“Evaluate how civil society and democracy mutually reinforce each other.” (2013, 2010)
Liberal theory sees civil society and democracy as a virtuous circle: associations produce democratic citizens, and democratic freedoms allow associations to grow. To evaluate this claim, we need to test both directions of the relationship and ask when the circle turns vicious.
Civil society strengthens democracy
- Schools of citizenship: Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America, 1835/1840) found that Americans’ “art of association” countered both individualism and a centralising state.
- Social capital: Robert D. Putnam (Making Democracy Work, 1993) linked the better performance of northern Italy’s regional governments to dense civic networks, and the south’s weaker performance to their absence.
- Peace between communities: Ashutosh Varshney (Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, 2002) compared matched Indian cities: Calicut, Lucknow and Surat against Aligarh, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The peaceful cities had inter-communal associations, such as business, professional, trade-union and cultural bodies, that restrained polarising politicians.
- Consolidation: Larry Diamond argued that a vibrant civil society matters more for sustaining democracy than for starting it.
Democracy strengthens civil society
- Legal space: associations depend on guaranteed freedoms. Article 19(1)(c) of the Constitution protects the right to form associations, and the courts enforce it.
- Public sphere: Jürgen Habermas showed that the bourgeois public sphere grew with a free press and constitutional liberties. Where these are curbed, public debate is refeudalised: citizens become an audience rather than participants.
- Institutional openings: the 73rd Amendment (1992) created elected panchayats and gram sabhas, which self-help groups, women’s collectives and adivasi organisations now use as platforms. The RTI Act, 2005 gave civil society a tool that civil society itself had demanded.
- Rights create claimants: once T. H. Marshall’s civil, political and social rights are established, they produce new groups who organise to claim them.
The RTI story shows the circle at work. Protest by associations in Rajasthan produced a national law, and the law now equips thousands of citizen activists.
Evaluation: when reinforcement fails
- Bad social capital: Sheri Berman (1997) showed that dense associational life in Weimar Germany helped the Nazis mobilise instead of protecting democracy. This is why Putnam, in Bowling Alone (2000), later distinguished bonding from bridging social capital.
- Hegemony: for Antonio Gramsci, civil society (schools, churches, the press) is where ruling classes secure consent. It can stabilise inequality rather than democratise society.
- Reverse causation: critics of Putnam argue that good government may create civic trust, rather than the other way round.
- Indian qualifications:
- Partha Chatterjee (The Politics of the Governed, 2004) finds rights-based civil society confined to an elite; most people reach the state through political society.
- Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (The Modernity of Tradition, 1967) showed that caste associations democratised politics by mobilising lower castes, yet the same ties also carry exclusion.
- Mutual friction: a democratic state can shrink civic space through funding and surveillance laws. In turn, civil society can bypass representative institutions. André Béteille raised this worry in 2011, denying that the anti-corruption movement was the voice of Indian civil society.
Conclusion
Civil society and democracy reinforce each other conditionally, not automatically. The circle holds when associations bridge communities, stay independent and respect the rules, and when the state protects their freedoms. Where associations are exclusionary or the state is controlling, each erodes the other. The real sociological question is which civil society and what kind of democracy.