Civil society
With the rise of a distinction between monarchical autonomy and public law, the term then gained currency to denote the corporate estates (Ständestaat) of a feudal elite of land-holders as opposed to the powers exercised by the prince.
They were developed in significant ways by 20th century researchers Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, who identified the role of political culture in a democratic order as vital.
The Weimar Republic's failure to address the ravages of economic depression, and domestic struggles, led to the creation of a multitude of German civil societies.
Even in well-established democracies, the proliferation of special interest groups—which signal a strong civil society—can potentially impede the functioning of representative institutions and distort policy outcomes in favor of the wealthy, well-connected, or well-organized.
[27] Moreover, based on survey data collected by Kenneth Newton, there is little evidence that social and political trust overlap, which renders the relationship between the strength of civil society and democracy obsolete.
[32] In modern America, Yuval Levin writes that civil societies are considered to be a gateway between the U.S. government and citizens[33] Some state that civil societies help maintain individual freedoms as a check to the U.S. government's power, while others see its role as upholding the state's efforts by helping it fuel social causes while constraining the un-democratic consolidation of power.
[33] Others, such as David Rieff, point out that the U.S. government is more financially equipped to work on social causes than civil societies like NGOs, who prove inadequate due to their lack of relative strength.
[37] Professors Carew E. Boulding and Jami Nelson-Núñez assert that civil society organizations are beneficial in that citizens are more inclined to participate politically when they can act collectively and develop associative solidarities with others around shared policy preferences.
[42] These case studies provide evidence of the crucial role of social networks in facilitating political participation and civic engagement.
The term "constitutional economics" was used by American economist James M. Buchanan as a name for a new budget planning and the latter's transparency to the civil society, are of the primary guiding importance to the implementation of the rule of law.
[48] Critics and activists currently often apply the term civil society to the domain of social life which needs to be protected against globalization, and to the sources of resistance thereto, because it is seen as acting beyond boundaries and across different territories.
[50] Rapid development of civil society on the global scale after the fall of the communist system was a part of neo-liberal strategies linked to the Washington Consensus.
[51] Some studies have also been published, which deal with unresolved issues regarding the use of the term in connection with the impact and conceptual power of the international aid system (see for example Tvedt 1998).
On the other hand, others see globalization as a social phenomenon expanding the sphere of classical liberal values, which inevitably led to a larger role for civil society at the expense of politically derived state institutions.
Generally, civil society has been referred to as a political association governing social conflict through the imposition of rules that restrain citizens from harming one another.
For instance, Socrates taught that conflicts within society should be resolved through public argument using ‘dialectic’, a form of rational dialogue to uncover truth.
[56] For Plato, the ideal state was a just society in which people dedicate themselves to the common good, practice civic virtues of wisdom, courage, moderation and justice, and perform the occupational role to which they were best suited.
The political discourse in the classical period, places importance on the idea of a ‘good society’ in ensuring peace and order among the people.
[57] Henceforth, monarchs could form national armies and deploy a professional bureaucracy and fiscal departments, which enabled them to maintain direct control and authority over their subjects.
[59] As a natural consequence of Renaissance, Humanism, and the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment thinkers raised fundamental questions such as "What legitimacy does heredity confer?
Strongly influenced by the atrocities of Thirty Years' War, the political philosophers of the time held that social relations should be ordered in a different way from natural law conditions.
As far as Hobbes was concerned, rationality and self-interests persuaded human beings to combine in agreement, to surrender sovereignty to a common power (Kaviraj 2001:289).
Both Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a critic of civil society, and Immanuel Kant argued that people are peace lovers and that wars are the creation of absolute regimes (Burchill 2001:33).
Unlike his predecessors, Hegel considered civil society (German: bürgerliche Gesellschaft) as a separate realm, a "system of needs", that is the, "[stage of] difference which intervenes between the family and the state".
Being the realm of capitalist interests, there is a possibility of conflicts and inequalities within it (ex: mental and physical aptitude, talents and financial circumstances).
Political society was autonomized into the state, which was in turn ruled by the bourgeois class (consider also that suffrage only belonged, then, to propertied men).
Marx, in his early writings, anticipated the abolition of the separation between state and civil society, and looked forward to the reunification of private and public/political realms (Colletti, 1975).
that the post-modern way of understanding civil society was first developed by political opposition in the former Soviet bloc East European countries in the 1980s.
However, research shows that communist propaganda had the most important influence on the development and popularization of the idea instead, in an effort to legitimize neoliberal transformation in 1989.
Initially the new conditionality led to an even greater emphasis on "civil society" as a panacea, replacing the state's service provision and social care,[51] Hulme and Edwards suggested that it was now seen as "the magic bullet".
