Contenu du sommaire : Les organisations de la société civile

For some fifteen years, the debate relating to civil society and the roles of the latter accompanied the crisis of post-colonial African societies and the reshaping of international development policies. The "historical hindsight" allows to highlight a vast debate, of a theoretical nature, on the nature of civil society and of the organisations which claim to belong to this civil society. It also casts light on the de facto proliferation of organisations supposed to constitute the civil society and which are probably part of an unprecedented reshaping of social and political relations in these post-colonies. This article makes the point on the concept of civil society, its dimensions and debates relating to African contexts.

This article focuses on the role of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the governance of the fight against poverty in the Third World. Theories of social innovation and empowerment used in the analysis of strategies against poverty are mobilised to analyse governance dynamics of international cooperation and development networks of CSOs located in the Roman Metropolitan Area.

In most sub-Saharan African countries, Parents' Associations, are increasingly solicited to participate in a better governance of the education. The article compares these associations in two very different national contexts, namely that of Benin, where these institutions benefit from substantial support from funding organisations and that of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are left to themselves.

In different countries – among which some in Western Africa – there have been for the last few years some organizations which are trying to combine health services insurances with microfinance. This working paper intends to question the way those services can be combined. It is based on four case studies led in Benin and one case study in Burkina Faso.

The East Asian development success has challenged the very notion of Third World and the concept of economic take off and social change. The francophone scientific litterature has not much contributed to the analysis of this unique historical phenomenon and to the international debate dealing with the universality versus the specificity of the industrialisation process and of the possible conditions of catching up for the East Asian NICs. There was little reflection whether these Asian experiences would confirm or not the Western interpretation of the 19th-20th century economic history, and how far they could either challenge or even redefine the industrialization and globalization paradigms.