Civil society is widely considered as a crucial element in contemporary society. Academics and policy makers have traditionally associated it with voluntary associations and organizations, assuming that associational life is an ideal intermediary between citizens and government. While members of associations form large social networks, which they can mobilize at critical moments, the conviviality of group sociability fosters the development of a set of common values, such as a democratic political culture and other civic virtues. Its origins are generally situated in the eighteenth century, and are mostly attributed to secularization, Enlightenment thinking, the birth of the “public sphere,” and growing emancipation from oppressive structures such as the church and the state.

This article examines the growth of civil society in imperial Russia by focusing on voluntary associations, especially learned societies, closely watched by tsarist officialdom but neglected by historians. Although scholars often emphasize the peculiarities of Russian development, Russia's societies were part of a broader European phenomenon. A study of associations highlights the relationship between state and society in authoritarian regimes where civil society is most vigorously contested. Because authoritarian regimes close the channels of representative politics and make it difficult for their subjects to act freely in concert, associations demonstrate the potential for the self-organization of society. They cultivate the microspaces of initiative and autonomy not completely under state control where the capacity of citizenship can appear. This study conceptualizes the development of Russian civil society and the way in which the disenfranchised could enter public life by using the examples of six Russian learned societies. Owing to the mission of the learned societies, Russian civil society became inextricably linked to patriotism and the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Associations raised consciousness, accorded an opportunity for special-interest constituencies of men to enter the public arena, framed policy issues, and mobilized a public in the language of representation. Although civil society and the autocratic state are often described as bitter rivals, cooperation, not confrontation, in the project of national prestige and prosperity was more often the rule. However, an increasing public assertiveness challenged autocratic authority, as Russian officialdom was unwilling to relinquish its tutelary supervision of civil society. Thus, associations became a focal point of a contradictory political culture.

This case study of the Dutch residential capital of The Hague explores the relationship between nineteenth-century associational life and local politics, testing the well-known argument of scholars such as Robert Putnam, that high numbers and high levels of participation in local voluntary associations are often positively correlated with processes of local political democratization. A quantitative analysis of (double) membership in the city's most prominent social clubs and cultural associations, and a qualitative analysis of the political culture within these clubs, offer a better understanding regarding why the impact of a vibrant local associational culture on local democracy has not always been as positive as political scientists have often tended to assume.

This article proposes to refine the concept civil society by discerning three distinct forms of civil society in the past. This refined conceptual framework counters the criticism that civil society suffers from its growing popularity and its broad definition. The usefulness of these three forms of civil society—which are based on the later work of Jürgen Habermas—are applied in this article on the seventeenth-century Low Countries. The central question is how these forms of civil society acted as schools of democracy in the seventeenth-century Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Republic. The three types of civil society are identified that developed through time and built a cumulative tradition of civil society. These are the medieval craft guilds (liberal civil society), the early modern civic militia (republican civil society), and the modern Enlightenment sociability (deliberative civil society). Data about the associational life in two cities in the Low Countries, Mechelen and Rotterdam, show that different forms of civil societies had different functions according to the societal context. Furthermore, the data show that societies with civil societies characterized by social inclusive boards and high mutation ratios had less political impact when they lacked links with existing political institutions. This implies that civil societies did not as a rule serve as schools of democracy.

Traditionally it is assumed that “modern” civil society originated in the associations, clubs, and public sphere of the eighteenth century as a result of the “liberation” of the individual from the “shackles” of absolutism, religious intolerance, and the patriarchal family. However, recent research goes further back in time. Scholars such as Robert Putnam (sociologist), Antony Black (political scientist), and Katherine Lynch (historian) associate the origins of civil society with the heyday of confraternities and guilds in the late Middle Ages. This has serious consequences for our understanding of the characteristics and functions of civil society. Given that confraternities were permeated by religious devotion and crafts were inextricably bound to the (often undemocratic) political establishment, fundamental questions arise about the importance of religion in civil society and the role of associations in the political participation of individuals. This article suggests that several long-term trends can be observed when broaching civil society from the perspective of guilds (or brotherhoods). In early modern guilds, the fraternal ideals related to mutual aid and equality appear to have gradually disappeared. Craft guilds stopped being “brotherhoods” and “substitute families” and transformed into formal and bureaucratic juridical institutions, while retreating into a sphere separate from household and family.

“Civil society,” in the definition proposed in the introduction to this special issue, was not solely a product of the Enlightenment or of elite sociability. This article focuses on eighteenth-century confraternities in Paris and Milan to argue that these religious associations fostered the kinds of values and behaviors that most writers associate with the formation of civil society: cooperation, charity, a sense of responsibility, and peaceful interaction both among the members and between them and others in society. Many of them encouraged a culture of independence and a sense of rights among their members. They also offered experience of organization to a very large number of men and a smaller number of women. They thus contributed to the formation of eighteenth-century “civil society.”

When the first misericórdia was created in 1498, Lisbon was trying to erase the wounds of the violent expulsion of the Jewish communities from the kingdom, and the confraternity was born under the concern of reuniting baptized persons who wanted to exercise charity. The misericórdias were soon to be founded all over the kingdom and its empire, acting as prebanking institutions and rivaling with local institutions like the municipality or the bishopric. Their importance was based mainly upon moral authority, as they tended to cater for most situations of poverty. Even if other local institutions practised charity, they were not generally able to attain the same scale of human or economic resources, as the misericórdias relied on the voluntary work of their members and attracted substantial postmortem donations. They responded directly to the king and were largely out of the control of competitors. By contrast, royal authority was too weak to impose an effective control; the first serious attempts to do so date from the marquis of Pombal's consulate (1750–77). In spite of misunderstandings and conflicts with the Crown, it is undeniable misericórdias gave an important contribution to the formation of local communities, participating in the dynamics between center and periphery. In spite of the variety of their geographic and demographic contexts, they could always be recognizable by central powers as abiding to the same principles. However, the elites who governed them were free to transform misericórdias into institutions capable of motivating their participation. Between obedience to the king and local management of resources, there was ample space for social action.