Participationand Transparency
S T U D E N T
C O N F E R E N C E
Participationand
Transparency at the Turn of the Century
S E L E C T E D C O N F E R E N C E P A P E R S
2000 Published by the Civic Education Project
Editor: Christine S. Zapotocky
ISBN: 963 00 5191 5
Design: Createch Ltd./Judit Kovács
Production: Createch Ltd., Budapest, Hungary
Printed: November 2000 ABLEOF
TC O N T E N T S
Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 5
Civic Education Project ............................................................................................ 6
S E C T I O N 1
Lessons of Participation in New Political Systems..................................... 7
Valeriu Lingurar—University of the West, Romania
Beyond the Slogan of Civil Society ............................................................................... 8
Rudolf Stika—Charles University, Czech Republic
Weaknesses in the Process of Demarcating Electoral Districts in the Czech Republic .. 17
Safo Musta—University of Tirana, Albania
Citizen Information and Public Participation in Albania:
A Study of Tirana Municipality .................................................................................. 24
S E C T I O N 2
Participation for All?
The Status of Subgroups in Postcommunist Societies ............................ 33
Luciana Maria Salagean—Babes-Bolyai University, Romania
Homosexuals: Why Is It So Hard To Accept Diversity?
Romanian Attitudes to Shaping New Patterns in Sexual Minorities Issues .................. 34
Sonila Danaj—University of Tirana, Albania
The Recognition of Albania’s Ethnic Minorities and Their Right to Participation in Education and Politics ......................................... 42
Jibek Aitmatova—American University of Kyrgyzstan, Kyrgyzstan
The Social and Political Status of Kyrgyz Women:
The Historical Heritage of the Soviet Union and Negative Tendencies in Postcommunist Kyrgyzstan.............................................. 51
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S E C T I O N 3
Transparency in Economic and Environmental Issues:
What has been Achieved? ............................................................. 59
Serhiy Stepanchuk—Ternopil Academy of National Economy, Ukraine
The Role of the “Black” Economy in Ukraine............................................................. 60
Daniela Shkalla—Aleksander Xhuvani University, Albania
Transparency about Environmental Hazards in Albania:
A Case Study of the Elbasan Metallurgical Plant ......................................................... 68
S E C T I O N 4
Opening Traditional Institutions............................................................. 77
Doina Cajvaneanu—University of Bucharest, Romania
Regional Participation:
Does Ecumenism Have a Chance in East-Central Europe? ......................................... 78
Olga Jdanova—Tashkent State University, Uzbekistan
Higher Education in Uzbekistan: Is There Anything to be Proud of? .......................... 85
Alexei Petrenko—Tomsk State University, Russia
Kazakhstan: In Quest of National Identity.................................................................. 91
S E C T I O N 5
New Attitudes toward Participation in Europe....................................... 99
Magdalena Borys—University of Gdansk, Poland
The Information Campaign and Communication with Citizens in the Process of Polish Integration with the European Union .................................. 100
Visvaldis Valtenberg—Vidzeme University College, Latvia
Joining the European Union: Miserable Present and Return to the Past ................... 110
Participants and Guests......................................................................................... 117
Conference Schedule ............................................................................................ 129
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Introduction
The Civic Education Project (CEP) held its eighth annual International Student Conference, Participation and Transparency at the Turn of the Century, 5–10 May 2000 in Budapest, Hungary. The conference brought together an impressive group of outstanding students representing twenty countries across Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia—all the countries in which CEP operates. While these countries reflect great diversity, they share the problems and challenges of transition after the fall of communism. The 2000 conference focused on the rising expectations in these societies for greater citizen participation and transparency in all spheres of political, economic and legal activity, both at the national and international levels. As always, the conference provided a collegial and dynamic forum for learning new skills, developing and challenging ideas and fostering understanding and dialogue among the participants.
Recent years have seen substantial opportunities for talented students from Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia to travel to the West for additional academic training. While these opportunities are essential to the experience of top students, CEP feels strongly that they should also interact with their peers from other countries of the East. The student conference remains one of the few academic events in which these students have the chance to meet their colleagues from neighboring countries and discuss directly with them the pressing issues faced in the region. Under the guidance of their CEP Fellows, one hundred forty student participants presented their original academic work this year. The papers published here were recognized as the best presented at the conference.
In addition to the core panel presentations, the 2000 conference also offered students the opportunity to participate in an information fair as well as a number of workshops and activities focusing on academic topics, public speaking and cross-cultural communication.
We would like to extend a special thank you to all of the sponsors and individuals that made this conference possible. We are especially grateful to the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute for its ongoing primary support of CEP programs and to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for its consistent assistance with the annual International Student Conference. Special thanks are also extended to the Central European University, which served as a welcoming host for this event, and to Pearson Education, the International Debate Education Association, the Robert Bosch Foundation, the International
Committee of the Red Cross, the Delegation of the European Commission to Hungary, Citibank, KPMG and Pepsi-Cola Hungary for their generous assistance and participation.
Liana Ghent
Director of Central and East European Programs
Civic Education Project
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Civic Education Project
The Civic Education Project (CEP), founded in 1991, is a private, nonprofit, educational organization dedicated to assisting democratic reform by cooperating with institutions of higher education in
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Eurasia. CEP believes that critically minded and informed individuals are fundamental to a thriving democratic society. Towards this end, CEP strives to develop the capacity for teaching and research in the social sciences, law and the humanities. It accomplishes this primarily by supporting western-trained lecturers as teachers and innovators at universities throughout the region.
CEP’s Visiting Lecturer Program places and supports western scholars for at least one academic year in positions at universities in CEE and Eurasia. There they teach, supervise research, initiate outreach activities and serve as resources for host universities. The Eastern Scholar Program identifies academics from the region who have substantial training from a western or western-accredited institution. CEP supports these scholars in their efforts to work as full-time academics in their home countries by providing them with financial support, teaching materials and assistance in their professional development. For the 2000–2001 academic year CEP has approximately 200 Fellows teaching at universities in Albania,
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia,
Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Yugoslavia.
In addition to teaching courses requested by the host department, CEP Fellows cooperate with local colleagues in outreach activities such as designing new curricula, developing local language teaching materials, securing western book donations, seeking research funding and identifying opportunities for talented faculty and students to receive training outside their home countries. The combined efforts of CEP’s Visiting Lecturers and Eastern Scholars allow CEP to facilitate region-wide training, research and exchange initiatives, including a wide range of student and faculty events.
Principal funding for CEP comes from the generous support of the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI). Other contributors include: AIG/Starr Foundation, Carnegie
Corporation of New York, Central and East European Law Initiative (ABA), Citigroup, Constitutional and Legislative Policy Institute (COLPI), European Commission, European Cultural Foundation, German
Rectors’ Conference, German Marshall Fund, Government of Austria, International Debate Education
Association, Juris Angliae, Jurzykowski Foundation, Koerber Foundation, Kosciuszko Foundation,
Macarthur Foundation, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, OSI East-East Program, OSI Network Library
Program, OSI Paris, Robert Bosch Stiftung, Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, US Institute of Peace, US State Department and other donors.
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S E C T I O N 1
Lessons of Participation in New Political Systems
Beyond the Slogan of Civil Society
Valeriu Lingurar
University of the West
Bucharest, Romania
Weaknesses in the Process of Demarcating
Electoral Districts in the Czech Republic
Rudolf Stika
Charles University
Prague, Czech Republik
Citizen Information and Public Participation in Albania:
A Study of Tirana Municipality
Safo Musta
University of Tirana
Tirana, Albania
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Beyond the Slogan of Civil Society
Valeriu Lingurar
University of the West
Bucharest, Romania
Introduction
In this paper I intend to take issue with one of the prevailing interpretations of the concept of civil society. I will combat Smolar’s idea that: “as used in Central and Eastern Europe, the notion of civil society had never much to do with the grand theoretical debates that one can trace across two centuries in the work of Locke, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, Hegel, Tocqueville, Marx and Gramsci, among others.”1
The specific goal of my essay is to debate this conception as it appears in Smolar’s study, showing that, on the contrary, there are important links between classical political philosophy and the postcommunist quest for civil society. The larger goal is to emphasize that the accepted account of this concept, according to which there are two incompatible paradigms, is one-sided.
In order to develop my argument, I will outline the polysemantic history of the concept of civil society, pointing out what it means from Aristotle to contemporary thinkers. I will illustrate the specific goal of my paper by comparing two apparently irreconcilable meanings of civil society: the Lockean “civil society” and the contemporary postcommunist “civil society.” At first sight these two are incompatible: in the first case there is a synonymy between civil society and the state, while in the second case they are antonyms.
Nevertheless, a thorough inquest will prove that the Lockean notion of civil society is the expression of his enduring theoretical intent to criticize the traditional idea of unlimited power. The same concern to limit the power of the state is inherently linked to the contemporary perception of civil society as a device of public control over the autocratic tendencies of the state.
Polysemantic History of the Concept of Civil Society
The history of the expression “civil society” is a real adventure. The notion itself is polysemantic: as
Dominique Colas revealed, within this expression we understand “civil” in opposition to “barbarian,”
“savage,” “military,” “religious” or “political.” Furthermore, “ the society” can be the opposite of “the community,” “the individual” or “the state” so that, combining these antitheses, we can detect an extensive number of meanings. Moreover, political theory conceives the concept of civil society in many different ways.
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In Aristotle’s Politics the expression koinonia politike (translated later in Latin as societas civilis) is a synonym for polis—city or state, the most developed model of community or association, exceeding the family
(oikos) and the ethnic community (ethnos). “Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.”2 Aristotle insists on understanding the difference between the political or civil society and other forms of human association as qualitative, and not merely quantitative. Therefore, in his conception, the expression “civil society” is a synonym for “state” and must be conceived in qualitative opposition to oikos
(family) and ethnos (people).
Manfried Riedel reaches the same conclusion by a process of eidetic reduction inspired by the phenomenological method developed by Edmund Husserl: the polis is a species of community. “It is a group, which as human and hence free and self-responsible, comes together in governance to guide efforts toward the achievement of the good life. Community and governance are not the same or tautological, but they do go together, for persons are united as a community by their common orientation to the same end, and as free they rightly guide or govern themselves toward that end.” In this way Aristotle identifies the central nature of the sociopolitical order as being a koinonia politika or “civil society.”3
Augustine comprehends the city (civitas) and human society (societas terrestra) in opposition to the “City of God.” Dominique Colas notices in his Genealogie du Fanatisme et de la Societe Civile that the background of the Lutheran political period is a revised Augustinism that praises civil society and, thinking of everyone as a priest, shows that the Church should not be identified with the City of God. Colas claims that the notion societas civilis emerged in modern political terminology on two routes: the Aristotelian tradition and the Protestant Reformation.
Rousseau intended to label his famous Social Contract either On Civil Society or On the State; this biobibliographical fact emphasizes the idea of synonymy between “civil society” and “the state” as well as the great modern significance of this issue. Classical political theory explains the notion of “civil society” in opposition to the “state of nature” (I shall clarify this distinction in the section dedicated to Lockean political theory). The topic of civil society is debated in this manner by thinkers like Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, Spinoza and Fichte; they all endorse the synonymy between “civil society” and “state.” At first sight there are no major differences between the various contractualist theories of civil society. Still, in my opinion, there is one important aspect that should be stressed: in some contractualist theories, civil society is explained within a broader theoretical attempt to limit the state’s autocratic tendencies (Locke,
Montesquieu), while in other theories the same topic is accounted for within an obsessive theoretical endeavor to legitimate political power (Hobbes).
Hegel’s “civil society,” burgerliche Gesellschaft, is the domain of necessities satisfied by labor and regulated by law and corporations. The Hegelian moment is very important in the history of this concept, because from the dialectic method theorized by the German philosopher, we can figure out how civil society could be a part of the state and, at the same time, the opposite of it. It is a case of dialectic contradiction and not a logical one. Hegel criticizes traditional logic and identifies dialectic as the tendency of a notion to pass over into its own negation as a result of the conflict between its inherent contradictory aspects.
The German idealistic thinker finds a place for everything—logical, natural, human and divine—in a dialectical scheme that repeatedly oscillates from thesis to antithesis and back again to a higher and richer synthesis. In his Philosophy of Right, Hegel identifies in this dialectical manner “the family”—the thesis,
“civil society”—the antithesis, and “the state”—the synthesis. For the first time in the history of political
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CEP R O J E C T philosophy, “civil society” is delimited from “the state.” As George McLean remarked, “Hegel attempted to reimburse with value the civil society understood as the sector between family and state. In the characteristically holistic and dialectical manner of his Phenomenology of the Spirit, he followed the expansive unfolding of the idea.”4 Just as the unity of the family would be based on love, so the unity of civil society would be related to the satisfaction of needs and wants. Civil society is described as an “external condition” and a “condition of needs,” the situation in which there is a distinction between those who govern and those who are governed. This distinction disappears in the state, the realm of absolute freedom. “The power of self-interest generates conflicts, which remain insoluble in terms of particular persons or a smaller grouping; hence the state is necessary, while the corporation mediates between the two. This state, however, is not an impersonal structure, but is the locus of the exercise of freedom and of the values and virtues needed to overcome private self-interests and the conflicts they engender. Civil society, having now become the state, is not only public but is suffused with the power of coercion and provides therefore no protection or escape.”5 “Individuals can attain their ends only as far as they determine their knowing, willing and action in a universal way and make themselves links in a chain of social connections.”6 The idea of a civil society here is inherently linked to the Hegelian apology of the state.
Hegel overvalues the state in spite of civil society. Karl Marx reverses this inequality, emphasizing the preeminence of civil society. His apology of civil society has a weird destiny. Marx’s writings that praised civil society and blamed the state inspired the communist ideology that finally determined the dissolution of civil society within the socialist Leviathan. For Marx the ideal of a civil society in which all participate fully in all pursuits, including governance, only could be a matter of the future, a soteriological myth.7 For the present, the private individual was dominated by his or her property and in turn treated others as means for its advancement. Only the state was concerned with the communal being. But as it took all governance for itself, it became increasingly distanced from the people and their concerns. Thus, Marx predicted the end of the socialist state in a transformation to an ideal communist society. This Marxist prediction inspired those theorists who conceived civil society as the third way, beyond socialism and capitalism.
Democracy and Civil Society
The most recent meanings of civil society have been conceived within theoretical debates concerning the dissolution of the communist political systems in the East and Central European countries. Many theorists connect the failure of the communist world to the emergence of the alleged “parallel polis.” In this context, civil society is the expression of a double opposition: on one hand it signifies opposition to communist authority, and on the other hand it is pictured as antagonism to the ethnic community.8
“Civil society” is approached in this way by personalities like Vaclav Havel, Jacek Kuron, Adam Michnik and Janos Kis.
Aleksander Smolar describes the anticommunist strategy of civil society: although formulated in several articles, the program “The Society First” can be outlined in a few sentences. His first postulate, unforgettably expressed by Soljenitin and Havel, was “to live in the truth.” This was an authentic moral imperative and, at the same time, a way to reject the legitimacy of a public domain established by the constrained admittance of an official definition of reality. The second postulate asserts the “value of self-organization.” The third postulate was “respect for the law.”9 In this interpretation civil society is an antipolitical social project beyond communism and democracy, beyond socialism and individualism, a brand new way of understanding human civilization. The anticommunist intelligentsia has rediscovered “the third way,” carrying on the Marxist ideal of an emancipated civil society. The destiny of this alleged “third way” is
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LPNPS Y S T E M S described accurately by Smolar: “Responsibilities and definite opportunities have cured lots of leaders of moral society of the utopian idea that a “third way” would be possible, beyond capitalism and socialism, beyond dictatorship and democracy. This fantasy was replaced by the decision to imitate western institutions, such as constitutional democracy, the free market and the rule of law.”10 What had been
“moral civil societies” became political blocs.
The strategy of civil society as a “third way” has failed. This moral civil society, depicted as an antipolitical community (anticommunist and anticapitalist as well), had an outstanding historical role, but its part in history ended when its terrible enemy, the communist state, collapsed. Smolar’s conclusion is accurate: revolutionary civil society is a transitory phenomenon, and the Polish experience proved that social opposition is followed by social atomization. Eventually the moral civil society works as a social ideal exhilarating the emergence of a new democratic civil society. The idea of an antipolitical civil society is grounded in sociopolitical communist realities. Within the communist sphere the fundamental ideological demarcations stopped working; within the totalitarian system basic political choice is not the traditional one, between left and right; political choice is made either for the socialist status quo or against it. Vladimir