The article attempts to offer a framework for understanding the interdependence between modern civil society and the democratic state in its complexity. The author seeks inspiration mainly from two very significant sources—in Toqueville's social theory and in Giddens' theory of reflexive modernity. In the first stage the author summarises basic arguments in empirical discussions on the civil society concept. In the second stage he offers the overview of a robust normative perspective of the concept and, in the third stage, he tries to outline the complex interpretative framework for an empirical analysis of state–civil society relations. The author follows the ambition of overcoming to a certain extent the crucial sociological paradox between the macro- and micro-sociological approaches and considering both the functional-structural perspective and the empirical point of view of the civil society concept.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AhrneG. (1998) ‘Civil society and uncivil organizations’, in AlexanderJ. (ed), Real Civil Societies (London: Sage), 84–95.
2.
AlexanderJ. (ed) (1998) Real Civil Societies (London: Sage).
3.
AlmondG.VerbaS. (1963) The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press).
4.
BarberB. (1999) ‘Clansmen, consumers, and citizens: Three takes on civil society’, in FullinwiderR. (ed), Civil Society, Democracy and Civil Renewal (Lanham/New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.), 9–30.
5.
BaumanZ. (1998) Globalization: The Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity).
6.
BellD. (2000) “‘American exceptionalism” revisited: The role of civil society’, in EberlyD. (ed), The Essential Civil Society Reader. Classic Essays in the American Civil Society Debate (New York/Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.), 373–389.
7.
BryantC. (1993) ‘Social self-determinations, civility and sociology: A comment on Kumar's “civil” Society’, British Journal of Sociology, 44:3, 397–401.
8.
CalhounC. (1993) ‘Nationalism and civil society’, International Sociology, 8:4, 387–412.
9.
CalhounC. (1999) Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
10.
CohenJ. (1999) ‘American civil society talk’, in FullinwiderR. (ed), Civil Society, Democracy and Civil Renewal (Lanham/New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.), 31–54.
11.
CohenJ.AratoA. (1992) Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
12.
DahrendorfR. (1990) Reflection on the Revolution in Europe (London: Chatto & Windus).
13.
DahrendorfR. (1997) After 1989. Morals, Revolution and Civil Society (London: Macmillan Press Ltd & St. Antony's College, Oxford).
14.
FukuyamaF. (1995) Trust: The Social Virtue and Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press).
GellnerE. (1994) Condition of Liberty. Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton).
17.
GiddensA. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity).
18.
GiddensA. (1998) The Third Way (Cambridge: Polity Press).
19.
HabermasJ. (1989 [1962]) Strukturwandel der Offentlichkeit (Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand), trans. BurgerT. as Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge: Polity).
20.
HallJ. (ed) (1995) Civil Society: Theory, History and Comparison (Cambridge: Polity).
21.
HavelV. (1985) The Power of the Powerless, ed. KeaneJ. (Armonk, NY: E. Sharpe).
22.
JanoskiT. (1998) Citizenship and Civil Society. A Framework of Rights & Obligations in Liberal, Traditional, and Social Democratic Regimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
23.
KeaneJ. (ed) (1988a) Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London/New York: Verso).
24.
KeaneJ. (ed) (1988b) Democracy and Civil Society: On the Predicaments of European Socialism, the Prospects for Democracy and the Problem of Controlling Social and Political Power (London and New York: Verso).
25.
KeaneJ. (1998) Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
26.
KeaneJ. (2003) Global Civil Society? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
27.
KockaJ. (1997) ‘The difficult rise of a civil society: Societal history of modern Germany’, in FulbrookM. (ed), Germany History since 1800 (London: Arnold), 493–511.
28.
KonrádG. (1984) Antipolitics: An Essay (London: Quartet Books).
29.
KumarK. (1993) ‘Civil society: An inquiry into the usefulness of historical term’, British Journal of Sociology, 44:3, 375–395.
30.
LockeJ. (1963) Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
31.
MichnikA. (1987) Letters from Prison and Other Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press).
32.
MishlerW.RoseR. (1997) ‘Trust, distrust and skepticism: Popular evaluation of civil and political institutions in post-communist societies’, Journal of Politics, 59:2, 418–451.
33.
MüllerK. (2002) ‘Czech civil society: Preconditions, problems, perspectives’, Central European Political Science Review, 3:9, 160–184.
34.
NeocleousM. (1996) Administrating Civil Society. Towards a Theory of State Power (New York: Macmillan Press Ltd).
35.
OffeC. (1984) Contradiction of Welfare State (London: Hutchinson).
36.
OffeC. (1996) Modernity and the State (Cambridge: Polity Press).
37.
Pérez-DíazV. (1993) The Return of Civil Society. The Emergence of Democratic Spain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
38.
Pérez-DíazV. (1998) ‘The public sphere and European civil society’, in AlexanderJ. (ed), Real Civil Societies (London: Sage), 211–238.
39.
PowellF. (2000) ‘State, welfare, civil society,’ inTonkissF.PasseyA. (eds), Trust and Civil Society (London: Macmillan Press Ltd), 90–110.
40.
PutnamR. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
41.
PutnamR. (2000) Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster).
42.
SalamonL. (1999) Global Civil Society: Dimension of the Nonprofit Sector (Baltimore: John Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies).
43.
SeligmanA. (1992) The Idea of Civil Society (New York: Free Press).
44.
SeligmanA. (2000) ‘Trust and civil society’, in TonkissF.PasseyA. (eds), Trust and Civil Society (London: Macmillan Press Ltd), 12–30.
45.
ShilsE. (1991) ‘The virtue of civil society’, Government and Opposition, 26:1, 3–20.
46.
SkocpolT. (1999) ‘How Americans became civic’, in SkocpolT.MorrisF. (eds), Civic Engagement in American Democracy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institutions Press), 27–80.
47.
SmithP. (1998) ‘Barbarism and civility in the discourse of fascism, communism, and democracy: Variation on a set of themes’, in AlexanderJ. (ed), Real Civil Societies (London: Sage), 115–137.
48.
SullivanW. (1999) ‘Making civil society work: Democracy as a problem of civic cooperation’, in FullinwiderR. (ed), Civil Society, Democracy and Civil Renewal (Lanham/New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc), 31–54.
49.
SztompkaP. (1998) ‘Mistrusting civility: Predicament of a post-communist society’, in AlexanderJ. (ed), Real Civil Societies (London: Sage), 191–210.
50.
TaylorC. (1990) ‘Modes of civil society’, Public Culture, 3:1, 95–117.
51.
TaylorC. (1995) ‘Invoking civil society’, in TaylorC., Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 204–224.
52.
TesterK. (1992) Civil Society (London: Routledge).
53.
TocquevilleA.de (1968) Democracy in America (New York: Doubleday).
54.
WalzerM. (1991) ‘The idea of civil society’, Dissent, Spring, 293–334.
55.
WalzerM. (ed) (1995) Towards a Global Civil Society (Oxford: Berghahn Books).
