfactorily, especially
from the outside, without local knowledge and information,
whose ultimate authority and conduit is local civil
society in the variety of its forms.
Cross-References
▶ Civil Society, Violence and War
▶ Good Governance
▶ Government–Nonprofit Sector Relations
▶ Identity
▶ NGOs and Socio-Economic Development
▶ NGOs and Sustainable Development
▶ Peace and Conflict Resolution Organizations
▶ Social Capital, Definition of
▶ Uncivil Society
References/Further Readings
Brinkerhoff, D. W. (2007) Introduction – Governance challenges in
fragile states. In D. W. Brinkerhoff (Ed.) Governance in post-conflict
societies: Rebuilding fragile states (pp. 1–21). London/New York:
Routledge.
Cohen, S. (2001) States of denial: Knowing about atrocitities and suffering.
Cambridge: Polity; Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Duffield, M. (2000). Globalization, transborder trade, and war economies.
In M. Berdal & D. M. Malone (Eds.) Greed and grievance:
Economic agendas in civil wars (pp. 69–89). Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner Publishers.
Howell, J., & Pearce, J. (2001) Civil society and development: A critical
exploration. Boulder, CO/London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Kaldor, M. (2006) New and old wars: Organized violence in a global era
(2nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity.
Kaldor, M., Kostovicova, D., & Said, Y. (2007) War and peace: The role
of global civil society. In M. Kaldor Global civil society 2006/7
(pp. 94–121). London: Sage.
Muenkler, H. (2005). The new wars. Cambridge: Polity.
Pouligny, B. (2005). Civil society and post-conflict peacebuilding:
Ambiguities of international programmes aimed at building ‘‘new’’
societies. Security Dialogue, 36(4), 495–510.
Pugh, M. (2005). The political economy of peacebuilding: A critical theory
perspective. International Journal of Peace Studies, 10(2), 23–42.
World Bank (2005). Engaging civil society organizations in conflictaffected
and fragile states. Report No. 32538-GLB. The International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.
Civil Society Indicators and Indexes
V. FINN HEINRICH
Transparency International, Melville, South Africa
Introduction
For most of its history, the concept of civil society has been
confined to the realms of political theory and philosophy.
From the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment via Gramsci’s
cultural hegemony perspective to the revival of the term
by Eastern European dissidents in the 1980s, civil society
was always used in the context of imagining a normative
ideal-type society. In addition, these various philosophical
traditions differed quite strongly in their definition of the
concept and its boundaries, leading commentators to lament
the conceptual confusion around the term and questioning
its usefulness for contemporary sociopolitical
analysis (Knight & Hartnell, 2001; Grimond, 2002).
Given this ideological and normative baggage,
the operationalization of the concept for empirical
research – a necessary prerequisite for the development
of indicators and indices – is an extremely challenging
undertaking. In fact, the applicability and relevance of
civil society for empirical–analytical research is a contested
issue: while there are scholars who regard the
term as an essentially normative and theoretical construct
(Tester, 1992; Foley & Edwards, 1998), there is a
growing number of researchers who contend that civil
society can and should be added to the repertoire of
376 C Civil Society Indicators and Indexes
macro-level concepts used for sociopolitical analysis
(Edwards, 2004: vi; Anheier, 2004).
However, those looking for empirical data on civil
society are likely to be confronted with a gaping hole.
Due to the tendency of official statistical agencies to be
preoccupied with either state or private sector institutions,
the third sector – which is often used synonymously
with civil society – largely remained empirical terra incognito
(Anheier, 2004: 11). As a consequence, up to the end
of the twentieth century one does not find any explicit
quantitative empirical work under the rubric of civil society.
This has changed quite profoundly because of a number
of special research projects dedicated to analyzing
‘‘real existing civil societies,’’ and due to several attempts
at conceptualizing and measuring the concept by scholars
working in the empirical–analytical research tradition.
Definition
While it is not a standing term used in the social sciences,
civil society indicators can be defined as specific measures
of pertinent aspects of the phenomenon, which lend themselves
to operationalization and measurement and to tracking
changes over time. A good indicator should meet the
SMART standard, i.e., it should be (analytically) sound,
measurable, accessible/available, relevant, and timely. A
civil society index is a composite indicator, which combines
the individual indicators (or variables) in a single
measure. For the development of indicators and indices,
an underlying theoretical framework which helps the researcher
define and select the relevant indicators and organize
them in a way that accurately reflects the assumptions
about their interrelationships is of crucial importance.
Historical Background
Up to the 1970s, social science data were highly skewed
toward economic issues. Despite the emergence of a social
indicator movement in the 1970s, empirical information
on civil society has remained scarce. The only quantitative
aspect of civil society which has been covered by largescale
international surveys for several decades is the extent
of the population’s participation in voluntary organizations.
When in the late 1990s civil society became one of
the key buzzwords among the international policy and
development community and academics alike, the dire
state of civil society data triggered the establishment of a
substantive number of international research projects on
civil society and related issues. The following projects are
the most widely known:
● Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project
(http://www.jhu.edu/$cnp/), which analyzes the
scope and economic contributions of the nonprofit
sector in more than 40 countries. The project is
also working with the UN statistical division to
introduce basic indicators on the nonprofit sector in
the official reporting system of national statistical
agencies.
● CIVICUS Civil Society Index Project (www.civicus.org) –
a participatory and multi-method approach to assess
the state of civil society in more than 50 countries.
● Global Civil Society Yearbook (http://www.lse.ac.uk/
Depts/global/researchgcspub.htm), published by the
London School of Economics, charts key themes
and challenges for global civil society in an annual
publication.
● Civil Society and Governance Programme at the Institute
for Development Studies, University of Sussex
(http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/civsoc/), which from 1998
to 2001 examined civil society’s relations with government
in 22 predominantly developing countries.
● Citizens and Governance Project, run by the
Commonwealth Foundation in 2000 (http://www.
commonwealthfoundation.com/uploads/documents/
cg_global_synthesis.pdf), which used a participatory
methodology to investigate people’s conceptions of a
good society and the role of civil society in governance
in Commonwealth countries.
● ARVIN Tool (http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/ESSD/
sdvext.nsf/PrintFriendly/C386845885F530EB85256
EA700 64EB14?Opendocument) developed by the
World Bank, which seeks to assess the enabling environment
for civic engagement and has been applied in
a number of developing countries.
● USAID NGO Sustainability Index for Eastern
Europe and Eurasia (http://www.usaid.gov/locations/
europe_eurasia/dem_gov/ngoindex/), which has been
generated annually since 1998 by USAID to assess the
sustainability of the NGO sector in the region.
● World Value Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.
org/), a large-scale international public opinion survey,
which includes questions on civic participation. The
survey data forms the basis for a number of crossnational
indices on civil society and social capital
(e.g., Norris, 2002; Howard, 2003).
Key Issues
As a consequence of the increasing availability of crossnational
data on civil society assembled via the projects
listed above, as well as of the growing attention by comparative
social researchers to issues of conceptualization, a
vibrant debate about how to conceptualize, operationalize,
Civil Society Indicators and Indexes C 377
C
and measure civil society has ensued (e.g., Heinrich, 2005;
Anheier, 2005; Sokolowski & Salamon, 2005; Howard,
2005; Kubik, 2005).
Conceptualizing Civil Society
Civil society is clearly one of the most contested and
most challenging social science concepts to conceptualize
and measure. On a basic level, one can distinguish
between normative–theoretical approaches to civil society,
which are preoccupied with developing a vision
for what civil society should be like and empirical–
analytical perspectives, which focus on analyzing real
existing civil societies. A second distinction can be
made between conceptualizations of civil society treating
the phenomenon as synonymous with a ‘‘good society’’
and those defining it as a distinct sphere or sector
within society at large (see Table 1).
Almost all studies which employ indicators and
indices fall into the lower right-hand box in Table 1,
with the notable exception of Putnam’s civic community
index, which measures the ‘‘civicness’’ of an entire community
as opposed the characteristics of the nonprofit/
civil society sector within a community (Putnam, 1993).
Civil Society’s Boundaries: However, within the dominant
empirical-analytical approach to the civil society
sphere/sector, there is considerable diversity in terms of
defining civil society’s boundaries (extension) and core
dimensions (intension). Regarding the extension of the
concept, two different approaches can be distinguished.
First, the structural-operational definition, which focuses
on the following key characteristics of organizations to
classify them as part of civil society: organized, private,
nonprofit-distributing, self-governing, and voluntary
(Salamon & Anheier, 1997). Second, a functional approach
which puts emphasis on the nature of the activities
performed in civil society, which are usually defined as the
expression of interests in the public sphere (Heinrich,
2004, Uphoff & Krishna, 2004). The choice of ‘‘function
versus form’’ concept has important downstream implications
for the development of indicators. For example,
while the structural-operational definition leads to a
focus on organizational indicators, the latter approach
implies a wider perspective, also including nonorganized
civic behavior.
Civil Society’s Core Dimensions: A further key conceptual
choice concerns the identification of civil society’s
core characteristics, which are to be operationalized and
measured via specific indicators. Here, the lacking consensus
around the term’s core meaning and the underdeveloped
body of theorizing on civil society have
proven to be crucial impediments for the development
of a widely agreed operational concept. While a common
operational concept is lacking, there is broad agreement
about the multidimensional nature of civil society, requiring
a composite index approach involving multiple
indicators.
As regards the key dimensions of civil society, recent
research has identified a convergence toward a twodimensional
conceptualization of structural and cultural
features which mirrors a similar emerging orthodoxy in
the social capital literature (Heinrich, 2005; Van Deth,
2003). While the structural dimension, which examines
the extent of civic participation as well as the key features
of organized civil society, is well-established in the literature,
the cultural dimension is a rather new addition and remains
still underdeveloped in terms of operational tools and measures.
These cultural facets relate to the norms, values, and
interests expressed in civil society; by focusing on the content
of civic activities they complement the structural
dimension, which is mainly concerned with the quantity
and form of these activities.
Civil Society Indicators
There is a wide range of different civil society indicators in
use, which can be classified according to their data type
and data sources.
On the one hand, there are objective indicators which
use information obtained from official statistical agencies
or public opinion surveys. Some examples are:
● Share of paid employment in nonprofit sector (Johns
Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project)
● Percentage of population who is a member of at least
one voluntary organization (World Value Survey)
● Percentage of people who trust others (LSE Global
Civil Society Index)
On the other hand, there are subjective indicators which
involve an intermediary step between the raw data and
the indicator score. This step is usually undertaken by
experts, who assign the indicator score based on the
Civil Society Indicators and Indexes. Table 1 Civil society
concepts
Normative–
theoretical
Empirical–
analytical
Property of society
(a ‘‘good society’’)
Object within society
(sphere/sector)
378 C Civil Society Indicators and Indexes
available information and based on their own knowledge.
There is an extensive range of subjective indicators, primarily
generated by USAID’s NGO Sustainability Index and the
CIVICUS Civil Society Index.
Civil Society Indices
Due to improved data availability, there are a growing
number of composite indicators on civil society. The
following indices are available for a substantive number
of countries:
1. The Global Civil Society Index developed by the Comparative
Nonprofit Sector Project at Johns Hopkins
University (Salamon & Sokolowski, 2004)
2. The Civil Society Strength Index developed on
the basis of the CIVICUS Civil Society Index data
(Heinrich, 2008)
3. LSE’s Global Civil Society Index (Anheier & Stares,
2002), which measures the extent to which a country’s
civil society participates in global civil society
4. USAID’s NGO Sustainability Index for post-Communist
Europe and Eurasia
5. Marc Howard’s measure of organizational memberships
(Howard, 2003)
6. Pippa Norris’ Social Capital Index (Norris, 2002:
150–151)
Research by the author has found moderately strong correlations
among the first four indices, while the latter two
measures, which rely on a limited number of indicators
based on the World Value Survey, often yield substantively
different results from the other indices (Heinrich, forthcoming).
However, in general and different from composite
measures in many other areas of the social sciences, such
as democracy, there are considerable differences in individual
country ratings and rankings across the entire range of
civil society indices. To illustrate this with an example: The
Czech Republic occupies a low position on Howard’s measure
and the Johns Hopkins Index, a medium position on
Norris’ Social Capital Index, but a relatively high ranking on
the Civil Society Strength Index and the LSE index. These
substantial differences cannot be attributed solely to the
different sample compositions, but are likely to be a consequence
of the vastly different operationalizations, scarce data
as well as the limited validity of the available data sources.
Operational concepts range from using organizational
membership as the sole indicator of civil society
(Howard), to a focus on economic features (Johns
Hopkins Index) or the NGO sector (USAID), while operationalizations
which span civil society’s multilevel nature
of micro-level (individual behavior), meso-level (organizational
characteristics) and macro-level (organized civil
society) are rare (Heinrich, forthcoming). In addition,
each index is plagued by a specific set of validity concerns,
such as the subjectivity of expert assessments (CIVICUS,
USAID), the doubtful cross-cultural validity of public
opinion surveys (Howard, Norris, LSE), or the existence
of a large gap between concept and indicator, such as in
the case of the Johns Hopkins Index, which uses primarily
economic indicators to measure the sociopolitical concept
of civil society.
Future Directions
Empirical research on civil society has grown significantly
since the turn of the millennium. The initial
approach of using organizational membership as the
sole indicator for civil society has been superseded by
multidimensional composite indicators, which are
designed to capture the various facets of this complex
macro-phenomenon. However, in general, civil society
indicators and indices are still a nascent area of research
which has to rely on imperfect measures and limited
data sources.
Future research should focus on a number of key
challenges. First, existing indices rarely cover more than
50 countries with a strong overrepresentation of OECD
countries. Thus, the development of larger and more
globally representative datasets remains a key task for
the future. While the process of including economic
data on the nonprofit sector in the official reporting by
statistical agencies is certainly an important step forward,
the political, social, and cultural aspects of civil
society are likely to remain outside of the remit of
statistical agencies and therefore require additional private
efforts to data collection. Second, the cultural dimension
of civil society remains underdeveloped,
conceptually as well as empirically: How civil societies
differ in terms of the values, norms, and interests they
espouse and promote is a question that has not been
addressed by the scholarly community and for which
valid indicators remain scarce. Third, developers of civil
society indices need to pay more attention to their
underlying concepts. Too often, the concepts of civil
society, social capital, third sector, and associational life
are conflated even though they relate to substantively
different phenomena. In addition, researchers should
specify which specific characteristic of civil society they
intend to capture with their measure, since notions of
civil society’s strength, sustainability, quality, or capacity –
while related – imply different choices in terms of the
selection of indicators. Last, but not least, since the scholarly
community is still far from having established a widely
Civil Society Indicators and Indexes C 379
C
accepted composite measure of civil society, ongoing engagement
among researchers involved in the crucial, yet
highly complex, task of measuring civil society is likely to
be key to advancing the field.
Cross-References
▶ Civic Participation
▶ Civil Society, Definitions of and Approaches
▶ Social Capital, Definition of
▶ Values
References/Further Readings
Anheier, H., & Stares, S. (2002). Introducing the global civil society index.
In H. Anheier, M. Glasius, & M. Kaldor (Eds.), Global civil society
yearbook (pp. 241–254). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Anheier, H. K. (2004). Civil society: Measurement, evaluation, policy.
London: Earthscan.
Anheier, H. K. (2005). Measure for measure: A commentary on Heinrich
and the state of civil society indicators research. Journal of Civil
Society, 1(3), 241–246.
Edwards, M. (2004). Civil society. London: Polity.
Foley, M. W., & Edwards, B. (1998). Beyond Tocqueville. Civil society
and social capital in comparative perspective. American Behavioral
Scientist, 42, 5–20.
Grimond, J. (2002). Civil society. The Economist, The World in 2002.
London: The Economist.
Heinrich, V. F. (2004). Assessing and strengthening civil society worldwide.
A project description of the CIVICUS civil society index: A participatory
needs assessment & action-planning tool for civil society.
Johannesburg: CIVICUS.
Heinrich, V. F. (2005). Studying civil society across the world. Exploring
the thorny issues of conceptualization and measurement. Journal of
Civil Society, 1(3), 211–228.
Heinrich, V. F. (2008). What makes civil society strong? Measuring and
analysing the strength of civil society across the world. Ph.D. thesis.
Hagen: Fernuniversita¨t Hagen, forthcoming.
Howard, M. M. (2003). The weakness of civil society in post-Communist
Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Howard, M. M. (2005). Conceptual and methodological suggestions for
improving cross-national measures of civil society: Commentary on
Heinrich. Journal of Civil Society, 1(3), 229–234.
Knight, B., & Hartnell, C. (2001). ‘Civil society – Is it anything more than
a metaphor for hope for a better world?’ Alliance, 6(4), 16.
Kubik, J. (2005). How to study civil society: The state of the art and what
to do next. East European Politics & Societies, 19, 105–30.
Norris, P. (2002). Democratic Phoenix. Reinventing political activism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Putnam, R. D. (1993). Making democracy work – Civic traditions in
modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. (1997). Defining the nonprofit sector.
A cross-national analysis. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Salamon, L. M., & Sokolowski, S. W. (2004). Measuring civil society:
The Johns Hopkins Global Civil Society Index. In: M. Salamon &
S. W. Sokolowski (Eds.), Global civil society. Volume 2. Dimensions of
the nonprofit sector (pp. 61–92). Bloomfield: Kumarian Press.
Sokolowski, W., & Salamon, L. (2005). Mirror, mirror on the wall?
Commentary on Heinrich. Journal of Civil Society, 1(3), 235–240.
Tester, K. (1992). Civil society. London: Routledge.
Uphoff, N., & Krishna, A. (2004). Civil society and public sector institutions:
More than a zero-sum relationship. Public Administration &
Development, 24(4), 357–372.
Van Deth, J. W. (2003). Measuring social capital: Orthodoxies and
continuing controversies. International Journal of Social Research
Methodology, 6(1), 79–92.
Civil Society Theory: Aristotle
MARTY SULEK
Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, Farmland,
IN, USA
Aristotle’s Life
Aristotle (384–322 BCE) is one of the most important
philosophers of antiquity, and a founding figure of
Western philosophy. A student of Plato and a teacher of
Alexander the Great, Aristotle founded the Lyceum, one
of the earliest and most influential philosophical schools
of the ancient world. By some accounts, he also invented
political science as a distinct academic discipline (Strauss,
1978: 21). There is a rich biographical tradition on Aristotle
in ancient sources, of which Du¨ring (1957) provides
a useful scholarly inventory. One of the most extensive
extant ancient accounts is provided by Diogenes Laertius
(‘‘DL’’) in the fifth book of his Lives of the Eminent
Philosophers, written sometime in the second century
AD. In the introduction to his translation of Aristotle’s
Politics, Lord (1984) also provides a speculative biography,
extrapolated from the biographical record, that traces the
philosopher’s likely, though for political reasons never
explicitly stated, political activities.
Aristotle was born in 384 in Stageiria, a Greek colony
on the Chalcidice peninsula, on the Gulf of Strymon, in
the northern Aegean Sea. He remained a citizen of Stageiria
his entire life, despite living elsewhere for most of it.
Later in life, he performed great services for his home
polis, including drafting its written code of laws. His
mother, Phaestis, originally hailed from Chalcis, on the
island of Euboea, and his father, Nicomachus, was an
Asclepiad, retained as court physician by King Amyntas
II of Macedon. Aristotle thus received his early education
in an aristocratic setting at the Macedonian royal court.
His mother died when he was still very young, and his
father died when he was ten. Thereafter, he was brought
up under the guardianship of Proxenus of Atarneaus, the
husband of his sister, Arimneste.
At the age of 17, Aristotle moved to Athens to pursue
his advanced education. He may have initially enrolled in
380 C Civil Society Theory: Aristotle