✎＿But in the face of this sense of disempowerment, there surprisingly is no decline in involvement in organisations which seek to share wealth and opportunities, protect one another’s rights and work towards the common good. According to the United Nations, civil society groups have grown 40-fold since the turn of last century.

Internationally, the non-profit sector is which one trillion dollars, and there are 700, 000 such organisations in Australia alone. The UN recognises 37, 000 specifically civil society organizations across the globe, and gave 3, 500 accreditations to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development.

This profound movement towards harnessing voices and resources from outside the realm of governments and officialdom reflects a profound growth in NGO’s,“the third sector”, as some call it.

As Robert Putnam discovered in the field of local government in Italy, the best predictor of governmental success was the strength and density of a region’s civic associations.