Towards a Dynamic Theory of Civil Society: The Politics of Forward and Backward Infiltration

Abstract

This article develops a conceptual framework to theorize the processes of mutual penetration between civil society, the state, and the economy, where incumbents and challengers continuously formulate new strategies against each other. We criticize the prevailing Weberian and Tocquevillian concepts of civil society, and then, drawing on research in social movements and comparative political economy, propose a new framework: the politics of forward and backward infiltration. Under each form of infiltration, we delineate three submodes: the politics of influence, the politics of substitution, and the politics of occupation, which correspond to strategies for discursive influence, functional replacement, and institutional takeover, respectively. We challenge the exclusive focus on the politics of influence as inadequate for analyzing these processes, while highlighting the other two modes as necessary additions. Finally, we elucidate the implications of our theory of forward and backward infiltration for the study of civil society and participatory democracy more generally.

Social Innovation for Sustainability Transformation and its Diverging Development Paths in Marginalised Rural Areas

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“…The researchers Klein and Lee (2019) look into the processes of interrelation and collaboration between the civil society, the State, and the economy, where each agent shapes different engagement strategies. These strategies include, in particular, the policy of influence, the policy of substitution and the policy of occupation, which conform to the strategies of discursive impact, functional substitution and takeover of institutions, respectively.…”

Civil Society and Pro-Democracy Social Movements: Troubled Relations Within Authoritarian Regimes?

“…Sociological perspectives on civil society range from the third sector perspective, which focuses exclusively on an institutionally defined field (e.g., van Til (1988); Evers and Laville (2004); Brandsen et al (2005); Valentinov (2009); van Til (2009); Vaceková and Plaček (2020); Young D. R. ( 2000)), to the strategic action field (e.g., Klein and Lee, 2019), which sees civil society as consisting of organizations acting with knowledge of one another under a set of common understandings about the purposes of the field, the relationships in the field, and the field's rules (Fligstein and McAdam, 2011;Fligstein and McAdam, 2015), to the arena approach, as shown in Heinrich (2005), that places it between the state, the market, and family in which citizens pursue their interests and, therefore, bears strong similarities to both Gramscian and neo-Gramscian views (e.g., Buttigieg, 1995;César Souza Ramos, 2006;Landau, 2008;Tocco, 2014;Whitehead, 2015;Fonseca, 2018), and to the sphere (Alexander, 2006;Alexander and Tognato, 2018;Alexander et al, 2019a;Alexander et al, 2019b;Alexander et al, 2020;Tognato et al, 2020) approach that includes diverse institutions outside the state apparatus and the market, norms, legal codes, and public opinion through which a civil code finds its expression, and, finally, as broad as to mean society's overall quality. There appears to be a noticeably established consensus among scholars within all these theoretical interpretations and sociological perspectives.…”