(BQ) Part 2 book "The Oxford handbook of civil society" has contents: Civil society and government, civil society and civil liberties, civil society and public work, civil society and democracy, civil society and the market, civil society and institutional philanthropy, assisting civil society and promoting democracy,.and other contents. | part v THE SPACES OF CIVIL SOCIETY This page intentionally left blank chapter 23 CIVIL SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT nancy l. rosenblum charles h. t. lesch Civil society and government have their own conceptual and institutional histories, and each of these histories has a foot in both political theory and social and political developments. New institutions, shifting boundaries, and novel interpenetrations of civil society and government are a constant, but sometimes these changes amount to transformative moments. One such moment came when perceptions of civil society shifted from negative to universally positive, and civil society came to be identified as a separate sphere from the economy and from government, cast as the terrain of genuine moral and social life. As a result, civil society often escapes the critical analyses that have been leveled at government. Civil society, not the state, is the bastion of utopianism in political thought today. This chapter surveys the shifting boundaries of civil society-government relations and underscores the potentially transformative move towards partnerships that reach into areas that were previously marked out as separate terrains. 1. Boundaries Discussions of civil society and government pose difficult questions of boundary definition and boundary crossing. Assigning substantive purposes, designating the characteristics of their institutions, and identifying their shifting 286 the spaces of civil society boundaries pose many analytic challenges. Moreover, locating the boundaries between civil society and government inevitably reflects moral norms and political ideology, and has implications for law and public policy. In addressing these questions, we adopt the spatial metaphors that have become indispensable to thinking on this subject. Viewed from the perspective of government, the state is the encompassing sphere, the higher ground, and the controlling institution. Government is the inclusive, putative authorized
