48 Philosophical Frames
the socioeconomic requirements of democracy (compared to the inflation
of opinions on a “cultural” basis), on the costs of that transition (in terms
of priorities, sacrifices, etc.) and on the time span involved (in terms of the
stages of that transition, the accumulation of its necessary and sufficient
conditions and measures, etc.).
e second observation concerns the dominant state/society Th
relationship. Here we suffer a double confusion. One is the confusion
between the state—i.e., the institutional forms of political society—on the
one hand, and the transient political regime/system in place in a specific
historical moment on the other. The second confusion is the one between
society and civil society, i.e., between the general forms of human social
organization on a specific territory, including its state, and the sum total
of autonomous collectivities and forms of voluntary associations within
society that have in common their autonomy vis-à-vis the state.
s a weak state always a guarantee of a strong civil society? What I
effect does a weak state have on the cohesion and integration of society
in general; any society, that is? Can we maintain the claim that Western
democracies are distinguished by weak states? If we take the extreme
example of liberalism in politics and economics, can we safely say that the
United States of America is a weak state/government? Conversely, are all
dictatorships characterized by “strong” states; and what does that precisely
mean? Finally, does the weakening of the state always lead to an expansion
of the public sphere and of civil society and consequently to the progress
toward democracy?
uch questions, and other similar ones, need to be seriously S
addressed in the intellectual production concerning democratization in
the countries of the “South.” This is not the place to deal with this matter
in detail. Nevertheless, we might content ourselves with noting that the
state plays, in many countries of the South as it had played in the his-
torical experience of the countries of the North, an important—at times
primordial—role in the cohesion and integration of society as a whole. In
that case, the weakening of the state, or its breakup, may be tantamount to
the breakup of society itself rather than the construction of a strong civil
society or the progress toward democracy.
e U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is a tragic illustration of that problem. Th
During that war, the semiplanned, semispontaneous (read: anarchic)