Civil society refers to the space for collective action around shared interests, purposes and values, generally distinct from government and commercial for-profit actors. Civil society includes charities, development NGOs, community groups, women''s organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, social movements, coalitions and advocacy groups.

1. To limit the state: Civil society actors should watch how state officials use their powers. They should raise public concern about any abuse of power.  They should lobby for access to information, including freedom of information laws, and rules and institutions to control corruption.
2. To expose the corrupt conduct of public officials and lobby for good governance reforms: Even where anti-corruption laws and bodies exist, they cannot function effectively without the active support and participation of civil society.
3. To promote political participation: NGOs can do this by educating people about their rights and obligations as democratic citizens, and encouraging them to listen to election campaigns and vote in elections. NGOs can also help develop citizens’ skills to work with one another to solve common problems, to debate public issues, and express their views.
4. To develop values of democratic life: tolerance, moderation, compromise, and respect for opposing points of view.  Without this deeper culture of accommodation, democracy cannot be stable. 
5. To develop programs for democratic civic education: Civil society must be involved as a constructive partner and advocate for democracy and human rights training.
6. For the expression of diverse interests: NGOs and interest groups can present their views to parliament and provincial councils, by contacting individual members and testifying before parliamentary committees. They can also establish a dialogue with relevant government ministries and agencies to lobby for their interests and concerns. Over time, groups that have historically been oppressed and confined to the margins of society can organize to assert their rights and defend their interests as well.
7. To provide new forms of interest and solidarity that cut across old forms of tribal, linguistic, religious, and other identity ties: Democracy cannot be stable if people only associate with others of the same religion or identity.  When people of different religions and ethnic identities come together on the basis of their common interests as women, artists, doctors, students, workers, farmers, lawyers, human rights activists, environmentalists, and so on, civic life becomes richer, more complex, and more tolerant.
8. To provide a training ground for future political leaders: NGOs and other groups can help to identify and train new types of leaders who have dealt with important public issues and can be recruited to run for political office at all levels. 
9. To inform the public about important public issues: This is not only the role of the mass media, but of NGOs which can provide forums for debating public policies and disseminating information about issues before parliament that affect the interests of different groups, or of society at large.
10. To mediate and resolve conflict: NGOs have developed formal programs and training of trainers to relieve political and ethnic conflict and teach groups to solve their disputes through bargaining and accommodation.
11. To play in monitoring the conduct of elections: This requires a broad coalition of organizations, unconnected to political parties or candidates, that deploys neutral monitors at all the different polling stations to ensure that the voting and vote counting is entirely free, fair, peaceful, and transparent.  It is very hard to have credible and fair elections in a new democracy unless civil society groups play this role.

            Because civil society is independent of the state doesn’t mean that it must always criticize and oppose the state.  In fact, by making the state at all levels more accountable, responsive, inclusive, effective—and hence more legitimate—a vigorous civil society strengthens citizens’ respect for the state and promotes their positive engagement with it. A democratic state cannot be stable unless it is effective and legitimate, with the respect and support of its citizens.  Civil society is a check, a monitor, but also a vital partner in the quest for this kind of positive relationship between the democratic state and its citizens.