Civil society and the nation-state – The case of Kenya

Understanding civil society organisations There has been a great deal of debate to clarify what kind of or-ganisations should be regarded as civil society organisations (CSOs). The only unfortunate thing is that such debates by most theorists and practitioners in this area assume that CSOs are homogeneous. Such an assumption is both fallacious and inaccurate. If one takes the cat-egory of NGOs for instance, they come in different forms. There has been talk of DONGOs (donor-organised NGOs), MONGOs (my own NGO), GONGOs (government-owned NGOs), FANGOs (family-owned NGOs), FONGOs (first-lady NGOs) and so on. The other contentious issue has been the response to the question: So who are the CSOs? It is my opinion that the simple way to deal with this blurred enquiry is by creating a distinction between the state and the rest of society. This in any case seems to be the idea behind the initial thinking that led to the coining of the expression societas civilis withi