Societatea civilă în Orient şi Occident
The Civil Society in the Far East and the West

Summary/Abstract: The existence of a strong civil society, though not a prerequisite for the demise of autocracy and a successful transition, contributes to the consolidation of democracy. Modern democracies are complex institutional arrangements in which the political parties cannot channel all the communication between independent agents and the public sector. A high density of civil society associations is beneficial, but is not an automatic product of capitalism, urbanization and cognitive mobilization it requires explicit encouragement through public policies. While the “Asian societies” are too diverse to allow for non-trivial regional generalizations, it can be said that, overall, their civil societies have been by tradition been dependent on the public authority. In many Asian countries the modernization was a centrally-controlled experiment pursued by the urban elite. The current challenge in the region is to integrate the local civil society with the new political developments at the center, in order to make it a pillar of consolidated democracy.

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