Conceptualizing Civil Society from the Bottom Up: A Political Economy Perspective

Abstract

Regardless of how civil society is actually defined, the idea of civil society has been approached in a variety of ways. Most recently, it represents a goal for newly democratizing countries, one that the established liberal democracies of Western Europe and North America have achieved. Historically, however, the approach was more empirical and descriptive (although certainly not without normative overtones), and civil society was “discovered” rather than predicted or sought after (Black 1984; Ferguson 1966; Tocqueville 1969). Either way, this goal is often a normative one, suggesting that “civil society” is the product of a unique Western cultural heritage that, grosso modo, is essentially liberal in nature (Seligman 1992). This is one reason why the concept was both slow to be applied to Latin America and had to be transformed in the process (Avritzer, this volume).

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