Is there a relationship between a strong civil society and the capacity of the state to act and perform its functions? As the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) has shown in its recently published 2015 edition, not necessarily.
New Zealand, Canada, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia are all examples of countries in which the state’s performance significantly exceeds its accountability to non-governmental actors involved in policy-making. Meanwhile in Luxembourg, Germany, Iceland, Austria, Belgium or the Czech Republic, a strong civil society does not always go hand in hand with a capacity to act on the part of the state.
Dysfunction, reform
The situation in the latter group of countries is also very much the story of Ukraine, although the contrast between state and civil society is possibly much greater. After the events of EuroMaidan in 2014, Ukraine emerged as a state which can be described as dysfunctional in many ways.
