When we think about think tanks and civil society organisations, these two come hand in hand
Igor Bandovic
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In the current context, Serbian civil society organisations are mostly doing awareness-raising campaigns and informing citizens on the things that are happening in our society.
This is not a new role for civil society organisations, because they were doing so back in the 90s when there was no access into the policy circles during the Milosevic reign. Today they are again in that role because, unfortunately, we don’t have access to decision-makers’ circles nor do we have influence on the policies which are promoted or done by the government. In this context what civil society organisations are doing in trying to promote change is aligning themselves with the citizens and their constituencies. By raising awareness among them- by really connecting with them- they are trying to create a critical mass of activists who can play the role either at the local level, at the municipal level or at the central level. And this is probably the only niche left for civil society organisations to do evidence-based research and change.
On the collaboration between think tanks and civil society organisations
When we think about think tanks and civil society organisations, these two come hand in hand. The creation of the civil society movement really started back in the ’90s on the premise that the level of nationalism was bad, the wars were not acceptable and there was too much hatred in our society. However, once all of these problems were gone, a certain number of civil society organisations started building expertise and began building technical knowledge in certain areas.
This is related to when the EU somehow started to be more engaged in Serbia, which is probably around 2003. Back then a certain number of civil society organisations started to shape themselves and behave as if they were think tanks. One of these organisations was BCSP, which used to be called Central Civil Military Relations. All of a sudden we had a number of organisations which specialised in certain areas. We (BCSP) specialised in security policy in the broader sense of the word. And this was a huge difference because a certain number of organisations were still doing what civil society organisations typically did, while other organisations began to try to influence policies, draft and amend laws, and talk with decision makers.
Due to the fact that the context has changed, nowadays civil society organisations are helping to bring constituencies-citizens- closer to the work of think tanks.
Think tanks are using their expertise to send this message further, either to the international community, to the donor community, through with the diplomatic community.
This is how this ad hoc alliance is working.
What might be worth mentioning is that Serbia has a huge number of environmental activists and informal groups, which is probably something we can call the ‘third wave of civil society movement.’ People at local level, activists and informal groups are gathering and fighting for clean air, clean earth and clean water. This situation, added to the complexity of the whole civil society sector (where I also put think tanks), in a way helped the civil society. It helped formal groups, organisations and think tanks, get back to the basics and get back to the base. And thus, we are cooperating with all of them on a daily basis providing our expertise, helping them fight political pressure, providing legal support to them, and spreading the message across the board with their wording.
Overcoming the challenges
The values that we are protecting are basically the same values of the civil society organisations. These differences and challenges are put aside. While we share the same values, we are seen as allies and that’s what we are there to be. This is how we operate nowadays in this region.
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