ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the concept of modernity relates to the notion of civil society and citizenship. From a social structural rather than cultural point of view modernity can be conceptualised as the social organisation that became dominant in Western Europe after the industrial revolution in England and the political revolution in France. It entails two basic dimensions: the massive mobilisation/inclusion of the population in the national centre and the top-down differentiation of institutional spheres. These two dimensions took different forms in early and late modernity.
