The meaning and implications of the concept of civil society have been widely debated. As an analytical framework for interpreting the social world, the idea that civil society should be understood as, by definition, separated from and opposed to the operations of the state and official public institutions has various disadvantages, not the least of which is that it inhibits appreciation of the complex interrelationships between state and society. Equally, the notion that the hugely diverse group life of Western capitalist societies promotes social values that are separable from, and possibly opposed to, the market is hard to defend. The forms of combination and association that typify civil societies in the West are typically affected and shaped by the ideas, traditions, and values that also obtain in the economic sphere.

More generally, the entry of civil society into the language of modern European thought was bound up with the development and spread of liberal doctrines about society and politics. Since the 18th century it appeared in the context of the broadly individualistic, autonomous, and rationalistic understanding of the human personality that liberal thinkers tended to promote. For many liberals, it followed that social order and political obligation can be understood through the analogy of a social contract between ruler and ruled, that the rule of law is a precondition for the liberty of the citizen, and that the achievement of a commercial order requires and bolsters an improvement in the overall character of the interrelationships of citizens. This broad understanding of civil society as both a precondition for and marker of the distinctive trajectory of Western liberal democracy remains the predominant interpretation of it. That is not to suggest that this view is shared or admired by all. Critics observe the differentials of power and resource that characterize relationships within civil society, the apparent inability of liberal thinking to address the fundamental character of some of these inequities, and the skill and willingness of some states to orchestrate and occasionally manipulate civil society organizations for their own ends.

Origins And Development

This skepticism about liberal ideas of civil society reflects, and has sustained, diverse conceptions of its meaning and potential; a host of more conservative, as well as more radical, ambitions have also been attached to this term. Indeed, the term civil society has carried a number of different associations in the history of political thought, and its original meaning in Western thinking was rather different from its current protean status. For the Roman author Cicero, societas civilis (itself a translation of Aristotle’s koinonia politike) signaled a political community of a certain scale (usually including more than one city in its compass) that was governed by the rule of law and typified by a degree of urbanity. This kind of community was understood in contrast to noncivilized or barbarian peoples. This conceptual usage was transformed by different European thinkers throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, with the result that civil society came to acquire a rather different set of connotations. Here are identified three of the prevalent modes of thinking concerning this term that became established during this period, though this list is far from exhaustive.

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