Nancy L. Rosenblum And Robert C. Post
Princeton University, 2002

Civil Society and Government brings together an unprecedented array of political, ethical, and religious perspectives to shed light on the complex and much-debated relationship between civil society and the state. Some argue that civil society is a bulwark against government; others see it as an indispensable support for government. Civil society has been portrayed both as a independent of the state and as dependent upon it. This book reveals the extraordinary diversity of views on the subject by examining how civil society has been treated in classical liberalism, liberal egalitarianism, critical theory, feminism, natural law, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Confucianism.

The volume draws on the work of eminent scholars to address six questions: In terms of function and consequences, does it matter where the line is drawn between civil society and the state? What is the relationship of civil society to the state? In what contexts and under what conditions should government interact with individuals directly or instead indirectly through communal associations? What are the prerogatives and duties of citizenship, and what is the role of civil society in forming good citizens? How should a society handle the conflicts that sometimes arise between the demands of citizenship and those of membership in the non-governmental associations of civil society?

Reviews

Overall, there is nothing like this book that I know of. The contributors approach the question of the nature and place of civil society from within the most important contextual understandings of the major philosophical, ethical, and religious positions available in the world. This is a book that brings together material from an unusually wide range of perspectives on an important topic. The scholarship is first-rate--one profits from reading the footnotes as well as the text."--Tracy Strong, University of California, San Diego