Organizations and Constructing Civil Society Subjects: Speech Acts, Performative Utterances, and Human Sciences

This paper posits that we can gain a better understanding of civil society by studying its discursive construction in a particular historical context. Civil society has re-emerged as a political discourse since the 1980s due to regime changes, neoliberal reforms, and new governance practices. To analyze how international organizations define and constitute civil society discursively, an interpretivist approach can be taken in three layers: a) contextualizing civil society in its historical political context; b) treating policy documents as expressions of speech acts; and c) identifying the practices, instruments, and materials that organize civil society actors. Since the 1990s, there has been a significant increase in the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world. These organizations are often considered part of civil society, acting as intermediaries between people and policymakers. They are often referred to as "transmission belts," "mediators," "connections," or "bridges" that represent the collective voice and interests of the citizenry. However, it's essential to note that these metaphors should not be taken at face value. Contrary to the expectations of democratic self-government through organized actors of civil society, which involve a bottom-up approach, there is often a manufacturing of participation or what is known as 'participatory engineering.' This is because many CSOs/NGOs have not emerged spontaneously, and rely on external funding from government, bilateral aid agencies, and international organizations. These organizations have called upon civil society actors to share or transfer traditional state responsibilities with non-state actors. As a result, the involvement of CSOs in public policy has become a core aspect of governance, with civil society actors being provided with resources and opportunities to participate in decision-making and policy implementation. Under this background, the primary thesis of this paper is that NGOs and CSOs symbolically represent civil society in contemporary political discourse. They are often seen as representing or standing for civil society in various contexts, reflecting the close association between civil society and these organizations in both scholarly and practical discussions. Scholars and practitioners have often associated NGOs with civil society, narrowly defining it as a sphere consisting of these organizations and other voluntary groups. However, this association is only evident within specific political contexts, and civil society's meaning is linked to the practices of these organizations when it is defined as a social sphere comprising NGOs, CSOs, and other voluntary groups. In addition, the conceptual links between NGOs/CSOs and civil society, public sphere, legitimacy, and participatory democracy have been taken for granted in the past, but it's crucial to recognize that this relationship is not a given fact. To examine this relationship, I draw on Michel Foucault's discourse analysis and Judith Butler's performativity theory. These insights allow us to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how public policies can function as performative utterances that define and constitute NGOs, as well as the conceptual links between NGOs and civil society.