Independent and Broader Civil Society in East-Central European Democratizations

Civil society is generally considered to be a major factor in the breakdowns of the communist regimes in East-Central Europe and their subsequent democratic consolidation, but scarce attention has been paid to the specific characteristics of this social domain in state socialist settings. This essay proposes to distinguish two different types of civil society in the communist polities. Independent civil society corresponds to standard Western notions of civil society as an autonomous sphere of associational life between state and family. The so-called broader civil society encompasses associational structures controlled by the communist state that form the infrastructure of what will become component parts of a standard civil society once transition to democracy occurs. Broader civil societies in state socialist countries can be decomposed into several segments that differ from each other in the nature of their relationship to the regime. It is claimed that broader civil society structures are more important for the consolidation of civil societies after 1989 than independent civil society.