Research Paper on:
Africa's Economic Stagnation and the State and Civil Dichotomy

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
consider first the way that the concept of civil society might be defined, and how this relates to the political, social and economic changes which have taken place in various  African countries over the past decades. As Sennett and Dodd (2003) point out, the term civil society is one which originated as a translation of the Roman concept of societas  civilis, derived in turn from the Greek. The idea of the state was  synonymous with the concept of civil society, namely, the political arena in which all citizens were involved. The term also carried the connotations of a community whose structure was derived  from laws, rather than from the dictates of a single ruler. Later, in the Cold War era, the idea of the civil society came to mean, in the West, a  society which was characterised by free association in the sense that it was not under the direct control of the state as exemplified by the ruling party: the opposite of  Stalinism, in fact. As Sennett and Dodd note, by this  definition the implication is a community in which politics does not intrude unnecessarily, rather than one in which all citizens are politically involved. In modern terms, they assert that the  concept of civil society is one which is being re-examined, in the sense that there appears to be a "need to define and distinguish a sphere of society that is  separate from the state" (Sennett and Dodd, 2003, PG). They see the development of civil society as dependent on active participation on institutions which are not part of the state,