Notes on Civil Society

With a systemic view of how government functions, I realize its important to promote the function of each aspect of the state equally. Thinking back on this model we talk about in comparative politics, if we focus too much on the promotion of civil society, (i.e. the inputting of demands, without empowering the state institutions with methods of turning the input into real policy, and then also providing it with a way to deliver the policy back) then the state will simply be overwhelmed and unable to function.

Similarly, if the state is strengthened and endowed with and efficient bureaocracy, but civil society remains isolated and fragmented, then citizens will feel disenfranchised from the state apparatus. This leads to a low voter turnout and a mentality, within the state, that it can proceed with little interaction with its constituents.

The point here seem to be that both the input and output, and the mechanism to turn the input into output, need to be developed concurrently. This means organizing Civil Society and empowering it to express itself in a way that can be dealt with. At the same time, there needs to be a culture, within government, of listening to and accepting demands from Civil Society; these demands then need to be turned into clear, realistic policies, tangible to the public.

What this hopefully yields is a high level of cooperation, as a reslt of Civil Societies ability to articulate itself and governments ability to turn demand onto result, as well as the cooperation resulting from both parties working together and the distribution of the output. This cooperation is possible because both sides grew together, rather than in isolation.