Practically everywhere one looks these days the concept of “civil society” is in vogue. Neo-Tocquevillean scholars argue that civil society plays a role in driving political, social, and even economic outcomes. This new conventional wisdom, however, is flawed. It is simply not true that democratic government is always strengthened, not weakened, when it faces a vigorous civil society. This essay shows how a robust civil society helped scuttle the twentieth century's most critical democratic experiment, Weimar Germany. An important implication of this analysis is that under certain circumstances associationism and the prospects for democratic stability can actually be inversely related. To know when civil society activity will take on oppositional or even antidemocratic tendencies, one needs to ground one's analyses in concrete examinations of political reality. Political scientists should remember that Tocqueville considered Americans' political associations to be as important as their nonpolitical ones, and they should therefore examine more closely the connections between the two under various conditions.

No abstract

In the years since Peter Hall's seminal 1993 article “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning and the State” appeared, the ideational research agenda has expanded enormously, to the point where it now includes everyone from constructivists to rational choice theorists. This article assesses what we have learned about the role of ideas in political life since “Policy Paradigms” appeared, analyzes how well social scientists have taken up the challenges and questions “Policy Paradigms” put forward, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of current ideational scholarship. Based on this, the article concludes that the way forward for ideational scholars must include coming up with clearer, more easily agreed upon definitions of ideational variables, more extensive study of the processes through which ideas become institutionalized and thus able to affect political outcomes over time, and more careful investigations of the ways in which ideas shape or form both actors' motivations and contexts.

No abstract

As a result of the dramatic events of recent years, social scientists have devoted increasing attention to explaining what causes democratization as well as what makes democracies vibrant and successful over the long term. Yet, whereas a generation ago most scholars tackling these issues stressed economic, political, or institutional factors, today societal and cultural variables are in vogue. This article argues that examining societal and cultural variables in isolation from their broader context leaves fundamental questions unanswered and misinterprets some of the most important dynamics of political development. To know whether civil society activity will have positive or negative consequences for democratic development, we need to marry an analysis of societal and cultural factors to the study of political institutions.