ABSTRACT
Civil society has two main aspects: quantitative/institutional and qualitative. The quantitative/institutional is the organizations that form civil society. The qualitative is basically the political culture and the modus operandi of civil society. The sources of proto-civil society formation in Cuba include the state, its bureaucracies, its mass organizations and its policies that are generating different interests and cleavages. This also includes the traditional non-governmental organizations that survived after the Revolution of 1959; and, global civil society whose organizations are establishing contacts in Cuba, sponsoring affiliates or generating joint activities with Cuban counterparts. State-society relations in Cuba have experienced important changes since the mid 1980s marked by greater diversity within Cuban society and increased levels of autonomy, processes that are basic to civil society formation. The process is decentralization, informalization, and pluralization. The gap between theory and practice in Cuban socialism and the economic crisis all indicate that civil society.
