CIVIL SOCIETY

What is 'civil society' and Why is it often seen as a Crucial Element in Explaining both Successful and Unsuccessful attempts at Democratization?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WHAT IS CIVIL SOCIETY? QUESTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS1

CIVIL SOCIETY AND DEMOCRATIC CITIZENSHIP: THREE PERSPECTIVES3

Organizational Capacity and Democratic Citizenship3

Mobilization Capacity and Democratic Citizenship5

Deliberative Capacity and Democratic Citizenship6

REFERENCES11

What is 'civil society' and Why is it often seen as a Crucial Element in Explaining both Successful and Unsuccessful attempts at Democratization?

What is civil society? Questions and Clarifications

Civil society is a notoriously fuzzy concept. Not only is the concept used in different ways across contexts and historical time periods, but further complicating a clear definition is the fact that civil society is most typically defined in terms of what it is not: civil society is non-market and non-state. While the vagueness of the concept continues to be readily decried, scholars have also continued to argue for its theoretical and practical merits. Not only do elites, policy makers, and activists continue to refer to the idea of civil society in their own practical discourse, but also from a theoretical perspective, the concept helps us understand a distinct arena or sphere of social activity (O'Donnell 2004 pp. 32-46).

Although dating much farther back, it has been particularly since the global democratic transitions of the 1980s and 1990s that the term civil society has come to be used as a part of a tripartite differentiation of three major arenas of society: political society, economic society and civil society. The three arenas are a Parsonian ideal type construction in that each arena represents a general category for conceptualizing major types of social relations. In the reality, of course, forms of social organization and interaction among these three realms may sometimes overlap; but the ideal type construct provides a conceptual tool for understanding and analyzing major forms of social interaction (Ingelhart 2003 p. 65-78). The central point is that social relations in these different realms have fundamentally distinct and distinguishable logics, or in the words of Cohen and Arato, steering mechanisms, or in the words of Mark Warren, mediums of production. Political society is primarily structured or constituted by and through the power of the state; economic society is primarily structured through the exchange of money and the pursuit of profit; whereas civil society is primarily structured and constituted through social norms. That is, civil society is the realm of collective/social activity, which is held together by chosen normative allegiance rather than by other kinds of force.

Mark Warren argues for a the utility of this tripartite classification of political, economic and civil society by drawing on Parsons's distinction of the three principle ways in which collective decisions can be made: Collective decisions can be organized through coercive means (e.g., the state); they can be made through unintended consequences of economic exchanges that is, by markets.; or through social resources, such as, traditions, customs, and norms.

Civil society is, therefore, the sector, or sphere, of society that is distinguished by voluntary and associative relations among citizens that occur outside ...