ROBERT Putnam (1993) and Sheri Berman (1997) discuss the making of civil society in nation state and its role in promoting and extending the values of democratic life in a nation-state.
Both writers depart from the nineteenth century French philosopher Alexis Tocqueville notion on the emerging of “association movements” that have connected and attached American people to an idea of a distinct nation that larger than personal or limited communal desires and interests. Indeed, it is believed as the core of the American oneness imagination.
The citizenry’s action of coming together for common purpose both in public and private sphere, according to Tocquevillean, is the basic concept and a prerequisite in creating a self-conscious and active political society and also a vibrant and lively civil society that working autonomously without state’s intervention.
Civil society is a field where private entrepreneurship and civilian affairs regulated by civil rule and law. Again, from this point of view, civil association and civil society is not only a condition for a democracy to be existed, but also a social and cultural tools that can be utilized to keep the existence of the nation-state; make the nation-state as a kind of living creature that keep growing together with its creators, i.e. its citizenries.
However, the neo-Tocquevillean see that an active and public-spirited citizenry with egalitarian political relations together with the presence of social fabric of trust and cooperation thus vibrant networks and norms of civic engagements is not enough to guarantee and guard the presence of democracy. In many cases civil society has moved the nation-state to the reversion track, which is an anti-democratic way of life.
In his work, Putnam underlines the new-institutionalism approach in looking at the nation-state’s actors’behaviors, saying that this approach has basic similarity with its predecessor, institutionalism; i.e. first, it shapes the subject of identity, power relations and strategies, and at the same time it is shaped by many trajectories of history. Besides that the idea of identities, power relations and strategies of the political actors are also shaped by the social and cultural contexts. These three factors form the institutional performance; therefore each of nation-state, even society and community within nation-state, has its own performance. It can be totally or slightly differs from neighbor societies.
This is why in Putnam’s work with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti on the civic tradition in modern Italy we find many significant and fundamental differences among the cities and provinces. Some provinces experience vibrant civil society and some others don’t. Some provinces, especially in the southern side of Italy have low institutional performance, while some provinces in the northern side have a high institutional performance. This study also stresses on the relationship between “the socioeconomic modernity that is the result of the industrial evolution and the civic community that is the patterns of civic involvement and social solidarity.”
Therefore it is concluded that the higher civic involvement and solidarity (civil society) degree, the higher institutional performance degree and the socioeconomic development in one particular province.
Berman’s work explains how a robust civil society in interwar era drives the German Empire to a different direction. Berman notes, “During the interwar period in particular, Germans threw themselves into their clubs, voluntary associations, and professional organizations out of frustrations with the failure of the national government and political parties, thereby helping to undermine the Wiemar Republic and facilitate Hitler’s to power.”
In German Empire case we can assume that if only the civil society had not lived actively and vigorously in both of public and private sectors, and in another words, if the civil society had been weakened during the interwar period, Hitler and his Nazi would never had opportunity to take the power and to lead the nation-state to another war and defeat. Furthermore, another conclusion that can be underlined for the Weimar Germany case that the civil society phenomenon during the interwar period had failed to provide and protect, in Machiavellian terminology, the civic virtue.
From these two readings we still need to drawn an exact relation and distinction between the civil society and political groups or parties. Given a German Empire case we can see how the peasantry organization moved its direction from the nobles and elites to the nationalist-socialist wing and remained one of the fundamental supporters at the very beginning of Nazi and Hitler. But from the Italy’s Emilia-Rogmana case we can see how civil society was able to aggregate and articulate its interest to the political channels. From these two different cases we can understand that there is a time when civil society has to attach itself to the formal political procedures. But the question is when and how it can be done.
I also would like to note that Weimar German is not the only case where active and vibrant civil society has failed to provide democracy. The quite similar phenomenon had happened in Japan during the Manchuria occupation in 1920s-1930s. Civil society, scholars and even mass media, supported the idea of “greater Japan”. Another case is happened in Soeharto time in Indonesia. Civil society, public organizations and scholars had supported the notorious New Order regime. Like in Weimar German, Soeharto and his apparatus used the Nazi and Hitler style of gradualism and legalism approaches to switch the civil society directions.
Teguh Santosa 