| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 87.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Democratic Civility: The History and Cross-Cultural Possibility of a Modern Political Ideal. Ed. by Robert W. Hefner. (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1998. x, 330 pp. $39.95, isbn 1-56000-364-2.)

In the early 1990s, the concept of civil society was all the rage. The Communist regimes had collapsed. The Latin American dictators were gone. George Bush declared a "new world order." The whole globe seemed to be entering a new era of liberty. The basic idea that organizations outside the state, in civil society, were the key to a healthy democratic polity was the new common sense. 1

Alas, the past few years have not been so happy. Horrific violence has bloodied the decade. Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, the former Soviet Union, and Chiapas have suffered enormously. Financial chaos, whether temporary or not, has erupted in Asia, Latin America, and Russia. The French resistance to market liberalism indicates that not every Western government is on the same page. Protests at the recent World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle are still another sign that even in the industrialized countries not everyone is content. 2

In this atmosphere, the bloom is off civil society. Private sector groupings do not appear to be the panacea they were in Ernest Gellner's Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (1994). The question for the late nineties is to figure out what to do with the concept—rejigger it or toss it out? This collection of essays suggests the former. . . .

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