Is the existence of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) equivalent to civil society? That is, the more NGOs you
have, the more civil society you have. What does civil society mean, anyway?
Before I moved to Armenia, I have to be honest, I hadn’t really come across the
term. Having spent several years working in the non-profit (or not-for-profit)
sector in Canada, I moved to the other side of the ocean only to realize that
(a) “non-profit” is more often replaced with the term “non-governmental” and
(b) the non-governmental sector and civil society are used almost
interchangeably. But are they one and the same?
