Governing Civil Society Organisations and Constructing the Common Good: Civil Society in the Shadow of the Danish State

This paper argues that civil society is something that must be produced and constructed in order to come into existence. This construction entails a specific production of what civil society is, which values are (and should be) present in it, what the common good is and how civil society and civil society organizations can and should contribute to it. Civil society always has and
continues to exist in the shadow of the state meaning that the state is the main producer of civil society through legislation, administration and discourse.
Since the 1990s, civil society has become a pivotal notion in both the public agenda and in state governance. In an age of scaling back of welfare services, civil society has become an important arena for the relief of the troubled welfare state. This paper uses Denmark as an illustrative example to show how civil society is produced both as a specific site with specific (good) values, but is at the same time instrumentalised to provide welfare services the state can
and will no longer provide. Civil society, civil society organisations and the common good are not given entities, but constantly produced and mobilised in different political conjunctures.