Postcommunist Civil Society

Howard’s article about postcommunist civil societies articulates the ways in which having a weak civil society, which is the case for postcommunist countries, affects democracy. Howard accepts the fact that, “the weakness of civil society constitutes a distinctive element of post-communist democracy”, as well as the fact that this weakness in civil society “has a negative impact on the quality of postcommunist democracy”(164). This is all very important, as well as being true, and Howard credits the idea that a strong civil society leads to a stronger democracy to Robert Putnam. So having established that these postcommunist countries have a problem in the weakness of their civil societies Howard then offers two ways in which this problem can be resolved: generational change and encouragement. The first of these two solutions is, as Howard admits, much more likely to be the way in which change occurs.

Generational change would help to improve civil society because one of the main reasons that Howard proposes as the cause of the weak civil societies is the memory of the communist programs that they were forced to participate in, and often caused them great distress, but after a new generation, who did not experience these horrors, takes over then there would be no memory of these programs to keep them from getting involved in civil society. This is ultimately the most likely way in which this change will occur. Howard does offer one potential criticism to this source of change. He says that because socialization comes from more than simply memories, it comes from family and stories and friends, it is possible that this fear of organizations may transfer from generation to generation (166). I find this to be an unlikely scenario; although what socialization does come from many sources, it is very unlikely that fear will have a 100% generational transfer. Meaning that slowly but surely these fears will be so distant from the real lives of new generations that they will not be able to relate to them, and thus civil society will grow and flourish. 

Keenan Conrad