Institute of Philosophy of the Tajik Academy of Science

Civil society: Evolution of idea and problems of its existing in Tajikistan 
 

Institute of Philosophy of the Tajik Academy of Science 

Beginning from the 90-s in the post soviet societies as well in Tajikistan, the problem of civil society is very actively discussed. And it is not by accident. In the concept of USSR collapse and the communist system, the civil society was opposite to the state and was identified with the political dissidence and considered as an effective means against the strengthening of governmental power. With the end of 90-s such a close interest to civil society mainly was stipulated by definite improvement of stabilization of social, economical and political situation in these countries. The developed condition not only allows concentrate attention to solving of impending goals, which are closely related to the further development of state and non-government institutions of the modern society with the search of new and optimal means and methods of their interrelations, but with the manufacturing of solid understanding of the nature of these institutions. 

The conception of “civil society” reflects important aspect of social organization which is by itself embodied in the different type of societies. Contentious orientation of historic evolution of the idea of civil society is defined by the character of dominated opinions on the nature and formation of this society. In the philosophical tradition of society and its members control by the state came from the Plato’s line. Plato put the unity of the state on the first place, which is actually possible with the active participation of identity and group on the every level of the state life. In this way such a social link is created by the political and intellectual elite of the state. It means that civil society is the continuation of the state policy. According to Aristotle the state in its nature is first in compare with the family and every citizen, because whole precedes parts. Aristotle considers citizens only those who takes part in the court and in the public meetings. Property ownership must be in the hand of citizen in order to be well-off. If the person who does not have property he cannot be valid citizen. Aristotle’s “politiya” is the entire social being of the state and society, citizen and politics. 

In modern time T. Gobbs characterize civil society as the state condition of society, which comes for the changing of its natural (pre state) condition in the result of agreement among people. Despite that T. Gobbs identifies civil society and state, the last one in his interpretation strongly differs from state defined by his predecessors. According to T. Gobbs in order to realize more efficiently its functions state must provide freedom to its nationals in required frames. These frames are defined by the citizens’ possibilities to use offered rights without any anxiety. 

J. Lock’s view to the nature of civil society was oriented for searching of state differentiation problem solving. The central point for him was the issue of how to restrict the state of absolute monarchy, incompatible with the civil society. According to J. Lock the most important component for transition from natural condition to civil society and state can become the private ownership. The main function of the state is to defend the private ownership. The basic aim of the people to enter the society as he considered is the aspiration of peaceful and safely usage of the laws set up in the society.  

For J.J. Russo the civil society means its transformation to state with the help of social agreement and certainly in the form of republic where the power can be dismissed in any time by the demand of the civil society. He sees three main qualities which create the identity: the right of ownership on what it has; civil freedom, restricted only by public will; moral freedom. T. Gobbs, J. Lock and J.J. Russo differently understand the content and nature of the civil society, but they can be joined together by the idea that natural condition in the results of public agreement transforms to civil condition of the society.        

At the end of XVIII and beginning of XIX centuries the theory of civil society starts to be reconsidered by its rationalizing construction. In this time the well-know syncretism of society and state was overcame, which is linked with improving rationalizing public life and the necessity of its moral and legal regulation. English philosophers and economists, French historians and socialists-utopians, H. Hegel, K Marx and so on originate the new socio-realistic tradition in considering the civil society and it reviews not as political phenomenon, but the objective legal, moral and social reality of modern Europe. 

G.F. Hegel thinks that civil society is detachment which appears between family and state, although the development of civil society become later then the development of state, so as a detachment it envisage the existence of the state which it should have in front of itself as something independent in order to exist. Civil society in the Hegel’s interpretation is the mediated by labor system of necessities, resting on the private properties and overall formal relation of people. Such kind of society is created only in modern world. In the ancient states subjective goal was fully analogical with the state will; in modern life we demand in opposite our own opinion, own excitements and conscience. For the ancients there was not conscience in this regard, the final word for them was the state will.           

K. Marx also links civil society appearing with the creation of bourgeois relations. Before the capitalistic society formation there was unification of civil society and state under the auspices of the last one, so long as in pre capitalistic societies the people were considered as a special kinds of property by the authority. This “living” property was summoned only to enrich the power, nationals did not make a claim for rights, and they just need to fulfil the obligation imperatively imposed on them by the authority. In capitalistic society bourgeois transformed in the class organized in the national scale and tending to give to their interest general form. Exactly this way state acquires independent existing along with the civil society and out of it.  

Thus, by XIX century in the concepts of civil society two contrary orientations were formed: etatism which explains the civil society on the assumption of state development (H. Hegel) and socistism which defines this condition of state from its own basis (K. Marx).  

By the end of XIX and beginning of XX centuries in explanation of civil society appear several new tendencies: the idea of sociological reconstruction of the civil society (F. Tyoniss, E. Durkgame, M. Veber), its political transformation in the theories of liberalism and neoliberalism (J.S. Mill, K Popper, F. Haiks), humanization and radicalisation of ideas in the modern theories of capitalism and capitalistic modernization (E. Fromm, U. Habermass, M. Fuko and others). 

Modern concept of civil society began to reshape at the second half of XX century. Civil society is considered as volunteer association of citizen which is created out of state administration’s activity and market (U Habermass) as a mediator in relationship between a person and state (A. Arato, J. Koen). 

Based on the mentioned concepts we can make the conclusion of ambiguity, historical variability and aksiological character of the “civil society” conception. With the development of society gradually the general understanding of civil society was formed as an ideal society of free independent personalities, their independent organizations, realizing their activities on the base of equality and mutual benefits.           

According to the view of well-known American professor Frederic Starr “the standard opinion regarding the civil society in English speaking world is defined as the status which exist when people are ruled by the law, when liberty of speech and association are defended by law, when voluntary citizen are working for the purpose of civil society strengthening and finally, when people are considering themselves rather as citizen than as an object”.    

F. Starr does not put the civil society against the state and considers the last one as a condition where all the identity rights are defended by the law and where the citizen themselves voluntarily unite in independent associations, which are directed against the state, but in contrary are working together with the state. 

Based on this understanding, it is important to define how this socio-economic condition can effectively function in Central Asia and in Tajikistan as well. In principal the main institutions of civil society expressed in the official and unofficial forms are well known. Certainly there are structural and semantic differences in understanding of peculiarity of civil society forming in the Central Asia. But the question is that to what extend we can consider the civil institutions blocks, religious establishments, “hashar” (collective volunteer work), elderly council, society of men meetings and parties, clan and so on which are controlled by the state. 

If we can consider PU (public union) as one of the form of civil society, then the question arise that to what extend they are independent and free from the external financial sources? But if they do maintain the others interests, then the spirit of civil society itself as an independent and volunteer association of people for the achievement of good will of the society is lost. In Tajikistan, according to the Tajik Juridical consortium, PU in the field of education, science and culture are 20,4%; humanitarian and charities – 16,5%; professional - 10,6%; women – 27,5%, human right – 5,1%; youth and children – 9,4% economical – 2.2%. It is visible from here that in Tajikistan the most active PU are the women, youth and children and humanitarian and charity ones and relatively active is the PU in education. In the case of lack of support from the government for the PU of non productive sectors all of them exists and function with the financial help from International institutions and organizations as well the foreign state structure.

The next factor that impede the formation of real, but not quasi institutions of civil society in the Central Asian region appear the strict hierarchy coming from the power (from the top to the bottom), but not (from the bottom to the top) from the citizen to the state. In many cases occurs the government ownership of civil institutions. Not having choice the subject of civil societies are forced to live in the peace with the state which is controlling natural, material, financial and other resources.  

Not less important factor is clannish social system which is the basement of unity in the micro level that naturally destroys the formation of volunteer social association among the citizen.  

The next important circumstance considers the lack of clear and acting, but not the declared laws that support the civil institutes. Nowadays in Tajikistan the civil sector does not have required resources for keeping self-sufficiency in the society that bring them to strong dependence from the government, which is looking at them not as a citizen, but as its subjects. In the new edition of the Law of Tajikistan “About social unification” it is considered extremely wide authorities for the state authorities to control over the activities of public organization. So, the article 34 of the Law states: “Registering organ conduct the control over compliance of activity of social organization with the charter aims.

Registering authority has the right:

• to ask from the managerial authority of the social organization their regulatory documents;
• to send their representatives for taking part in the events organized by the social organizations;
• in the case of identification of violation of social legislation of the Republic of Tajikistan or accomplishment of acts by them that are against the charter goals, delivers for the managerial agency of this organization a written notice with the indication of detail reasons for the written notice.

The written notice delivered by the registering agency must be considered in ten days by the social organization”. 

Obstacles for the PU on the national level are the shortage of legislation that are regulating taxation and financing of the PU. The state establishments, as a business structure as well, in fact do not participate in the program financing and the organizations of civil society projects and the main, and often the only, donors continue to be the international organizations.  

The society and state structure both in the main cities and in local areas become more informed and tolerant to the activity of PU. But in this field of activity a great deal of work needs to be done, so long as the civil circumstances after the gaining of Tajikistan’s independence was not ready for the acceptance of modern standards of governmental and non governmental sectors interaction. 

Cooperation with the governmental structure for PU is considered as a priority for the strategy of efficiency increasing in their activities. From the evaluation and opinion of the governmental agencies most of the times depends the success and further perspectives of PU.  

The relation of PU with the business structure are not developed yet to the level that the national business could become strong and permanent partner in the activities of other PU. Business structure so far does not have enough notion of the capacity and opportunities of PU. There is not full understanding of partnership usefulness from the business structure and the culture of sponsorship is not sufficiently developed. Together with this, there are some private and public funds, as well as some business structures and businessmen that are providing granting support for other non commercial organizations. Despite that some businessmen are actively taking part in charity activities, there was not such a precedent of strategic cooperation of business with PU. 

There is no established system of PU project financing and conducting of monitoring of their project activities. Frequently with the finishing of financing cycle from external source the activity of this particular PU also stops. They seriously need the designing of integral programming of institutional and organizational development. It contains the coverage of population’ participation in the Jamat support management centres, accountability for the community, management and coordination, training of the staff, mission and perspectives, influence of PU on the development of rural communities, seeking of funds and budget planning, resource attracting, creation of local resources bases and so on. 

In the last moment international donors are allocating less amount of finance for the institutional development of PU, preparation and training of people for the work in tertiary sector, referencing that for this purposes in the previous years were spent big amounts of finance. The local PU do not have capacity to train new staff on the volunteer bases. Nevertheless, increasing the number of PU and presence of competition is motivating expanding of PU sphere of activities, independently from their own resources train the staff in accordance with the international standards on planning, management and accounting.                                       

Donors are not always adequately focus on the professional training of PU and finance at the same time incapable organizations as well. 

Lack of coordination during the realization of grant programs both from the donors’ sides and national PU sides sometimes invokes some duplication of projects, but in the last time this situation is fairly overcome.  

Analyze of the leaders’ opinion, members and PU staff regarding the cooperation with mass media shows that state mass media so far are not interested in coverage of PU activities. As a result the activity of PU remains not fully open (clear) for the society and population. 

The network of state mass media is not developed enough yet and also is not able to cover and popularize the PU activities. Moreover, in the condition of market economy they require the service payments which is not always affordable for PU.