ABSTRACT
In Slovenia, as elsewhere in the socialist half of Europe, "civil society" is the concept that summarizes the process of the democratization of society and the transformation from totalitarianism to democracy. 1 As elsewhere, the concept implies a normative political philosophy which helps us to describe, analyze, and understand a wide range of empirical democratic struggles. The distinctive feature of the transformation to democracy in Slovenia, however, is that it was initiated by the new social movements and that they—and not dissident intellectuals, or reform communists, or the aging New Left elite—played the crucial role in the formative period of civil society. The network they formed called itself the "Alternative Scene," or simply the "Alternative."
