Civil Society

Introduction:
Civil society, dense network of groups, communities, networks, and ties that stand between the
individual and the modern state.
This modern definition of civil society has become a familiar component of the main strands of
contemporary liberal and democratic theorizing. In addition to its descriptive properties, the
terminology of civil society carries a litany of ethical and political aspirations and implications.
For some of its advocates, the achievement of an independent civil society is a necessary
precondition for a healthy democracy, and its relative absence or decline is often cited as both a
cause and an effect of various contemporary sociopolitical maladies.
The meaning and implications of the concept of civil society have been widely debated. As an
analytical framework for interpreting the social world, the idea that civil society should be
understood as, by definition, separated from and opposed to the operations of the state and
official public institutions has various disadvantages, not the least of which is that it inhibits
appreciation of the complex interrelationships between state and society. Equally, the notion
that the hugely diverse group life of Western capitalist societies promotes social values that are
separable from, and possibly opposed to, the market is hard to defend. The forms of combination
and association that typify civil societies in the West are typically affected and shaped by the
ideas, traditions, and values that also obtain in the economic sphere.

What is Civil Society?

According to the WHO Civil society is seen as a social sphere separate from both the state and
the market. The increasingly accepted understanding of the term civil society organizations
(CSOs) is that of non-state, not-for-profit, voluntary organizations formed by people in that social
sphere. This term is used to describe a wide range of organizations, networks, associations,
groups and movements that are independent from government and that sometimes come
together to advance their common interests through collective action. Traditionally, civil society

includes all organizations that occupy the 'social space' between the family and the state,
excluding political parties and firms. Some definitions of civil society also include certain
businesses, such as the media, private schools, and for-profit associations, while others exclude
them.

Civil society and modernity

Historians of the idea of civil society suggest that these contemporary reservations have their
roots in the complex and multifaceted intellectual genealogy of this term and the different modes
of thinking that underpin its usage in modern Western thought. Both of the conceptions outlined
at the start of this entry stem from a way of thinking about Western modernity that emerged in
European thought in the 18th and 19th centuriesspecifically, the idea that modern societies
can be analyzed in terms of the development of three separate and rival orders: the political, the
economic, and the social. Civil society is still invoked by many of its advocates as a synonym for
the values of authenticity and belonging, neither of which, it is assumed, can be achieved in
politics or economic life.
More generally, the entry of civil society into the language of modern European thought was
bound up with the development and spread of liberal doctrines about society and politics. Since
the 18th century it appeared in the context of the broadly individualistic, autonomous, and
rationalistic understanding of the human personality that liberal thinkers tended to promote. For
many liberals, it followed that social order and political obligation can be understood through the
analogy of a social contract between ruler and ruled, that the rule of law is a precondition for the
liberty of the citizen, and that the achievement of a commercial order requires and bolsters an
improvement in the overall character of the interrelationships of citizens. This broad
understanding of civil society as both a precondition for and marker of the distinctive trajectory
of Western liberal democracy remains the predominant interpretation of it. That is not to suggest
that this view is shared or admired by all. Critics observe the differentials of power and resource
that characterize relationships within civil society, the apparent inability of liberal thinking to
address the fundamental character of some of these inequities, and the skill and willingness of

some states to orchestrate and occasionally manipulate civil society organizations for their own
ends.

Origins and development

This skepticism about liberal ideas of civil society reflects, and has sustained, diverse conceptions
of its meaning and potential; a host of more conservative, as well as more radical, ambitions have
also been attached to this term. Indeed, the term civil society has carried a number of different
associations in the history of political thought, and its original meaning in Western thinking was
rather different from its current protean status. For the Roman authorCicero, societas
civilis (itself a translation of Aristotles koinonia politike) signaled a political community of a
certain scale (usually including more than one city in its compass) that was governed by the rule
of law and typified by a degree of urbanity. This kind of community was understood in contrast
to noncivilized or barbarian peoples. This conceptual usage was transformed by different
European thinkers throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, with the result that civil society came
to acquire a rather different set of connotations. Here are identified three of the prevalent modes
of thinking concerning this term that became established during this period, though this list is far
from exhaustive.
A strand of thinking developed in the Enlightenment era in the writings of English figures like
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke that presented the social and moral sources of the legitimacy of
the state in relation to the idea of civil society. Though internally diverse, this tradition shared an
aversion to the idea, widely held in ancient Greek thought, that societies could be characterized
according to the character of their political constitution and institutions. Society, however
conceived, was prior to and formative of the establishment of political authority.
A different mode of thinking about civil society, which found its most coherent expression in
19th-century German thought, separated civil society from state in both ethical and analytical
terms and regarded the two as separable and perhaps as opposites.

Standing between and partially overlapping with these perspectives, there developed a different,
long-lasting

conception

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some

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the Scottishpolitical economy tradition of the 18th century, including Adam Smith and Francis
Hutcheson. In their view, civil society should be conceived as emerging from the intertwined
development of an independent commercial order, within which complex chains of
interdependence between predominantly self-seeking individuals proliferated, and the
development of an independent public sphere, where the common interests of society as a whole
could be pursued. The development of the notion of a public that is in possession of its own
opinion in relation to matters of common concern became an increasingly prevalent way of
thinking about civil society, particularly in connection with the emergence of forums and spaces
where the free exchange of opinions was observablenewspapers, coffeehouses, political
assemblies.

Contemporary political discourse

The second and third of these strands have been most influential in shaping the thinking of
Western theorists since the late 20th century. After a period of relative philosophical disinterest
in the term in the middle decades of the 20th century, the terminology of civil society became
ubiquitous in political thinking during the 1980s. Many of the ideas of this phase of its intellectual
history can be connected to the three traditions previously identified.
The English strand has been powerfully reappropriated in the contemporary period by various
neoliberal theorists and ideologues. For them, civil society stands as a synonym for the ideal of
the free market accompanied by a constitutionally limited, but powerful, state. This last idea
figured powerfully in the idealization of civil society that prevailed in eastern European
intellectual circles following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In these settings, civil society
signified either the survival (in countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland) of a web of autonomous
associations that were independent of the state and that bound citizens together in matters of
common concern or a necessary means of achieving the economic prosperity and civil freedoms
of Western democracy.

The German strands concern with the sources and importance of the ethical ends learned
through participation in the corporations of civil society reemerged in the work of a body of
American political scientists and theorists who came to view civil society organizations as sources
of the stocks of social capital and mutual reciprocity that a successful democracy is supposed to
require.
And, third, the Scottish conception was powerfully revived by left-inclined thinkers who hoped
to provide a more pluralist, and less statist, reformulation of a socialist ideology that was
experiencing a profound political recession among Western publics.
As the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor observed, these and other influential ways of thinking
about civil society rested upon the twin assumptions that, in empirical terms, independent civil
societies did come into existence at various points from the 18th through the 20th century and
that their existence depends, in part, upon the separation of the concepts of state and society in
the Western political imagination. Neither of these assumptions is uncontentious. While there
clearly does exist a plethora of groups, communities, and associations in relative separation from
the state, the boundary between state and civil society in many countries is rarely as clear or firm
as the first assumption suggests. In various democracies, the state and other public authorities
succeeded in incorporating institutions and organizations from civil societyfor instance, trade
unions, environmental groups, and business associationsinto key networks of influence and
decision making. Equally, individual groups and even oppositional social movements often
expend considerable resources and energy attempting to interact with government officials,
elected politicians, and state bureaucracies. The notion that the statecivil society distinction
exists in all Western societies therefore requires considerable clarification and qualification in
empirical terms.
Likewise, the idea that a fundamental intellectual distinction between state and society
underpins the model of liberal democracy begs some rather large questions. Quite different
accounts of the distinction and interrelationship between society and the state guided some of
the major ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries and sustained clashing theories about
politics, sovereignty, and social order. Above all, the idea that a portion of any societal complex

should be portioned off, endowed with ethical, even emancipatory, significance, and understood
as the fundamental opponent of political authority and institutional life looks increasingly
problematic in the early 21st century.
One of the most interesting and contentious manifestations of the terminology of civil society
arises from its increasingly common application to non-Western societies. Are supporters of civil
society in the West and in newly democratizing states throughout the world talking about the
same things when they invoke this term? Can a Western-derived term be usefully employed as a
framework for analyzing societies with forms of sociability and state-society relationships that
differ markedly from those of the West? Equally, the assumption of some Anglo-American theory
that a network of independent associations, cultural practices, and organizations is a necessary
feature of a stable democracy is open to considerable doubt when viewed from elsewhere in the
world (think, for instance, of East Asian countries that have many of the features of civil societies
but are not democratic in their political structures).
During the 1990s, in particular, many authors, politicians, and public authorities keen to find
solutions to some of the different kinds of problems facing developing countries seized upon civil
society as a kind of panacea. Relatedly, this term became a conceptual mainstay of academic
thinking about democratic transitions and a familiar part of the discourse of global institutions,
leading nongovernmental organizations, and Western governments. The ideological character
and political implications of such ideas have become increasingly clear over time. Such thinking
helped sustain various attempts to kick-start civil societies from above in different African
countries, for example, and simultaneously served to legitimize Western ideas about the kinds of
political structure and economic order appropriate for developing states. In philosophical terms,
applying civil society in this kind of way raises the profound question of whether it can be
removed from its status within the Western political imagination and applied in ways that are
appropriate for the indigenous developmental trajectories and political cultures of some of the
poorest countries in the world.
It is impossible to divest the notion of civil society of normative connotations. The concept
remains powerful, in part, because of its (often unstated) contrastive character. A civil society is

typically seen as a superior alternative to a barbarian, natural, despotic, traditional, or premodern

societal other. This kind of idea constitutes an inexorable part of the terms appeal within the
Western political imagination. The achievement of a dense forest of groups, networks, and
organizations that appears to stand beyond the boundaries of the state and outside the reach of
the family and clan remains, for many political thinkers, a major part of what makes Western
modernity unique and desirable. When examined closely, this generic idea gives way to a host of
different kinds of projects, fantasies, and anxieties about politics, society, and the economy.
Since the 1990s, civil society has moved to the center stage of Western political debate, assuming
the character of both the diagnosis for and the solution to the various malaises of Western
societyrampant individualism, rising crime, consumerism, and the decline of community,
among other maladies. In more philosophical terms, it has held out two different kinds of promise
to intellectuals, political actors, and, occasionally, social movements. On one hand, it offers the
dream of reconciling some of the major discursive tensions in Western thoughtbetween, for
instance, self-interest and the public good, the individual and the community, freedom and social
solidarity, and the private and public domains of life. And the second promise, the idea of civil
society as a distinct third sector of Western societies (distinct from both the state and the private
realm), has come to fire parts of the radical imagination in contemporary ideological debate. In
this context it offers the thinly veiled promise of the achievement of a collective emancipation
from the constraints, compromises, and disappointments of politics. With a growing awareness
of the limitations and dangers of both of these ideas has come a desire to rethink the boundaries
of civil society and reconsider which political and moral values it promotes.