Civil society, the state, and the limits to global civil society

Global Society

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 155-178

  Bowden, Brett ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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CIVIL SOCIETY;

EID: 33645563784     PISSN: 13600826     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13600820600576423     Document Type: Article

References (164)

1. Civil society translates as koinònia politiké in Ancient Greek; see Aristotle, The Politics and the Constitution of Athens (ed. Stephen Everson) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
2. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992).
3. For an account of the 'democratic revolution' that was written around the time the Berlin Wall was falling, see Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
4. Michael Walzer, "Introduction", in MichaelWalzer (ed.), Toward a Global Civil Society (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995), p. 1.
5. See, for example, Vaclav Havel, Vaclav Klaus and Petr Pithart, "Civil Society after Communism: Rival Visions", Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1996), pp. 11-23
6. Wilmot James and Daria Caliguire, "The New South Africa: Renewing Civil Society", Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1996), pp. 56-66.
7. Robert Fine, "Civil Society Theory and the Politics of Transition in South Africa", Review of African Political Economy, No. 55 (1992), pp. 71-83
8. and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, "Sri Lanka: Civil Society, the Nation and the State-building Challenge", in Alison Van Rooy (ed.), Civil Society and the Aid Industry (London: Earthscan, 1998), pp. 104-133.
9. For an argument that "civil society is unlikely to spread outside parts of Central Europe and Latin America", see John A. Hall, "The Nature of Civil Society", Society, Vol. 35, No. 4 (1998), pp. 32-41.
10. The terms "global" and "globalisation" are older that some might think. The terms "globalise" and "globalism" were first used in 1944 by O. L. Reiser and B. Davies in their book Planetary Democracy: An Introduction to Scientific Humanism and Applied Semantics. The term "globalisation" first appeared in an English-language dictionary in 1961. See J. A. Scholte, "The Globalization of World Politics", in John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds.), The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 14.
11. For a good cross-section, see Paul Ghils, "International Civil Society: International Nongovernmental Organisations in the International System", International Social Science Journal, No. 133 (1992), pp. 417-431
12. Paul Wapner, "Environmental Activism and Global Civil Society", Dissent, Vol. 41, No. 3 (1994), pp. 389-393
13. Miguel Darcy de Oliveira, "The Case for Global Civil Society", National Civic Review, Vol. 84, No. 2 (1995), pp. 130-132
14. Glenn Kowack, "Internet Governance and the Emergence of Global Civil Society", IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 35, No. 5 (1997), pp. 52-57
15. and Jackie Smith, "Global Civil Society?", American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 42, No. 1 (1998), pp. 93-3.
16. Cf. N. Chandhoke, "The Limits of Global Civil Society", in M. Glasius, M. Kaldor and H. Anheier (eds.), Global Civil Society 2002 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 35-53.
17. Max Weber, Essays in Sociology (trans., ed. and intro. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948), p. 78; emphasis in original.
18. Alex deWaal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry (London and Oxford: African Rights and James Currey, 1997), p. 65. The same argument can be applied, if not more strongly still, to global markets. In recent years, virtually unregulated hedge funds, currency speculators, tax-haven banking, and the free hand afforded to transnational corporations have had many ill effects on the well-being of peoples and economies all over the world. Nevertheless, this is a concern that will have to be set aside here, for this article will deal only with the deficiencies of global civil society.
19. Three of these are: John Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London: Verso, 1988)
20. Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994)
21. and Ernst Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (New York: Allen Lane, 1994).
22. Larry Diamond, "Toward Democratic Consolidation", Journal of Democracy, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1994), pp. 5-6; emphasis in original.
23. Gellner, op. cit., p. 1.
24. Ibid., p. 211.
25. See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government [1690] (New York: Mentor, 1965).
26. John Keane, "Despotism and Democracy: The Origins and Development of the Distinction between Civil Society and the State 1750-1850", in John Keane (ed.), Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (London: Verso, 1988), p. 39.
27. Cohen and Arato, op. cit., p. 91.
28. The dating of the distinction is something of a moot point, but there is some evidence to suggest that it is detectable as early as Hobbes's Leviathan, in which he makes reference to "Systemes Subject, Politicall, and Private" and "Bodies Politique". See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651] (ed. and intro. C. B. MacPherson) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp. 274-288. Similar evidence can be found in both Locke and Rousseau.
29. For an argument that Cicero planted "the germ of the idea" of a "separation of state from society" on the basis of property rights, see Neal Wood, Cicero's Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 136-142.
30. If the argument is to be based on property rights alone, however, an insufficient argument, the same could be said of the Greeks. See Aristotle, op. cit., pp.
31. For example, Locke states: "Men by entering into Society and Civil Government, have excluded force, and introduced Laws for the preservation of Property, Peace, and Unity amongst themselves." See Locke, op. cit., para. 226, p. 464.
32. See also Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract [1762] (trans. and intro. Maurice Cranston) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), chs. 6-8.
33. See Brett Bowden, "The Ideal of Civilisation: Its Origins and Socio-political Character", Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2004), pp. 25-50.
34. Keane, op. cit., pp. 36-39. Keane also argues that the work of David Hume maintains the "classical understanding of civil society". Such an observation is problematic, however, when one considers that, as contemporaries and friends, Hume and Ferguson∠d Adam Smith_regularly engaged in debate and were almost inevitably influenced by each other's thoughts. Whilst it might appear that in some passages of A Treatise of Human Nature Hume draws no distinction between civil society and the state, as is the case where he writes "Of the Origin of Government".
35. Like Hobbes, elsewhere he makes a clear distinction when writing of men in society forming "leagues" and "alliances" as he articulates "the boundaries of our public and private duties". See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature [1739/40], Vol. 2 (London: Dent, 1956), pp. 238
36. Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society 1767 (ed. Duncan Forbes) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966).
37. Ibid., p. 142; emphasis in original.
38. See Jean Jacques Rousseau, "Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men", in J.J. Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings (ed. Victor Gourevitch) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 111-222.
39. Ferguson, op. cit., p. 183.
40. Ibid., p. 218.
41. Ibid., p. 258.
42. Ibid., p. 218.
43. This does not mean the absence of an army altogether, rather that the protection of one's society is the duty of all of its capable citizens.
44. Keane, op. cit., p. 42.
45. Paine is said to have commenced work on the Rights of Man no fewer than four days after the appearance of Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. See Derek Matravers, "Introduction", in Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1996), p. viii.
46. Keane, op. cit., p. 47.
47. See Paine, op. cit., pp. 34, 104.
48. Paine's remarks require some qualification. Although it might appear as though Paine is some sort of laissez-faire libertarian, this is not the case. In Part Two of Rights of Man and again in Agrarian Justice, Paine goes to considerable lengths to articulate and cost an extensive system of state-provided social welfare. Included in it are the provision of education and child benefits, relief for the poor and unemployed, maternity and death grants, and age pensions. See Paine, op. cit., Part Two, ch. V, pp. 165-222
49. and, "Agrarian Justice [1795-6]", in Thomas Paine, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. 2 (ed. Philip S. Foner) (New York: Citadel Press, 1945), pp. 605-623.
50. Thomas Paine, Common Sense and The Crisis [1776] (New York: Doubleday, 1960), p. 13; emphasis in original.
51. At around the same time a similar attempt at balancing civil society and the state was being made across the Atlantic in The Federalist Papers. This is most readily apparent in James Madison's Federalist No. 10. See James Madison, "Federalist No. 10", in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, The Federalist [1787/88] (ed. Benjamin Fletcher Wright) (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1961), pp. 129-136.
52. See Cohen and Arato, op. cit., p. 91 and after; emphasis in original. It might be more accurate to assert that Hegel expounds the first modern theory of the state of which civil society is a major component⊤ which perhaps only Bernard Bosanquet's The Philosophical Theory of the State (London: Macmillan, 1923), might be compared.
53. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right [1821] (trans. T. M. Knox) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), para. 289, p. 189.
54. Ibid., para. 273, p. 176.
55. Ibid., para. 257, p. 155.
56. Ibid., para, 142, p. 105.
57. Ibid., para. 155, p. 109.
58. Ibid., para. 261, p. 161.
59. Ibid., para. 260, p. 160.
60. Ibid., para. 260, p. 161.
61. L. Arnhart, "History and the Modern State: Hegel's Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of History", in L. Arnhart (ed.), Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls, 2nd edn (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1993), p. 298.
62. See Hegel, op. cit., para. 157, p. 105.
63. Ibid., para. 157, p. 110.
64. Ibid., para. 258, p. 156.
65. Ibid., addition to para. 258, p. 156.
66. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America [1835-40], 2 Vols. (ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence) (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 246, 259-261.
67. Ibid., p. 691.
68. De Tocqueville, quoted by Keane, op. cit., p. 57. I have used Keane's translation of the passage as it more vividly captures the spirit of de Tocqueville's concerns than the translation used above and below. The equivalent passage is at de Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 691.
69. Ibid., p. 253.
70. Ibid., p. 252.
71. Ibid., pp. 515, 697
72. For more of the specifics, see ibid., Vol. 1, Part II, ch. 8, "What Tempers the Tyranny of the Majority in the United States", pp. 262-276.
73. See also Vol. 2, Part II, ch. 7, "Relationships between Civil and Political Associations", pp. 520-524.
74. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, and Representative Government [1859-1861] (London: Dent, 1962), p. 68.
75. Ibid., pp. 72-73.
76. Ibid., p. 161.
77. Ibid., p. 75.
78. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology [1845/46] (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), p. 98.
79. See Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [1869]", in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1958), p. 284.
80. Karl Marx, "Preface to The Critique of Political Economy [1859]", in Marx and Engels, ibid., p. 362.
81. Quoted in Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 18.
82. Ibid., p. 21.
83. Cohen and Arato, op. cit., p. 86
84. and Keane, op. cit., pp. 62-66.
85. John Keane, "Introduction", in Keane, op. cit., p. 1.
86. See the anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, in particular chs. VII and VIII, "Mutual Aid Amongst Ourselves" and "Mutual Aid Amongst Ourselves (continued)", which can also be considered as having added to the late 19th- and early 20th-century discourse on civil society. Kropotkin, however, sought no balance between civil society and the state, as for him, the state was, by definition, an oppressive and corrupting authority.
87. See Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution [1902] (Boston: Extending Horizons Books, n.d.).
88. Paul Q. Hirst, "Introduction", in Paul Q. Hirst (ed.), The Pluralist Theory of the State: Selected Writings of G.D.H. Cole, J.N. Figgis, and H.J. Laski (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 6.
89. See J.N. Figgis, "The Great Leviathan", in Hirst, op. cit., pp. 111-127.
90. Ibid., p. 16.
91. Ibid., pp. 21-22.
92. It has been remarked that Gramsci's recasting of civil society "is not what associates him with Marx... but what distinguishes him from Marx". See Norberto Bobbio, "Gramsci and the Concept of Civil Society", in Keane (ed.), op. cit., p. 83.
93. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (eds. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith) (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), p. 12.
94. Notably, on occasions Gramsci draws a further distinction between "political society" (government) and "the State", where the "State = political society + civil society" see p. 263.
95. Ibid., p. 208.
96. See, for example, Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
97. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation [1944] (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), p. 71.
98. Roger Simon, Gramsci's Political Thought: An Introduction (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1982), pp. 68-70.
99. See Gramsci, op. cit., p. 56.
100. Simon, op. cit., p. 69.
101. Ibid., p. 69.
102. Ibid., p. 69.
103. Gramsci, op. cit., p. 56.
104. See Aristotle, op. cit., pp. 4-5
105. Hobbes, op. cit., p. 262
106. Paine, Rights of Man, op. cit., pp. 85-87
107. Hegel, op. cit., p. 155.
108. For a classical illustration of this, compare and contrast John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972)
109. the modern standard-bearer of liberal thought, with Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1988);
110. or Michael Sandel, Liberalism and its Critics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984).
111. Jean Bethke Elshtain, "Not a Cure-all: Civil Society Creates Citizens; It Does Not Solve Problems", Brookings Review, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1997), p. 14.
112. Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community: The Reinvention of American Society (New York: Touchstone, 1993), p. 26.
113. See Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), pp. 69-98. Falling into this category is Tony Blair's New Labour government in the United Kingdom, Gerhard Schroder's recent coalition government in Germany, and Bill Clinton's Democrat administration in the United States.
114. See Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroder, Europe: The Third Way÷e Neue Mitte (London: Labour Party and SPD, 1999)
115. and the White House, "The Third Way: Progressive Governance for the 21st Century" (Washington, DC) (25 April 1999).
116. Eva Cox, A Truly Civil Society (Sydney: ABC Books, 1995), p. 50.
117. For a more sceptical account of the motives behind the advocacy of civil society, see Ellen Meiksins Wood, "The Uses and Abuses of 'Civil Society'", in Ralph Miliband, Leo Panitch and John Saville (eds.), Socialist Register 1990 (London: Merlin Press, 1990), pp. 60-84;
118. and Bjorn Beckman, "The Liberation of Civil Society: Neoliberal Ideology and Political Theory", Review of African Political Economy, No. 58 (1993), pp. 20-33.
119. Krishnan Kumar, "Civil Society: An Inquiry into the Usefulness of an Historical Term", British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 3 (1993), p. 375.
120. Simon, op. cit., pp. 72-73.
121. Michael Walzer, "The Concept of Civil Society", in Michael Walzer (ed.), Toward a Global Civil Society (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995), p. 23.
122. For an introduction to Michel Foucault's complex thoughts on power, see Michel Foucault, "Strategies of Power", in Walter Truett Anderson (ed.), The Truth About the Truth (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1995), pp. 40-45;
123. and S. Wolin, "On the Theory and Practice of Power", in J. Arac (ed.), After Foucault: Humanistic Knowledge, Postmodern Challenges (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), pp. 179-201.
124. Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison (ed. and trans. Lynne Lawner) (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 204.
125. Walzer, "The Concept of Civil Society", op. cit., p. 23.
126. Diamond, op. cit., p. 6.
127. Walzer, "The Concept of Civil Society", op. cit., pp. 16, 23.
128. See Z. A. Pelczynski, "Solidarity and 'The Rebirth of Civil Society' in Poland, 1976-81", in Keane (ed.), op. cit., pp. 361-380.
129. Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital", Journal of Democracy, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1995), p. 65.
130. See also Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
131. Elshtain, op. cit., p. 15.
132. Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order (London: Profile Books, 1999), p. 16; emphasis in original.
133. For a more detailed account of social capital, see James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1990), esp. ch. 12, "Social Capital", pp. 300-321.
134. With some modification these parameters draw on definitions outlined in Diamond, op. cit., pp. 4-17
135. and Lester M. Salamon and Helmut K. Anheier, "The Civil Society Sector", Society, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1997), pp. 60-65.
136. See Putnam's argument in "Bowling Alone", op. cit., pp. 70-73.
137. For the counter-argument and an articulation of "global social capital", see D. Minkoff, "Producing Social Capital: National Social Movements and Civil Society", American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 40, No. 5 (1998), pp. 606-619.
138. Alejandro Colas, "The Promises of International Civil Society", Global Society, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1997), p. 271.
139. Ibid., p. 261.
140. See Alejandro Colas, "Putting Cosmopolitanism into Practice: The Case of Socialist Internationalism", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1994), pp. 513-534.
141. Colas, "The Promises of International Civil Society", op. cit., p. 272
142. for a detailed account, see D. Stienstra, Women's Movements and International Organization (London: Macmillan, 1994).
143. The term is used by Alan Fowler, "Distant Obligations: Speculations on NGO Funding and the Global Market", Review of African Political Economy, No. 55 (1992), p. 27
144. and de Waal, op. cit., p. 66.
145. On the other side of the argument is the claim that neo-liberalism requires a state strong enough "to enforce contracts, preserve property, and guarantee basic human freedoms of association and choice". See Gordon A. Christenson, "World Civil Society and the International Rule of Law", Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4 (1997), p. 733.
146. Mustapha Kamal Pasha and David L. Blaney, "Elusive Paradise: The Promise and Peril of Global Civil Society", Alternatives, No. 23 (1998), pp. 431, 433, 438.
147. Pasha and Blaney appear to be unaware that Gill has elsewhere stated: "an emerging global civil society and system of international political authority... might then provide the political space and social possibility to begin to mobilize for the solution to deep-seated problems of social inequality, intolerance, environmental degradation and the militarization of the planet".See Stephen Gill, "Reflections on Global Order and Sociohistorical Time", Alternatives, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1991), p. 311.
148. Jan Aart Scholte, "Global Civil Society: Changing the World?", CSGRWorking Paper No. 31/ 99, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (May 1999), p. 34, available: .
149. Ghils, op. cit., p. 429; emphasis in original.
150. See Paul Wapner, "Environmental Activism and Global Civil Society", Dissent, Vol. 41, No. 3 (1994), pp. 389-393;
151. Paul Wapner, "Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics", World Politics, Vol. 47, No. 3 (1995), pp. 311-340;
152. and Wapner, Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics (New York: CUNY Press, 1996).
153. See also Ronnie D. Lipschutz and Judith Mayer, Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance: The Politics of Nature from Place to Planet (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996).
154. See Ann Marie Clark, Elisabeth J. Friedman and Kathryn Hochstetler, "The Sovereign Limits of Global Civil Society: A Comparison of NGO Participation in UN World Conferences on the Environment, Human Rights, and Women", World Politics, Vol. 51, No. 1 (1998), pp. 1-35.
155. Ulrich Beck, "The Cosmopolitan Manifesto", New Statesman (20 March 1998), p. 29.
156. See also 'The Cosmopolitan Perspective: Sociology of the Second Age of Modernity', British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 51, No. 1 (2000), pp. 79-106;
157. and "The Cosmopolitan Society and its Enemies", Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 19, Nos. 1-2 (2002), pp. 17-44.
158. Scott Turner, "Global Civil Society, Anarchy and Governance: Assessing an Emerging Paradigm", Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 35, No. 1 (1998), p. 25.
159. Ronnie Lipschutz, "Reconstructing World Politics: The Emergence of Global Civil Society", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1992), pp. 391, 398.
160. Martin Shaw, "Global Society and Global Responsibility: The Theoretical, Historical and Political Limits of 'International Society'", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1992), p. 432.
161. For a critique of this line of thinking, see Pasha and Blaney, op. cit., pp. 417-450.
162. Clark, Friedman and Hochstetler, op. cit., p. 35.
163. Rawls, op. cit., p. 3.
164. Ibid., p. 4.