Civil Society Activism Under Authoritarian Rule by Francesco Cavatorta

Author:Francesco Cavatorta [Cavatorta, Francesco]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9786613955296
Goodreads: 16715790
Publisher: Not Avail
Published: 2012-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Civil society

While most commentators acknowledge that a particular conception of civil society, as connoting voluntary organizations that operate in a nebulous zone between those of the family and the state, has become dominant in the literature, at least since the end of the Cold War, it is, nonetheless, a truism to observe that there is no consensus on what the term actually refers to. Diversity characterizes the history of thinking on civil society. Rosenblum and Post point out that:

Civil society is alternately viewed as a source of stability and legitimacy for government and as a source of resistance against arbitrary, oppressive and overweening government. Civil society is sometimes conceived as a spontaneous growth, prior to an independent of government, and sometimes dependent on government for legal structure, robust recognition, or outright fiscal support. Civil society is described as developing in partnership with government and as substituting for the failings of government.

(Rosenblum and Post, 2002: 1)

The absence of conceptual clarity stems from the diversity of theorizing on the subject of civil society. There is no such thing as ‘the classical conception of civil society’ (Giner, 1995: 302). There is a Lockean interpretation, but there is a Hegelian one, and there are Hobbesian, Marxist and Gramscian theories of civil society. While these share in common the view that civil society refers to a sphere of life outside the state, there remains ‘ample room for disagreement between authors and schools’ (Giner, 1995: 302).

This theoretical diversity is explored in Edwards’ ‘whistle-stop’ tour of civil society (Edwards, 2004: 9). Edwards suggests that in classical tradition civil society was treated as synonymous with the state – both concepts referred to a type of political association that governed social conflict ‘through the imposition of rules that retrained citizens from harming one another’ (Edwards, 2004: 8). This tradition was continued in late medieval thought which equated civil society with ‘politically organized commonwealths’. However, according to Edwards, this approach took a different turn between 1750 and 1850 in response to a number of developments, in particular, the rise of the market economy and the social fallout from this, as well as the impact of the French and American revolutions on ‘traditional paradigms of authority’. In this Enlightenment tradition, civil society was seen, not as indistinguishable from the state, but as a defence against impingement by the state on newly acquired rights and freedoms. Edwards links this approach to James Madison and Alexis de Tocqueville and through them to writers such as Ernest Gellner and James Madison (Edwards, 2004: 8).

The dominant theme in this debate was the value of voluntary associations in curbing the power of centralizing institutions, protecting pluralism and nurturing constructive social norms…. A highly articulated civil society with overlapping memberships was seen as the foundation of a stable democratic polity, a defence against domination by any one group, and a barrier to anti-democratic forces.

(Edwards, 2004: 7)

However, while this has become the dominant view of civil society, it is not the only tradition in political thought. Others have

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