The Social Science Journal 49 (2012) 202–209

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The Social Science Journal

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Civil society in Canada: A case study of rural and urban planning

contexts
Wendy de Gómez a,1 , Ryan Bullock b,∗
a
University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
b
School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan, Room 323, Kirk Hall, 117 Science Place, Saskatoon, SK, Canada S7N 5C8

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper explores the political concept of civil society and its emergence in multi-level
Received 5 December 2010 rural and urban planning contexts. The first section conceptualizes civil society in the
Received in revised form 23 August 2011 broader context within which it develops and we discuss global civil society to establish
Accepted 27 August 2011
the need for a more local and regional focus. We then present considerations for assess-
Available online 18 April 2012
ing civil society and outline the research approach. The second section presents two case
examples: (1) rural civil society in British Columbia, Canada focusing on the socio-political
environment that enabled a shift away from conventional top-down, state-led forest man-
agement to devolved local control, and; (2) urban civil society in Waterloo Region, Ontario,
which illustrates the response of local organizations to the wider socio-economic problems
of housing provision in the Region. In both rural and urban contexts, there was longstand-
ing tacit local support for each cause but significant triggers were needed to open policy
windows and enable civil society organizations to help shift management ideologies in the
forestry and housing sectors. Empowering civil actors through, for example, the devolution
of decision making and responsibilities, and the redistribution of resources, helped to foster
forms of legitimacy needed for emerging local and regional civil society organizations and
networks.
© 2011 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Although civil society is not a novel concept, the con-
textual specificities of its emergence are often overlooked
in the political science literature. With respect to geo-
graphical contexts for instance, the differences across rural
and urban areas are significant in fully understanding
planning and management dynamics as well as organi-
zational capacities that enable effective development of
civil societies in the “political sense” (Bullock, Hanna,
& Slocombe, 2009; Dale & Newman, 2006; Reed, 2007;
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: wendy-juancarlos@rogers.com (W. de Gómez),
ryan.bullock@usask.ca (R. Bullock).
1
Tel.: +1 519 579 8601; mobile: +1 519 880 6130.
Walker & Fortmann, 2003). One reason for this sort of
research ‘blind spot’ is, as Hess (2009) asserts, that the
concept of civil society is based on undone science—that
there is an absence of scientific research for social move-
ments and other civil society organizations to draw upon
when attempting to make epistemic claims in the political
field. Much research conducted by Civil Society Organiza-
tions (CSOs) is not published in peer-reviewed academic
journals and therefore seems to lack scientific credibility
(Hess, 2009). Therefore, conceptualizing the nature of spe-
cific CSOs is a crucial task in determining the legitimacy of
their function.
This paper merges the political concept of civil society
with current geographical concepts, namely adaptive gov-
ernance within rural and urban settings (Lebel et al., 2006),
and local and regional planning dynamics, to highlight
the importance of contextual influences and legitimacy on

0362-3319/$ – see front matter © 2011 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2011.08.014
 W. de Gómez, R. Bullock / The Social Science Journal 49 (2012) 202–209
the emergence and civil society initiatives. The first sec-
tion of this paper conceptualizes civil society to address
definitional and contextual challenges and identify some
implications for assessment. The research approach and a
rationale for case selection are also outlined. The second
section then examines two cases of emergent civil society
organizations, namely regional groups pursuing commu-
nity forestry in British Columbia (BC) and housing provision
in Waterloo Region, Ontario. The concluding section dis-
cusses some implications for the concept of civil society
and its assessment as a multi-scaled and contextualized
phenomenon.
2. Civil society—a conceptualization
2.1. A brief history and concepts
The concept of civil society can most often be attributed
to Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America 1835,
when he described the “art of association” to describe
American propensity for civil association to counter the
conundrum of modern democracy, which is intensely indi-
vidualistic (Edwards, 2009; Fukuyama, 2001). In other
parts of the world, such as France during the French
Revolution, civil associations were important to give the
weak a stronger voice against the minority political elite
(Fukuyama, 2001). Yet the rise of civil society as more than
an associational concept can be traced to the more recent
failure of both the state model of welfare and centralized
planning from 1945 to the mid-1970s, and the failure of
market-based Reaganomics and structural adjustment pro-
grams from the 1970s to early 1990s. The new approach
was framed as “new localism”, “the third way” or “com-
passionate conservatism” and functioned on the idea of a
three way partnership involving the state, market and civic
spheres (Edwards, 2009; Seligman, 1992). The fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989 was a rallying cry for the progression
of a new type of civil society, based on popular democ-
racy, and began the trend in many parts of Eastern Europe
(Edwards, 2009; Howard, 2003). Although civil society has
long held tradition in both Central America and Africa,
many formal movements gained significant popularity at
the beginning of the 1990s as well (Escobar & Alvarez, 1992;
Fox & Hernandez, 1992; Hassan, 2009).
However, the rise of global markets and production
activities have elevated the role of civil society as a response
to perceived weaknesses in the legitimacy and accountabil-
ity of governments and institutions that are ill-equipped to
respond to these increasingly challenging issues. Globaliza-
tion has contributed to a steady rise in social consciousness
due to the increasing complexity of global labor markets,
the rise of civil and national identities within countries,
and increased developments in technology and transporta-
tion (Castells, 2006). A problem with global civil society
however is that there is no common forum where globally
“common” issues can be raised (Brown, 2008). Although
these sorts of issues may have similar roots in economic,
political or environmental ideologies, they also vary sig-
nificantly in their contextual characteristics (Brown, 2008;
Eberly, 2008; Edwards, 2009; Manor, Robinson, & White,
1999; Salamon & Anheier, 1997). In other words, while
203
there are common consequences of globalization, these
consequences play out differently through space and time.
Civil society actors have endeavored to find solutions to
globally common problems through international forums,
but these forums often provide unspecified standards,
morals, and guidelines that are not enforceable by existing
institutional arrangements across different settings.
Some argue that the globalization of the world econ-
omy is nothing more than a new type of economic
colonization (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009). Opponents of the
globalization movement—often called ‘anti-globalists’—are
considered a type of civil society organization that devel-
oped in response to unequal global economic principles
and instruments, such as trade agreements, organizations
for economic development and cooperation, and the major
economic institutions of the new global economy (Clark,
2008; Seters, 2008). A main concern behind the glob-
alization debate is what type of responsibility citizens
are willing to assume on different issues. For example,
a recent empirical study by Bickerstaff, Simmons, and
Pidgeon (2008) identified global issues such as radioac-
tive waste, cell phone disposal, genetically modified crops
and climate change and measured the level of responsibil-
ity citizens were willing to accept for each issue. Findings
indicated citizens were less likely to assume responsibility
(and hence to take action) for climate change and similar
issues with larger or diffuse contextual factors and more
abstract physical implications. And although participants
recognized that individual behavior contributed to the
problem, there was little faith that personal action could
make a meaningful contribution to the solution because
its effects were diffused and even negated by the inac-
tion of others (Bickerstaff et al., 2008). These are serious
limitations of civil society as conceived in global political
space.
Given the complexity of the global arena, and the
cross-level challenges and contradictory policies created
by multi-level institutional and political arrangements, this
paper calls for the need to examine the concept of civil
society in a regional context. As the state as a political
entity may become increasingly unimportant in the global
context, there is a distinct need for civil society to pro-
mote itself within local and regional contexts to avoid the
politicization of issues that are context specific. Definitional
issues and considerations for assessment are presented in
the following section to set the stage for the case study
analyses.
2.2. Defining and assessing civil society
Civil society is located at the crossover between the
state, the family and the market. It is a fluid concept with
many definitions and indicators and, as such, establishing
clear rules for what entities and actions represent civil soci-
ety is a difficult task (Angeles & Gurstein, 2007; Manor et al.,
1999). Civil society roles and associations vary extensively
across cultures and regions, making the postulation of uni-
versally applicable boundaries an untidy task, and making
clear operational guidelines for context-specific boundary
setting essential (Manor et al., 1999).
204 W. de Gómez, R. Bullock / The Social Science Journal 49 (2012) 202–209
In this paper, civil society includes an array of organi-
zations and associations that are arranged around values
and visions that mobilize social energies. Civil society
can be differentiated from government agencies, corpo-
rations and the business of the market sector, as well
as the kinship values of families (Brown, 2008). There is
a common but not always cohesive nature within CSOs.
This nature includes the ability to mobilize people and
resources through commitments to social values and mis-
sions that are considered to enhance the public good
(Angeles & Gurstein, 2007; Brown, 2008; Hess, 2009). Civil
society typically involves a wide range of stakeholders.
Finally, civil society adopts causes on behalf of marginal-
ized peoples (Brown, 2008), which in the context of this
paper includes forest-dependent rural communities and
urban homeless populations. Based on these definitional
attributes, the extent to which civil actors recognize and
accept the assumed role and cause of a given CSO as legit-
imate indicates whether civil society is effectively at work
in a political domain.
Existing civil society research reveals a tendency to
focus on either organizational attributes or key functions
in efforts to assess civil society. Comparative Non-profit
Sector’s (CNS) structural operational definition is the
most widely known approach that employs an organiza-
tional perspective (Salamon & Anheier, 1997; Salamon,
Sokolowski, & List, 2004). These structural features seek
to describe collective citizen action in terms of its quantity
(extent) and quality (effectiveness). Non-profit organiza-
tions (NPOs) are regarded as the core expression of civil
society. To qualify as a NPO, an association has to be
organized, private, non-profit, distributing, self-governing
and voluntary (Salamon et al., 2004). Yet this defini-
tion excludes the elements of voluntary organizations,
such as the social economy (Evers & Laville, 2004), hous-
ing associations (Morris, 2000), grassroots associations
(Horton Smith, 1997), informal associations (Lyons, 1996)
and many forms of associational life found in developing
countries (Fowler, 2002). Additionally the approach omits
concepts such as collective citizen action outside of orga-
nizations. Similarly Howard’s (2003) definition for civil
society in post-communist Europe lacks empirical validity
as it uses the share of membership in voluntary organiza-
tions as the sole empirical indicator.
In contrast the Civil Society Index (CSI) uses an
operational definition that includes individual citizen par-
ticipation, demonstrations, social movements and other
unorganized forms of civic engagement (Anheier, 2001;
Heinrich, 2004). Additionally, the CSI is applicable in a
wide variety of contexts because it focuses on the broad
notion of citizens advancing their interests beyond the
market, family, and state. The CSI uses both a norma-
tive structural and theoretical cultural approach (Anheier,
2001; Heinrich, 2004). Approaches that include a cul-
tural dimension of civil society empirically investigate the
extent to which specific norms and interests are present
in civil society, rather than employing these norms as cri-
teria for defining civil society’s boundaries (as is the case
with most normative–theoretical work), which would lead
to excluding a priori any intolerant practices from the
realm of civil society (Heinrich, 2005). Operationalizing
these cultural features includes aspects such as: examples
of citizen’s respect for the rule of law, democratic prac-
tices with the CSOs, corruption within civil society, civil
society action to promote transparency, and non-violence
within CSOs (Heinrich, 2005). The normative structural
elements would include variables such as the percent-
age of citizen participation, percentage of civil society
organizations, percentage of volunteering, average hours
of volunteering, geographical distribution and effective-
ness of umbrella bodies, and the adequacy of support
infrastructure (Heinrich, 2005). Most existing assessment
approaches treat civil society as a multidimensional con-
cept, ruling out the reduction of civil society to a single
variable (Bothwell, 1998; Bratton, 1994; Croissant, Lauth,
& Merkel, 2000; Dekker & van den Broek, 1998; Uphoff &
Krishna, 2004).
Accordingly, the concept of legitimacy encompasses
normative, legal, sociological, and cultural meanings. Legit-
imacy has long been recognized as a core element in
governance regimes, dealing with the complex relationship
between societal acceptance of regimes and institutions
and their ability to exercise power and authority effectively
(Brickerhoff, 2005; Brown, 2008; Mitchell, 2002). As this
paper focuses on local organizations and regional contexts
to assess civil society across rural and urban political space
in Canada, assessing legitimacy as a multidimensional ele-
ment that is necessary for the existence of civil society can
indicate whether selected case organizations are, in fact,
working effectively as CSOs.
Brown (2008) offers a legitimacy framework to assess
CSO effectiveness based on the following six criteria:
1. regulatory legitimacy (compliance with legal require-
ments and regulations);
2. associated legitimacy (links with other institutions rec-
ognized as legitimate);
3. performance legitimacy (expertise, resources and stake-
holders interests);
4. political legitimacy (meaningful representation of mem-
ber interests);
5. normative legitimacy (widely held values and norms),
and;
6. cognitive legitimacy (develops out of how stakeholders
view the world).
It should be noted that both normative and cognitive
legitimacy may be viewed as examples of cultural indi-
cators although not specified as such in Heinrich (2005).
These criteria are useful because they have been developed
for a wide conceptualization of civil society, they are eas-
ily understood, and they incorporate said factors missed by
previous scholars.
2.3. Case selection
British Columbia Community Forest Pilot Program and
the Homeless and Housing Umbrella Group (HHUG) in
Waterloo, Ontario were chosen due to their timeliness and
significance in the rural forestry and urban housing sectors
in Canada, as well as the high level of grassroots activism
and social conflict inherent in these settings. Comparing
 W. de Gómez, R. Bullock / The Social Science Journal 49 (2012) 202–209
typical or representative case experiences (Yin, 2003)
helps to understand how the ongoing efforts of regional
CSOs encouraged municipal and provincial government
responses to address governance gaps associated with
what are seen as quintessentially rural (forestry) and urban
(homelessness) issues. (This is not to say that the effects of
resource industry collapse and homelessness are isolated
to rural and urban areas, however). As governance shifts
typically occur through socio-political pressure and/or leg-
islative changes that catalyze regime change (Armitage,
2008), contrasting the selected cases provides an oppor-
tunity to assess civil society in different contexts and at the
regional level of scale where actors have emerged to fill
vacant political spaces and address relevant multi-scaled
issues. In turn these cases point to conceptual and practi-
cal implications of civil society in rural and urban planning
contexts in Canada.
Furthermore, the lessons from a Canadian perspective
are important because as Friedmann (2005) states:
“Canadian culture generally can perhaps be character-
ized by a greater reliance on the state to defend the
public interest and to resolve ensuing conflicts with a
consensus-building approach involving lengthy nego-
tiations among the contending parties. It is also more
seriously concerned with social issues of urban devel-
opment and with listening to a multiplicity of voices.
Organized civil society is perhaps no stronger in Canada
than in the United States, but it is politically more active,
in part because it is encouraged to occupy political space
at the municipal level.”
The enforced pursuit of civil society at the municipal
level is due to irregular and poor funding and the lack
of basic policy priorities at the national level (Phillips,
2010). In many countries the civil society sector is cen-
tral to citizenship and democracy, community building,
social innovation and as a force for economic develop-
ment (Phillips, 2010). The HHUG network could be viewed
as both a mechanism for community building and social
innovation and the community forest model that of eco-
nomic development, perhaps placing Canadian civil society
on a new path—a path that many CSOs may follow in
attempts to fill broad knowledge gaps in the unchartered
territory of solving specific public-policy problems (Frickel,
Gibbon, Kempner, Ottinger, & Hess, 2010). Case studies
of the British Columbia Community Forest Pilot Program
and the Homeless and Housing Umbrella Group (HHUG)
in Waterloo, Ontario are developed below using Brown’s
(2008) legitimacy framework to examine the importance of
contextual influences on the emergence and effectiveness
of civil society initiatives across rural and urban regional
contexts in Canada.
3. Civil society emergence and legitimacy in rural
and urban contexts
3.1. Rural civil society in BC’s forestry sector
In the context of this paper, a rural community is
defined here as a definable aggregation of interrelated
households within a discrete spatial extent located outside
205
delineated urban areas (Smit & Wandel, 2006). House-
holds are considered linked by the forests and resources
that provide the ecological and economic base for rural
communities. Adaptation is used in the sense of adap-
tive co-management (Armitage, 2008) and considers the
relationships between ecological systems and political
economy, the latter of which relates to political and
social power relations, resource use and global economies
(Blaikie & Brookfield, 1987). Adaptive capacity includes the
specific types of management and practices used by a rural
community to respond to larger structural changes (Ford
& Smit, 2004; Keskitalo, Klenk, Bullock, Smith, & Bazley,
2011; Sutherland, Smit, Wulf, & Nakalevu, 2005). In this
case, the concept of adaptive co-management does not
refer to the formal type of sectoral management approach
(Mitchell, 2002), but rather to the governance system used
to adapt to the changes in the socio-political and economic
environments of a community (Lebel et al., 2006).
British Columbia’s Community Forests Agreement pro-
gram serves as the primary adaptive mechanism utilized
by forest-based communities as a means to encourage a
management shift from planning processes at higher lev-
els of scale to regional and landscape units through a new
governance framework. The framework was developed by
the British Columbia Ministry of Forests and Range with
grassroots input (Bullock et al., 2009). The establishment
of the Community Forests Pilot Program enabled a growing
network of local forest communities to become involved in
forest management through Community Forest Agreement
licenses (Pinkerton, Heaslip, Silver, & Furman, 2008). While
senior government and grassroots initiative helped trigger
changes to support a more local agenda in the forest sector,
community capacity to embrace change is considered here
with respect to the legitimacy of the emerging regional civil
society networks that provided the governance framework.
The development of the community agenda in the
British Columbia forest sector has been rooted in that
Province for decades and the push for conservation and
effective yield management remains a primary source
for environmental rallying (Pinkerton et al., 2008). The
green-political platform of the Provincial New Democratic
Party (NDP) in the early 1990s, and the subsequent imple-
mentation of regulatory policies such as The Old Growth
Management Strategy (1992), The Protected Area Strategy
(1993), and the changes to planning practices outlined
in the Forest Practices Code (1994), created the triggers
for effective change (Bullock & Hanna, 2008; Pinkerton
et al., 2008). In the 1990s the NDP strongly responded to
changes in global labor markets and the environmental
agenda foresaw the necessity to rely on market structures
to enable their localized movements. The political space
between the NDP and their ability to effectively utilize
the globalization movement allowed the community for-
est movement the recognition that they could use market
instruments such as controls on the free flow of wood
products and the log sort and auction model, which uti-
lizes the economic viability of alternative logging methods;
the utilization of a greater spectrum of wood and of get-
ting better prices for wood; and returning wood royalties
to the government rather than large-scale logging compa-
nies (Pinkerton et al., 2008). The organizational structures
206 W. de Gómez, R. Bullock / The Social Science Journal 49 (2012) 202–209
of community forest initiatives became more formalized
through self-organizing grassroots planning processes, lob-
bying and the collective mobilization of resources (Bullock
et al., 2009). Subsequently, the British Columbia Commu-
nity Forests Association (BCCFA) emerged as a network of
rural, community-based organizations engaged in and/or
pursuing community forest management. Those involved
in the organization saw it as part of a global movement
committed to culturally, ecologically, and economically
sustainable forestry (Gunter, 2004).
The rise of co-management efforts in the BC forest
industry represents a governance shift—a societal adapta-
tion to the political climate and public pressures. Provincial
governments bestowed important rights on certain BCCFA
member communities through Community Forest Agree-
ments. These rights and responsibilities included: the
creation of an inventory of timber supply and conducting
timber supply analysis; access to lands within the bound-
ary of the community forest and the withdrawal of timber
from that land; regulation of logging activity through
five-year management plans; enhancement of timber pro-
duction through silvicultural techniques, and; the ability
to exclude ‘outsiders’ from timber in the Community For-
est area (Pinkerton et al., 2008). The devolution of control
over forests to community actors marks an unprecedented
change in a governance system long-dominated by senior
government and the private sector.
The Harrop-Procter Community Forest is one exam-
ple of the shift in planning ideology in British Columbia
beginning in the 1990s. In order for the Harrop-Procter
Community Forest to effective, the organization instituted
six mechanisms to bolster legitimacy. (1) The first was the
development of policies that grew out of provincial regu-
latory arrangements and that included sufficient revenue,
combined with volunteer labor, to support the operation
of the community forest. (2) A co-management arrange-
ment was created with the Province to ensure associated
legitimacy. (3) Establishing clear processes for organiza-
tional decision-making generated performance legitimacy
through community meetings, an elected board, and a local
monitoring procedure. (4) Political legitimacy was ensured
when Harrop-Procter Community Forest embraced an
organizational form (cooperative) that represented the
local values of the political constituents and included a
wide range of community stakeholders. (5) Normative
legitimacy was produced through the framing of broadly
representative visions, goals, and objectives linked to what
the organization and community members wanted from
local forests. (6) Finally, the Harrop-Procter communities
valued the tacit support of First Nations whose territories
over-lapped with the community forest as a means to legit-
imize the activities for a wide range of stakeholders, which
furthered the cognitive legitimacy of the civil movement
(Pinkerton et al., 2008).
The forest sector endured a period of immense adap-
tation to larger political processes in British Columbia in
the early 1990s. The adaptive responses of rural CSOs
and networks successfully enhanced local access to and
control over forests and resources. The capacity of local
organizations to develop co-management techniques with
the government and negotiate access to free-markets
outside of corporate interests points to the effectiveness
of civil society at work in a rural setting. When certain
conditions of legitimacy were fulfilled, civil society actors
helped to develop and implemented important changes
in the political-ecological landscape of British Columbia.
Although the Neo-Liberal agenda was a main driver in the
success of the local agenda, there were other factors that
enabled success (Bullock & Hanna, 2008; McCarthy, 2006;
Pinkerton et al., 2008; Teitelbaum, Beckley, & Nadeau,
2006). The importance of mainstreaming the local agenda
into the larger the socio-political process and the encour-
agement of partnerships between institutions, enabled
co-management advocates responding to the changes in
the global economic environment. Additional factors such
as the cohesiveness of the resource base (i.e., forests), the
long history of and support for the environmental move-
ment in the province, and the homogeneity of the social
groups engaged in the civic changes, all permitted and
promoted an effective civil society movement to emerge
(Agrawal, McSweeney, & Perrin, 2008). However, as the rise
of civil society in this case was inextricably linked to the
changing provincial and global political contexts, questions
arise as to whether similar civil arrangements could arise
in rural regions where larger political-economic forces do
not align with local objectives.
In the next section, the above observations are con-
trasted with the emergence of a housing initiative in the
Region of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, as one example from
the urban civil society experience.
3.2. Urban civil society in Waterloo Region’s housing
sector
Urban systems are complex, interconnected structures
where there is often steep competition within and between
civil organizations for resources and political space. Using
a case of a successful CSO is a suitable way to under-
stand this complexity (Woodlard & Reese, 1999). Taking a
broad view of urban systems recognizes the complexity of
the demographic features of urban populations, especially
in a multi-cultural country such as Canada. The divi-
sions of urban civil action can become quite narrow, often
with specific ethnic identities being the main impetus for
change in governance and particular agencies (Mouritsen
& Jorgensen, 2008; Sandercock, 2004). Instead, the emer-
gence of civil society in this case is considered in the larger
socio-economic aspects of governmental functions for ser-
vice provision as a mechanism for civil change involving
many diverse groups.
Due to the complexity of service provision in urban
areas, civil society organizations often emerge as a
response to the inadequate or uneven distribution of the
provision of essential services (Brown, 2008). This could
include various types of services such as food-security,
waste management, infrastructure development or hous-
ing. Service gaps in urban areas result from socio-political
structures that must choose between numerous actors
with diverse and often opposing interests, as well as
inter-governmental competition for resource allocation
(Clemente, Magnier, & Ramierz, 2008). The focus here is
on the housing sector in Waterloo Region, with particular
 W. de Gómez, R. Bullock / The Social Science Journal 49 (2012) 202–209
emphasis on the development of a regional civil soci-
ety organization referred to as the Homeless and Housing
Umbrella Group (HHUG).
HHUG is a non-partisan group consisting of con-
cerned individuals, agencies and groups committed to
preventing and reducing homelessness in Waterloo Region
(Homelessness and Housing Umbrella Group, 2007). There
were several triggers for the development of the organiza-
tion, namely the 1999 report Understanding Homelessness
in Waterloo Region and the subsequent the 2001 Regional
Growth Management Strategy—both developed by the
Regional Municipality of Waterloo. The reports outlined
the need for improvements to housing provision in Water-
loo Region and called for the development of a Community
Housing Plan in order to address anticipated economic
growth in the region. The HHUG took on the responsibil-
ity of writing the Community Housing Plan. Community
Housing Plan representatives requested that the Regional
Municipality of Waterloo be the regional entity to man-
age the 1.3 million (CAD) in federal funding (from the
Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative) for plan
implementation.
The HHUG vision was for Waterloo Region to be a
regional community where everyone would have access
to appropriate housing and support (HHUG, 2008b). Since
1999, the HHUG successfully initiated other regional orga-
nizations initiated to better understand the persistent
problem of homelessness. Other examples include the
Cambridge Action on Homelessness Group, the Water-
loo Region Community Homelessness Network, the Youth
Homeless coordinating Group, the Kitchener Downtown
Community Collaborative and many others (Region of
Waterloo Social Services, 2005). The HHUG has played an
active part in calling for housing development propos-
als to address persistent homelessness, capital projects
that sustain, enhance and increase the capacity of longer-
term housing stability programs, and projects that address
and/or prevent youth homelessness (both capital or time-
limited projects) (HHUG, 2007).
Although the individual groups that form the HHUG do
not provide the final decision on projects, HHUG acts as
an information body reporting to Waterloo Regional Coun-
cil. In addition, the HHUG provides updates regarding the
improvement of housing services in the Region and, more
importantly, produces a Report Card for the Region, thus
acting as a monitoring group for housing initiatives. In May
2008 the first Report Card determined that there was no
overall improvement to housing access and stability in the
Region based on indicators such as: rental housing avail-
ability, support to maintain housing, rental housing costs
and income and percentages of populations experiencing
homelessness or who are at risk of becoming homeless
(HHUG, 2008a).
The information collection and monitoring functions of
the organization are well-developed and provide empirical
research and base line data to help better understand the
specific areas where housing provision gaps in Waterloo
Region. However, the HHUG does not have any project deci-
sion making power. The partner agencies have education,
advocacy, and communication as their primary functions
(Region of Waterloo Social Services, 2005). Therefore, the
207
outcome effectiveness of the organization is based on the
responsiveness of regional governmental agencies to lis-
ten and act upon the HUGG’s recommendations. In this
sense the HUGG acts as a sort of “bridging organization”—a
forum for civil deliberation and the planning of initiatives
rather than as a strategic operational decision making body
(Elbakidze, Angelstam, Sandström, & Axelsson, 2010).
The HHUG satisfies several of Brown’s (2008) legiti-
macy criteria and, as such, it is an effective CSO. (1) First
it holds regulatory legitimacy through Waterloo Region
and responsibilities to provide housing data under spe-
cific acts outlined by the Region such as the Urban Areas
of All Roads Lead to Home: A Homelessness to Housing Strat-
egy for Waterloo Region and the Community Housing Plan
for the Region of Waterloo. (2) The HUGG gains associated
legitimacy through links with other regional institutions
as demonstrated by alliances with other member groups
as well as regional government. (3) The HUGG displays
performance legitimacy by incorporating a wide variety
of stakeholder opinions and interest, as well as a formally
resourced monitoring component. (4) Furthermore, the
HUGG gained political legitimacy by representing the inter-
ests of similar organizations such as the Cambridge Action
on Homelessness Group. (5) The organization also satisfied
normative legitimacy through its broad appeal and found-
ing belief that everyone has the right to access housing. (6)
And although the views of the stakeholders differ at times
with respect to housing types, functions and access equity,
the housing strategy was developed for the stakeholders
primarily. This point is somewhat tenuous, however, due
to the fact that many people who need access to housing
may not understand nor be interested in the larger philo-
sophical underpinnings of the movement. The HUGG meets
the civil society legitimacy requirements outlined in this
paper.
4. Conclusion
This paper has developed understanding of the concep-
tual definition and contextual aspects of civil society, as
well as identified some contradictory facets of the concept
and tensions across local-global political space. In particu-
lar, we have illustrated that the emergence of civil society,
as a response to societal challenges, is supported when gov-
ernance solutions are matched to the scale and scope of
such ‘problems’. As we have highlighted, civil society must
be understood as a multi-leveled phenomenon that coa-
lesces and plays out differently across different contexts
(Brown, 2008). In a multi-level world this means empow-
ering civil actors through the devolution of decision making
and responsibilities, and the redistribution of resources in
order to facilitate CSOs and networks that, in turn, can
generate and draw upon various forms of legitimacy. The
ability to identify and act on opening policy windows and
triggers is crucial.
Addressing the need to further define and clarify civil
society roles and practices can assist civil actors to actually
find themselves in otherwise diffuse problems and solu-
tions (Bickerstaff et al., 2008). Better understanding local
civil society roles, actions and relationships at the local and
regional scale can help civil society actors and supporters
208 W. de Gómez, R. Bullock / The Social Science Journal 49 (2012) 202–209
to make the links needed to address complexity (Westley,
Zimmerman, & Quinn Patton, 2007), and thus give traction
to the popular “think global, act local” philosophy. Tack-
ling the conceptual and practical limitations of civil society
and how social change occurs (through empirical research)
would enable local and regional civil society to create or
occupy “vacant” political spaces in order to address gover-
nance gaps in rural and urban systems.
The cases document current experiences and lessons
from civil society in Canada. They highlight how differ-
ent sources of legitimacy contributed to the emergence of
rural and urban civil society organizations in both rural and
urban contexts. The case of community forestry in British
Columbia illustrates the importance of socio-political fac-
tors in the development of a regional network consisting
of local-level civil society organizations during the 1990s,
and how local actors adapted to form a new kind of for-
est governance regime based on desires for increased local
control of resources and co-management with senior gov-
ernment. Community forestry groups were successful due
to, in part, the socio-economic context that enabled the
development of the environmental movement in British
Columbia and the common commodity (forests) for which
change was being advocated. Conversely, urban civil soci-
ety was shown to emerge through the development of
an issue-specific working group that came to serve as a
research and monitoring institution intended to bridge
gaps in housing provision in Waterloo Region. The urban
civil society example developed out of a distinct gap in
service provision and the forward thinking of advocates
who worked on behalf of the common cause of hous-
ing provision in a region with anticipated demographic
growth.
Both case examples can be regarded as successful in
achieving their specific civil society goals, but both cases
are also subject to the changing priorities of larger political
engines. Both the rural and urban examples needed signif-
icant triggers to enable participant organizations to shift
management ideologies in the forestry and housing sec-
tors. Focusing on local civil society and regional network
initiatives suggests it is necessary to have accountability
checks by government agencies and donors, as well as the
people for whom the organizations exist. Legitimacy, as an
indication of civil society emergence and efficacy, is more
easily identified at the local level due to the contextu-
ally specific nature of civil society organizations working
in different geographic locations, albeit for the same
causes.
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