ABSTRACT
Voluntary associations have long been held in distrust in France although things have changed recently. Their rapid growth since the 1960s 1 has been accompanied by new discourses in theoretical works as well as in the media and the political world. Two kinds of positive political effects of voluntary associations have been identified. Historically, the first types to be analysed are the external effects, the role played by associations as actors in civic and political life. Associations are then said to preserve individual freedom by enabling people to organize themselves in order to protect themselves from the state. In the early nineteenth century Tocqueville 2 played a great role in emphasizing this aspect of the question, and his analysis gained a new relevance in the 1950s, with what was perceived as the threat of communism and totalitarianism, and the development of the welfare state in Western democracies. It was then reactualized during democratic transitions in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. Civil society, and associations in particular, was called for in order to promote individual rights in a new and fragile democratic context.
