Abstract
This chapter looks at many of the issues involved in theorizing civil society. A focus on 'civil society' has permitted institutions such as the World Bank to emphasize the principles as the accountability of the state to its citizens, and the desirability of due process and transparency in all government activity. Civil society was indistinguishable from political society because social life was by its very nature political. The chapter discusses a number of conceptual objections to the term. The current enthusiasm for 'civil society' both as an analytical device to understand why things happen and, more commonly, as an ideal model of political life, leaves much unsaid. The problem with 'civil society' as an analytical concept, or as even as a political ideal, is not that it is undertheorized, but that it is overtheorized.
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