CIVICUS |
Civil Society Index (CSI) 
Background
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The CIVICUS Civil Society Index (CSI) is a participatory needs assessment and action planning tool for civil society around the world,with the aim of creating a knowledge base and momentum for civil society strengthening initiatives. The CSI is initiated and implemented by, and for, civil society organizations at the country level. It also actively involves and disseminates its findings to a broad range of stakeholders including government, donors, academics and the public at large. From its inception in 1993, CIVICUS strived to make a significant contribution to recording the rise of civil society around the world, and to build a knowledge base of civil society-related issues. To achieve this, in 1997, CIVICUS published The New Civic Atlas,a compilation of civil society profiles for 60 countries around the world. The New Civic Atlas provided concise and current information on the basic features of civil society in these countries; however, it lacked consistency with regard to the issues covered. In 1998, when the possibility of an updated version of The New Civic Atlas was raised, some members voiced their preference for a more rigorous comparative framework of analysis that would allow valuable lessons to be drawn across countries. Responding to this feedback, the Secretary General and CEO of CIVICUS, Kumi Naidoo, presented a proposal to the CIVICUS Board recommending that an exploratory consultative process, for the development of a Civil Society Index,be undertaken. In 1999, CIVICUS developed a concept note, distributed it to its members and partners and conducted a number of consultations around the world. One participant described the project as “an exercise in madness,” highlighting the contextual nature of civil society, insufficient data on the topic in many countries and the absence of a widely accepted definition of civil society. Others felt the time was right for such an initiative, notwithstanding the numerous challenges of the project design. In September 1999, at the CIVICUS World Assembly in Manila, Kumi Naidoo presented the Diamond Tool, developed by Professor Helmut Anheier, then Director of the Centre for Civil Society at the London School of Economics (LSE), as the preliminary methodological design for the CSI project, for acceptance by CIVICUS members and partners. Even though the four-dimensional approach of the Diamond Tool does not generate an Index in the strict technical sense of a single additive score, CIVICUS employs a broader interpretation of the term “Index” as concise and comparable information on a phenomenon in different contexts and consequently retained the project’s name, the CIVICUS Civil Society Index. Subsequent to the Manila World Assembly, and with financial assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Netherlands Organisation for International Development Cooperation (NOVIB) and the Commonwealth Foundation, CIVICUS developed a full-fledged project design and hired dedicated human resources to move the project forward. In March 2000, CIVICUS issued a request for statements of interest to organisations interested in participating as CSI country partner-organisations in the CSI’s pilot phase. The pilot phase began in October 2000 in thirteen countries world-wide:
The selection of country partners was based on each organisation’s expression of interest and an assessment of their capability rather than on strategic or methodological considerations. This led to a strong representation by Central and Eastern European countries, where a civil society needs assessment and action-planning project was regarded as relevant and timely. The global co-ordination of the pilot implementation phase was financially support by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Commonwealth Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and NOVIB. In February 2001, a capacity-building workshop was held for the country partners in Mainz, Germany. The national partners completed the data collection and analysis, and presented their findings at the CIVICUS World Assembly, in Vancouver in August 2001 and produced country reports, which are available on the Pilot Phase page of the CIVICUS CSI website. CIVICUS published a reflection paper on the pilot phase, also available on the Pilot Phase page of the CSI section of the CIVICUS website. To gain a thorough understanding of the pilot phase’s achievements and challenges, an independent consultative evaluation study was conducted by Srilatha Batliwala Research Fellow with the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, involving the country partners, CIVICUS staff and board members and external experts. The evaluation found that “the Index project is an innovative, contextually flexible, empowering and uniquely participatory tool for self-assessment by civil society stakeholders of the state of civil society in their countries. The Index as currently designed, however, has certain weaknesses in methodology that must be modified before it is further applied…[t]hese flaws are largely amenable to remedy and re-design.” The CIVICUS Board of Directors formally adopted the recommendation of the evaluator to continue the project and address the project’s shortcomings, which was the focus of the subsequent re-design phase, in which CIVICUS contracted Carmen Malena as a Senior Research Consultant. From March to November 2002, the project methodology and framework were revisited and the project team made the proposed changes to improve the validity, comparability and action-orientation of the CSI project. The proposed framework was presented and discussed at a two-day workshop in July 2002, in Cape Town, South Africa, which brought together an international group of 20 civil society researchers and practitioners. The recommendations of the workshop led to the production of a final project framework, completed in October 2002, which provided the foundation for the development of a comprehensive project implementation toolkit. In November 2002, with the revised project framework in place, CIVICUS issued a call for statements of interest from organizations to apply as country partners for the 2003-05 CSI implementation phase. During the next months, CIVICUS received over 90 applications from more than 70 countries. This was three times the expected number of applications. This was an indication of the relevance and timeliness of the CSI tool for a wide range of countries, from the global South to post-communist to OECD-countries. After a thorough desk and peer review, CIVICUS accepted applications from 68 organisations in 65 countries. To make the process more manageable and to accommodate the different timing preferences of the NCOs, the CSI implementation phase was broken up into three rounds, commencing in April, July and December 2003 respectively. In 2004, CIVICUS developed the CIVICUS Civil Society Index–Shortened Assessment Tool (CSI-SAT), which is based on the original CSI design, but is a shorter, less extensive and less resource-intensive process to assess the state of civil society. The CSI-SAT is particularly relevant in countries, where there is a substantive amount of secondary data available on civil society and it can also serve as a useful preparatory activity for a full CSI implementation at a later stage. The project spanned over the years 2005 and 2006, with the CSI being implemented in 53 countries world wide. The CSI team worked with country partners to assist them in completing the project and in drafting country reports . In mid 2006 the country reports were compiled into the first volume of The Global Report on the State of Civil Society: Findings from the CIVICUS Civil Society Index Project. This first volume, launched in 2007, provides concise and informative overviews of the state of civil society in participating countries. In Volume Two, which was launched in 2008, readers can find a wide-ranging analysis of key issues facing civil society worldwide. You can find more information, including how to order a copy of these books, on the CSI Publications webpage. 2008 will be a very exciting year for the CSI. In addition to working with 6 new African countries in implementing the project (a training for them was held in January 2008), and participating again at this year’s CIVICUS World Assembly presenting a workshop entitled “CSI for Action”, the CSI will see a revision of the current toolkit and methodology, as well as starting a new phase of project implementation around the world. The Global Call for Applications has closed, and as many as 60 new NCOs will soon be selected and trained during this year. |
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