Beyond Strong and Weak: Rethinking Postdictatorship Civil Societies

Abstract

What is the impact of dictatorships on postdictatorial civil societies? Bottom-up theories suggest that totalitarian dictatorships destroy civil society while authoritarian ones allow for its development. Top-down theories of civil society suggest that totalitarianism can create civil societies while authoritarianism is unlikely to. This article argues that both these perspectives suffer from a one-dimensional understanding of civil society that conflates strength and autonomy. Accordingly we distinguish these two dimensions and argue that totalitarian dictatorships tend to create organizationally strong but heteronomous civil societies, while authoritarian ones tend to create relatively autonomous but organizationally weak civil societies. We then test this conceptualization by closely examining the historical connection between dictatorship and civil society development in Italy (a posttotalitarian case) and Spain (a postauthoritarian one). Our article concludes by reflecting on the implications of our argument for democratic theory, civil society theory, and theories of regime variation.

Social trust and grassroots governance in rural China

“…37 Yet, many other scholars emphasize the role of nondemocratic rule. 38 A defining characteristic of the Communist rule is the absorption and destruction of social groups. Through political campaigns like the Cultural Revolution, peasants in China have been torn from their lineages and even direct families, and the atomized masses are the easy subjects of mobilization by the party-state.…”

Social Movements and Democracy in Spain: Review of Democracia, dignidad y movimientos sociales. El surgimiento de la cultura cívica y la irrupción de los «indignados» en la vida pública. Rubén Díez y Enrique Laraña

“…Therefore, it is not surprising that the 15M was a movement central to the democratic dynamics under austerity. As such, several authors note that one of the main features of Spanish politics is the autonomy between protest movements and institutional politics (Fishman, 2012;Flesher Fominaya, 2007;Riley & Fernández, 2014). In line with these contributions, Díez and Laraña point out that the transition to democracy opened the space for autonomous movements to develop.…”

Creating Organisational Strength from Operationalising Restrictions: Welfare Non-profit Organisations in the Russian Federation

“…Riley and Fernandez's (2014) propose that path-dependent influences of past regime arrangements shape civil society. Specifically, they highlight how the past impacts civil society arrangements in post-dictatorial contexts, many of which are now characterised as hybrid regimes (Riley and Fernández 2014). In such contexts, NPOs might lack autonomy from the state to be Politicalto shape policy, either locally or nationally, to challenge the status quo, or effectively hold state authorities to account.…”

“…But they still have organisational strength, that is to say, political power to influence how policy is deployed and to negotiate the associated networks therein. As such, they can still contribute to society both by providing welfare services (often their core mission) and also by facilitating good (if not necessarily democratic) governance (Riley and Fernández 2014).…”

“…getting individuals to do civil society thus to engage with them (Vorbrugg 2015)], in this paper, we are primarily concerned with external activities of such organisations. We draw on Riley and Fernández (2014) who suggest the need to distinguish between organisational strength and organisational autonomy. The post-dictatorial context of Italy and Spain indicates that democratic reforms do not automatically lead to NPO autonomy and that they can remain heteronomous (i.e.…”