Does this mean that civil society no longer serves any purpose as a framework for understanding the world and changing it for the better? My answer is no: as this new edition aims to show, these ideas can shed a great deal of light on what is happening, why, and how we might respond. Images of civil society as a sphere of peace and harmony were always somewhat limiting and romantic; perhaps what has brought them into sharper focus is the fact that this romance is being challenged in the United States and Europe – the home of much civic thinking and innovation – and not just in China or Venezuela or Egypt. So it is certainly legitimate to question the relevance of civil society theories in the light of contemporary developments and to critique the ways in which these theories have been applied in practice by governments, politicians, voluntary associations, donor agencies, and the media. Therefore, mounting threats to civil society and how to meet them – with polarization front and center – form the overriding theme of my revisions to the fourth edition of this book.
As in previous editions, my approach is not to see civil society as the solution to problems in and of itself (except in very limited circumstances) but to look to it for frameworks through which we can understand what is happening and explore what might be done. Rejecting the tendency to argue for one particular interpretation of this concept over all the others, the book explores a range of different theories and traditions that fall into three major categories: civil society as a part of society in chapter 2 – the world of voluntary associations; civil society as a kind of society in chapter 3 – marked out by positive social norms such as reciprocity and cooperation; and in chapter 4, civil society as an arena in which these norms are worked out and tested, otherwise known as the “public sphere.” Each of these theories illuminates a different set of questions and suggests its own avenues for action, so rather than choosing one or the other, my approach is to see how they fit together both conceptually (in chapter 5) and in practice (in chapter 6). This approach generates a much richer set of insights across the boundaries of geography, history, and culture.
Nevertheless, analyses of civil society always take place within a particular context, so understanding those contexts is an essential step forward in making sense of what is undoubtedly a complex set of ideas. Over the last five years, four interrelated trends have emerged to shape the contexts in which civil society is analyzed in these pages: the spread of authoritarian populism, rising cultural and political polarization, the deepening privatization and commercialization of the public sphere, and the increasing bureaucratization of NGOs and other nonprofit organizations. Taken together, these trends pose a serious threat to the health and vitality of civil societies everywhere and to the values, principles, and mechanisms that underpin them.
The widespread resurgence of authoritarianism has curtailed civic space and freedom of expression in many parts of the world, including in countries like Brazil, Egypt, India, and the United States which were previously seen as sites of great promise for civil society development. ICNL and CIVICUS, two NGOs that monitor this situation, report that more than 120 laws constraining freedoms of association and assembly have been proposed or enacted in sixty countries since 2012, with just 3 percent of the world’s population now living in countries where civic space is defined as “fully open.”2 The criminalization of dissent and the imprisonment or murder of activists like Berta Caceres in Honduras in 2016, and journalists such as the Saudi-American Adnan Kashoggi in Turkey, Kateryna Handzyuk in Ukraine, and Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta (all in 2018), are especially chilling examples of this curtailment, but there are many “softer” strategies like the imposition of restrictions on the registration and receipt of foreign funding by NGOs, the rise of state surveillance under the guise of fighting terrorism, voter suppression and intimidation under gerrymandering and other similar tactics, attacks on the press as “enemies of the people,” and the closure or forced removal of independent institutions like the Central European University in Budapest. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was unequivocal about his intentions: “you can be sure there will be no money for NGOs,” he said during his election campaign, “Those useless people will have to go to work.”3 The end result of these developments is to erect higher barriers to civic participation and to weaken independent advocacy, activism, and accountability – precisely the opposite of what’s required to promote a healthy and democratic civic life.
Authoritarianism both encourages and thrives on polarization and fearmongering as a way of stoking up support for leaders who claim to be defending “the nation” or “national values” against inside or outside threats and enemies – most notably in the contemporary context, immigrants. The apparent depth of this polarization in the United States after the election of President Donald Trump, in the United Kingdom around the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, and in the nationalist agendas of politicians in countries like Hungary, Italy, and France, has taken many people by surprise, but the signs of such schisms were visible well before 2016 for those whose eyes were open enough to see them. For example, Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol’s careful analysis of the US Tea Party found that much of this movement was an authentic expression of disaffection among conservatives, especially white rural Americans who began to mobilize against what they saw as the domination of politics and culture by disdainful liberal elites in the cities.4 Other research uncovered a consistent pattern of resentment that was making its way into politics as the Republican Party moved rightwards,5 though the “culture wars” that divide “red” and “blue” America stretch back much further in time, through President Bill Clinton’s battles with House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1990s to the rupture that emerged around Roe v. Wade in 1973. These divisions have since grown to seemingly unbridgeable levels, morphing into the rise of right-wing hate groups and networks of white nationalists on the right and the arrival of sometimes violent counter-protests on the left.
Many commentators have lamented the erosion of civility and the breakdown of public norms that has taken place as a result of these developments. Senator John McCain’s funeral in 2018, for example, was full of eulogies to a man who seemed to embody the virtues of America’s unifying “civic religion” under threat from partisans, captured beautifully in McCain’s own posthumously published “farewell letter.”6 But the low-grade civil wars that are unfolding in the United States and in other countries can also be read as an incomplete process of civil society development in which certain visions of the good society have been marginalized, while others have been privileged. This has always been the case with minorities and other non-dominant communities; the difference now is that groups that are in some ways privileged are also organizing around their own resentments. Sorting through these divisions in order to build a civil society that is both genuinely diverse and holds together sufficiently to prevent a slide into permanent conflict is an urgent task. Easier said than done of course, but as the examples given in chapter 6 show, the most powerful way to get people to stop demonizing each other is to encourage them to meet, talk, and work together. Just as a weak democracy can only be strengthened through more democracy, the answer to problems in civil society lies through more civil society.
Traditionally, civil society theorists have seen polarization