Civil Societies and Social Movements : Potentials and Problems

This volume examines and contributes to debates surrounding social capital, social movements and the role of civil society in emerging forms of governance.

The authors adopt a broad range of research approaches, from testing hypotheses drawn from rationale choice theory against available statistics on associations, to ethnographic study of emerging attempts at participant / deliberative democracy. Divided into three clear sections, focusing on the following core aspects of civil society:

• the position of civic organizations between state and society in emerging forms of governance

• the geographical scales of social movement mobilizations and actions from the local to the global

• the patterns of public trust and civic engagement that falls under the rubric of social capital.

The book draws on case studies from a wide range of countries, including: Russia, Ukraine, Britain, Greece, Spain, Germany, Argentina and new Asian democracies.

Presenting current research on the key dimensions of civil society, Civil Societies and Social Movements will appeal to those researching and studying in the fields of political science, sociology and social policy.