Civil
Society and Democratic Theory: Alternative Voices
Synopsis
This book introduces radically alternative models
of civil society that have been developed outside the liberal democratic frame
of reference, models which suggest that civil society does offer new and
non-statist democratic possibilities. Drawing on a wide range of civil society
theory-practice from Eastern Europe and Latin America (including the Zapatistas
in Mexico), and from visions of global civil society too, this book is uniquely
positioned to consider the questions posed by these alternative voices for
democratic theory and practice. * Are there alternatives to the liberal
democratic vision of civil society? * Is a democracy located in civil society
rather than the state either possible or desirable? * How and why has the
concept of civil society come to be used so widely today? * Can global civil
society further the struggle for democracy initiated by national civil
societies?
Additional information
Contributors:
Gideon Baker is Lecturer in Political Theory in the
School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History at the
University of Salford. He has published articles in various journals including
Contemporary Politics, Democratization and Politics.
Publisher:
Routledge
Place of publication:
London
Publication year:
2002
Table of contents
Title Page v
Contents vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
The
concept of civil society is gathering momentum today as the search
continues
for forms of community and political action outside of what is often
seen
as a discredited state. But what can we really expect from civil society?
In
particular, could citizen self-organisation ‘beneath’ or outside of the state
provide
for the democratic self-determination that so many feel is lacking in
modern
society, despite promises to the contrary from liberal democracies?
Liberal
democratic theory complacently assumes that civil society should act
merely
as a support structure for democracy ‘proper’ at the level of the state
–
shaping parliamentary deliberation by providing a voice to public opinion,
educating
citizens in democratic values, and generally acting as a ‘watchdog’
over
those in power, but otherwise leaving the ‘real’ business of democracy to
representatives.
Are there, though, alternative visions of civil society to this
domesticated
liberal democratic one? In particular, is a democracy located in
civil
society rather than the state desirable or even possible? And can the
slogan
‘civil society first’, involving turning our backs on the state, continue
to
be a meaningful mode of democratic organisation today, even after the
events
of 1989 appeared to signal its redundancy? Remarkable as it may seem
more
than a decade after the triumph of liberal democracy supposedly ushered
in
the ‘end of history’, some still answer yes to these questions – but why and
in
what ways? And can such sentiments ever be other than utopian?
This
book seeks to shed light on these questions by offering a new and
critical
perspective on the now extensive debate concerning the relationship
between
civil society and democracy.1 This perspective involves providing a
wider
and more inclusive picture than has been taken previously. By wider I
mean
wider in two dimensions. On the first dimension I seek to include not
only
the Western canon of political theory on the topic of civil society and
democracy,
but also voices from Central–Eastern Europe and Latin America.
On
the second dimension, I consider newly emergent calls for ‘global civil
society’
and for global action in civil society as a possible alternative for
democratic
theory and practice to the historically exclusive focus on the state–
civil
society relationship. I make no claims to be comprehensive in my
treatment
of these ‘alternative voices’, for my purpose is not merely
descriptive
but analytical – seeking to chart the ways in which the resurgent
idea of civil society has been, and continues to
be, articulated in radical ways
which require us to reflect more fully on our
taken-for-granted understanding
of civil society and also on the possible outline
of a form of civil society different
from that which currently predominates in theory
and in practice.
This process of reflection involves demonstrating
that the hegemonic
liberal democratic perspective on civil society is
one singular point of view
rather than a universally accepted one. The reverse
side of this process involves
uncovering aspects of the emergence and formation
of the particular liberal
democratic perspective on civil society so as to
historicise a concept that is
more often reified. In this aim I loosely follow
Foucault’s genealogical method,
in as much as this seeks to question concepts ‘as
to their use in practical
systems [and] for the ways in which they constitute
and circumscribe our
capacities to act’. Civil society, as with any
other such concept, should therefore
‘be interrogated for the ways in which it
structures and delimits our political
imaginations’. This is a project in tune with
Foucault’s wider call for a form
of liberation that involves thinking that ‘that
which exists is far from filling
all possible spaces’ (Ashenden 1999: 158; Foucault
1989: 208):
The role of the genealogist is to draw attention to
the way in which
dominant discourses conceal the emergence and
effects of the practices
they sustain. It is only by tracing out the genesis
of these discourses and
practices, and by contextualising them in relation
to other practices and
discourses, that other possibilities foreclosed by
dominant interpretations
can be reactivated and possibly pursued.
(Howarth 2001:18)
In particular, the alternative readings of the
relationship between civil
society and democracy that I include in this book
(in order to open up this
discursive space) have a common orientation towards
locating democracy
primarily in civil society itself. The vision of a
‘democracy of civil society’, as
we might term it, is of a very different type to
the democracy that we actually
have, where ‘people power’ is read as primarily a mechanism
for selecting
the people’s representatives in the state. In this
democracy, civil society is
largely instrumental. The question posed by the
alternative voices considered
here is: could it be other than this?
However, the purpose of this book is not to offer
up a new model of civil
society for democratic theory. With its critical
project in mind, and considering
the alternative theories that are its primary
focus, it does consider what the
democracy of civil society might look like by way
of a reconstruction of an
ideal-type democracy of this sort. But this is
provided because of the heuristic
value of working with an ideal-type that makes
explicit the implications of
valorising the democracy of civil society. For
unlike much radical civil society
theory, which tends instinctively to assume that
‘more power to civil society’
means more democracy, a more systematic and
questioning approach is
required if we are to make a meaningful assessment of
the extent to which
the democracy of civil society represents a coherent
alternative for democratic
theory and practice.
The structure of the book is as follows: in parts I
and II I explore models of
civil society and democracy from Eastern Europe and
Latin America
respectively. The alternative discourses treated
here are primarily from the
1970s and 1980s and were articulated under
conditions of authoritarian state
repression. In their different yet complementary
ways, theorist-activists in
both regions turned to the idea of civil society in
the face of what they saw as
the moral and political distortions of statist
politics. ‘Civil society first’ is the
leitmotif here, and I analyse the ways in which
this was understood to promise
a radically new approach to the theory and practice
of democracy centred on
civil society.
In part III I chart the eclipse of the radical
approach to civil society – as
introduced in parts one and two – by the liberal
democratic model of civil
society during the 1990s.2 I do this by focusing on
academic debates about
democratisation in the same two regions (Eastern
Europe and Latin America),
where the radical reading of civil society emerged
most powerfully. What
becomes apparent is the essentially statist and
instrumentalist reading of
civil society by an academe within which, post
1989, liberal democratic
categories are hegemonical to the extent that
alternative readings of civil
society are largely forgotten or rendered
invisible.
In part IV I continue the task of considering
alternative visions of civil
society and democracy by looking at more recent
challenges to the liberal
democratic model. These include, first, the ‘global
civil society’ approach,
which is imparting a growing sense of democratic
possibility to the increasingly
transnational actions of new social movements and
other non-state
associations with global ambition and reach (human
rights and environmental
movements, for example). Second, I reflect on the
theory–practice of
democracy as global resistance within civil society
that is being worked out
by the Zapatistas (along with their global
coalition) in Mexico today. The
model of civil society to ‘power’ articulated under
the shadow of the
authoritarian state in the 1970s and 1980s might
have been eclipsed, but can
these new global perspectives recover the
significance of ‘civil society first’
for our times?
In the final part of the book, in order to bring
together my reflections in a
more wide-ranging discussion, I first reconstruct
an ideal-type model of a
democracy based in civil society such as appears to
be pre-figured in the
alternative readings of civil society considered
throughout the book. I provide
this model as a reconstruction of key features of
the radical approach because,
to reiterate, I do not want to suggest a new
approach myself, but rather to
ask some hard questions about the democracy of
civil society in order to
contribute one answer to the question: what can we
reasonably expect from
such a democracy? The answer that I give, to state
it only crudely here, is
that the theory of the democracy of civil society
recovers crucial insights
from what we might term the republican tradition in
democratic theory
in liberal democratic thought through its
uncritical adherence to statism.
However, I also show that it falls well short of
being a fully developed theory
of democracy.
I conclude by shifting focus from problems in
theory with the democracy
of civil society to the role of this ideal as a
self-definition of radical political
practice over the last twenty years. I take from
these various actor-centred
articulations of the democracy of civil society a
powerful argument against
the axiomatic treatment within liberal democratic
theory of the legitimacy
of the state. I suggest that the idea of a
democracy of civil society is a necessary
reminder to students of democracy that, instead of
seeing the legitimacy of
self-organisation in civil society as requiring
justification, we should shift the
burden of proof to those (liberal democratic)
theories and practices which
assume that the state can be effectively
democratised and then that this is
all democracy is. For in turning away from the
state to civil society, the idea
of the democracy of civil society encourages us to
redirect our political efforts
towards more local, particular and self-determining
manifestations of
democracy, and this may indeed be it’s most
significant achievement.
I now devote the remainder of this introduction to
a brief history of the
idea of civil society, in order to situate the
contemporary debates with which
I am concerned in some wider historical context.
The history of a concept
The idea of civil society was articulated first by
the philosophers of the Scottish
Enlightenment.3 These philosophers were able to
posit the universality of
civil society (commercial society within a
framework of law), as a solution to
the particularity of the market sphere that was
increasingly redefining the
estates system of feudal society. This
particularity, which for Adam Ferguson
represented a serious threat to civic virtue, arose
out of the increasing thirst
for private wealth, which turned people away from
‘affairs of state’ while
also escalating the state’s role in upholding
security. The very real threat of
despotism followed from this, according to Ferguson
(Ferguson 1966: 261).
The concern, first, with the rising tension between
individualism and
community life, second, with the need to check the
power of the state, and,
third, with the need to rediscover some kind of
republican virtue or public
spirit represents enduring concerns for theorists
of civil society to this day.
However, in its Enlightenment form such thought was
arguably not yet fully
modern; for Ferguson because, although he is able
to identify associationalism
as important to the resolution of the problems
named above, this is not defined
as activity outside of the state. Ferguson is still
thinking in the classical terms
of an essential unity between civil society and the
state (Keane 1988a: 44). A
less than fully modern approach to civil society is
also characteristic of the
theorists of the Scottish Enlightenment more
generally. They, particularly
Adam Smith, posited civil society’s ‘solution’ to
the problem of the greater
good in society as arising from the natural
sympathy or moral sentiment
displayed within it. This was a quintessentially
eighteenth-century notion,
shaped still by Christian and natural theology,
which suggested that a
transcendental mutuality was implicit in the
recognition by individuals of
other individuals in the arena of exchange
(Seligman 1992).
The Scottish Enlightenment’s idea of civil society
then travelled to
Germany by way of the translation of Ferguson’s
Essay on the History of Civil
Society (1767) and Smith’s The Wealth of Nations
(1776–8) (Ashenden 1999:
145). Thereafter, Hegel was the first philosopher
to begin to develop a
recognisably modern notion of civil society in his
Philosophy of Right, written
in 1821. Although Hegel articulated the same
tension between individual
autonomy and community as the philosophers of the
Scottish Enlightenment,
he did this without reference to an ethical unity
from without. Instead, Hegel
sought to resolve the contradictions that existed
in civil society as a result of
its particularity by reference to the universal
state. It is only at this point,
then, that the idea of civil society is first
concerned with the proper relation
between the state and civil society as separate
spheres. However, Hegel’s
theory of civil society also gave the concept a
pejorative hue for the first
time. The state, in order to realise its
universality, requires the creation
through civil society of individual freedoms and
the ability to satisfy needs.
Yet by this very process of development, civil
society is increasingly
characterised by chaos and inequality that
undermines ethical unity. Such
ethical unity is found only in the universal state,
which, although it should
not abolish civil society, should rule and guide
it.
For Marx, going further than Hegel in criticising
the atomisation unleashed
by an unfettered civil society, any separation of
spheres between state and
civil society had to be overcome entirely. Marx
also rejected Hegel’s account
of the supposedly impartial, ‘universal’ state
ruling over civil society; as far
as he was concerned, this state actually furthered
the dominance of the
bourgeois class over subordinate classes in civil
society. Thus, although Marx
retained Adam Smith’s identification of civil
society with economic
interactions through the mechanism of the market,
he was decidedly less
sanguine than Smith about the possibility of the
‘greater good’ emerging
from the sum total of these transactions. The
formal ‘freedoms’ of civil society
were for Marx a sham masking the deep structure of
class inequality that
defined this sphere in the first place. Real
political freedom could only be
attained if the working class took over state
functions which, in being alienated
from civil society, reinforced the latter’s
individualistic, egoistic and therefore
socially atomising character (see Marx 1977). In
this moment of revolution,
‘particularistic’ civil society itself would be
abolished by the universal rule of
the proletariat. Marx’s damning critique concerning
the alienation and
exploitation supposedly to be found in the sphere
of civil society contributed
thereafter to its significant decline as a field of
study. More generally, the
growing dominance of the modern state from the
second half of the nineteenth
century led anyway to declining interest in the
sphere of civil society
alian Marxist, isolated civil society as a category
of importance in its own
right. Gramsci characterised civil society as the
realm of culture and ideology,
or, more concretely, as the associational realm
(made up of the church, trade
unions, etc.) through which the state, under normal
circumstances,
perpetuates its hegemony or achieves consent.
However, precisely because
this associational realm represents a non-state and
a non-economic sphere,
Gramsci, contra Marx, saw it as having the
potential for dual autonomy from
both the state and market relations. He was
therefore the first to articulate
the idea that civil society, in a moment of
counter-hegemony, could actually
be resistant to state power as, in his well-known
phrase, so many ‘earthworks
and buttresses’ (Gramsci 1971: 238). The
voluntarism of Gramsci’s account
of civil society contrasts, of course, with Marx’s
structural determinism.
Rather than political change being dependent on the
unfolding of the laws of
history within the deeper structure of production
upon which civil society
rests, action in civil society itself is made
possible. Gramsci’s more political
or agency-centred emphasis is reflected in most
contemporary accounts; civil
society is therefore used to identify a sphere of
willed action, rather than an
‘unwilled, non-purposive, arena of human
interaction’ such as the early
moderns had in mind when they coined the term to
describe the operation of
commercial societies (Pearce 1997: 58).
How did this new emphasis within civil society
theory arise? It appeared
first with the re-emergence of the concept in
communist Central–Eastern
Europe.4 Democratic opposition movements in this
region (especially in
Poland) used the idea of civil society in
theorising their struggle to create a
protected societal sphere separate from the
official sphere of the allembracing
party-state. Indeed, accounts of the history of the
idea of civil
society itself have been rewritten to some extent
through the influence of
these discourses. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59),
for example, despite his
infrequent use of the term itself, has recently
emerged in academic
consciousness as a key civil society theorist. This
is at least in part because of
the compatibility of his observations with those
arising from the Central-
Eastern European opposition movements; that is, he
was the first, in Democracy
in America, to articulate the need for strong,
independent associations – ‘corps
intermédiaires’ as he terms them – to stand between
the individual and the
state.5 For Tocqueville, looking in bewilderment at
the totalitarian
implications of statist, centralising and, as he
saw it, potentially stifling and
conformist developments in post-revolutionary
France, and for the Central-
Eastern European oppositionists considering their
weakness in the face of
even greater ‘totalisation’ from above, the
importance of the ‘self-defence’ of
society against the state must have been equally
apparent.
Robert Fine differentiates this new approach to
civil society (what he terms
‘civil society theory’, which he also claims
emerged during the 1980s in
connection with the political struggles in Central
and Eastern Europe) from
the concept of civil society that we inherit from
the ‘classical’ theory (Fine
1997: 9). For Fine, what sets current civil society
theory apart, ‘is that it
privileges civil society over all other moments or
spheres of social life, on the
ground that civil society furnishes the fundamental
conditions of liberty in
the modern world … ’ (1997: 9). This was not the
case for the earliest theorists
of civil society, who saw the emancipatory
potential of civil society in more
limited and historicised terms: as the role of
private property in freeing
‘humanity from the personal dependencies, status
inequalities and other
injustices associated with the old political order’
(Fine 1997: 16). As far as
Fine is concerned, the new situation in civil society
theory of the privileging
of this sphere over all others is a shared feature
of otherwise very different
approaches to using the concept. Indisputably,
civil society is now central to
democratic theory, as will become clear from the
following review of its current
uses in the field.
Starting on the left of the political spectrum, it
might be imagined that
leftists would be given to recalling Marx’s
critical analysis of ‘bourgeois’ civil
society. Yet, on the contrary, increasing numbers
of left-leaning theorists seem
to be abandoning any reservations that they once
had about the category of
civil society. This is especially true of the New
Left. Many New Left or post-
Marxist theorists find insights within the idea of
civil society which are seen
as crucial in coming to terms with two admitted
areas of weakness in their
earlier accounts. The first of these is the
supposed failure of orthodox leftism
to recognise the threat to democratic self-organisation
posed by modern state
bureaucracies. The modern state, it is argued,
based largely on the experience
of state-socialism, but also of welfare statism,
has a deadening tendency to
subordinate ever more areas of social life to its
control regardless of whether
it has been captured by and seeks to ‘represent’
previously oppressed classes
(Lefort 1986: 280). The second alleged mistake was
the left’s class objectivism,
involving the downplaying of the ‘fact of
pluralism’ characteristic of modernity
and an adherence to vanguardist strategies now
invalidated by the acceptance
of such pluralism. This error is seen to require
some kind of separation of
spheres between state and civil society in order to
preserve both an open,
uncoerced public sphere and also a personal private
sphere from the intrusions
of state power (and, ultimately, from
totalitarianism).
These are the problems facing a previously
authoritarian left from the
standpoint of democracy, but for the New Left civil
society represents their
solution.6 For Jürgen Habermas, the most
influential of New Left theorists,
civil society is the source of self-reflexivity in
society, without which democracy
itself dries up. That is, the institutions of civil
society must act to protect the
autonomous development of public opinion in the
public sphere from being
undermined or colonised by state bureaucracy – the
system of power – and
by the economic power of the market – the system of
money (Habermas
1992: 444). In particular, Habermas has identified
new social movements as
attempts to hold back the incursions of this
instrumental or self-steering
‘system’ of power and money into the
non-instrumental or goal-orientated
‘lifeworld’ of civil society. However, contra
republican readings of civil society, and broadly in line with liberal thought on the
topic, Habermas wants to
preserve – make normative even – the separation of
spheres between state,
civil society and economy. For Habermas argues that
civil society, given the
complexity of modern decision-making and the need
to protect certain levels
of efficiency, cannot govern, but can only
‘influence’ or ‘sensitise’ the state
through democratic will formation. Thus he states
that ‘the public opinion
that is worked up via democratic procedures into
communicative power [in
civil society] cannot “rule” of itself, but can
only point the use of administrative
power in specific directions …’ (Habermas 1994:
9–10). That is, the pure
republican formations of political will by elements
of the public sphere,
constituted through civil society, are ‘only
catalysts and not the end results of
political action’ (Ely 1992: 178); or, as Habermas
puts it:
[L]egitimate law reproduces itself only in the
forms of a constitutionally
regulated circulation of power, which should be
nourished by the
communications of an unsubverted public sphere
rooted in the core
private spheres of an undisturbed lifeworld via the
networks of civil
society.
(1996: 408)
Yet the New Left are not alone in redeploying the
concept of civil society
for their own purposes. Within mainstream political
science, the concept
seems to have taken off as an explanation for the
collapse of communist –
and other authoritarian – regimes, through the
apparent resurgence of
independent associational life as a basis for
popular political resistance. Here
the term civil society becomes central to the vocabulary
of analyses of the socalled
‘third wave’ of democratisation since the 1980s,
especially in Central–
Eastern Europe. As Schwarzmantel observes, this
mode of thinking about
civil society actually places the concept in a line
of thinking about
totalitarianism, and resistance to it, which traces
back to theorists such as
Hannah Arendt. Here, the antithesis between civil
society and ‘rude society’
identified by the Enlightenment theorists is
replaced by a new binary
opposition between civil society and totalitarian
society (Schwarzmantel
1996: 7). In other words, the norm of associability
which the term civil society
was originally used to deploy in critiquing
‘barbaric societies’ is now used in
contrast to the atomisation of society under total
state control. For theorists
such as Arendt, totalitarian regimes obliterated
the groups and associations
which were all that stood between the power of the
modern state and the
weak, isolated individual. This understanding of
civil society, as a bulwark in
the face of the state leviathan, is now the
commonly accepted one in accounts
of the ‘third wave’ of democratisation. It turns
the civil society ‘solution’ away
from problems posed to society arising from ‘below’
(i.e. untrammelled
individualism) and exclusively towards threats from
‘above’.
Thus, Ernest Gellner (1995) states that ‘civil
society is that set of diverse
non-governmental institutions which is strong
enough to counterbalance the
state [and which] can prevent the state from
dominating and atomising the
rest of society’.7 Diamond, who agrees that civil
society is defined in its relation
to the state, writes that he conceives of it ‘as
the realm of organised social
life that is voluntary, self-generating, (largely)
self-supporting, autonomous
from the state, and bound by a legal order or set
of shared rules’ (1994: 5).
Diamond’s definition is not merely descriptive (as
no account of civil society,
however crude, can be), but contains also a clear
normative agenda. Indeed,
Diamond identifies this for himself. It includes,
first, that civil society is
concerned with public not private ends; second,
that it does not seek power
in the state; and, third, that its associations are
themselves pluralistic and
diverse (1994: 6). In some senses the concept of
civil society, so interpreted,
returns to pluralist thinking on the character of
liberal democracies – where
these are understood as possessing multiple centres
of power with no one set
of interests predominating (since membership of
groups is cross-cutting) and
with influence, broadly speaking, moving from civil
society to the state, which
acts as a mere facilitator for, and adjudicator of,
social demands. Of course,
theorists of civil society, given their awareness
of the role of civil society against
the state under authoritarianism, should be less
optimistic than pluralists
that the state always acts as a neutral referee and
that it has no interests of
its own. Yet in relation to liberal democracy this
rosy picture does seem to be
accepted for the most part, if only implicitly in
the sense that their telos of
‘civil society against the state’ outside the
liberal democratic world is clearly
that it becomes part of that world.
With this essentially liberal focus, premised upon
the notion of a separation
of spheres with civil society programming the state
in society’s interests, we
come full circle back to Habermasian approaches to
civil society that are
common currency for the New Left. For whether it is
articulated in the form
of a liberal counterweight to state power, or as a
‘lifeworld’ outside of the
state for the generation of a critical public
sphere, few commentators would
now disagree with Habermas that:
the now current meaning of the term ‘civil society’
… no longer includes
a share of an economy … and thus differs from the
modern translation,
common since Hegel and Marx, of ‘societas civilis’
as ‘bourgeois society’
… However, this much is apparent: the institutional
core of ‘civil society’
is constituted by voluntary unions outside the
realm of the state and the
economy …
(1992: 453)
This, then, appears to be the dominant paradigm for
understanding civil
society today. But recall: Habermas, in elucidating
this paradigm, does not
see civil society ‘ruling’ itself in any sense.
Thus civil society, although crucially
separate from the state and the economy, must still
be placed within this
overarching tripartite schema, without which it is
nothing. Separate, on this
account, does not mean self-governing in any way
and involves significant
surrendering of popular control to spheres of
administrative and economic
expertise. Crucially, the suggestion here, as for
theorists of the ‘third wave’
of democratisation, is that the civil society we
find within liberal democracy
is broadly the civil society of our normative
ideal-type. Yet surely this stance
should cause alarm, given how effectively critique
is marginalised when real
and ideal are conflated, resulting in their being
no place from which to argue
outside the dominant paradigm. It is all the more
necessary, therefore, to
ask the question: Can civil society be more than
this? Must it continue to act
within the constraints set down by the state and
the market under liberal
democracy? Some rather different answers to this
question from the liberal
democratic one form the subject of the chapters to
come.
1 - Polish Voices 13
2 - Czechoslovakian and Hungarian Voices 33
3 - The Latin American Left's Discovery of Civil
Society 53
4 72
Part III - The Taming of the Idea of Civil Society
Since 1989 87
5 89
6 - Civil Society and Democratic Transition 101
Part IV - New Alternatives? 113
7 115
8 - Zapatismo and Civil Society as Revolutionary
Practice 130
9 - Havel and Arendt on Politics in the Public Sphere
147
Conclusion 168
Notes 172
Bibliography 177
Index 188
