The Civil Sphere

Summary

Civil sphere theory (CST) conceives of civil society as an analytically autonomous social space within contemporary societies. It is differentiated from the state, the market, and other social-structural spheres like the family and education. Within the civil sphere, the culture of democracy is instantiated and sustained, grounded in its unique moral and symbolic codes. Central to the civil sphere is a binary democratic/antidemocratic code that forms the discourse of civil society, used to legitimize civil motives, relationships, and institutions and to delegitimate the anticivil opposites. The institutions within the civil sphere can be divided into two categories: communicative institutions, including public opinion, polls, and media (both factual and fictional), and certain voluntary associations that have solidarity as a goal. Regulative institutions, including voting, political parties, office, and law, mediate relations between the civil sphere and the state. The civil sphere constantly interacts with noncivil spheres (the state, the market, the family, education, etc.) at its boundaries. These boundary relations can take on three forms: facilitating input (e.g., the productivity of the market), destructive intrusions (e.g., market-driven inequality and exploitation), and civil repair, which often occurs through social movements. Processes of societalization capture how issues previously confined to noncivil spheres spill over into the civil sphere, engendering public response and moral urgency. The theory also addresses modes of incorporation (assimilation, hyphenation, multiculturalism) that attempt to resolve the tension between the civil sphere’s universal ideals and the exclusion produced by its real-world instantiation. CST has developed at the global level as well, applied to various regions, including Latin America, East Asia, the Nordic countries, and Central and Eastern Europe. Additionally, scholars have utilized CST to explain different phenomena, including populism, migration, radicalism, and Indigenous–settler relations. Although a truly global civil sphere remains aspirational, CST highlights expanding forms of transnational communication and moral universalism. In short, CST offers a macro-sociological way to speak about solidarity in modern democratic societies.