Civil society is one of the most used - and abused - concepts in current political thinking. In this important collection of essays, the concept is subjected to rigorous analysis by an international team of contributors, all of whom seek to encourage the historical and comparative understanding of political thought. The volume is divided into two parts: the first section analyses the meaning of civil society in different theoretical traditions of Western philosophy. In the second section, (...) contributors consider the theoretical and practical contexts in which the notion of civil society has been invoked in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These essays demonstrate how an influential Western idea like civil society is itself altered and innovatively modified by the specific contexts of intellectual and practical life in the societies of the South. (shrink)

The concept of civil society, generally speaking, refers to a collective of free citizens who organize their common life in an autonomous and co‐operative way. To understand the different meanings and historical dynamic of the concept, three conceptions of it need to be distinguished, the oldest of which long pre‐dates the development of modern notions of ‘state’ and ‘society’. The Aristotelian idea of koinonia politike – translated into Latin as societas civilis – refers to a political community (...) of free and equal, virtuous citizens, bound together by a willingness to advance their common interest by means of political self‐rule in order to protect their liberty against both despotism and anarchy. Despite its historical distance from the two other, modern conceptions, this original one still poses a crucial question for any contemporary notion of civil society: what are the social understandings, forms of life and modes of action necessary for the establishment and preservation of political institutions that enable civic co‐operation and political autonomy? (shrink)

The paper deals with mutual conditionality of existence between the civil society and legal state. The paper is based on the 1918-1940 doctrine of independent Lithuania, the models of the legal state and the tentative models of the civil society created at that time. In the first part of the article, the concept of the legal state is discussed. In terms of creation of the model of the legal state, M. Romeris works are of exceptional importance. (...) It his works, M. Romeris related the legal state in essence with the legal, procedural system for ensuring the lawfulness. On the basis of works of European scholars of the 19th–20th centuries, M. Romeris conducted a critical analysis of the legal state and elucidated its most significant traits. It is notable that M. Romeris was able to make a correct insight into the strategy of advancing towards the legal state. (shrink)

For virtually all the major schools of Western opinion, the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, between 1989 and 1991, represents a triumph of Western values, ideas, and institutions. If, for triumphal conservatives, the events of late 1989 encompassed an endorsement of “democratic capitalism” that augured “the end of history,” for liberal and social democrats they could be understood as the repudiation by the peoples of the former Soviet bloc of Marxism-Leninism in (...) all its varieties, and the reemergence of a humanist socialism that was free of Bolshevik deformation. The structure of political and economic institutions appropriate to the transition from post-Communism in the Soviet bloc to genuine civil society was, accordingly, modeled on Western exemplars—the example of Anglo-American democratic capitalism, of Swedish social democracy, or of the German social market economy— or on various modish Western academic conceptions, long abandoned in the Soviet and post-Soviet worlds, such as market socialism. No prominent school of thought in the West doubted that the dissolution of Communist power was part of a process of Westernization in which contemporary Western ideas and institutions could and would successfully be exported to the former Communist societies. None questioned the idea that, somewhere in the repertoire of Western theory and practice, there was a model for conducting the transition from the bankrupt institutions of socialist central planning, incorporated into the structure of a totalitarian state, to market institutions and a liberal democratic state. Least of all did anyone question the desirability, or the possibility, of reconstituting economic and political institutions on Western models, in most parts of the former Soviet bloc. (shrink)

In Ukrainian academia, the last decades have seen growing interest in the concept of civil society, which has been studied from different disciplinary angles. Commentators disagree on the level of development it has reached in Ukraine. They emphasize its absence in Soviet times, and the general lack of organizational initiative in contemporary Ukraine. In this essay, I show that, although these critiques of Ukrainian civil society are crucial for comprehending its historical evolution, the history of (...) Ukrainian civil society can also help us understand how it might evolve in the future, both during and, hopefully after, the current war. In my analysis, I focus on two particular lines. The first is the interaction between civil society and the state, which shifted from an anti-state attitude to a model of partnership. The second, which operates in the background, is how civil society has struggled with different utopian ideas, over the 20th and early 21st centuries. Analyzing this relationship to different utopian ideas helps us understand how the relations between civil society and the state changed over time. I conclude with a question about European challenges. (shrink)

Since the fall of communism in 1989 Southeast Europe has been a site of far-reaching societal transformation, much of it marked by political crisis, economic upheaval, ethnic tension, and bitter war. The book comprises articles investigating the history and development of civil society in post-communist Southeast Europe. How is civil society to be grasped, what are the historical factors shaping the civil societies of the region?, what is the function of civil society (...) in the transition to democracy and a market-economy?, and what are the prospects for the future development of the civil societies of the region in an age of globalization?, -these are just a few of the major questions addressed in this collection of articles. Many of the authors are social scientists, philosophers, and activists from the region, offering first-hand critical analysis of the state of civil society in Southeast Europe and suggesting theoretical and practical strategies for the future course of its development. The aim is to provide the reader with insight into the complex challenges that face the civil societies of the region. (shrink)

Despite its long history of refugee crises, Asia lacks effective refugee protection mechanisms. Most Asian states resist ratification of the international refugee laws, and many international organizations are ineffective and lack concrete legal and political approaches to protecting refugees. Asian civil society, particularly Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, collaborates to protect refugees by employing alternative frameworks. This paper argues that Asian civil society aims to challenge the nature of refugee protection in Asia. Instead of encouraging (...) states to ratify the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, APRRN stimulates national-level implementation of refugee protection principles and practices from below. It engages its members in global decision-making by mobilizing and sharing resources with them. APRRN frames refugee protection as international human rights issue instead of as a national security concern. (shrink)

There is a tension apparent in Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society between his naturalistic account of the history of societies as emanating from principles of human nature on the one hand, and on the other, the rhetorically charged moralism that readers have generally noted in his critique of contemporary polished and commercial societies. This is related in the article to questions about the appropriate relationship between forms of rhetoric and the writing of (...) moral and political philosophy as they appeared in early-modern political thought and were taken up by other figures in the Scottish Enlightenment (most notably Hume). The article shows how reading Ferguson's text as an exercise in political rhetoric, which harnesses the additional force of forensic and demonstrative forms of eloquence, can provide a basis for understanding not only the intended relationship between the two sides of its argument but also its relationship with Ferguson's role as a teacher of morals at Edinburgh University. (shrink)

This volume brings together academics from a variety of disciplines to discuss Collingwood's contributions to philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of history, political philosophy and archaeological theory. It begins with a general survey of his contribution to history, politics and philosophy.

This paper will analyse Hegel's discussion of the relation between family and civil society on the basis of Marx's insight into the discrepancy between Hegel's explicitly logical structure of presentation based on �essential relationships� and his implicitly historical structure of presentation based on �external necessities�. It is intended neither to resolve the dispute between Hegel and Marx nor to apply Marx's critique to passages of the Philosophy of Right that he did not have occasion to discuss. The purpose (...) of this paper is more specific. It will attempt to illustrate the conflict between Hegel's characterization of civil society as a moment of ethical life emerging from the family in a non-contradictory manner, and his characterization of civil society's opposition to, and transformation of, the family. (shrink)

Scottish Enlightenment political thought shows permanent tensions between commerce and liberty, passions and interests, wealth and virtue, as a now classical literature has shown. The Scottish literati share the conception that civil society is a product of history, in contrast with barbarism, while giving diverse roles and meanings to passions and virtues. On the one hand, by his criticism of modern commercial politics, Adam Ferguson stood for the classic virtue of antiquity. On the other, David Hume, Adam (...) Smith and John Millar, who conceived selfish passions as the driving forces of history and progress, emphasised politeness and sociability, considered as the new, and pacific, characteristics of commercial modernity. This article highlights their contrasting views and points out the huge debate within the Scottish. (shrink)

In contrast to those who trace civil society to “community” per se, Foucault is keen to locate this concept as it emerges at a particular moment in respect of specific exigencies of government. He suggests that civil society is a novel way of thinking about a problem, a particular problematization of government that emerges in the eighteenth century and which combines incommensurable conceptions of the subject as simultaneously a subject of right and of interests. This article (...) takes up Foucault’s discussion of the Scottish Enlightenment in The Birth of Biopolitics to trace the distinctiveness of his discussion of civil society, but also in order to suggest that we ought to pay closer attention to the tensions between commercial-civilizational and civic republican themes in the literature of the late eighteenth century than does Foucault. It is my tentative suggestion that Foucault’s account leaves out significant aspects of these debates that offer counter-valences to the dominant models of the subject available to contemporary political discourse. (shrink)

This book focuses on Andrew Arato’s democratic theory and its relevance to contemporary issues such as processes of democratization, civil society, constitution-making, and the modern Executive. Andrew Arato is -both globally and disciplinarily- a prominent thinker in the fields of democratic theory, constitutional law, and comparative politics, influencing several generations of scholars. This is the first volume to systematically address his democratic theory. Including contributions from leading scholars such as Dick Howard, Ulrich Preuss, Hubertus Buchstein, Janos Kis, Uri (...) Ram, Leonardo Avritzer, Carlos de la Torre, and Nicolás Lynch, this book is organized around three major areas of Arato´s influence on contemporary political and social thought. The first section offers a comprehensive view of Arato’s scholarship from his early work on critical theory and Western Marxism to his current research on constitution-making and its application. The second section shifts its focus from the previous, comprehensive approach, to a much more specific one: Arato´s widespread influence on the study of civil society in democratization processes in Latin America. The third section includes a previously unpublished work, ‘A conceptual history of dictatorship (and its rivals,)’ one of the few systematic interrogations on the meaning of a political form of fundamental relevance in the contemporary world. Critical Theory and Democracy will be of interest to critical and social theorists, and all Arato scholars. (shrink)

The Fable of the bees and the Treatise of human nature were written to define and dissect the essential components of a 'civil society'. How have early readings of the Fable skewed our understanding of the work and its author? To what extent did Mandeville's celebrated work influence that of Hume? In this pioneering book, Mikko Tolonen extends current research at the intersection of philosophy and book history by analysing the two parts of the Fable in relation (...) to the development of the Treatise. Focussing on the key themes of selfishness, pride, justice and politeness, Tolonen traces the evolution of Mandeville's thinking on human nature and the origins of political society to explore the relationship between his Fable and Hume's Treatise. Through a close examination of the publishing history of the Fable and F. B. Kaye's seminal edition, Tolonen uncovers hitherto overlooked differences between Parts I and II to open up new approaches in Mandeville scholarship. As the question of social responsibility dominates the political agenda, the legacy of these key Enlightenment philosophers is as pertinent today as it was to our predecessors. (shrink)

There is a huge number of publications devoted to civil society. Nevertheless this theme is inexhaustible, because the very subject of it is multidimensional and changing along with the evolution of society. Alongside this, one of the key problems of the civil society theory is a problem of its perception in our mind. Answering these questions, the author, at first, stresses the necessity to differ three historical types of civil society: ancient classical polis, (...) civil communities of the Modern History and contemporary civil society. They all are substantially different inter se from the axiological point of view. That is a reason not to use the ideological and methodological curves developed for historically previous types of civil society for the analysis of contemporary one. Secondly, the author focuses attention upon epistemological aspect of the civil society theory, in particular he proposes to rethink the concept of “totality” not in a formal logic way but in the “logic” of living systems in order to be able by means of this concept to express the unity of the diversity of social system. Thirdly, the author treats the concept of “citizen” in informal sense, stresses its existential, personal content and contemplates it through the dialectical relation of “totality-peculiarity-individuality.” Fourthly, the author researches the phenomenon of contemporary civil society as a counterpart of a state in the complex society the main features of which are the diversity and individuality. He comes to the conclusion that the civil society is not a society in common sense, but rather is some kind of “soil structure,” so called “social mycelium” that fertilizes social system with new opportunities. In the final part of the article author gives the example of one of the approaches to estimate the degree of maturation of civil society, proposed by the world-wide international organization “Civicus.” He stresses that the logic of power distribution in contemporary society presupposes cooperation of different actors, and one of the most influential of them is the civil society. (shrink)

Behind only that of Bronislaw Malinowski, the influence of the Central European polymaths Ernest Gellner and Karl Polanyi on socio-cultural anthropology in the 20th century was profound. Gellner and Polanyi also influenced much wider swathes of scholarship. They belong to different generations and were raised in quite different settings in Prague and Budapest respectively. What these thinkers have in common is a philosophy of history which posits the industrial revolution in northwest Europe as a radical rupture in Weltgeschichte. Polanyi’s (...) ‘great transformation’, with its focus on the economy, corresponds to Gellner’s metaphor of the ‘big ditch’ and focus on a new polity. The cultural homogenization of the nation-state and the disembedding of the economy from society in the era of free trade are two sides of the same coin. This paper argues that these complementary models derive to a considerable degree from the scholars’ background on the margins of industrializing Europe, in the ruins of the Habsburg Empire. (shrink)

as you have stated the Question, 'tis not about what was First, or Foremost; but what is Instant, and Now in being.... You go (if I may say so) upon Fact, and would prove that things actually are in such a state and condition, which if they really were, there would indeed by no dispute left. [Shaftesbury, The Moralist]. As for the Performance itself, it is but an Essay. [Edward Ward].

MUSLIM STATES HAVE BEEN CHARACTERIZED AS SUFFERING FROM A "democratic deficit." A wide-ranging debate has been taking place for many years on whether Islam is somehow to blame for the troubled history of liberal democracy in the Muslim world. This essay argues that if liberal democratic polities are to develop in Muslim countries, then nurturing civil society is a necessary first step. How can Islamic ethics help or hinder this process?

Civil society initiatives played a key role in the increasing academic focus on poverty in mid-1960s Europe. The first generation of academic poverty researchers were able to draw on the expertise of civil society actors who, since the 1950s, had been carrying out their own research to counter a lack of scholarly interest. While the ‘rediscovery’ of poverty as a research topic in academic circles has received scholarly attention, the research efforts of their non-academic counterparts have (...) been overlooked. Building on recent work in the history of knowledge, this article focuses on poverty-related research in Belgium by both academic and non-academic knowledge producers. We assess whether and how both types of knowledge co-existed and possibly interacted. We also demonstrate how, due to a lack of academic interest in the 1950s, research on poverty in Belgium became crucial for civil society actors. From the mid-1960s onwards, the renewed academic interest in poverty facilitated interactions between established civil society researchers and academic scholars, but these interactions were complicated by a growing divergence in methods and goals. Through the lens of poverty, this article expands on our understanding of the development of research in the social sciences. (shrink)

This article investigates the impact of Locke's philosophy of language on his political thought. It argues that certain aspects of his linguistic theory have a devastating impact on his vision of civil society. There are three ways in which the Lockean commonwealth is threatened. First, Locke's belief in the sovereign and constitutive power of words impedes the toleration that he holds so dear. Second, his fear that men break the compacts that make language work throws into doubt the (...) possibility of the trust that generates and sustains political society. Third, his radical thesis of semantic instability undermines the foundations of community: sociability, the 'social contract' and culture. While Locke's politics might, in the light of this analysis, appear impossible, I end by suggesting that these tensions capture the ineliminably problematic character of political life. (shrink)

The English translation of Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere converges with the revival of the "political culture concept" in the social sciences. Surprisingly, Habermas's account of the Western bourgeois public sphere has much in common with the original political culture concept associated with Parsonian modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s. In both cases, the concept of political culture is used in a way that is neither political nor cultural. Explaining this peculiarity is the central problem addressed (...) in this article and its companion piece, which appeared in Sociological Theory, volume 3, number 2 (1995). I hypothesize that this is the case because the concept itself is embedded in an historically constituted political culture (here called a conceptual network)-a structured web of conceptual relationships that combine into Anglo-American citizenship theory. The method of an historical sociology of concept formation is used to analyze historically and empirically the internal constraints and dynamics of this conceptual network. The method draws from new work in cultural history and sociology, social studies, and network, narrative, and institutional analysis. This research yields three empirical findings: this conceptual network has a narrative structure, here called the Anglo-American citizenship story; this narrative is grafted onto an epistemology of social naturalism; and these elements combine in a metanarrative that continues to constrain empirical research in political sociology. (shrink)

The Politica as a specific genre of academic reflection on civil life developed from the later sixteenth century and flourished until at least the mid-seventeenth century, especially at universities in the Holy Roman Empire and where their influence was felt, as in the Dutch Republic. Theologians, Philosophers, Jurists, and Medical Doctors contributed books. Aside from few and only with difficulty accessible surveys, and a few individual well-researched authors, research into this genre remains a task for the future. This survey (...) collects contributions from a number of senior and younger researchers and their various approaches and arguments. In particular, by providing examples of the heterogeneity of current research, it serves as an introduction to the genre and to a more complete assessment of the development of Early Modern political thought. The volume also stresses the importance of this genre for several transformations of political thought in the Early Modern Age. (shrink)

The paper’s aim is to retrace the history of climate change through its definition and the process of negotiation aroused from the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC). After a brief description of this institution, the basic principles beneath the whole system of environment protection and the struggle against climate change will be presented. The intention is to demonstrate how, despite the undeniable advancements of the latest decades, the international legislative framework, even supported by (...) the action and intervention of the European Union, is still not sufficient and leads to a diffused and latent disillusion among civil society. (shrink)

This book explores Hobbes's ideas about the internal pacification of states, the prospect of a peaceful international order, and the connections between civil and international peace. It questions the notion of a negative Hobbesian peace, which is based on the mere suppression of violence, and emphasises his positive vision of everlasting peace in a well-governed commonwealth. The book also highlights Hobbes's ideas about international coexistence and cooperation, which he considers integral to good government. In examining Hobbes's conception of peace, (...) it provides a fresh perspective on his international political thought. The findings also have wider implications for the ways in which we think about Hobbes's relationship to the realist and liberal traditions of international thought, and will appeal to students and scholars of political theory and international relations. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the revision of the classical thesis concerning secularism the progressive domination of the discussion around the issue of the civil society. These two poles facilitated the development of a series of historiographic approaches that particularly touched on the areas of Eastern and Southeastern Europeís history. Here we are concerned with three central cases of historiographic discourseís production, as indicators of the dominant ìparadigmîís change: the first concerns the role of the Russian church in (...) the pre-Revolutionary period; the second, the issue of secularization and its relations with Islam in the Ottoman Empire; and finally the third, the problem of internal fragmentation of the Orthodox millet with the establishment of Greek autocephalus Church in 1833 and (self-sufficiency) and later the Bulgarian Exarchate. These new approaches were intended to solve various long-standing problems and for the most part resulted in solutions within existing opposites of historiographic schools of thought. (shrink)

In the postmodern era, European political philosophy has introduced several concepts. These concepts have ideologically prepared Western countries for decentralization reform. Being still “in process”, reflection on the proper structure of postmodern society is marked by ambiguous and often contradictory ideas. The very view on the state as a de-hierarchical, rhizomorphic and horizontal phenomenon presupposes numerous ways of reforming it. Throughout their histories, European countries have shifted from confrontations, hostilities and rivalries towards new mechanisms of fruitful relationships between (...) class='Hi'>civil society and state institutions. Nowadays, many aspects are influencing the elaboration and implementation of strategies on civil society development in different countries. These aspects include the following: different starting conditions; the presence or absence of basic principles of public space development; the possibility of fulfilling civic practices’ potential; the level of political participation. West European countries have managed to create a viable structure to support the development of civil society, as well as maintain a stable dialogue between it and the state. However, the process is still on: effective practices of interaction between them are being developed; conditions for more effective cooperation are being improved; new financial instruments are being created and implemented. All Central and East European countries have a common understanding of civil society as one of the most important actors in developing cooperation with the government. At the same time, they should be able to solve existing essential problems, such as low awareness about global development problems and the population’s unreadiness to meet the immediate objectives of civil society development. (shrink)

Morality, as Immanuel Kant understands it, depends on the capacity of a person to be the agent and owner of his own actions, not merely a conduit for social and psychological forces and influences over which he has little or no control. As a result, Kant’s moral philosophy focuses primarily on the topic of individual freedom and the necessary preconditions of the possibility of that freedom. In the Groundwork and second Critique, Kant’s discussion of the connection between morality and freedom (...) centers on autonomy of the will. He identifies autonomy as the supreme principle of morality and defines it as “choos[ing] only in such a way that the maxims of your choice are also included as universal law in the same volition” (Gr 4:440). In this paper I argue that according to Kant the possibility of autonomous action requires that certain preconditions be met. Satisfying these preconditions requires an individual to be a member of civil society (status civilis), and, specifically, a civil society maintained by a strong, sovereign power. This connection between freedom and civil society exists on two levels. First, one precondition of autonomy (i.e., internal freedom) is liberty (i.e., external freedom), and an individual can secure his liberty only once he is a member of civil society. Second, an individual is free only when others recognize him as a being with the capacity for autonomous action, and joining civil society is the process by which this recognition takes place. (shrink)