By Dietrich Rueschemeyer
Considering Alexis de Tocqueville first made the linkage in his writings on the USA, a fit democracy has been linked to the flourishing of civil society, as measured via renowned participation in voluntary and civic actions and the energy of enterprises that mediate among the person and the kingdom. This quantity takes a clean examine this vintage topic within the context of post-communist jap Europe, the West eu welfare states and the U.S., asking: what styles of participation represent the hot democracies of jap Europe?; what degrees of civic activism are attribute of up to date Western democracies?; what components account for variations between nations and altering styles over time?; and what do findings recommend concerning the customers for democracy within the twenty first century?
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Putnam 11. Conclusion: Contrasting Patterns of Participation and Democracy Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Marilyn Rueschemeyer, and Björn Wittrock Index About the Editors and Contributors Michal Illner is Director of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and lectures at the Charles University of Prague. His research is concerned with urban and regional problems and policies and with the analysis of local administration and politics. He is the author of an extensive monograph on social indicators.
This is not an inescapable dilemma. Michels’s “iron law of oligarchy” is not at all an iron-clad empirical generalization. We know, for instance from the classic study of Lipset, Trow, and Coleman (1956), that internal democracy in organizations is contingent on variable conditions. But these conditions are not fully understood; and we also know that limitations of internal democracy in the name of political efficiency are not at all rare. Fifth, and perhaps most important, some interests are at odds with democracy.
The particular character of state-society relations also makes the Scandinavian countries especially important for a comparative analysis of the participatory and organizational underpinnings of democracy. The interpenetration of state and society has here gone further than in any other Western country. A widespread opinion holds that such comprehensive and pervasive activities by the state choke off the impulses for the self-organization of social and economic interests. More generally, conservative commentators see state action and citizens’ public engagement in a zero-sum relationship: the more of one, the less of the other.
