Great historical developments always are wrapped up in their own rhetoric, upholding the flow of political slogans, ideological cliches, and philosophical ideas. Until dramatic changes in the communist world occurred in late 1980s and early 1990s, the idea of civil society generally had been forgotten under the pressure of other, more urgent concerns. Despite its deep philosophical roots, it was long believed to have been missing programmatic element. As consequence, the notion of civil society only appeared randomly in the works of political philosophers and historians. It was the developments in Eastern Europe in late 1980s and early 1990s, invigorated by region's vibrant tradition of civil society and strong popular yearning for its highly valued condition of freedom, pluralism, and participation, that endued this concept with new shine of living resonance and evocativeness. (1) Powerful transmogrifications in the socialist world allowed the concept of civil society to reenter political and academic debates. It is not surprising that the concept of civil society provides perspective from which critical analysis of transitional processes can and should be undertaken. The subject is of great importance in view of the rapidly growing awareness that healthy civil society stands as key for democratic stability as well as effective economic institutions. For example, Fukuyama argues that collective values and cultural norms can be major determinants of economic success in different societies.: Putnam, studying civic traditions in Italy, concluded that levels of civic engagement might directly affect economic performance. (3) Most notable, stalled transition reforms throughout Eastern Europe and, to greater extent, in the former Soviet Union raised questions about direct and simple correlation between the free market and economic efficiency. Fran Tonkiss suggests that in the absence of strong civil society, the alternatives faced by transitional countries boil down to a crude choice between unfettered markets and reversion to communism, [because] deregulation and privatization [can] not in themselves insure economic efficiency, let alone political stability or social welfare. (4) As market-related issues began to be discussed more often in relation to and in the context of civil society, the conceptualizing on this subject matter shifted from philosophical and theoretical realms to more prescriptive and policy-oriented domain. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, I suggest that to facilitate deeper inquiry into the programmatic dimension of civil society, which organizes and advances many of the reform measures and current political processes in post-socialist societies, we need to categorize rapidly growing body of literature and distill differences and similarities in the Western and Eastern European tradition of conceptualizing on this issue. As Van Der Zweerde once observed, the empirical reality, the academic concept, and the political slogan of civil society are all part of the same social (5) To take his idea one step further, most effective and productive reform measures should be designed on the basis of the theories that most adequately represent social reality. Second, by critically investigating the chronology and mixed record of reform policies, I hope to demonstrate that despite the strong national(ist) and communitarian tradition in the conceptualization of civil society in Eastern Europe, which emphasizes communal solidarity and trust, many of the market-related and democratic transitional reforms were designed on the basis of Western-type individualist conceptualization of civil society, traditionally privileged by neoliberal orthodoxy. The adverse effect of such strong accentuation on individualism was the erosion of the fragile sense of solidarity, which indigenous tradition attempted to revive in the national form. In this respect, transitional measures orchestrated from the outside by Western advisers and readily adopted by national reformers without careful consideration of the alternatives, represented striking continuity with the Soviet totalitarian project, which aimed at atomization and fragmentation of national societies. …
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Sep 25, 2010
Deborah J Serrien + 1
Open Access
