- Bryan H. Massam Ph.D. F.R.S.C.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by John T. Pierce
Preface
Introduction - Setting the scene
Compliance and solidarity-elusive concepts
What is civil society?
Toward sustainable development
Citizenship
A word on modernity
Historically, the space or gap between the individual and the state in western countries has been defined by the importance/legitimacy of the civil society. Dahrendorf* (1995, 23) has argued that while the term is more suggestive than precise, the core meaning of the concept is very precise - "Civil society describes the associations in which we conduct our lives, and that owe their existence to our needs and initiatives, rather than to the State".
In 'An Essay on Civil Society' Professor Bryan Massam explores the breadth and depth of the literature on the civil society, illuminating both its contemporary and historical constructions. While it is possible to identify a core meaning and conditions of a civil society, Professor Massam pushes beyond the semantic and definitional to uncover the complex dynamics and parameters of these 'associations' at both the micro and macro levels. The essay tackles problems of maintaining and enhancing a civil society from a number of perspectives, including health, the state, environment, economic growth and communications. The results from cross-cultural research clearly indicate that "reconciling individual rights and communal obligations remains the key to successful functioning of civil societies". In the end, achieving a viable civil society is about making choices. This essay makes clear what those choices are and the forces which bear on those choices.
The Community Economic Development Centre is particularly grateful to Professor Massam for this contribution, the first in a series from a Toyota Foundation sponsored study entitled 'Pluralism in Community Development Practices: Can New Information Technology Build/Maintain A Civil Society'?
*Dahrendorf, R. (1995). A precarious balance: economic opportunity, civil society, and political liberty. The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibility, 5(3), 13-39.
The political, social and economic mechanisms for handling the full range of human needs typically involves reliance on individual initiatives, especially by families, within the context of regional, national and international markets as well as by state intervention and governmental actions of politicians, appointed and elected officials, as well as bureaucrats. The search for satisfactory ways to organize individuals into groups to tackle collective problems concerning human needs has given rise to much theoretical speculation by academics and others. In the practical world, the state has been developed in recent history as the key element within which citizenship is defined, a sense of belonging is nurtured and practical decisions are made regarding the production, consumption and distribution of resources in order to serve the needs of individuals. Today it is increasingly evident that states are typically too small to act alone in the world of global finance and communications. They are often too large to give a unified, connected sense of identity and solidarity to all individuals. Arguments have been made to suggest that the promotion of civil society to fill the gap between families and the state will go a long way towards improving the quality of life of individuals by giving them a greater sense of control and responsibility over their lives, while recognizing that globalization as manifested by international capital flows and trans-national corporations can be regulated if co-operation among civic states is secured by legitimate treaties and sanctions.
With all these points in mind, I have tried in this essay to outline a range of topics relating to the concept of civil society which embrace the breadth and depth of the literature, from many disciplines, which has referred to the concept. For this reason, I have selected a wide variety of sub-headings to illustrate the many aspects of civil society. Yet, while such a smorgasbord may encourage the reader to nibble only on a few morsels, I hope that the complete satisfying meal will result from sampling widely and drinking deeply.
Personally, I subscribe to the view that a worthy goal for academics, especially in the human and social sciences, is to offer to citizens, politicians, bureaucrats and the media views about human organization to help build effective civic cultures within which rational arguments can accommodate individualism and passion. The pursuit of civil society as the key to building effective civic states and a global civic order to promote justice and sustainable human existence seems to me to be perhaps the single most challenging task facing humanity.
INTRODUCTION-SETTING THE SCENE
A recent survey by Ekos Research (1995) solicited opinions about governments in Canada using initial telephone interviews, a survey of governing and economic decision-makers followed by detailed telephone interviews and a round of focus groups with survey respondents. A series of key themes were identified. Deep resentment and frustration describe the current mood and there is considerable ambivalence in the public's resolve to reduce the size of government to manage the public debt. There appears to be an important distinction between the realm of popularity and the domain of legitimacy. The report notes that popularity is clearly ephemeral and very elastic, and in early 1995, the federal government appeared to be very popular. However, there is only a slight improvement in the realm of legitimacy and the report identifies a long road back to reestablish trust in government. Surprising, at least to me, are the lack of questions in the interviews and in the surveys on participation, and the role of voluntary associations in helping to empower citizens and influence decision makers. The report notes that, while the country is a crucial source of identity and belonging , (second only to the family), Canadians seem to be seeking a higher order of moral community. Perhaps the search is for lower order local groups in which citizens can participate to co-operate with others and develop shared responsibility for social problems. It is unfortunate that this aspect of Canadian social life was not explored in the study. The complex mosaic of contemporary Canadian society comprises individuals who have both individualistic, libertarian values co-existing with collectivist, conservative values. The problem we are confronted with is to find a viable accommodation for these conflicting values.
COMPLIANCE AND SOLIDARITY-ELUSIVE CONCEPTS
The notion of solidarity among members of a group or community has been taken up by Hupchick (1995) in his review of the historical context within which change is currently occurring in Eastern Europe. An understanding of the complexities of the three civilizations of Eastern Europe; Western European (Catholic/Protestant Christian), Eastern European (Orthodox Christian), and Islamic (Muslim), with over seventeen major nationalities, is required of anyone who wishes to explain or promote civil society concepts in this part of the world. For example, throughout the four centuries of the existence of the house of Habsburg, he argues that the basis for its existence lay in the acceptance by the nobility and the population within each of the various, ethnically diverse territories of the Habsburgs' hereditary right to the office of supreme political authority. This political authority rested on the staunch medieval principle of God wills it. Hupchick reminds us that, in the final analysis, loyalty to the house of Habsburg served as the cement that held the essentially medieval state together into the twentieth century.
The Ottoman Empire in Europe from the 14th and 15th centuries, until its zenith in the 16th, was arguably the strongest and most efficient in all Europe. With highly centralized government and great wealth, principally built on Turkey's fortuitously placed position to control trade, European monarchs viewed with awe and no little fear of the fierce power of the militia. Again it is worth noting that according to Kupach (1995), the underpinning moral mortar for Ottoman strength lay in Islamic political, economic and military traditions that were centuries old and believed to be divinely ordained.
Shifting to a completely different geographical location and cultural tradition, it is clear that current economic advances in Southeast Asia owe their success to some degree to the profoundly embedded traditions of ancestor worship, Confucianism and respect for authority which have assisted in the establishment of compliance among members of a community. Clearly, compliance among members of the human species has been brought about by the cultural attachment to religious beliefs, often reinforced by earthy use of the force of arms. Further, the enlightenment attachment to reason, while invoked as a rationale for compliant behaviour, often falls short of persuading us to co-operate in mutually beneficial ways.
The relationships among the global system of secular states in the late 20th century involves political and economic forces which are closely interwoven with the development of capital in its varied forms. And Rosenberg (1995) asserts, a new form of imperial power is arising and to this he assigns the name the empire of civil society. A strong critique of the realist theory of international relations is provided by Rosenberg that moves the discussion beyond the narrow community-based parochial view of civil society as a phenomenon contained within a sovereign state. He develops a broader, international perspective and adds a useful complementary dimension to much of the standard literature on civil society cited in this essay.
In a speech delivered at the Athenaeum Club in London in 1991, Shils claims that the association between virtue as public spirit or civility, and republican governments, has unfortunately been neglected by academics. He goes on to argue that understanding the term civil society is critical to the elaboration of virtue of a political regime. Shils (1991) notes that civil society has three main components.
1. That part of society comprising a complex of autonomous economic, religious, intellectual and political institutions which are distinguishable from the family, clan, locality or state.
2. A complex of relationships with formal and informal rules and procedures and practices to safeguard the separation of state and civil society, yet which maintain effective ties between them.
3. A widespread pattern of refined or civil manners.
Civility, as understood by Shils, provides the distinguishing characteristic of decency which differentiates a well-ordered from a disordered liberal democracy. Clearly, the context for the development of a civil society ,and more specifically, the boundaries,rights and entitlements of individuals, are typically laid down by the state as laws, regulations and practices, and they are reinforced by a range of legitimate sanctions. The latter may be formal and openly recognized, or less formal with debatable legitimacy and especially if surveillance and secrecy obtain, as well as infringements on human rights.
The term civil society or some variant has a well-established presence stretching to the earliest writings on families, society and government. In the political philosophy of medieval times, ecclesiastical institutions were contrasted with those now more familiarly reported as state and private institutions, and by the seventeenth century the term had come to be used as part of the dialogue involving the ways government imposed conditions on nature.
Kumar (1993) suggests that the concept of civil society, with its emphasis on pluralism and a continuing role for state regulation, is an attractive one not only for those states emerging from command centralized political systems, but also for western democracies which are currently facing serious internal social problems as the welfare state is being redefined. While the battle cry to create a civil society has been used to mobilize opposition to the state, especially in the eighties in Central and Eastern Europe, Kumar is critical of the continuing use of the term to excite individuals to be more responsible, caring citizens in The New Age. As part of a democratic state, civil society implies consent rather than coercion and as such is the preferred approach for human organization within a liberal democratic society. Whether we really need the term civil society Kumar (1993) suggests is debatable. He asks, what is wrong with the language and use of terms such as constitutionalism, citizenship, and democracy? In a spirited commentary on Kumar's paper, Bryant (1993) reminds us that de Tocqueville's art of association and the notion of civility as the equitable treatment of others as fellow citizens, however different their interests and sensibilities, must be part of the complete view of civil society to embrace the sociological aspects of life as complementary to the economic ones stressed in the literature Kumar reviews. Bryant's (1993) critique of Kumar's initial paper is answered by Kumar (1994), who asserts that the terms he prefers-democracy, citizenship and constitutionalism-are the critical ones to work with in the development of effective functioning states that involve interaction among the separate autonomous realities of state and society. By using such terms, he argues "... we will, I think, gain a better insight into the nature of our problems than we are likely to find in the seductive but perhaps ultimately specious idea of civil society". However, it is worth noting and agreeing wholeheartedly with Kumar (1994) that: "If we wish to continue to use the concept of civil society, we must situate it in some definite tradition of use that gives it a place and a meaning."
TOWARD SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
"Sustainable human development is development that not only generates economic growth but distributes its benefits equitably; that regenerates the environment rather than destroying it; that empowers people rather than marginalizing them. It is development that gives priority to the poor, enlarging their choices and opportunities and provides for their participation in decisions that affect their lives. It is development that is pro-people, pro-nature, pro-jobs and pro-women." UNDP (1994)
Reference to this view in the context of a recent conference on Social Development and the need to provide a global civil society will be made later in this essay.
That this view of sustainable development enjoys widespread support from policy-makers scattered throughout the many U.N. social and economic agencies and other international bodies comes as no surprise to those individuals, scholars, journalists and laypersons who grapple with the task of writing prescriptive statements to guide human affairs as the millennium comes to a close.
Gramsci's adage that the old age is dying while the new one is as yet unborn may have been written to reflect views in Europe of the 1920's, especially in Italy, but its essential truth remains as the globalization of economies takes hold, the welfare state is redefined, centralized systems of government collapse and technology, especially electronic communications, becomes cheaper and more accessible to all. According to a recent editorial comment by Michael Valpy in The Globe and Mail (June 28,1995),
"The state today is without priorities, without objectives,without ideas other than the mindless cutting of social expenditures with little or no regard for their impact on Canadian society or for what the role of government should be. In behaving like this, as the British social theorist Sir Ralph Dahrendorf has noted, it is severely weakening our civil society,the essential space between the individual and the state. 'The state as economists see it is quite uncivil', he has written, 'because it assumes that the actors are only isolated individuals .... There is no such thing as society, only individuals and governments' ".
Michael Ignatieff (1984) makes a similar point in The Needs of Strangers.
"My taxes go up to help people I don't know ... Their taxes go up to help me, and they don't know me. What comes apart is peoples' willingness to pay the way for strangers. If I start to think whether I get value for my money out of the civic bargain entirely on my own terms, logic will lead me to want to opt out eventually, because in fact I pay for weapons systems, schools, welfare etc., that I don't want."
Valpy notes that the society of strangers makes it easier for governments to order cuts, because those of us who are haves don't know those who are the have-nots. As a community of human beings of caring individuals, not just tax payers, we have to reoccupy some of the domain we have ceded to the state.
Precisely how this re-occupation, even occupation, is to be achieved remains ill-defined or hidden within the pleas and rhetoric of public figures. Vaclav Havel has reminded us that
"I have been persuaded time and time again that a huge potential of good will is slumbering within our society. It is just that it's incoherent, suppressed,confused, crippled and perplexed. In such a state of affairs, participants have a duty to awaken this slumbering potential." (The Globe and Mail: June 28, 1995).
Wiebe (1994) fosters a nostalgic view of democracy as practised in the U.S.A. in the nineteenth century. During this period, he argues that lodge-politics prevailed whereby direct participation in politics occurred not only through political parties, but via a range of associations, fraternal orders and working men's associations. Wiebe suggests that with the massive growth of economic hierarchies, the power of the people through group associations has been massively eroded. So-called public hierarchies comprised of bureaucrats subscribing to what some have called reason and argument, and others refer to as a cult of instrumental rationality, further alienated individuals and removed them from political decision making. Certainly such a milieu may account for the apathy shown by citizens as is indicated by low turn-out rates for elections.
To argue as Wiebe does that a return to the early part of the 19th century is the answer to the social and other problems facing the U.S.A. in the closing years of the 20th century is to miss the essential complexities of a contemporary society in which inter alia mass communications plays such a major role in shaping consumerism. Simpson (1995) has reviewed Wiebe's (1994) book and while he notes that it is fun to read, radical in its prescriptions, but he is ultimately a misguided romantic with a mistaken sense that what inspired democrats long ago can make democracy work better today. The desire to turn the clock back to a better time is not, however, without its supporters who typically couch their arguments in terms of good old-fashioned family values. One school of political and social thought which supports this view is promoted by Etzioni and other communitarian writers. Comments on this will be provided later.
Seelig, a professor of planning at the University of British Columbia, in an article in The Globe and Mail (March 16, 1995) asserts that: "A disturbing form of decision-making is emerging on the civic scene across Canada. It has become known as citizen participation for the past 30 years but it is clearly becoming a cop-out for politicians who do not have the courage to make hard choices". The search is for acceptable solutions which Seelig contrasts with good solutions. He credits government planning departments with the expertise to understand social, economic, environmental and demographic matters affecting a community. Citizen participation and polling of opinion rarely, if ever,ask what will you give up to gain something else, yet without such information the notion of public input to reach a consensus on collective choice can be viewed as a sham.
Perhaps more pervasive in the scheme of human organization is the view espoused by Connor O'Brien in his 1994 Massey Lectures On the Eve of the Millennium that, inter alia, renewed effort is required to defend Enlightenment values which are under threat from fundamentalist religious beliefs and practices. However, not all social critics subscribe to the notion that Enlightenment values will, in and of themselves, promote harmony, justice, equity and security for individuals. Homo economicus as a rational being is, as Ferry (1993) cogently argues, also and perhaps more significantly, a cultural primate-homo aestheticus-searching for spiritual significance beyond the rational exchange economy of trading which supposedly defines worth and value.
Locke's view on Truth is echoed in comments by Kingswell (1995) in his book on Civil Tongue: justice, dialogue, and the policies of pluralism. He reminds us that justice as civility goes beyond cold and absolute truth. "Truth ... has no such way of prevailing, as when strong Argument and good Reason, are joined with the softness of civility and good usage". Locke (A letter concerning toleration, in Kingswell (1995)).
And more recently Terry Waite echoes the sentiment that: "Truth tempered by compassion is the route to decency. People can be cut to pieces by absolute truth."
These remarks were offered by Waite, the special assistant to the Archbishop of Canterbury, after his release from Lebanon where he had been held hostage for many months by an Islamic fundamentalist group.
Moving to a completely different part of the world, the foothills of the Himalayas, Norberg-Hodge (1991) recounts her experiences of living with villagers in Ladakh over many years. She bemoans the impacts of external commercial influences, especially tourism and the trappings of an exchange economy with money, on the quality of life as manifested in a profound sense of security which comes from the subtle yet powerful covenants existing in a close-knit community. The external world has brought electricity, consumer goods and medication, and in its wake alienation,envy and anomie. The search for ways to incorporate institutions and practices to preserve the joy and satisfaction of community life, while taking advantage of technology that alleviates suffering, continues to challenge policy-makers.
More significantly and strongly supported by detailed empirical evidence gathered in Italy over a period of almost twenty-five years are the findings of Putnam (1993) as reported in his fascinating and very highly regarded book: Making Democracy Work. He makes the persuasive case that a region's chances of achieving socioeconomic development during this century have depended less on its initial socioeconomic endowments than on its civic endowments. Students of recent Japanese industrial growth and improvements to health in that country will recognize this claim. This is elaborated in the book by Ohmae (1995), in which he tries to make the case for a global state as the need for nation states disappears. His argument hinges on the proposition that economic development is the key to human development and the needs of individuals can best be satisfied by meeting them as consumers who have an almost infinite capacity to want to purchase goods and services. This view stands in stark contrast to the one I present in The Right Place (1993), in which I argue for shared responsibility in local jurisdictions as being critically important in determining and seeking to satisfy the needs of individuals.
Perhaps the term regulatory state is an appropriate one for the last decade of the twentieth century as I suggest in Massam (1993). As the next millennium approaches, possibly the global public sector, albeit comprised of individual states in a variety of configurations for economic, social, environmental and political purposes,will emerge as the milieu within which collective choice problems will be addressed.
In 1990, Barry offered some answers to questions surrounding definitions of welfare and the part played by governments in its promotion. Among other things, he argues that the growth of state welfare is directly linked to social dependency and a diminution of self-sufficiency, as well as the reduction of individual choice which is a result of collective provision. Whether or not one subscribes to this view, which purports to identify the disadvantages resulting from collectivist action, all societies are faced with choice problems for the production, consumption and distribution of collectively consumed goods and services. The unfettered, unregulated free-enterprise milieu is widely recognized to be as unacceptable as the centralized command controlled system currently being dismantled in Central and Eastern Europe. Now the search is for new political paradigms, probably along the lines of the regulatory state within which a civil society functions effectively. This happy combination appears to combine the advantages of the market while offering sufficient protection to accommodate the views of individuals and the collective will.
A new effort to understand relationships between environmental security, state capacity and civic violence has been launched via a large research project at the University of Toronto in co-operation with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. The Director of the project is Professor Homer-Dixon of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program, University of Toronto. It is clear that the depletion of resources and the increasing pressure due to population growth can result in conflict and violence within and among local communities as the haves protect their interests and territory and the have-nots struggle to survive.
Cooke (1990) reminds us that:
"As the 20th century fin de siècle approaches we seem to be confronted by change wherever we look. Debates about future directions have been raging throughout the 1980's ... Is the market the best mechanism for determining the allocation of all goods and services? Should the welfare state be dismantled? ... If individuals are free to choose and benefit from the products and services of the market, do they also have responsibility towards other individuals less able to choose?" (Cooke, 1990).
This view is discussed in an editorial comment in The Economist of June 23, 1990 under the title 'Goodbye to the nation state?': "Countries are getting together now as never before for good reasons ... as economies become more interlinked,so the people prosper ... similarly, many of today's non-economic problems can best be tackled internationally ... more co-operation is essential."
Cooke's book on postmodernism attempts to explain the problems that underlie such debates. He goes on to suggest that postmodernists argue that modern perspectives undervalue, amongst other things, the consensus of minorities, local identities, non-western thinking, a capacity to deal with differences,the pluralist culture and the cosmopolitanism of modern life. The ambiguity which results is captured by Cooke's assertion that the appeal to ideas of community and the authority of tradition is clearly populist yet also reactionary.
The renowned Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor (1995) offers a set of essays in an attempt to define the political culture of modernity. He feels intuitively that modern society is different from that of previous ages, not just in the so-called novel institutions and practices of representative democracy, market economy, institutionalized scientific discovery, and steady technological advance. Moral and political principles have changed, as have definitions of authenticity, rights, legitimacy, equality and non-discrimination. Linkages among individuals stress economic ties with consensus and public participation occurring with people we have never met and will most likely never meet. The use of the Internet, World Wide Web, e-mail and other electronic linkages contributes to this. Taylor goes on to argue that the most powerful mode of solidarity that people in our age have felt is independent of the state: it is that of the nation, an imagined community which is peculiarly modern. Gwyn (1995) has recently noted that, while there are more than 2,000 nations in the world, there are fewer than 200 states. The mapping of nations into states is an ongoing exercise in human organization. Taylor reminds us that we would be foolish to forget what we have in common as citizens, a people or a nation in a rush to dismantle central government agencies that provide us with goods and services. The fragmentation which can result from such efforts may result in the danger of a people less and less capable of forming a common purpose and carrying it out. There is a long-standing view, which has been espoused in many western industrial societies, that the democratic style of government provides a common purpose for citizens that will yield both material benefits and emotional satisfaction.
The case is made in the editorial in The Globe and Mail of May 18, 1995, and earlier in The Economist (August 27, 1994), that while democracy is no guarantee of economic growth and prosperity, it can serve via open public debate to defeat corruption and this is a distinctly positive attribute in developing civic virtue. Also, political freedoms in a democracy typically provide effective laws to protect property rights and public scrutiny of government initiatives is encouraged to enhance accountability. Further, with the free flow of ideas, innovations with economic and social benefits are encouraged to respond to changing conditions. The provision of political stability, which typically characterizes a democratic system, is seen as a necessary condition for sustained economic and social development. Perhaps more significantly, however, are the arguments that the support for democracy rests on moral and political grounds of consent, fairness, civility, accountability and legitimation via the rule of law.
A three-way classification of the world's political systems is provided by The Economist (August 27, 1995). The categories are FREE, PARTLY FREE and NOT FREE and they are based on whether there are free and fair elections, protection of civil liberties, multi-party legislations, and uncontrolled press. A map showing the rich, middle-income and poor countries corresponds very closely to the political classification,while recognizing the recent spread of democracy across Latin America and the former Soviet block.
A careful empirical study by Surjit Bhala (1994) notes, inter alia, that an improvement in civil and political freedom of a single rank (given that USA ranks 1 and Iraq ranks 7) appears to raise per capita economic growth by approximately one percentage point. Olson (1993) also concludes that democracy is far more conducive to long-term economic growth than dictatorship, even of the so-called benevolent kind. While dictatorships will give rise to economic policies that can and do in some cases achieve rapid economic growth, for example, East Asia in recent years, they are rare and the overall view of The Economist (August 27, 1994) is that "far from inhibiting growth, democracy promotes it."
Hutton (1995), writing about the contemporary economic, political and social scene in the U.K., ascribes the public malaise, and the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of central agencies of the government to bring about improvements to life chances for individuals as stemming to an increasing extent from the lack of an effective civil society. In a word he argues that to address current economic and social problems, what is needed is the development of a new conception of citizenship in which individuals are empowered to seek control of the world in which they live.
The need for people to have security in their daily lives is put forward in the 1994 Human Development Report of the U.N. as a necessary condition for peace and sustainable development. It is noted that feelings of insecurity typically arise more from worries about daily life than fear or dread of a cataclysmic world event. Security of employment, income, health and environment, as well as security from crimes against persons and property together with the availability of opportunities for future generations and the provision of meaningful social safety-nets are clearly the emerging consensus of human security all over the world.
SOCIAL TRUST, CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIAL CAPITAL
In a word, Axelrod demonstrated that mutual dependence and trust are needed,and within the framework of the prisoner's dilemma format of the problem, the requirement to bring about co-operation is that the game be played over and over again. Reliance on future connections supported by covenant and trust, rather than by formal contract, appear to lead to technically superior outcomes than the sub-optimal outcomes that result from the maximization of short-run self-interest.
In an effort to reframe social problem solving in the state of California, The California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility was set up in 1990. The approach adopted was to promote the greater well being of individuals with the view that this would directly benefit society. The focus was on developing a civil society in which individuals took personal responsibility to co-operate freely without state intervention to tackle social problems in a jurisdiction which is on the verge of being the first state in the U.S.A. with no racial or ethnic majority. Considerable emphasis is placed on the development of parenting skills to help families to nurture self-esteem, and the school and workplace are seen as the necessary environments to provide positive reinforcement. The statistics on drug and alcohol abuse and the myriad of other problems relating to them are staggering and getting worse as are figures on crime, violence, poverty and chronic welfare dependency. It is argued that low self-esteem is a significant contributing factor, though it does not act alone in any simplistic deterministic causative model. The report claims that the lack of self-esteem is central to most personal and social ills plaguing our state and nation as we approach the end of the twentieth century. Self-esteem is considered to be part and parcel of personal and social responsibility, and it is acknowledged that governments and experts cannot fix these problems for us. It is only after each of us recognizes our individual personal and social responsibility to be part of the solution that we also realize higher self-esteem. It is recognized that self-esteem and personal and social responsibility involve the propensity for honesty, charity, dignity, faith, intellectual energy, optimism, self-acceptance, courage and love.
The World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen in March, 1995, recognized that the only practical way to lay new foundations for a new society, as they call it, one in which individual security is centrally stressed in policy-making, is to focus on a small, manageable number of issues. A six-point agenda was offered with item 1.0 being a new world social charter. Of particular significance for the purposes of this essay is the fact that the first pledge of the world social charter makes explicit reference to the need to build a civil society as a necessary condition for individual security, sustainable development and peace. To quote in full: "We the people of the world solemnly pledge to build a new global civil society, based on the principles of equality of opportunity, rule of law, global democratic governance and a new partnership among all nations and all people".
It is the desire of the U.N. to draw up a global social contract, which they hope will have similar profound positive effects on the lives of individuals as the contracts drawn up in the 1930's and 1940's at national levels in the U.S.A. and the U.K. under the New Deal and the Beveridge Plan for the welfare state. In 1976, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights came into effect and encompassed rights to food,health, shelter, education and work. However, no matter how many charters, contracts or covenants are drawn up, proclaimed as being in effect or cited as relevant to guide global, national, regional or local policy-making, in the final analysis it is only in the empirical observation of outcomes and performance that we know if positive changes are being effected.
This point has been stressed forcefully in the Citizen's Charter by the British Prime Minister John Major which places considerable emphasis on determining measures of performance and indicators of the quantity and quality of output of public agencies such as schools, hospitals, transit systems, water boards, police and the like in the United Kingdom. "The Citizen's Charter is about giving more power to the citizen. But citizenship is about our responsibilities ... as well as our entitlements. The Citizen's Charter is not a recipe for state action; it is a testament of our belief in people's rights to be informed and choose for themselves" Major (1991).
The 1982 Canadian Charter on Rights and Freedoms, as an instrument for enhancing opportunities in Canada for individuals to obtain greater liberty and freedom within a collectivity, has been challenged by Hutchinson (1995) in his recent book. He argues that all the rights-talk serves little to protect vulnerable individuals from achieving self-esteem and personal security. Hutchinson asserts that, far from enhancing civic life,the charter has attenuated both its practice and potential and rights-talk probably betrays the cause of democracy. The instrumental rationalist mode of Enlightenment thinking as manifested in the search for an explicit written Charter to protect civic culture offers only limited opportunities of easily accessible guarantees of personal freedoms to many individual citizens. This view is supported by Prior et al. (1995) who is critical of the use of the Citizen's Charter in the U.K. and similar charters of local governments in their capacity to empower citizens and promote civil society.
THE STATE-WELFARE, FAILED AND PHANTOM
The Secretary-General of the U.N., Boutras Boutras-Gali, has used the term the failed state (Time: August 1994, p. 25) to characterize the desperate situation in which there is no government in control over a specific piece of territory. Specifically, he was referring to recent events in Somalia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia,. Consent and consensus have broken down, the rule of law has been abandoned, local militia and ethnic bands have taken over and replaced the legitimate state. International agencies are confounded and news networks transmit images of death, hostage-taking and mindless violence into living-rooms, kitchens and bedrooms many thousands of kilometres away. To observe strangers on our T.V. screens contributes, in a fleeting fashion, to build a community of concerned citizens. Communications, in this instance, does not provide a ready answer or improvement in responses to bring about civic engagement to build trust and co-operation.
Professor Sharon Williams of the Osgoode Law School at York University argues that the time is ripe for the establishment of a permanent international criminal tribunal to deal with crimes against humanity. She argues that the lack of political will which thwarted efforts in the past to establish such a tribunal may have shifted as a consequence of the awareness, created primarily through the media, of the activities which have occurred around the world-such as in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. (Williams, 1995). The research of Williams is focusing on the activities of the United Nations' International Law Commission, as mandated in 1947 by the U.N. General Assembly, "to formulate a code of crimes against the peace and security of mankind and a statute for an international criminal tribunal, but so far both remain on the drafting board".
In passing, it is worth noting the existence of the phantom state that is the international organization that controls the flows of capital around the world, creates jobs, and has a powerful influence on the quality of life of so many people. This state, as Thrift (1995) reminds us, does not have fixed territorial limits with citizens who control and manage the government. The multi-national or trans-national organizations that characterise the phantom state are becoming more and more powerful and their direct influence on the lives of individuals by creating images and values through their control of news and other information, as well as the economic consequences of investments, is having a profound de-stabilising effect on citizens within states.
While it is widely recognized that the traditional welfare states are evolving to embrace private initiatives (Day and Klein, 1987: Minford 1984; Mishra 1984), Taylor-Goody (1991) in his review of Hill's (1990) book on the Welfare State notes that "... the welfare state is not unsuccessful at meeting such objectives as the establishment of a national minimum standard: state provision has not failed to advance equality." It is very clear that changes to the welfare state of the last twenty years are needed to accommodate recent patterns of capital flows among countries which have resulted in the restructuring of industrial economies, which in turn have generated high levels of regional unemployment and large claims on social benefit programs. Considerable social unrest and tension currently exists in many states as governments struggle to provide universal social programs with declining sources of taxation revenue and growing deficits.
Sovereignty is one of the hallmarks of the state and, as such, policies of the government are typically designed in part to enhance and reinforce it. The protection and defense of territorial sovereignty and the stability of a national government's credibility in the international forum require investments and expenditures on arms as well as sound fiscal and monetary policies to say nothing of stable internal relationships within the state. These points have recently been reinforced by Griffiths (1994) who reminds us that: "Like nostalgia, sovereignty ain't what it used to be. Canada's sovereignty problem is less and less the familiar one of enforcing writ or title against foreign intruders ... In essence our problem is one of taking control over what happens within the national domain in an increasingly interdependent world". He goes on to defend the view that defense of sovereignty is a matter of culture, including political values and the effect is to demilitarize thinking about security. The fundamental question, according to Griffiths, is how then are we to maintain Canada's capacity for autonomous choice in an era of globalization? In essence, to do this he argues we need first to affirm Canada's political culture of civility. "In turn, for civility to thrive, we must look anew to the ends of popular culture and communications in this country". By civility Griffiths means "an attitude of respect and consideration in dealings among private citizens, in relations between state and society, and not least in the relations of individuals and the state to the natural environment and to other peoples." Without civility, that is the capacity to listen and respond to others and the environment, we will descend into chaos and violence. The loss of civility in Canada is seen as having a fracturing effect on Canadian society. When experiences are shared, it is argued that people know one another and security is enhanced. It is imperative that alternate social and political structures for the expression of community be designed without delay to secure Canada's future. The case is made to seek a future cast in terms of population sovereignty rather that state sovereignty, the latter is the prevailing frame of reference in Canada. A policy in which the people are sovereign is one where civil society has precedence over the state. However, Griffiths argues that for civility and civil society to prevail within Canada, and for that matter internationally, we need to change not only our thinking but the capabilities we bring to bear in defence of sovereignty.
Almost thirty years ago in Montreal on May 18, 1966 Robert McNamara made a similar point in a highly controversial speech he delivered to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. McNamara served as secretary of defence for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He quotes passages from his 1966 speech in his recently published memoirs: In Retrospect: the tragedy and lessons of Vietnam. "There is among us ... a tendency to think of our security problem as being exclusively a military problem. I disagree. A nation can reach the point at which it does not buy more security for itself by buying more military hardware, and we are at that point [in 1966]."
The challenge remains to stimulate a meaningful debate on this issue such that public policies reflect a shift toward enhancing civility within and among states so that defence spending declines significantly and a stable peace ensues.
Judith Maxwell has drawn the attention of Canadians to the necessity to focus on the social deficit associated with economic policies rather than the financial deficit per se. A review of some of Maxwell's recent speeches which elaborate this view is given in The Globe and Mail (Feb. 11, 1995). Current political policies in many Canadian provinces and the federal government increasingly focus on financial deficit reduction.
Day and Klein (1987) ask some very pertinent questions regarding welfare. For example, is the responsibility for the provision and production of welfare by the state synonymous with the production of welfare by the state? To what extent should, or can, the welfare state be replaced by the regulatory state? What are the implications of replacing public production of welfare services by the public regulation of producers? They acknowledge the criticism of the left and right that the Welfare State is excessively bureaucratic, paternalistic and ineffective. They go on to make the case that we should be asking how best to make sure that the appropriate kind of service, whether public or private, is being produced, to the right specifications of quality, at the right price in the right place for the right people.
These excellent questions anticipated the more general and vitally important question: Why do some democratic governments succeed and others fail?. Of course, this requires commentary on the term 'fail'. Putnam has been struggling with this important question for many years and in 1993, he published Making Democracy Work. In this theoretical text, which includes detailed supporting empirical evidence, he examined the performance of Italy's 20 regions since the inauguration of regional governance in 1970. Morlino (1995) has reviewed the work and identifies Putnam's clear, strong, and provocative hypothesis that differences in the present-day institutional performance of the various regions of Italy can be traced to differences in patterns of civic engagement that extend back to the early Middle Ages. Putnam's key question that guided his work is: what are the conditions for creating strong, responsive, effective representative institutions? Interviews, survey data and statistical measures of institutional performance complement an experiment to test government responsiveness to citizen inquiries and case studies of institutional policies and regional planning, as well as detailed analysis of legislation produced by the 20 regions over the last two decades. In total, Putnam offers a good example of applied social research to address one of the most pressing and important questions of the age concerning the organization of the state and its impact on the human condition. This work builds on the long tradition in political economy which embraces the works of de Tocqueville, whose classic study written after his visit to the United States in the 1830's stressed the close connection between the mores of a society and its political practices. He asserted that civic associations reinforce the trust and habits of the heart that are necessary conditions for stable and effective democratic institutions to function. Thus going beyond Mill's institutional design approach to democracy that sought to identify the institutional forms most favourable to effective representative government. An alternate school of thought, which sought to explain the performance of democratic institutions, focused on the impact of socioeconomic factors. Aristotle, for example, argued that social development and economic well-being enhanced the prospects for effective democracy, and cultural factors have also been involved to explain performance and this has a most respectable lineage stemming to Plato.
The point has been made by Bell (1984, p. 49) that in the case of the U.S., a state in the Hegelian sense has never existed as there was "... no unified, rational will expressed in a political order but only individual self-interest and a passion for liberty. In every European nation (with the partial exception of Britain), the state ruled over society, exercising a unitary or quasi-unitary power enforced by an army and a bureaucracy." In answer to the question: What is the distinguishing feature of the United States and one that has been its strength throughout its history? Bell (1984) strongly asserts that it is simply that the United States has been a completed civil society (to use Hegel's definition), perhaps the only one in political history, but he acknowledged that Hegel considered that England, as a bourgeois nation, exemplified the idea of civil society following the German term bürgerliche Gesellschalft as the translation for civil society. However, the United States never had such a complex and profound social order as exists in England in the symbolism of the monarchy,the strength of the landed classes, the centrality of an established church, the desire of the bourgeoisie to join the gentry, the weight of the Establishment, and the lure of titles and honours. As Bell succinctly puts it, the basic fact is that England was a society in which a hereditary social order dominated the political and economic orders. Hutton (1995) has made the case that this long established social order is a root cause of contemporary social, economic and political ills in contemporary Britain.
STRENGTHENING DEMOCRACY THROUGH VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS
Membership by citizens in voluntary social groups or associations that were not just political or commercial but serious, futile, and infinitely varied much impressed de Tocqueville as he travelled across the United States some 150 years ago. Through such associations, citizens learned how to accomplish things jointly. The phenomenon of voluntary association, free of control, direction, or motivation by government or titled individual, was absent in Europe. Recently, especially in the 1950s according to Zinberg (1994) there has been a widespread study of voluntarism by social scientists in the U.S.A. and even Barber, in his book of the mid-eighties, recounts anecdotal evidence of the individual who is so much involved as a volunteer in the local P.T.A., Little League, Elks, girl scouts and the like that she does not have time for politics! If this is not political activity then what is? Putnam (1995) however, provides depressing empirical evidence that shows a marked decline in voluntary participation. "The PTA is down by 60 per cent ... the animal clubs [!]-the Moose, Elks, Lions (once all-male strongholds) stopped growing in the 1970's. Further participation in a social event with a neighbour declined by 50 per cent and attendance at a political party meeting by almost 60 per cent. Union membership is down." In Putnam's language people are "bowling alone", individualism is the norm on a massive scale. This apparent isolationist trend has perhaps been impelled, not only by the long work days of males and females, but by the explosion of new technologies, for example, T.V., tapes, CD's, VCR's and audio-visual cameras have turned homes into entertainment centers. Zinberg (1994) makes the most important point that: "Now another giant leap is occurring through the use of the Internet, the electronic network, that is ultimately likely to be the most revolutionary of all behaviour-modifying technologies." The so-called community of Internet users does not involve eye-to-eye or face-to-face contact.
INFORMATION AND INTERNET ETC-ENVIRONMENTAL MATTERS
Kapica alerts us to the possibility that the Net will soon achieve gridlock, and at the current rate of growth, this unfortunate situation could occur before the turn of the century. The so-called father of the Internet, Vincent Cerf, advised the Internet Society at a meeting in Honolulu in June 1995 that the volume of traffic had reached dangerous measure. The time to download will continue to grow as overloaded servers take longer to deal with the vast quantities of data. Perhaps the cable T.V. companies and providers of fibre-optic lines will provide technology to overtake the slow telephone wires. Technological problems are of course propounded by legal issues of copyright and protection of information, as well as financial matters regarding the distribution of costs and benefits among producers and consumers, as well as taxation questions. Producers can deftly move their sites to jurisdictions with lax regulatory systems to avoid regulation and local taxes.
The value of computers lies in their ability to help organize raw data into a form that can be used to solve problems by converting information into knowledge, to use the terms of Young (1993) in his monograph on Computers in a Sustainable Society. However, there is considerable controversy about the precise definition of knowledge and its place in sustaining human development. The lack of consensus, as well as the inequitable distribution of computing resources, hardly serves to encourage open exchange of information among citizens. With the increase in access to computers via cheap Internet systems it is not unreasonable to expect that, by the turn of the century, computers will be as familiar to citizens as telephones are today.
In 1994, the Ontario Government introduced a piece of imaginative environmental legislation: The Environmental Bill of Rights. This Bill allows citizens inter alia to comment on permits, licences and levels of pollution and to seek redress through the office of the Environmental Commissioner. One important feature of this legislation is the creation of an Environmental Registry which contains data on permits, licences etc., and this registry is accessible to citizens using computer terminals and telephone modem linkages. The basic purpose of the Bill is to inform and empower citizens, to give individuals responsibilities and to allow the growth of an informed civil society in which volunteer groups and Non-Government Organizations (N.G.O.'s) have influence over public policy especially with respect to environmental concerns. This project in Ontario is in the initial phase of development.
On a much larger scale, mention can be made of the Green Web computer-based project which is being managed by the Regional Environmental Centre in Budapest as part of an initiative to develop N.G.O.'s in ten central and eastern European Countries and the three Baltic States. The N.G.O.'s are focusing on environmental matters within the context of an overall initiative to create functioning civil societies in this part of Europe. The Regional Environmental Centre is an independent, non-advocacy, not-for-profit foundation. It was established in 1990 by Hungary, the United States, and the Communion of the European Communities (E-mail address: pepe@fs2.bp.rec.hu). Beneficiary countries of the REC are Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The mission of the REC is to promote public participation in environmental decision-making. The REC primarily supports non-governmental, grass-roots organizations,but also co-operates with local authorities, national governments, academic institutions, the media and the private sector. Among other activities, presentations and workshops are offered to facilitate the role of NGO's in civil society in the context of promoting public participation in environmental decision-making.
Young (1993) asserts that computers may soon be more numerous in the United States than cars, which have been perhaps the country's most dominant cultural artifact to date, and it is worth noting that such development is likely to increase the propensity for a society of strangers to become ever more prevalent. Individuals may be connected electronically but remain unknown to each other: This is the phenomenon recognized by Ignatieff (1984) among others as being so detrimental to the creation and maintenance of a civil society which ideally seeks to promote joint response and responsibility to shared problems.
In 1986, environmentalists in the United States won a long battle and the Emergency Planning and Right-to-Know Act was proclaimed. This act created the world's most comprehensive national pollution database-the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). This inventory includes information on toxic chemicals released to the air, land and water for about 24,000 U.S. industrial facilities each year. In the early nineties, approximately 80,000 reporting forms have been filed each year and made available to citizens who wish to be aware of pollution events. The data are collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state pollution agencies.
A Canadian National Pollution Release Inventory is being developed which is modelled on the TRI, but it should be noted that the right of citizens to see data is currently under debate. In the European Union a toxic reports system was discussed in 1994 without resolution. These initiatives follow "... the spirit of Agenda 21, the blueprint for global environmental co-operation agreed upon by all United Nations members at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which recognized the concept of community right-to-know and recommended that all nations move to establish TRI-style pollution tracing systems" (Young 1993, p. 18).
A good example of a public right-to-know computer-based data set is provided by RTKNET based in Washington, D.C. Two non-profit organizations, OMB Watch and the Unison Institute jointly operate the system. Over 800 users have on-line access to the TRI data base which Young (1993) claims was not previously being made available on-line at low or zero cost.
Overall, Young (1993) concludes that computers are unlikely to be a force for strengthening participatory democracy unless appropriate public policies that govern their evolution and application are put into place. The definition of such policies is not elaborated upon, but clearly it has to include procedures for dealing with matters of confidentiality and right-to-know as well as access costs and technical specifications regarding the accuracy of data. Whether public policies can be designed to encourage greater use of computer data bases and heightened responsibility of citizens to participate in collective choice is a moot point.
The concept of technological citizenship has been introduced by Frankenfeld (1992). As the conscious amplification of human capacity, he asserts that technology can enhance citizenship which focuses on equality of rights and obligations legitimized and enforced by a polity. The goals of such citizenship are to aid in achieving autonomy, dignity and assimilation. Waters (1993), commenting on this work, notes that assimilation is the condition that seeks to bond individuals with their fellow humans and with their built world. Technological citizenship combines these concepts and is an attempt to reconcile the rights of the individual to be protected from technology's potential harm with the rights of technologists to innovate. The reconciliation of individual rights and communal obligations remains as the key to successful functioning civil societies. Technological citizenship identifies four rights: 1. The right to knowledge or information; 2. The right to participation; 3. The right to guarantees of informed consent; 4. The right to some form of limitation on the degree of environmental hazard where the environment is defined in the broadest possible sense.
Some have argued that computers will enhance opportunities for citizens to participate in complex collective choice decisions. Waters (1993) reminds us that citizenship, as it is normally defined, involves obligations that require informed consent and autonomous thought as well as a certain degree of civic literacy. The ability to gain access to computer-based data sets and communications systems can potentially enhance citizenship. While connections among individuals via Internet allow information to be exchanged, questions to be posed and answers to be sought, it is also clear that there is an opportunity cost as time for group activity decreases. The consequences may be profound as social isolation becomes more pronounced. Putnam (1995) argues that being socially connected yields benefits for individuals and society. In summary, it is good for your health. Mortality risk is halved by membership of a group and membership of two groups is doubly beneficial. Further, voluntarism cuts crime as Jane Jacobs has argued using the notion of eyes on the street as the preferred means to protect property and person as opposed to the introduction of more regulations, codes and policing. "Increasing PTA involvement in schools is more effective in improving the quality of education than increasing teachers' salaries by 10 per cent ... and also ... Living on a block where people go to church, even if you do not go, means you will hear about jobs ... and economic opportunities are enhanced." Zinberg (1994).
COMMUNITARIANISM-BRIEF COMMENTS IN PASSING
On March 13,1995 Amitai Etzioni delivered the second Times/Demos lecture in London on the topic of Communitarianism. Demos is a recently established, privately funded research centre that is looking at new political solutions for contemporary social problems. In essence, Etzioni argued that our civic house is in disorder and he proposed a series of initiatives, that characterize communitarianism, that will allow it to be put back into order. Communitarians are defined as: "People committed to creating a new moral, social and public order based on reshaped communities,without allowing puritanism or oppression." (The Economist 1995, Jan. 6, p. 65)
The Economist (1995) has taken a hard look at the communitarian movement and remarks that while "... the widening popularity of communitarian ideas is entirely unsurprising ... but if you read Mr. Etzioni's words more carefully ... that first suffusion of warmth starts to fade." For example, the meaning of community is never made clear; it could mean almost any kind of grouping, and while rivalries are likely to be the norm among communities it is far from evident how the movement deals with such actions. If, as some communitarians appear to suggest, consensus is always out there waiting to be discovered then there is hardly any need for constitutional protection of rights, separated powers, limited government and so forth. If only we can discover this elusive consensus which all too often is a chimera as I elaborate in the chapter-An overview of Consensus in Massam (1993).
Those philosophers and political scientists who have been categorized as 'High Communitarians' by The Economist, for example, Sandel, Taylor, Lasch and MacIntyre, go further than the 'Low Communitarians' like Etzioni by not only stressing the failures of western society but by arguing that the wide-scale adoption of liberal values in the west contributed to the mess we are now in. The High Communitarians argue that "What the human spirit craves most ... is not autonomy and self-determination, but a settled place in the world. By celebrating the individual and subordinating society to his [sic] imagined needs, liberal thinking breaks the ties that bind society; this makes the true needs of mankind [sic] impossible to fulfil". (The Economist 1995, p. 67)
Kelly (1995) recently interviewed Etzioni and makes the somewhat flippant remark that: "listening to Etzioni it becomes clear why this avuncular man has been referred to as a slippery Santa Claus and his ideas described as more difficult to pin down than custard".
The recent review by Moore Milroy (in press) of Etzioni's book: The Spirit of Community: rights, responsibilities and the communitarian agenda (1993), [and four other books on civility] concludes that Etzioni is looking for new members for the communitarian movement, that is a movement that will "... do for the commons what the environmental and women's movements have done for their causes .... The text is a string of ill-chosen phrases and uncorroborated claims ... Frankly, we should let professor Etzioni quietly bury this book."
HEALTH-AN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF HUMAN PROGRESS
Life expectancy in European countries since the Second World War has shown steady improvement but in the 1960's life expectancy in the centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe levelled off and in some cases began to fall. Hertzman et. al. (1990) have examined the variety of social and physical environments in different countries in central and eastern Europe, and they draw attention to the signs of demoralization of Hungarians and loss of control over their destiny, with concomitant adverse effects on health status. In stark and stunning contrast are the astonishing statistics showing improvements in longevity and general health in Japan over the last three or four decades while recognizing their expenditures of 2% and 4% less of GNP on health care than Canada and the U.S.A.
At a global scale of analysis it is clear that a nation's GNP per capita strongly correlates with life expectancy, and as the distribution within a state becomes more equitable there are positive consequences. The education and support of women and children is especially significant if it is bolstered by the cultural and social environment as well as public policies. Social support networks serve as highly significant elements in determining the health of individuals in a population. Such networks can extend beyond the family, to embrace informal associations which complement direct intervention by the state or the market. The effective functioning civil society celebrates informal associations as long as they contribute to the overall improvement in the quality of life for all.
Control by individuals acting as individuals,through non-state institutions as well as via the interests of the market and the state is perhaps the single most important explanatory variable in determining personal health, security and ultimately the success of a democracy. But, of course, it should be obvious we are not dealing with a dichotomous variable, neither one which can be measured on an ordinal or ratio scale, rather a congeries of necessary conditions which acting in toto serve to enhance the opportunities for effective citizen participation to yield a decent civil outcome.
CIVIL SOCIETY IS NOT A UTOPIAN DREAM
Civil society should not be viewed as an end or a utopian dream for such a vision as cited by Dahrendorf (1958, p. 103) can be very misleading. Dahrendorf claims that "all utopias from Plato's Republic to George Orwell's Brave New World of 1984 have one element in common: They are all societies from which change is absent ... the social fabric of utopias does not, and perhaps cannot, recognize the unending flow of historical processes." Robertson (1984) goes further and argues that the ideal world is a perpetuum immobile predicated on an assumption of consensus and stability. Unfortunately the real world falls far short of this ideal, and hence the widespread appeal to re-find, re-invent, or create the necessary contracts and covenants which are implicit in citizenship and civil society if they are to serve to ameliorate the human condition, not just through regulatory and interventionist policies and practices, but more subtly yet no less significantly through aesthetic and cultural dimensions of existence which provide reasons, explanation and purpose for individuals.
Hall (1995) claims that civil society has attracted public attention by attempts to establish decency in societies where it had most conspicuously been absent, namely those states now included in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the three Baltic States. Wood (1990) clearly recognized that "The strongest impulse [for the assertion of state-civil society distinction] is now undoubtedly coming from Eastern Europe, where civil society has become a major weapon in the ideological arsenal of opposition forces against state oppression" (p. 64).
Invoked as part of the struggle by Solidarity in Poland against the Polish party-state civil society can be seen as the opposite of despotism. Taylor (1995) suggests that within this context civil society can be viewed as a web of autonomous associations, independent of the state, which binds citizens together in matters of common concern, and by their mere existence or action can have a positive effect on public policy. Some subscribe to the view that western liberal democracies have functioning civil societies. Empirical evidence as provided by Putnam (1995) and Hutton (1995), for example, clearly indicates the partial truth of this claim where the state it must be acknowledged is understood in much more complex terms than Weberian ones as the agency with the monopoly of physical force. Individuals in those states outside centralist-states do not necessarily find themselves in a society which can be characterized as civil per se. Further that the banner of civil society has been raised in very different worlds. The collection of essays in Hall's book are for the most part positive with respect to the usefulness of the term civil society, though attempts "... to specify and delineate with greater care, to go beyond the essentially negative view of civil society as societal self-organization as opposition to the state" are undertaken by analyzing particular societies rather than the esoteric abstract writings of the likes of Ferguson, Hegel and Gramsci. Keane's (1984, 1988) reviews of the term civil society drawing on views of the eighties included the implicit assumption that communism would fall from the forces of popular uprisings in the form of voluntary civil associations. This has not occurred. Further, that the collapse of the western liberal democracies, especially in the post-war period and particularly in the Soviet Union and its satellites, as well as military dictatorship elsewhere, recognize the full force and input of the powerful state when power is routinely exercised by militia and agencies of surveillance, secrecy and propaganda.
Gellner (1994) claims that the most significant difference between totalitarian ideologies, for example, communism and western liberalism is the existence of the civil society with its so-called voluntary associations like trade unions, political parties, religious, pressure and lobby groups and clubs which fill the space between the family and the state. While Gellner (1994) recognized that under communism in Central and Eastern Europe civil society was repressed he suggests that it is being encouraged to grow and prosper and the early signs for success are good.
Practical steps that are being taken to encourage civil society in CEE are provided by the Civic Education Project referred to earlier. And with respect to environmental management the creation of the Regional Environment Centre in Budapest is to teach citizens how to establish and run effective N.G.O.'s to assert citizen's views about environmental matters on those agencies of the state that formulate public policies and pass laws to enforce such policies.
While it is true to a certain extent that the web of autonomous associations does exist in western states, it has been noted by Taylor (1995), for example, that states like Sweden, Holland and Germany among many others have integrated in varying degrees trade unions, employers' associations and the like into government planning. The degree to which negotiations among labour, management and government occur is hard to grasp in quantitative terms, but it is clear that in some states in recent times, for example, the United Kingdom under Thatcher and USA under Reagan,that social consensus was being radically reshaped with, or as a result, that civil society was and is being threatened as the critical servo-mechanism or thermostat for ensuring consensus and legitimacy as manifest by sustainable, stable systems of interacting parts, to use a simplistic analogue from science.
If the dynamism of capitalism, which is not in itself a corrupting force is to be harnessed to the common good then Hutton (1995) argues that a set of feasible and achievable reforms are required in the specific case of the United Kingdom. A written constitution is needed and democratization of civil society must be brought about. Republicanisation of finance is required and recognition that the market economy has to be managed and regulated, both at home and abroad. Also it is vital to uphold a welfare state that incorporates social citizenship and works toward the construction of a stable, international order beyond the nation state.
A civil society may be a necessary condition for sustainable development,but it must be complemented by a set of practices and institutional frameworks that link the voluntary association to families, economic units, regions, districts, townships and other de facto and de jure units within the state, and beyond. A linkage with other states to handle mutually shared problems and opportunities, comparative advantage issues and trans-boundary flows is clearly vital. For example, ozone depletion,global warming, global currency markets and refugee policies, all require management and regulation that is beyond the capacity of the civil society in a single territorial defined state working in isolation from a functioning international system of states of the real or phantom variety.
Such an essay as I offer here does not lend itself to a neat and definitive conclusion on the definition or the practical utility of the term civil society. However it is my view that this term has the potential to capture the imagination of those who wish to engage citizens in the task of taking responsibility for individual and collective needs. Without such active engagement of individuals it is difficult to envisage any way of implementing legitimate control of resources such that the needs of our species will be handled reasonably, decently and with civility. To engage in civil discourse is more than a plea to seek the rational outcome by replicable, traceable formal instrumental procedures. Rather it is to undertake and participate in an active covenant that as homo sapiens we cannot avoid. It is the responsibility of social scientists, among others, to excite debate on civil society, for to avoid doing so is to ignore some of the fundamental elements of modernity which touch on freedom, responsibility and social order.
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