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269 This chapter conceptualizes the relationship between civil society and the state in Latin America. Mexico embodies the ideal type of the patterns discussed later in this chapter, and this focus will help us understand the dynamics of the relationship between state and society in Mexico and the quality of the country’s democracy. Briefly stated, there is a long line of argument in social theory, according to which a strong civil society is a necessary condition for a high-quality democracy. This position is especially associated with the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, whose work has experienced an unusual revival, as scholars and social actors have tried to explain the processes of democratization in the past two decades as well as the variable outcomes of these processes (Tocqueville 1969). The activation of civil society groups in different parts of society and different areas of the country, their organization and mobilization, have been a feature of the process of political transition in Mexico since the final years of the Institutional Revolutionary Party regime up to the present. The evaluation of the effects of these new social forces on Mexican democracy requires an understanding of the nature of civil society, of the different kinds of democracy that exist in Latin America, and of the mechanisms that link civil society and political institutions. Civil society is a diffuse concept in the social sciences, and the fact that it has entered political discourse has further limited its applicability in academic research . For this reason, a theoretical excursus will be necessary. The first part of this chapter proposes a conceptualization of civil society based on Tocqueville’s (1969, vol. 1, parts 1 and 2) analysis and a contemporary operationalization by Ernest Gellner (1994). The focus will be on the complicated issue of what constitutes a strong civil society. In the second part of the chapter, once civil society is defined with some precision, we find that the concept helps us understand Civil Society and the Bifurcated State: Mexico in the Latin American Mirror carlos h.waisman 270 Carlos H. Waisman central aspects of the relationship between state and society in contemporary Latin America in general and in Mexico in particular. The conclusion suggests that the feature of social dualization, which is present in most countries of the region and intensified in the recent period by economic liberalization, has produced what I call regime bifurcation. Conceptualizing Civil Society Civil Society and Democracy The spectre of civil society is haunting the enemies of democracy and the market economy. Yet they should feel relieved. This spectre’s insubstantiality has rendered it quite harmless. Since the meaning of the term “civil society” is so fluid, the propositions derived from it, loosely inspired in superficial readings of Tocqueville, are hard to test empirically. Civil society is supposed to be the magic bullet against the old and new enemies of democracy (communism and authoritarianism in the past, jihadism in the present) and market society, the midwife of democracy. However, these are little more than rhetorical images, due to the extreme fuzziness of the concept. In the world of practical politics, the opponents of communism in central Europe in the 1980s, initially a small segment of the intelligentsia, seized on this term as a label. Since then, opponents of authoritarian and even populist regimes (for example, the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela) have done the same, whatever their level of civility. Governments and international organizations, both inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), have also appropriated “civil society” and used it vaguely to refer to non-governmental groups or institutions. Thus, a collection of speeches by an American secretary of state, dealing with variegated subjects such as freedom of the press, human rights, the recovery of Holocaust-era assets, democracy, refugees, and freedom of religion bears the title Strengthening Civil Society and the Rule of Law (Bureau of Public Affairs 2000). The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) points at more specific entities and defines civil society as the “set of citizens’ activities, either individual or associative, in the economic, social and political fields” (Inter-American Development Bank, n.d., 7). This definition includes both private and public activities as well as, within the latter, both informal and associational ones. This document classifies “civil society organizations” (CSO) as follows: civic participation and social interest promotion CSOs, CSOs that render social services, CSOs that promote enterprises “established under a social criterion of integration and solidarity,” and CSOs engaged in developmental philanthropy...

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