Civil society is most often understood as an area of society that exists apart from three other areas: 1) political area - the state, state institutions, and political parties; 2) formal economy – markets, companies, banks, financial institutions, etc.; and 3) private life of individuals. This conception of civil society consists of voluntary citizens’ associations, non-profit organizations, trade unions, local initiatives, social movements, and religious organizations (unless they are directly connected to the state). To exist and thrive, civil society needs free expression of public opinion, free and open public discussion, civic freedoms, rights, and liberties (see entry Citizenship), plurality, and, at least, the absence of authoritarianism. Civil society is often called a public sphere, as what happens in the civil society concerns everybody, but also because activities in the civil society are done openly for everybody to see. Civil society functions as a protection from oppression by authoritarian state, while it also strengthens political freedom and the power of the public to influence politics. Some authors argue that fully functioning civil society needs social cohesion, cooperation, empathy, and reciprocity. Other authors claim that civil society can not function without individualism, as it allows people to fully participate in civic life, and protects from authoritarian overreach of the state. 

                          Early Writings on the Civil Society

Thomas Hobbes viewed civil society as a ‘‘social contract’’ between individuals and the state. John Locke argued that civil society presents a sphere, regulated by the law, of private property, and free contracts and associations between individuals. Adam Ferguson, in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), argued that Western societies possess civil society, as opposed to despotic regimes of the East. In his view, civil society had the potential to install boundaries on the power of the state, usher in the rule of law, promote tolerance, and ensure the safety of individuals and private property. At the same time, Adam Smith claimed that free competition and markets are the true basis of civil society. Georg Hegel, in the Philosophy of Right, argued that civil society can fully exist when the state mediates the conflicts between individual self-interest and the common good.

The first volume of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835) explores American society and institutions. The United States represents a society without an aristocratic history, and its national character is characterized by a commitment to the ideas of personal and political freedoms and legal equality. Individuals are motivated by the desire to achieve personal success, social cohesion is maintained by local self-government, and there is no need for a rigid social hierarchy or a strong centralized state. America is characterized by a spontaneous form of people's sovereignty, and it is nurtured and strengthened by the effects of lifestyle, upbringing, religion, and law. American democracy and its commitment to the ideals of political freedom and equality had three main sources. The first refers to the geographical position, which reduced the military threats and enabled access to vast expanses of fertile land. Another source is the Constitution adopted by the former colonies, which emphasized federalism and the protection of political freedoms. The third source of democracy, the most important in Tocqueville's opinion, was the many variants of Protestant religions, all of which promoted the idea of ​​freedom, so freedom became part of American tradition and customs. This tradition of freedom is evident in the full protection, according to the Constitution, of freedom of the press, as well as in the formation of political, religious, civil, and other associations at the local level.

On the other hand, democracy and the personal freedom and legal equality that go with it, threaten the tyranny of the majority, increase the number of mediocrities, and lead to individualistic behavior aimed at getting rich. All this would increase social isolation and enable despotism to develop. Tocqueville explored the tensions in American society between the opposing imperatives of democracy - the egalitarian character of democratic societies that successfully eliminates the despotism that exists in feudalism, and the insufficient integration of the individual into the social being. Thus, if democracy is not controlled and thus becomes irresponsible, it can produce too much individualism (a neologism coined by Tocqueville himself) and lead to a new form of despotism. In Tocqueville’s view, the greatest danger from the emergence of the "tyranny of the majority" is the possibility that public opinion in the United States will begin to believe in the idea that the attitude of the majority of the population should have absolute sovereignty. In America, democratic institutions have enabled individuals to become involved in local political and civic organizations, resulting in a high level of local autonomy. Local associations, because they promote cooperation and solidarity, are precisely the factor that is the main barrier to excessive individualism and the emergence of an atomized society and dictatorship. In America, too, the abolition of aristocratic privileges led to equality of social opportunities, because all professions were open to all citizens. There is a broad and strong middle class in this country, as well as great social mobility. A factor that contributed to the strength of American democracy is the fact that there was no strong and developed capitalist class.

In his book Ancient Regime and the Revolution (1856), Tocqueville examines how the collapse of the aristocratic order and the revolution in France took place, as well as the long-term consequences of those events. Citing the reasons for the outbreak of the French Revolution, he singles out several factors. Conflicts within the aristocratic elite, conflicts between the aristocracy and the growing bourgeoisie, the spread of freedom and equality among the citizenry, the excessive centralization of administrative and political power by the crown, and the financial crisis in the decade before the Revolution were the most important contributing factors. to make the change of the old regime certain. Tocqueville especially emphasizes the disastrous influence of political centralization on political and social institutions that acted as a link between the government and ordinary people - craft guilds, local assemblies, and others. Centralization, restriction of political freedoms, abolition of intermediary institutions, and weakening of local public political life, led to excessive individualism, atomization of society, and general dissatisfaction in all classes. The later failure of the development of democracy in the post-revolutionary period, Tocqueville attributes to the aspirations of both the republican and monarchical regimes in France to continue with the bureaucratic centralization of state power. In France, there was a sharp equalization of the social hierarchy after the French Revolution, but at the same time the institutions that enabled the integration of individuals into the wider society were disbanded, and this led to revolutionary despotism. The revolution drastically diminished the position and influence of the Catholic Church, which had previously acted as a unifying factor, and thus represented an obstacle to the development of complete individualism. In the post-revolutionary period, no institution could substitute the unifying action of the Catholic Church.

In his book Democracy and Education (1916), John Dewey states that it is necessary to strengthen individualism and community at the same time. He believes that human habits are not a product of personal characteristics, but are a consequence of the institutional framework that exists in society. To change people's habits and strengthen both individualism and a sense of community, it is necessary to manifest deliberative intelligence within the community. He believes that educational institutions are the most important institutions which shape society, but also people's habits. That is why educational institutions must be as integrated as possible into the wider community. The public sphere refers to common interests within a community in which everyone feels the consequences of joint action. Accordingly, he believed that for most ordinary people, the best way to engage in democracy was to participate in local community decision-making.

           Marxist and Anarchist Critique of the Civil Society

Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin considered the state, all laws, authority, and civic and political organizations as external and founded on violence by the privileged minority for systemic exploitation and subjection of the majority. For him, political rights and democracy are a contradiction in terms. Bakunin advocated for anarchy where all were to govern and nobody would be governed, and where the state would cease to exist. In the area of economy, he envisioned voluntary cooperation between free federations of producers. He advocated for the collectivization of all private property that would be given to freely federated workers’ associations and workers’ cooperatives. His ideas gave the foundation for the philosophy of anarcho-syndicalism.

Karl Marx argued that the relations of production in capitalism create a specific type of social superstructure (ideology) that aims to preserve the reproduction of such relations of production. Hence, in addition to direct political control, the capitalist class creates an ideology that aims to justify and legitimize existing relations of production and capitalist exploitation and domination. The capitalist class, with its ideology that uses the ideas of equality and freedom, achieves to disguise, to other members of society, the basis of exploitation and domination on which that class rests. However, equality, freedom, and civil rights are an illusion, because the worker is neither free nor equal to the capitalist. The worker is not free, because he is forced to work for the capitalist in order to survive. The worker is not equal either, because all political power and ideological narrative are created, and held by, the capitalist class. That is why Marx sees ideology as a „false consciousness“, that is, a false image of society and the world. Marx believes that capitalist control over political power and ideological narrative will not be able to prevent the collapse of the capitalist system when the contradictions within the social base become too great.

Antonio Gramsci, often considered as representative of the cultural Marxism, is famous for his concept of "cultural hegemony". The ruling class in capitalist societies does not rule only through force and repression but imposes its own ideological system, which defends the interests of the ruling class, and other subordinate classes. This imposed value system is "cultural hegemony." Hegemony is a synthesis of political, intellectual, and moral leadership within the ruling class. This leadership justifies its interests by creating an image of the world that presents those interests and the economic and political relations that sustain those interests as positive for the entire population. When other classes (which Gramsci calls "subaltern") accept such a picture of the world as normal and common sense, or even better, as the only possible one, then those classes become integrated into that ruling cultural hegemony. The capitalist class integrates subaltern classes in two ways. On the one hand, it gives them small concessions - workers' rights, allows the work of trade unions, creates a social security system, and the like. On the other hand, the state and civil society create institutions and organizations - educational institutions, the press, churches, and civil associations - that promote this cultural hegemony. In addition, the state creates institutions - police, army, prisons, psychiatric institutions - that carry out repressive measures against those who do not accept hegemony. The capitalist class also has its independent ways of achieving obedience, through the realization of control and punishment in the workplace itself, but also through employment itself, because most workers without capitalist employment cannot even survive.

Gramsci believed that the survival of such hegemony is not necessary. The capitalist society produces intellectuals who serve the interests of the capitalist class by spreading and justifying hegemony. Gramsci calls such intellectuals "traditional intellectuals." Traditional intellectuals are hierarchically structured in relation to their own function within hegemony. At the top are creative intellectuals who produce a view of the world, in the middle are the organizers, and at the bottom are the administrators. However, the working class and the communist parties need to gather a new type of intellectual, who will spread, among the exploited classes, a different image, that of the truth of the revolution. He calls such intellectuals "organic intellectuals" and they should fight for the needs and demands of the exploited masses. Organic intellectuals do not have to be only those who are highly educated, but they can be all those who have some organizational function within production, culture, politics, or administration. As hegemony is created and operates equally at the macro and micro levels, through actors (intelligentsia) who create new values, organic intellectuals have room to crack the dominant hegemony and provide space for critical awareness of the possibility of changing the dominant system. Withdrawal of creative intelligentsia from hegemony will cause an organic crisis of authority and social disintegration. Subaltern classes, to realize their interests, must consciously and purposefully create their own intellectuals, activists, and theorists, to successfully fight against the hegemony of the capitalist class. The proletariat must bring into civil society its own values ​​and culture, which will work not only for the interests of the working class but for the interests of universal socialism. In that way, they will force the whole society, and finally, the traditional intellectuals, to actively accept the validity and historical necessity of the new hegemony and achieve the ultimate goal - the creation of socialist hegemony. Gramsci was very careful in his views on creating the dictatorship of the proletariat because he believed that other classes also had their own interests that should be taken into account, especially the peasantry. He saw how the peasants in the poor south of Italy were suffering, and he believed that the socialist strategy should not require the peasants to become workers but help them understand their position and fight for emancipation together with the workers.

                  Post-WWII Theories about the Civil Society

Wright C. Mills, in the book The Power Elite (1956), claims that the elite in the United States controls large bureaucratic organizations within three sectors: private corporations, state administration, and the military. Conflicts within the elite take place at the middle level of power, mainly over the division of spoils, and the media and political scientists pay the most attention to these conflicts, while no one questions the fundamental basis of the system itself. Conflicts within the elites are becoming increasingly integrated into the bureaucratic state apparatus, which replaces the real political struggle between political parties. Trade unions and other professional organizations tend to integrate into the state, and their leaders fight only for their own interests or for the interests of their own members. Below the elite is the class of white-collar workers, which, compared to the earlier middle class of small capitalists and professionals, has lost its autonomous power. At the bottom of the pyramid is a huge mass of ordinary people who are disorganized, uninformed, completely apathetic, indifferent, and without any real power, but are completely controlled and manipulated. The very high concentration of power that the elites have and the apathy and powerlessness of the largest part of the population, represent an exceptional threat to democracy. The bureaucratic rationality of the elite seeks to prevent huge masses of people from approaching life's problems autonomously and rationally. As a solution to the problem of lack of democracy in the United States, Mills offers the following proposals: 1) educating the general public who would be informed and involved in making important decisions, 2) creating "nationally responsible political parties" that would clearly and openly fight for specific policies, 3) creating real intelligentsia, which would deal with the most important issues, 4) creation of strong state services independent of corporate interests, 5) formation of mass media that would properly inform the public about the most important issues, 6) creation of strong associations that would connect individuals, communities and the public.

Hannah Arendt’s book The Human Condition (1958) is a description of the historical development of the conditions of human existence. Her theory of political action is highly developed in this book. She believes that the emphasis placed on the welfare state is wrong, and that people should lead, what she called, an "active life" (viva activa), which is based on the idea of ​​work, civic engagement, and political action.

In his first book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), Jürgen Habermas studies the change of the public sphere from the time of feudalism, through its various forms in civil society, and concludes with the disintegration of the public sphere in the modern age. The public sphere refers to a free and open debate on social and political issues, which takes place in public. It also consists of associations that promote  civil liberties and universal values.The beginning of the public sphere appears in the salons and taverns of large cities in Europe at the beginning of the modern age. The media, and especially the press, initially played a significant role in the emergence and development of the public sphere. However, over time, the state, the private sphere, and economic monopolies have merged, leading to the commodification and commercialization of the media and their abuse, in order to achieve the interests of specific classes or groups. All this caused a rapid decline of the public sphere and led to its "refeudalization". The decline of the public sphere caused the loss of individual freedom because the state and institutions gained supremacy over individuals.

In The Civil Culture (1963) Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba study civil culture, political attitudes, political culture, and democracy in five countries. This was one of the first large-scale comparative cross-national studies in political science. In this book, the authors introduce the concept of political culture, which denotes a national mentality related to the political sphere, which they believe is of fundamental importance for every society. Almond and Verba distinguished three different political cultures by the level and type of political participation and people's attitudes towards politics – parochial, subject, and participant. Authors argue that a balanced combination of all of those three orientations is most conducive to functioning democracy.

       Civil Society in Postmodern and Post-Industrial Society

In his book The Post-Industrial Society (1969), Alain Touraine states that the second half of the twentieth century saw the development of a post-industrial society, which he called a "programmed" society. In post-industrial societies, the focus is shifting from the production of goods to the production of information. The development of the welfare state abolished the autonomy of the economic sphere because more and more economic decisions are made by the centralized state bureaucracy. It is this centralization and bureaucratization of economic policy that has contributed to post-industrial societies becoming programmed. The creation and dissemination of information is becoming most important for society and the economy, so universities are taking on the most important role in creating and shaping a new type of society and its elite. The centralized power of the state tends to control both the economy and public opinion and thus endangers the power of collective actors and the democratic order. In industrial society, the main representatives of the ruling class were the capitalists, and the main representatives of the popular class were the workers, so class conflicts were characterized by a conflict between workers and capitalists. In postmodern society, the most important representatives of the ruling class are politicians, bureaucrats, and managers, and the main force of resistance to the ruling class is no longer workers and the labor movement, but new social movements - environmental, student, anti-nuclear, feminist and the like. For a new social movement to be completely formed, it must meet three conditions: to be aware of its own identity, to accept the principle of opposition (existence of a clearly defined opponent), and to adopt the principle of totality, that is, to be aware of its historicity. The potential for success of these new movements depends on the successful activation of informational, organizational, financial, and ideological resources and the ability to make strategic decisions. Touraine believes that sociology should play a key role in providing information and ideological resources to new social movements. To this end, he advocates the establishment of "sociological interventionism", engaged sociology that will, through the creation of information and ideological resources, help social movements to create their own identity, and shape their own principles of opposition and totality.

Touraine also explored the broader social and cultural consequences of neoliberal globalization in his book New Paradigm for Understanding Today's World (2007, in French 2005). He believes that neoliberal globalization has led to the separation of the economy from the social, cultural, and political spheres. While in the post-war welfare state centralized bureaucracy took precedence over the economy, neoliberal globalization has led to the economy being out of the control of any political or economic institution. These new processes have led to the fragmentation of society and the establishment of a new cultural paradigm. This cultural paradigm leads to the emergence of new actors, new conflicts, and new personal and collective identities. The cultural paradigm represents a global transition from a collective life organized around social concepts to a collective life organized around cultural identities and collective cultural rights. Touraine believes that women will play a leading role in this new age.

In Disorganized Capitalism (1985), Claus Offe views modern Western democracies as disorganized systems full of problems: divisions in the labor force, declining role and strength of trade unions, and weakening liberal-democratic and neo-corporative governance mechanisms. In the books, Real Civil Societies: Dilemmas of Institutionalization (1998), and The Civil Sphere (2006) Jeffrey Alexander promotes the idea that the national sphere of civil society contains multiple, overlapping and conflicting, public spheres, communities, and associations.

Cornelius Castoriadis is known for studying autonomous societies. These are societies that actors can change or reform by thinking about them. There were only two types of autonomous societies in history, both self-organizing with a strong civil order. The first type was the ancient polis, while the second type appeared after the twelfth century in Western Europe. Autonomous societies are characterized by high levels of artistic and scientific achievements, which is a consequence of the imagination needed to maintain this type of society. Self-organizing autonomous societies are characterized by orderliness, and imagination is responsible for creating laws and norms. The decline of creativity in the West, after 1950, in his opinion, is a consequence of the spread of postmodern conformism.

Robert Putnam, in Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), researched Italian regional governments and how they influence the creation of horizontal ties across diverse groups, promote trust, and build civic embeddedness. All those connections form social capital that promotes local community competitiveness and quality of life. For him, an indicator of a high degree of social capital is substantial participation in voluntary organizations such as cooperatives, sports clubs, cultural associations, charitable organizations, etc. This form of large civil engagement promotes capital accumulation and economic prosperity. In addition, a high level of social capital promotes solidarity, trust, and tolerance, and ushers government efficiency by creating a partnership between government and society. In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000) Putnam focuses on the level of civic engagement in the United States and finds out that social networks, participation in voluntary organizations (clubs, associations, churches, unions, and professional associations) and, thus, the level of social capital in America is rapidly deteriorating. His metaphor of  “bowling alone” refers to the idea of bowling alleys that were once a common gathering space for people in the community, all across America; yet, now those bowling alleys are patronized by solitary individuals. In Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society (2002), Putnam and his colleagues widened their research of the level of social capital to other countries and found out that they also suffered from the decline in social capital.

                 Communitarian View of the Civil Society

Communitarianism is a moral, social, and political intellectual endeavor that started in the early 1980s as a critical reaction to John Rawls’s book A Theory of Justice (1999), but also as an opposition to classical liberalism. Unlike liberalism's emphasis on the rights of individuals, communitarians emphasize the value of community and community life. Communitarians also oppose the political priority of the state. They champion a conception of community based on the values of responsibility, morality, family, and civic values. The communitarian idea of citizenship is based on the individual responsibility to their community (communal commitments, obligations, and allegiances), that comes with being a member of some community, especially in areas of schooling, neighborhood control, and policing. Communitarians oppose  ‘atomism’ and individualism of liberalism and stress the social nature of individuals and their identities. The „unencumbered self” (Sandel) which precedes its social roles and values to communitarians does not exist. They also accentuate the importance of historical and social contexts when constructing their theories and values. For them, the content of values and norms is directly linked to their particular and local contexts, and not to abstract principles. Values and norms are formed and made stronger by family, workplace, and democratic participation in the life of the community. Some of the most famous and influential communitarians are Daniel Bell, Amitai Etzioni, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Philip Selznick, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer.

Amitai Etzioni believes that the individual should act and develop within his community. Due to capitalism and excessive individualism, communities are collapsing. Etzioni sees this process as very dangerous because only strong communities can respond to the needs of society efficiently and reflectively. On the other hand, individuals who actively participate in the development of their community become more responsible citizens. Etzioni believes that it is necessary, in cases of a serious emergency and great danger, to limit some constitutionally guaranteed rights, to protect the community and individuals, because, according to him, "radical individualism" would jeopardize social responsibility. He also emphasizes the need to increase tolerance and mutual understanding between different communities.

                                  The Global Civil Society

In recent decades several notable authors started studying and promoting global civil society -  Christopher Chase-Dunn (The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism: Toward Global Democracy, 2000), Mary Kaldor (Global Civil Society: an answer to War, 2003), Pippa Norris (Digital Divide? Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide 2001), and John Keane (Global Civil Society?, 2003). Global civil society consists of international nongovernmental organizations, (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, Doctors without Borders, Greenpeace), transnational social movements, and global social networks.  

                   Empirical Research on the Civil Society

Robert Wuthnow, in Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community (1994), presents the results of his national survey of American adults, which was focused on participation in small support groups in the US. He states that ‘‘exactly forty percent of the adult population of the United States claims to be involved in a small group that meets regularly and provides caring and support for those who participate in it‘‘ (Wuthnow, 1994). Wuthnow estimated that there were about three million small civil society groups in the United States, and his estimate of the number of these small groups is as follows: bible study and religious groups: 1.7 million; self-help groups: 500,000; special-interest groups (politics, sports, books, discussions): 750,000.

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