Accumulation, Urbanization and the State: Theorizing Civil Society Development in the Pre-WWI Warsaw Governorate

• In Event: 209 - Theory Section Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Historical Sociology 2

Abstract

Following the active participation of civic associations in the fall of authoritarian regimes in Latin America and Eastern Europe in the late 20th century, scholarly literature saw a resurgence of interest in civil society. Yet missing from debates is a consensus on what civil society actually is, what causes its emergence, and why it contributes to civil regimes in some instances while supporting illiberal dictatorships in others. This paper focuses on the question of why associations develop. To do so, it starts from a structural rather than normative definition of civil society in an attempt to parcel out theoretical assumptions about the emergence of civil society found in the literature. Though there is a paucity of theoretically motivated, empirical research on the emergence of civil society, a survey of existing literature suggests three theoretical approaches that can provide distinct explanations of the development of associational life. These can broadly be classified as economic development, modernization and state-centered theories. This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of causes of the development of civil society through a theoretical analysis of explanatory approaches put forth in the literature. Next, it attempts to examine the importance of the proposed mechanisms through an analysis of associations registered in the early 20th century Warsaw Governorate.

Author

• Malgorzata Kurjanska, University of California-Berkeley