2 - Inhabiting Nicaraguan Civil Society at the Intersection

Summary

The organizational model for Disabled Persons' Organizations as rights advocates, which is embedded in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, reflects a larger global trend within the international community promoting rights advocacy as the only legitimate form of civic participation, regardless of the people represented, the issue being addressed, or local history or tradition. This singular script for civil society has its origins in Cold War politics in the West, where the promotion of a free civil society throughout the Global South was used as a tool for defeating authoritarian regimes in the non-West. This history can best be understood using new institutional theory from organizational sociology, which shows how fields are governed by specific norms. What new institutional theory often ignores, however, is that organizations often belong to two or more fields at once. Disabled Persons' Organizations in Nicaragua are part of the international disability-rights movement, but they are also part of local norms civil society. Nicaraguan solidaridad has structured local civil society since the Nicaraguan Revolution (1979), when the population mobilized through “mass” organizations to promote the “common good.” This legacy leaves local disability associations caught between two institutional fields.