Bowling in the bronx: The uncivil interstices between civil and political society

Democratization

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 94-114

  Whitehead, Laurence ^a  

^a NUFFIELD COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CITIZENSHIP; CIVIL SOCIETY; DEMOCRATISATION; POLITICAL THEORY; THEORETICAL STUDY;

EID: 0030772997     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13510349708403504     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. For a useful and up-to-date compilation of the intricacies, including institutional and regional disaggregation and a discussion of the Andreotti trials, see Luciano Violante (ed.), Mafie e antimafia: Rapporta '96 (Rome: Laterza, 1996).
2. Le Monde, 30 Dec. 1995, p.6.
3. Britain, like many long-established 'polyarchies', extends political rights (rights to vote and organize) to substantial communities that reject its constitutional authority and that consider it legitimate to practice 'uncivil' forms of political opposition. Sinn Féin, Hen Batasuna, and the Corsican nationalists all illustrate this pattern of incivility.
4. The title is also a reference to Robert Putnam 'Bowling Alone: Democracy in America at the End of the Twentieth Century', in D. Rueschemeyer (ed.), Participation and Democracy: East and West (forthcoming). Putnam concludes that in the USA participation has fallen (often sharply) in many types of civic associations, from religious groups to labor unions, from women's clubs to fraternal clubs, and from neighborhood gatherings to bowling leagues. Virtually all segments of society have been afflicted by this lessening in social connectedness ... (which) seems a likely contributor to many of the social and political ills now afflicting America, and perhaps to those besetting other advanced democracies, as well.
5. Thomas Hobbes, Philosaphicall Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (1651), Part Two, Ch.5, paragraph 9.
6. Hegel's Philosophy of Right (trans. T.M. Knox), (Oxford: 1942), para. 245.
7. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, Ch.V, para. 2.
8. For a recent and sophisticated exposition, conducted from within the German critical theory tradition, see Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). Among the major authors they evaluate, Arendt, Gramsci, Parsons, and - inevitably - Habermas receive particularly thorough attention. See Chapter Nine.
9. 'On Civil Society and the Consolidation of Democracy: Ten Propositions' (mimeo, Stanford Department of Political Science, July 1995). Note that this definition includes trade unions but excludes private firms. Where does this leave privately owned communications media, or established churches?
10. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Allen Lane, 1994), pp.8, 10. However, those who find this strand of Gellner's argument troublingly eurocentric, could turn to Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins and Steven Lukes (eds.), The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), and to Jack Goody, The East in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) for partial correctives.
11. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Allen Lane, 1994), pp.8, 10. However, those who find this strand of Gellner's argument troublingly eurocentric, could turn to Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins and Steven Lukes (eds.), The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), and to Jack Goody, The East in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) for partial correctives.
12. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Allen Lane, 1994), pp.8, 10. However, those who find this strand of Gellner's argument troublingly eurocentric, could turn to Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins and Steven Lukes (eds.), The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), and to Jack Goody, The East in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) for partial correctives.
13. R.G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan: On Man, Society, Civilization and Barbarism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), para. 35-41, p.292. Does the norm of civility also apply to the treatment of outgroups. those not covered by pre-established rules, or not socialized into this conception of self-respect ? Collingwood went to press at the darkest period of the Second World War (January 1942) and seems a little ambivalent over this crucial issue.
14. In his account of what he calls the 'structural transformation of the public sphere', Habermas views civil society as the arena in which pluralistic public opinion makes itself felt as an independent source of power. But of course some voices express themselves more loudly than others in the arena of public opinion, and not all the opinions expressed in an unconstrained public arena will be equally 'civil'; Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993).
15. For a vigorous recent presentation of this case see Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance (Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994).
16. Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1994) and Francis Fukuyama, Trust: New Foundations of Global Prosperity (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1995).
17. Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1994) and Francis Fukuyama, Trust: New Foundations of Global Prosperity (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1995).
18. Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp.440-42.
19. On a recent visit to South Africa I was struck by the richness and stability of the civic society that had sheltered the whites - and even perhaps the coloureds of Cape province - under apartheid, while actively and energetically suppressing the possibilities of peaceful association for the none-white majority. Protestant Ulster probably displays a somewhat comparable polarity in civic provision, in this case legitimated by a universal suffrage that guaranteed Catholic subordination.
20. If Putnam's friends no longer go bowling, this is at least in part because so many rival entertainments are now supplied to them electronically and at home.
21. In his last book Ernest Gellner trenchantly sets out the two rival theoretical claims to validation, and asserts his clear choice: Theorists of democracy who operate in the abstract, without reference to concrete social conditions, end up with a vindication of democracy as a general ideal, but are then obliged to concede that in many societies the ideal is not realizable .... Is it not better to state the conditions that make the ideal feasible, or even mandatory, and start from that? Civil society is a more realistic notion, which specifies and includes its own conditions .... Because it highlights those institutional pre-conditions and the necessary historical context 'Civil Society' is probably a better more illuminating slogan than democracy; op. cit., pp. 188-9. But Gellner's imprecise specifications relate only loosely to the ideals of democratic theory.
22. Mimeo, op. cit. p.14. Note that these negative potentialities tend to run counter to the positive attributes emphasized by Schmitter's initial definition. Here non-usurpation becomes policy bias; deliberation becomes opacity; and civility becomes tribalism. It is difficult to sustain an idealized image of civil society, while also reflecting its multiple and ambiguous manifestations and its lopsided impact on the workings of the larger polity.
23. Carlos M. Vilas provides some striking illustrations of this viewpoint, in an overview of the neo-democracies of Central America; 'Prospects for Democratisation in a Post-Revolutionary Setting: Central America', Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol.28, Part 2 (1996), pp.461-503. He portrays local oligarchies founded on tight inherited structures of social exclusivity that have learnt to parade the rhetoric of market democracy as a public discourse masking their continued supremacy, while their more intimate social practices perpetuate deeply undemocratic values. Compare E. Gyimah-Boadi on the weaknesses of civil society in Africa 'preliberal or antiliberal values ... tend also to pervade the modern and secular civil associations ... tendencies of some key civil associations ... to refuse to establish "rational" bureaucracies; to "anoint" rather than elect (including those involved in prodemocracy work) their executives; and to endow their leaders with "life" chairmanships', 'Civil Society in Africa', Journal of Democracy, Vol.7, No.2 (1996), p. 129.
24. Carlos M. Vilas provides some striking illustrations of this viewpoint, in an overview of the neo-democracies of Central America; 'Prospects for Democratisation in a Post-Revolutionary Setting: Central America', Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol.28, Part 2 (1996), pp.461-503. He portrays local oligarchies founded on tight inherited structures of social exclusivity that have learnt to parade the rhetoric of market democracy as a public discourse masking their continued supremacy, while their more intimate social practices perpetuate deeply undemocratic values. Compare E. Gyimah-Boadi on the weaknesses of civil society in Africa 'preliberal or antiliberal values ... tend also to pervade the modern and secular civil associations ... tendencies of some key civil associations ... to refuse to establish "rational" bureaucracies; to "anoint" rather than elect (including those involved in prodemocracy work) their executives; and to endow their leaders with "life" chairmanships', 'Civil Society in Africa', Journal of Democracy, Vol.7, No.2 (1996), p. 129.
25. Giorgio Alberti of the University of Bologna has based his conception of movimentismo in Peru and Argentina on an analogous argument (see his '"Movimentismo" and Democracy: An Analytical Framework and the Peruvian Case Study (Mimeo, CESDE, Bologna, Oct. 1995). Guillermo O'Donnell coined the term 'brown areas' to refer to the large sectors of Latin American society where uncivil conditions prevail; 'On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries', World Development, Vol 21, No.8 (1993), pp.1355-69.
26. Giorgio Alberti of the University of Bologna has based his conception of movimentismo in Peru and Argentina on an analogous argument (see his '"Movimentismo" and Democracy: An Analytical Framework and the Peruvian Case Study (Mimeo, CESDE, Bologna, Oct. 1995). Guillermo O'Donnell coined the term 'brown areas' to refer to the large sectors of Latin American society where uncivil conditions prevail; 'On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries', World Development, Vol 21, No.8 (1993), pp.1355-69.
27. Compare the Czech debate over 'civil society' in which President Havel tries to promote the concept as a corrective to excessive emphasis on purely market relationships, while Prime Minister Havel equates democracy with individual freedom, including freedom from social engineering in the name of civil society; Vaclav Havel, Vaclav Klaus and Petr Pithart, 'Rival Visions', Journal of Democracy, Vol.7, No.1 (1996), pp.18, 20.
28. Recall the liberal pluralism of Durkheim for whom it was the State which 'creates and organizes and makes a reality' of the individual's natural rights, indeed its 'essential function' was to 'liberate individual personalities', by offsetting the pressure on them of local domestic, ecclesiastical, occupational and other secondary groups (while the latter were also needed to offset the potential tyranny of the state); Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim (London: Allen Lane, 1973), p.271.
29. These three alternatives have been elaborated by Carlos A. Forment, 'Civil Society and the Invention of Democracy in Nineteenth Century Cuba' (mimeo, Princeton, Sept. 1995).
30. My approach has been to exclude all political parties from 'civil society' on the grounds that they compete for national office. An alternative would be to include those political parties (and only those) who represent the interests of substantial sectors of civil society. This would involve making some invidious distinctions between political parties. Does the Italian Communist Party express the interests of a major element in civil society, or does it displace and suborn those interests? Is this stable over time, or variable ? How do we prove one interpretation rather than the other?