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Wider gaps between rich and poor, social segregation, an ageing population, climate change and disengagement from politics will be among the factors affecting Britain and Ireland in 2025. A Commission set up by the Carnegie UK Trust says civil society can influence many of these levers of change and help create a better society, but it must stay ahead of the game if it is to counter the power of government and business.
Carnegie UK Trust is one of over twenty foundations worldwide set up by Scots American Andrew Carnegie, working to support a more just, democratic, peaceful and sustainable world.
The Trust supports independent commissions of inquiry into areas of public concern, together with action and research programmes.
Nine fault lines pose big challenges and opportunities for civil society in the future, says a wide-ranging inquiry in Britain and Ireland by the Carnegie UK Trust.
Futures for Civil Society, produced by a commission chaired by Geoff Mulgan, looks forward to the year 2025, sketches four future scenarios and offers a toolkit civil society organisations can use to help build a better society.
It begins by identifying several key drivers for the decades, many of which civil society can do little or nothing about, but which it must respond to, such as an ageing society, falling cost of technologies and climate change.
Then there are four uncertain drivers which can be influenced by the actions of civil society:
Some 400 people involved in the ‘futures’ events run by the inquiry explored how the drivers of change might affect civil society in the future.
They found nine fault lines that civil society can either shape or suffer from.
Participants were concerned about the growing pressure on global resources and the associated threat to society. While environmental activism has put new energy into some parts of civil society, there is a question about how the so-called ‘green value shift’ will shape the nature of civil society associations and their relationships with the state and the business sector (who are critical players in tackling climate change at a local and global level).
There is a strong sense that economic polarisation between the rich and the poor and growing social divides are likely to significantly affect civil society. The challenge is to support and to empower the most marginalised and not to replicate inequalities in civil society structures. A second challenge is to find different ways of articulating outcomes that are not based on paradigms of economic growth or market delivery eg the burgeoning well-being literature has a more holistic approach to success.
Increased cultural and religious diversity may lead to further fragmentation of civil society. This presents several challenges, including how a secular state engages with strong value-based communities such as faith-based organisations, and how civil society associations best act as mediators or brokers between individuals, organisations and sectors.
Obstacles seem to stand in the way of active participation in civil society. Time and the pressure of work was a common theme. Regulatory barriers, such as health and safety regulations, also concerned participants, especially their impact on small civil society associations whose actions may be inhibited by their lack of capacity to deal with them. The perceptions of diminishing and/or commercialisation of ‘spaces’ (whether they be physical or virtual) for deliberation also surfaced as possible obstacles or threats to active participation.
Freedom to express oneself and the space in which to do so was highlighted as a key foundation stone for a healthy civil society. Participants highlighted the increasing importance of non-institutional or less formal forms of civil society associations, questioning whether they will replace or supplement more traditional or ‘organised’ forms of civil society associations.
Many of the discussions at the inquiry events highlighted the falling participation in formal politics and the changing relationships between civil society and formal structures of representative democracy. The challenge to civil society is how it might connect formal and informal democratic processes.
The application of technology has great strengths and has energised many parts of civil society, increasing the ability of associations to broaden their scope and the richness of connections. It was also seen as a good organising tool for collective action. However, technology was also seen as a source of fragmentation and atomisation. Civil society associations will inevitably review the way in which they apply technology given the rise of the ‘digital natives’.
Increasing partnership with the state, eg in the delivery of public services, has brought with it demands for accountability and performance. To achieve this, participants noted that civil society associations have often imported governance models from outside to improve delivery and productivity. They felt attention needed to be given to supporting diverse forms of organisational models and practice to ensure civil society is strong and that homogenous models of management should be avoided.
One of the most common themes throughout the Inquiry events was the underlying weakness of the arenas for public deliberation. They have been eroded by a number of trends such as the declining engagement in formal politics, the concentration of ownership of traditional media, the privatisation of public spaces and the growing number of laws about security and disorder.
Participants raised concerns about the marginalisation of dissent in the UK and Ireland, especially among those who lack the power or confidence to voice their concerns or who have non-mainstream views. Any restrictions in civil liberties in the UK and Ireland, for example in the name of security, can have significant detrimental affects on civil society elsewhere eg in less democratic countries civil society activists can be imprisoned and labelled as extremists under the cloak of anti-terror legislation.
The Commission’s report goes on to paint four possible scenarios for the year 2025, all of them reasonably optimistic, and all capable of being affected by actions we take now and in the coming years.
Geoff Mulgan, chair of the inquiry, comments in the introduction:
"One of the reasons for having conversations about the future is to understand the present better – and differently – so that we act with foresight rather than regret with hindsight.
"Many of the issues raised in the futures reports will come as no surprise – though in practice too many are ignored. So the reports look at the prospect of widening gaps between the rich and the poor, and the risks of greater social segregation. They explore the possible effects of an ageing population on civil society, and at the implications of continuing disengagement from traditional politics. They also look at how climate change could affect civil society – whether by encouraging a revived localism or a much stronger sense of global responsibility.
"Each of these issues poses distinct and difficult challenges for civil society – not least because of the limits of its power to act relative to the big battalions of government and business.
"In the past, civil society has often been ahead of other sectors in warning of new threats – like those from climate change – as well as embracing new opportunities – like those from a wider understanding of human rights. Our aim with the futures reports, and with the work in the later stages of the inquiry, is to stay ahead of the game and to help civil society shape the future rather than simply responding to events when they come."
A toolkit outlining how the scenarios, and the other inquiry materials, might be practically used to develop the strategic thinking of civil society associations can be downloaded at www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk.
The report is available from the same site.
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