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Abstract
This paper presents the historical, global and political factors that contributed to the emergence of civil society as different and independent of the state and market sectors. Specifically, the paper presents the various debates and scholarly views on the emergence of civil society and illustrates the major factors that contributed to its emergence in international and academic communities. Particularly, Mary Kaldor’s four-versions of the emergence of civil society are adopted in this paper because they present a systematic conceptualization of the term – identifying key theorists, global economic and political conditions as well as social actions that popularized the concept of civil society in the academia and global discourse. The paper aims to provide an understanding of the meaning of civil society and the space for debating the credence of its relevance in international development.