Civil Society, Democracy and the Muslim World

. The concept of a “civil society” appeared as early as in John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, first published in 1690, after the English “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. The concept remained in currency until de Tocqueville’s analyses of democracy, i.e. roughly until 1850. After a long period of almost complete silence, the topic of “civil society” reappeared in the 1970’s in Eastern Europe, amidst the drive there for a democratization of the Soviet-style political systems… (preface)