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Civil Society Before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe. Edited by Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 320p. $79.00 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2002

Michael Bernhard
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University

Extract

The Polish philosopher and diplomat Piotr Ogrodzinski has described “civil society” as a weasel word. It is hard to disagree, given that neo-Tocquevillians, Weberians, critical theorists, Christian fundamentalists, and World Bank analysts all unabashedly sing its praises while having completely different referents in mind for the term. Because it concerns itself with the historical development of civil society, rather than with some abstract idealized notion of it, this collection of essays by historians and social scientists is a sorely needed addition to the literature.

Type
Book Review
Copyright
2002 by the American Political Science Association

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