and respect for human rights (preferably to be imposed by cultural permeation and
persuasion, but nevertheless backed up by economic sanctions, international
courts, and the threat or actuality of physical force) (Model 4 ).
Such extreme diversity and uncertainty in the meaning of the term might be
thought to render ‘‘civil society’’ of little signiWcance as a way of thinking about
how political institutions actually work. Yet this has been very far from being the
case. Since the 1980 s this ancient but long-neglected concept has been rediscovered
and redeployed by political analysts in many parts of the globe. In eastern and
western Europe, in north and south America, and in Africa and Asia, promotion of
the principles of ‘‘civil society’’ has been widely urged as a strategic remedy for
perceived defects in the governance, political cultures, and community structures
of many contemporary states. Unusually, such strategies have won support right
across the political spectrum, in both national and international settings. From
neocommunists through to free-market liberals, from radical activists through to
civic conservatives, and from both proponents and critics of ‘‘globalization,’’ there
has come widespread endorsement of the goals and values deemed to be associated
with ‘‘civil society.’’
This apparent consensus has, nevertheless, largely glossed over the very wide
spectrum of diversity and uncertainty that continues to surround the precise
meaning and wider resonance of the term. Indeed, some commentators who
currently lay claim to the mantle of ‘‘civil society’’ seem quite oblivious of the
fact that, in both the past and the present, the term has been applied to institutions
and strategies often quite diVerent from those which they themselves espouse. The
present article will attempt to trace the historic roots and evolution of the concept
of ‘‘civil society,’’ and will then look at the variety of ways in which it has been
understood in its more recent revival. It will conclude, not by adjudicating on
which account of civil society is the ‘‘correct’’ one, but by attempting to explain why
this resurgence has occurred, and by identifying what (if any) are the underlying
perspectives that theorists and protagonists of the concept have held in common,
across many diVerent epochs, contexts, and cultures.
‘‘Civil society’’ (civitas or societas civilis) Wrst surfaced in the vocabulary
of European politics during the dying years of republican Rome, and was
subsequently to become a standard point of reference in the writings of the classic
Roman jurists. Nevertheless, it is important to recall that the Latin wordsocietas
(not just in Rome, but through many subsequent centuries of post-Roman
European history) did not have the comprehensive macrosociological meaning
that it was to acquire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Asocietasin
Roman law was merely any contract-based ‘‘partnership’’ set up for a particular
purpose. It was an arrangement that might range in size and function from a
marriage partnership between husband and wife, through to a large-scale public or
private enterprise association. The largest and most powerful ‘‘society’’ in Rome or
any other political culture was typically that which existed to manage public aVairs
132 jose harris