An interesting, but flawed study of social organization

Marc Howard’s discussion of civil society in post communist states makes some solid conclusions about the reasons for and consequences of a lack of social organization in these states. However, his argument is a bit too presumptive and contains flaws.
The evidence obviously supports that the level of organizational membership is lower in the post communist states than in others (159). After presenting this evidence, Howard makes three conjectures as to why there is such little organization. His second of these hypotheses, that close friendships remain strong, is vague and not very telling. Frankly, in most surveys, be it the Afrobarometer or World Values Survey, most respondents tend to be more trustful the more specific the social group is. In other words, people are always more likely to trust their neighbor than they are to trust the government. Howard claims that these networks are a result “of the high politicization of the public sphere” (162). Such an argument makes too many assumptions. It is not fair to assume that this paradigm is specific to post communist states, when really it is quite general.
Howard’s article then discusses the implications of these findings on the prospects for democracy in these states. He is reluctant to discuss the consequences on post-communist states: “…I do not view post communist democracy as doomed to collapse or fail, nor do I believe that the weakness of civil society is a good sign for a healthy democracy” (164). Howard is too passive in this section. This lack of civil society does have a real effect on the success of democracy in many states. Additionally, Howard’s reason for thinking that the lack of organization will not cause democracy to fail is sweeping and not really falsifiable: he thinks that people will also fail to organize against the government (164). This hypothesis may be true, but it is tough to ever test it. How can one ever falsify such an idea? The correlation is not likely.
This lack of social organization is an important issue and deserves a great deal of study. Howard does a good job of analyzing the data, but he makes some conclusions that are questionable.