Civil Society and the Collapse of the Weimar Republic

Abstract

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.

Association Membership and Generalized Trust: Are Connections between Associations Losing their Value?

“…In this case, membership is expected to lead individuals to develop 'new' values through interactions with co-members. 2 Given the importance of formal and informal institutions for governing people's behaviour (e.g., North, 1990;Thelen, 1999) and earlier findings linking the institutional environment to the development of specific types of voluntary associations (e.g., Berman, 1997;Schofer & Fourcade-Gourinchas, 2001;Kääriäinen & Lehtonen, 2006), it is surprising that both lines of argument ignore the socio-political and institutional environment within which the individual and the association exist. This is especially injudicious since the nature and internal homogeneity of the voluntary organization that arises in specific contexts, as well as the societal relevance of that group and the issues it stands for, influence members' integration process within the association.…”

Bringing Society Back In: Civil Society, Social Capital and the Third Sector

“…There is no doubt that a strong democracy needs an active citizenry; however, an active citizenry, organized in numerous voluntary organizations and societal based groups, does not lead automatically to strong and lasting democracy, as the failure of the Weimar Republic has clearly proven (Berman 1997).…”

Models of Civil Society and Their Implications for the Northern Ireland Peace Process

“…6 Moreover, Putnam's thesis would seem to have been refined by Berman's work on the Weimar Republic, which found that Germany at this time had a strong associational life but which ultimately ended in a totalitarian dictatorship. It was thus suggested that it was not civil society per se that was important but that it may help if political institutionalisation was strong and be neutral or even a hindrance if political institutionalisation was weak, as happened in Germany (Berman, 1997). In Northern Ireland democratic ideals have been enshrined within the political culture and the political parties, thus ensuring that totalitarian dictatorship was an unlikely outcome.…”