Presents a collection of comparative studies of civil society around two main issues: the comparison and analysis of civil society regimes in relation to different constructions of citizenship and welfare states and the role of civil society in governance and active participation of citizens.

An interdisciplinary collection of historical and comparative articles on civil society and the social capital debate.

This volume examines theoretical and comparative perspectives on civil society activism under authoritarian constraints to offer a better understanding of its relationship with regime change. Rejecting a normative approach, the authors focus on the whole range of civic activism under authoritarianism.

The nature of the currently emerging European society, which includes the economic and social transformation of Eastern and Central European countries, has been hotly debated. At its center is the relationship between markets and civil society within political and social contexts. The contributors to this volume offer perspectives from various disciplines (the social sciences, conceptual history, law, economics) and from several European countries in order to explore the ways in which markets influence various forms of civil society, such as individual freedom, social cohesion, economic effectiveness and democratic governance, and influence the construction of a civil society in a broader sense.

Social capital - networks of civic engagements, norms of reciprocity, and attitudes of trust - is widely seen as playing a key role for the health of democracy. While many authors have examined the consequences of social capital, there is a pressing need to explore its sources. This collection brings together leading American and European scholars in the first comparative analysis of how social trust and other civic attitudes are generated. The contributors to this volume examine the generation of social capital from two directions: society-based approaches that emphasize voluntary associations, and institutional approaches that emphasize policy.

This volume studies the relation of decentralization to democratization at both intermediate and local levels and analyzes how decentralization is transforming the relationship between the state and civil society.