Proponents of the civil society argument cannot have it both ways. If civil society is to be "strong," it must be strong in defense of citizens' interests, whether those spring from "salient social cleavages" or mere personal taste.[19] Within the broader civil society argument, as we have seen, there seem to be two centers of gravity concerning civil society's relationship to the state and influence upon it. In both cases proponents of a strong civil sector emphasize its autonomy from partisan or electoral politics, though such autonomy is said to be crucial for opposite reasons. The version of the argument that we have called "Civil Society II" focuses on civil society as a counterweight to the state. In [End Page 45] contexts of democratic transition, in particular, where established political parties have been repressed, weakened, or used as tools by the authoritarian state, autonomy from traditional politics seems to be a prerequisite for oppositional advocacy. In such contexts, civil society is treated as an autonomous sphere of social power within which citizens can pressure authoritarians for change, protect themselves from tyranny, and democratize from below.
If civil society is a beachhead secure enough to be of use in thwarting tyrannical regimes, what prevents it from being used to undermine democratic governments? To the extent that civil associations are strong, they challenge governing institutions to meet particular needs, aspirations, and conceptions of the common good. Established interests may lock up social resources and block society's ability to meet the demands of the dispossessed (as in the southern United States up to the advent of the civil rights movement in the 1960s); social blocs may form, each with its own panoply of associations, to battle one another for control of the state (as in contemporary Lebanon or the "plural states" of Western Europe before the political settlements of the nineteenth century); political forces may forge powerful ties with community organizations and civil associations, polarizing society and at times threatening the "order" that incumbents so cherish (as in post World War II Italy and contemporary El Salvador). To understand the role of civil society in the modern world, we must discern how and under what circumstances a society's organized components contribute to political strength or political failure.
Like the analysts of the "Civil Society II" camp, however, Robert Putnam wants to make generalizations about civil society as a whole and under any circumstances. In his analyses of Italy and the United States, Putnam argues that civil society augments, rather than offsets, the state's capacity to govern. Consistent with the "Civil Society I" argument, Putnam focuses attention on the cultural and organizational benefits that citizen participation in civil associations holds for a democratic state. Implicit in his account, however, is the fear that if such associations follow too closely the pattern of divisive political solidarities, they may well sharpen social cleavages and actually undermine the capacity for effective governance. Consequently, he appears reluctant to count among his "civil associations" any that advance a cause, pursue policy change as their central vocation, or provoke conflict. In so doing Putnam, too, seems to want it both ways. He clearly wants an activated and engaged populace, and he argues that the socialization performed by civil associations is vital to the creation of such an engaged citizenry. Yet in the end only those associations qualify that invoke a civic transcendence whose spirit claims to "rise above" the divisiveness of protracted sociopolitical and cultural conflict. This solution to the dilemma threatens to render the argument circular, but it is troubling in more [End Page 46] than theory, for it seems to fly in the face of Putnam's own evidence and of the experience of Western democracies with social movements. Indeed, the arguments presented by Sidney Tarrow and by Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens make a forceful case for viewing social movements--that is to say, the organized mobilization of groups along social cleavages--as the central bearers of democratizing pressures within Western democracies.[20]
Our purpose here is not to repeat those arguments. Instead, we maintain that the civil society argument as it is commonly presented is partial at best and seriously misleading at worst. In many respects, it presupposes precisely the sort of political peace that it imagines civil society providing. Where emphasis is placed on the ability of civil society to oppose a tyrannical state, its ability to oppose a democratic one is either ignored outright or countered with qualifications that themselves undermine the power of the civil society argument gener-ally.[21] When emphasis is placed on the formation of "habits of the heart" conducive to cooperation and collective action, as it is in Robert Putnam's argument, the mechanisms by which such "microsocial" effects translate into "macropolitical" outcomes are weakly specified or contradictory or both. [22]
What is missing in both cases is the political variable. At a minimum, this "political variable" must include both the political associations that play important roles in any society and the work of political compromise, restraint, and accommodation necessary for reconciling competing interests in a peaceful and more or less orderly way. More generally, the political variable includes the prevailing "political settlement" that governs who plays, the rules of the game, and acceptable outcomes. Numerous examples from recent history show that such settlements are the work of political parties and of the best-financed, and often best-armed, elements of civil society.
The arrangements forged in such political settlements do not come easily, and when they do come they may well represent a betrayal of the trust that civil society placed in politicians and political parties, and in a deliberate or circumstantial dampening of social demands and expectations, as many of the recent experiments in "democratization" demonstrate. Here social movements may play a crucial role, and not only in "new" democracies, by taking up neglected or repressed demands and pushing the political system to engage forgotten or marginalized sectors and issues. [End Page 47]
That role, of course, is by no means unambiguous, any more than is that of the rest of civil society.[23] Social movements may represent an armed and paranoiac vision of civic responsibility (the militia movement in the United States is an example) or a retreat from social responsibility beyond the immediate group (as in the case of certain religious movements). Their efforts may start or break down in violence as frustration mounts in the face of an unresponsive political system or a repressive state. Yet they also build trust and habits of cooperation and civic action among their members. Where the political system is even minimally responsive, they can boost the vitality of civil and political society by mobilizing people and stimulating debate. In short, decidedly political associations may well play the roles attributed to civil associations in the civil society argument, and may play them better.[24]
What role organized groups in civil society will play, we would argue, depends crucially on the larger political setting. As Michael Walzer puts it, "there is no escape from power and coercion, no possibility of choosing, like the old anarchists, civil society alone." What Walzer calls "the paradox of the civil society argument" is that a democratic civil society seems to require a democratic state, and a strong civil society seems to require a strong and responsive state. The strength and responsiveness of a democracy may depend upon the character of its civil society, as Putnam argues, reinforcing both the democratic functioning and the strength of the state. But such effects depend on the prior achievement of both democracy and a strong state.[25]
Where the state is unresponsive, its institutions are undemocratic, or its democracy is ill designed to recognize and respond to citizen demands, the character of collective action will be decidedly different than under a strong and democratic system. Citizens will find their efforts to organize for civil ends frustrated by state policy--at some times actively repressed, at others simply ignored. Increasingly aggressive forms of civil association will spring up, and more and more ordinary citizens will be driven into either active militancy against the state or self-protective apathy. The breakdown of the tutelary democracies and authoritarian states of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s attests to what more than one observer has euphemistically called "the dangers of excluding reformists from power." In such settings, all of civil life may become polarized, as Samuel P. Huntington pointed out long ago (though the solutions he advocated proved elusive); and even Putnam's choral societies and bowling leagues--even nuns and bishops!--may become "subversive."[26]
