When a military dictatorship took hold of Brazil in the 1960s, my academic work was deemed subversive, I was threatened with imprisonment and forced to live for four years in exile in Chile. The authorities similarly targeted thousands of others — harassing them, jailing them and often worse. This is how the “deep state” created by authoritarian regimes operates — often unpredictably and bluntly — to choke political life through outright repression, covert surveillance and dubious applications of the law. In other words, civil societys legitimacy stems from the causes it promotes and the legitimacy that these causes have in society. The legitimacy of civil society does not come from the state — not even from the law. Rather, citizens have in themselves the inherent right to participate in civic life. It is this right which the government should enshrine, by providing both the structure (rule of law, elections, rights) and the democratic space for people to participate. Read more: al-monitor/pulse/originals/2013/06/civil-society-democratic-transition-egypt-brazil.html##ixzz3FYQ0q39n
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 11:50:32 +0000
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