Civil Society and Political Theory

In this major contribution to contemporary political theory, Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato argue that the concept of civil society articulates a contested terrain in the West that could become a primary locus for the expansion of democracy and rights. In recent years, "civil society" has become the catchall term used to invoke everything that totalitarian governments suppress, yet it has a curiously ambiguous status in liberal democracies. To some, it indicates simply what the West already has and lacks any critical potential with regard to the injustices and dysfunctions of democratic society. To others, it is a holdover from early forms of political philosophy that are irrelevant to modern complex societies. Civil Society and Political Theory challenges both of these views. Its thorough, cogent analysis demonstrates the modernity and the normative/critical relevance of the concept to all types of contemporary societies. The book is in three parts. Part I reviews the dramatic reemergence of the discourse of civil society in Europe and Latin America and provides a history of the concept that takes Hegel's masterful synthesis as its starting point. Part II analyzes four modern critiques of the concept in the work of Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck, Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, and Niklas Luhmann. Part III offers a reconstruction of the concept of civil society based in part on Habermas's discourse ethics. Its four theoretical chapters form a bridge between theory and politics, answering the critiques of part II and focusing on the key roles of social movements and civil disobedience.