Dissident writings as political theory on civil society and democracy

Civil society re-entered the political lexicon in the early 1990s, precisely because of its apparent capacity, in Eastern Europe and South America, to contribute to ‘opening up’ and democratizing totalitarian and authoritarian states. Yet subsequent attempts in other contexts to apply the same recipe from the outside, namely strengthening civil society through funding, capacity-building and networking in order to foster a transition to democracy, have often proved less successful.