CHANGES IN RELATIONS BETWEEN PUBLIC AUTHORITIES AND THE CIVIL SECTOR: A REVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH

Andon Damovski PhD Student /Organized Living Service with support in the local community

Abstract: The civil sector sector is often determined by a few more or less precise differences. It differs from the state and the market in its specific qualities. Referring to the originality of the civic world, dilemmas arise: Are associations really places of politicization, democracy and its learning? – Or are the associations a place of solidarity where labor is renewed? In a word, are they the iron of social change? In such a connotation that connects the civil sector with the idea of counter-power, it should not be equated with either the Government or its administration. As different from the state, the civil society sector could be confused with the wider sphere of politics. Today, significant values are attributed to the civil society sector, for example as a potential reservoir of political elites or as a facilitator of public regulation. The interest in the civil sector today is part of the reassessment of the relations between the citizen and the state, of the political power of the common man. What defines the civil sector is the fact that it is the space where citizens can freely associate and organize in groups and organizations at different levels in accordance with their interests. The relations between the civil sector and the state have been the subject of interest for a long time. In this paper, we focus on the changing relations between public authorities (the state but also others such as local governments or supranational governments such as the institutions of the European Union) and the civil society sector by analyzing current research in some European Union countries. and the Republic of Northern Macedonia.

Keywords: civil society, associations, public authorities