• Civil Society and Governance
  • Civil Society and Governance Overview
  • Institutional Capacity Building
  • Civic Education
  • Citizen Participation
  • Advocacy
  • Democratic Governance
  • Grants Solicitation and Management Capacity
  • Women's and Minority Rights
  • Disenfranchised Groups
• Education
  • Education Overview
  • Basic Education
  • Higher Education
  • Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
  • Education for Vulnerable Groups
• HIV/AIDS
  • HIV/AIDS Overview
  • HIV/AIDS Prevention
  • Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC)
  • Grants Solicitation and Management Capacity
  • Institutional Capacity Building
• International Exchanges
  • International Professional, Academic, and Cultural Exchanges Overview
  • Undergraduate and Graduate Academic Exchanges
  • Professional Exchanges
  • Youth Exchanges
• Capacity Development and Training
  • Capacity Development and Training Overview
  • Participant Training
  • Institutional Capacity Building
  • Undergraduate and Graduate Academic Exchanges
  • Grant Solicitation and Management Capacity
  • Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Civil Society and Governance

Democratic Governance

World Learning’s experience globally has shown that civil society organizations (CSOs) have an important stabilizing role to play in promoting good governance and fostering democracy.  Civil society has become the main channel for promoting durable peace, justice, accountability, sustainable development and good governance. 

In this vein therefore CSOs and their networks are important players in national political life, with the potential to strengthen governance and transform state-society relations. They do this by bonding citizens to each other and by linking citizens to the state through formal and informal bridging mechanisms. In many cases, CSOs may offer the only opportunity for average citizens to engage with the state. Through their innovative approaches to community level decision-making, watchdog and lobbying activities in the course of the peace processes, CSOs can be credited for improving governance machinery from the bottom up and fostering accountability and hence peace in these fragile societies (Jusu, Yasmin; Sierra Leone Civil Society, in Adebayo, Adekeye and Ishmail Rashid, West Africa’s Security Challenges: Building Peace in a Troubled Region, Boulder, Lynne Rienner).

According to the Department for International Development (DFID), governance is the exercise of power and authority and how a country manages its affairs from the state down to the local community. It refers to the institutional arrangements within which all organizations operate – the formal and informal ‘rules of the game’. It concerns politics, rights and the relations of people, resources and power in diverse institutional and social contexts. The concept of civil society is often associated with good governance because it promotes openness, and thus supports a society that includes a pluralism of identities, religions, ethnicities, life-styles, and conceptions of the good life (Department of Government Georgetown University).

People around the world are increasingly joining together in their communities and countries to demand a greater voice in the decisions that affect their lives and to hold public servants accountable for effective, responsive and transparent governance. Yet many governments continue to exclude citizens, particularly the poor, from policy dialogue and public decision-making. In some countries, citizens face personal risk by simply asking the government to perform its duties, operate honestly and provide essential public services to all.

By strengthening local institutions and local government councils, World Learning helps local actors acquire the requisite skills and knowledge that can be used to better manage issues affecting their communities. While World Learning focuses most of its efforts on the "demand" side through citizen engagement, the "supply" side of effective governance is equally important in solving social problems. Combating social ills such as trafficking in persons, corruption in business and government, and unfair labor conditions requires the cooperation of public officials at the local, national and, increasingly, global levels. World Learning’s work to create linkages between governments and civil society enhances policy makers’ understanding of their responsibilities as well as the role civil society can play in helping to bring about social change.

Through World Learning’s Democracy Fellows Program, we assist the advancement of democratic practices in emerging and transitional democracies by recruiting and placing field-experienced democracy and governance professionals at USAID/Washington and Missions.