The term ‘civil society’ has evolved and changed greatly since Classical times but today may be broadly understood as that part of society representing a community of citizens pursuing common interests and undertaking common activities. In its modern guise, this equates to all those non-governmental organizations and institutions – distinct from government and corporate entities – that represent the desires and interests of citizens (what might be termed ‘civic values’). In the modern age, civil society has played a vital role in the rebuilding of post-communist Eastern Europe and in the battle against globalization.
The civil society and enlightenment
By the medieval period, ideas about participatory society had changed dramatically. The social idealism of Plato and Aristotle had little relevance to vast swathes of the global population who lived under the unfettered rule of all-powerful monarchs, and who eked out an existence within the constraints of serfdom. It was only with the Enlightenment that the idea of civil society re-entered political discourse in any meaningful way. Philosophers and political theorists sought new ways to reconfigure the power imbalance that had grown between the Church and state on the one hand and the citizenry on the other. It was a subject notably explored by, among others, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes (see entry on The Social Contract here).
Yet when the Greek philosophers first spoke of civil society, their terms of reference were quite different. For Plato, the civil society and the state were one and the same thing, striving for virtue, wisdom and the common good – in other words, civility. Aristotle, meanwhile, regarded the state as an amalgamation of civic associations, a grand framework in which the citizenry may actively participate in the virtuous running of the whole.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the German philosopher Hegel changed the terms of the debate again. He regarded civil society as that part of society that intervenes between family and state, and he saw it as a distinctly economic entity governed by a civic code. This was a view notably followed by Karl Marx and Alexis de Tocqueville, the latter of whom believed that associations of citizens with a mutual purpose would ensure that selfish desires were kept in check and would also guarantee the health of political society.
By the 1980s and 90s, civil society had come to be seen as an agent of rebirth and regeneration in many of the post-Soviet states, where the rapid demise of communism had created a vacuum in the spheres of government and commerce. At around the same time, it was also held up as a paragon of anti-globalization, whereby local interests could find a voice in the institutions of civil society.
However, civil society is not without its critics. Some have pointed to its fundamentally undemocratic nature – its leading figures unelected and, opponents suggest, answerable to no one but a small coterie of their supporters – while others have suggested that the rise of international non-governmental organizations (arguably the ultimate expression of civil society) has been instrumental in the imposition of homogenised ideas and strategies that have fostered globalization.