BRINTON-Association and Recognition

European Journal of Political
Theory
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Association and recognition in authoritarian societies: A theoretical

beginning
Aspen Brinton
European Journal of Political Theory 2012 11: 324
DOI: 10.1177/1474885111430612
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European Journal of Political Theory
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885111430612
A theoretical beginning ept.sagepub.com
Aspen Brinton
University of Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
This paper presents a theoretical sketch for how the existence of civic associations in
authoritarian regimes might be analysed. By relating the concepts of ‘civil society’ and
‘recognition’, I explore how associations are a potential locus of mutual recognition in
any society, democratic or undemocratic. While there are many theorizations of both
civil society and recognition in relation to democratic political contexts, normative
theories seeking to explain the existence of associations in authoritarian societies are
less robustly developed. Recognition, more specifically mutual recognition, is theorized
not only as one key ‘good’ sought through the act of forming the associations of civil
society, but also as a human need which will prompt the act of association within
dangerous contexts. This analysis informs thinking behind acts of civil disobedience
springing from civil society, as well as rationalizations for dissident activities undertaken
by associations within authoritarian regimes.
Keywords
civil society, dissent, recognition
The literature on civil society and associations from the last two decades has largely
been driven by the question of how to make democracy work. ‘Civil society’, taken
broadly in light of many different definitions, has been considered a cornerstone of
democratization has been considered a cornerstone of democratization efforts and
a measure of consolidated democracy. It is therefore also a critical concept within
democratic theory.1 There remains a lacuna in these discussions, however: where
there is no immediate hope for democracy ‘to work’ in authoritarian societies, why
does associational activity that looks something like ‘civil society’ nonetheless
occur? Dissident organizations in authoritarian states and cooperatives of various
Corresponding author:
Aspen Brinton, Integrated Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania, Claudia Cohen Hall, Philadelphia,
PA 19104-6304, USA
Email: abrinton@sas.upenn.edu
Brinton 325
kinds in failed states and war zones, for example, seem to be associations that
generate reciprocal civility, despite the lack of democracy surrounding them.2
While empirical studies have attempted to answer these questions with some pro-
visional data,3 the resources of political theory have not been engaged to build a
theoretical basis to evaluate the civility of associations arising outside of democ-
racy. The argument presented here endeavours to present a theoretical beginning
for examining gatherings and associations occurring outside of democratic rule of
law and beyond traditional spaces of democratic association.
The grounding of such a theory is the idea that reciprocal civility is generated
through associations, not merely in light of democratic goals and practices, but also
because of the existential need for reciprocal recognition that is provided through face-
to-face contact with other people. Civil society gatherings can indeed occur without the
usual protections of democracy, and do so within a modality of association based on
mutual recognition. When members of an association recognize each other with
mutuality and reciprocity, furthermore, the civility of their society with one another
becomes more likely. By identifying recognition as an additional basis for theorizing
civil society, the larger question of why people gather into associations in the first place
can be illuminated, along with shedding light on the various contingent trajectories of
their subsequent joint actions. If the task of putting theories of civil society into con-
versation with theories of recognition yields any success, it will be one step towards an
understanding of civil society that goes beyond contemporary scholarship showing
merely ‘how democracy works’. This step is important if we want to understand
how stable governments may or may not emerge from associational activity in non-
democratic spaces; we need terms and concepts to probe the dynamics of associations
arising outside of democracies, especially if there is to emerge some better understand-
ing as to when efforts to build civil societies can be fruitful, and not merely fanciful.4
A theorization that questions an unqualified and necessary linkage between civil
society and democracy can provide ground for new empirical research about civil
society organizations, especially on the question of whether organizations and
associations that form in non-democratic contexts will be civil or uncivil. Such
an angle of thinking does not preclude a conclusion that associations of civil society
in a particular place might constitute the seedbed of democracy. Rather, this argu-
ment contends that researchers need to examine the differences between the pos-
sibly trajectories of civility within associations by looking at the modalities of
recognition articulated and practiced. Such an examination can occur with or
without democracy in the foreground and background.
New questions
If putting democracy and civil society in causational wedlock inhibits the forma-
tion of new questions about civil society’s existence outside of democracy, the
architecture of a theory calling for a different sort of conversation should begin
by proposing new questions. This is not to cancel and nullify the traditional ques-
tions asked about civil society, but to enrich the landscape of inquiry with more
possibilities. The following discussion will be organized around three questions that
326 European Journal of Political Theory 11(3)
should be asked about associations existing outside of a democratic milieu, with

each question explained in light of relevant historical and contemporary ideas
underpinning that question’s relationship to associations, recognition and civility.
1. Do the members of the association see themselves as objects or subjects to one

another? In other words, is ‘intersubjective recognition’ (to be defined below)
practised within the association?
2. Do the members of the association seek external goals in a way that includes or
excludes the possibility that gathering together might be the main goal
in-and-of-itself of the association? In other words, do the ends (of the association’s
purpose) trump the means (the mode of gathering), or is the mode of gathering (the
means of coming together) sustained despite the association’s failure to reach its
‘ends’ and purpose? In the latter case, failure to achieve an external task would not
destroy the association, because it would continue to exist on the basis of its ability
to foster mutual recognition as a ‘means’ of coming together. It would therefore
have ‘sustainability’ even in a context of failing to achieve external goals.
3. Does the predominant modality of recognition within the association deny the
plurality of other modes of recognition? In other words, do members of the
association practise a form of recognition that is not mutual and therefore
exclusionary and anti-social?
Objects or subjects of association?

If the modality of recognition existing between individuals in an association mat-
ters in determining whether that association might promote civility in the larger
society, then it must be asked whether members conceptualize other members as
objects in relationship to the association’s goal, or whether an association’s mem-
bers are treated as subjects with intrinsic value. The notion of ‘intersubjective rec-
ognition’ derives from the idea that two human subjects, when interacting with one
another, can come to an understanding of each other through relating their own
subjectivity to the subjectivity of others; through understanding oneself in light of
others, others will come closer to understanding you. If a moment of intersubjective
recognition has occurred, the categories through which two subjects come to see
each other are not objectively or previously determined, but rather dynamically
derived from the interaction of human subjects understanding each other to be
subjects, not objects, to one another. Or, as Hegel famously put it, the ‘I’ comes to
be seen in the ‘We’.5 This matters for civil society organizations because the way
people interact with one another in association matters for how that association
impacts the individuals involved, the surrounding society, and the potential polit-
ical import of that association. The presence of shared intersubjective understand-
ing and recognition between subjects means there is more civility and less chance of
misrecognition and conflict.6
Since Hegel first examined this idea, other scholars have developed understand-
ings of recognition in order to take into account the changes of modernity.
Brinton 327
In The Struggle for Recognition, for example, Axel Honneth uses Hegel in com-
bination with sociological theory to argue that the ‘moral logic of social conflicts’ is
driven by the individual’s struggle for recognition from his society and the various
constitutive elements of that society.7 Honneth calls for a closer analysis of the
‘sub-cultural semantics’ which frame social struggles for recognition, as well as
calling for more examination of the ‘structures of ethical life’ which allow for
conversations about semantics to be transformed into political action. This is
useful for theorizing civil society, even if Honneth himself does not develop such
an idea directly, as civil society organizations are saturated with subcultural seman-
tics and are key players in the structures of ethical life.
Honneth argues that subcultural semantics and the structures of ethical life
predict the shape and form of social conflicts over recognition. His conclusion
leaves the specifics of the ‘structures of ethical life’ open with regards to time
and place; he does not go so far as to suggest that there are universal ethical and
semantic structures produced by the universal search for recognition. Partially
following Hegel’s Sittlichkeit, however, he acknowledges that the community will
create structures of ethical life and the corresponding patterns of intersubjective
recognition in ways consistent with that community’s culture and history:
A conception of ethical life in terms of a theory of recognition proceeds from the

premise that the social integration of a political community can only fully succeed to
the degree to which it is supported, on the part of members of society, by cultural
customs that have to do with the way in which they deal with each other reciprocally.
For this reason, the basic concepts with which the ethical preconditions for such
community-formation are described must be tailored to the normative characteristics
of communicative relations.8
Honneth attributes the origins of this formulation to Hegel, but is careful to

explain that his theory does not focus on the overarching predominance of the state
in determining social and political relations. Focusing instead upon the social roots
of a community, Honneth advocates examining the cultural customs that guide
reciprocal relations, customs that should shed light upon the predominant concep-
tions of ethical life, as well as the ‘normative characteristics of communicative
relations’. Modes of gathering are an example of the customs that create reciprocal
relationships, so examining associations is clearly one part of getting to the bottom
of how a society organizes its ethical life. This was not just a Hegelian premise, but
also the foundation of Alexis de Tocqueville’s research on associations in
Democracy in America.9
Honneth’s conception of intersubjective recognition is particularly relevant for
discerning whether civil society organizations might be important elements of the
‘structures of ethical life’, in particular as organizations and institutions apart from
the homogenizing tendencies of the state, democratic or non-democratic. He
argues, for example, that ‘[t]he more conceptions of ethical goods are open to
different values and the more their hierarchical arrangement gives way to horizon-
tal competition, the more clearly social esteem will be able to take on an
individualizing character and generate symmetrical relationships’.10 This ‘gener-

ation of symmetrical relationships’ is the core of a society with functioning avenues
of mutual recognition. In a political and social landscape of struggle, social sub-
groupings become important as sites where recognition is sought through
solidarity:
The practical relation-to-self that such an experience of recognition allows individuals

to attain is thus a feeling of group-pride or collective honor. Here, the individual
knows himself or herself to be a member of a social group that can collectively
accomplish things whose worth for society is recognized by all other members of
society. In the internal relations of such groups, forms of interaction normally take
on the character of relationships of solidarity, since each member knows himself or
herself to be esteemed by all others to the same degree.11
When the larger society becomes more unequal in its distribution of social
esteem, therefore, the suggestion here is that the relations of subgroupings within
the society become more important as sites of recognition. This presumes that
formally equal rights at the level of the state do not necessarily guarantee overall
equality of opportunity for mutual recognition and social esteem, and therefore
people turn away from the larger society and state towards smaller subgroupings
(such as civil society organizations) for their social esteem and mutual recogni-
tion.12 What brings such groupings together, furthermore, is often the search for
the recognition that is missing – either in terms of rights or in terms of solidarity.
In coming together as a group of people, an intersubjective value horizon is
created, and from that shared understanding the individuals recognize one another
reciprocally.
In applied terms, Honneth’s theorization describes the acts of many civil society
organizations: they set out to do what cannot be accomplished by one individual,
come together and recognize each other’s ability to contribute to that shared goal, a
group-pride or collective honour is generated, and therefore a relationship of soli-
darity and intersubjective recognition between the individuals can be created. The
framing and articulation of such collectively shared goals are not, however,
universal:
Empirically, whether the cognitive potential inherent in feeling hurt or ashamed

becomes a moral-political conviction depends above all on how the affected subject’s
cultural-political environment is constructed: only if the means of articulation of a
social movement are available can the experience of disrespect become a source of
motivation for acts of political resistance. The developmental logic of such collective
movements can, however, only be discovered via an analysis that attempts to explain
social struggles on the basis of the dynamics of moral experiences.13
The construction of the cultural-political environment matters for the form in

which social struggle will occur. Honneth advocates looking towards the dynamics
of moral experiences within a particular cultural landscape in order to isolate the
Brinton 329
possibilities for political resistance. If a civil society organization is one way a social
movement can be articulated, this could be rephrased to say that civil society
organizations will often form where there is a struggle being articulated in
moral terms. This may or may not become grounds for acts of political resistance,
as the extent of actions will depend upon the specific environment where that
struggle occurs. Yet more importantly, if civil society organizations are structures
of ethical life, then social conditions will greatly influence how the individuals in
those groups will articulate their search for recognition against society’s disrespect;
gathering together for mutual recognition will look quite different in different
cultures.
Honneth’s theorization of the relationship between the structures of ethical life,
intersubjective recognition and group solidarity can be helpful for understanding
civil society organizations in non-democratic contexts. If a civil society organiza-
tion generates intersubjective recognition between its members, where individuals
can come to share understandings of one another derived through common social
conditions and shared moral and ethical understandings, it will likely draw mem-
bership and support because of the fact it provides its members with mutual rec-
ognition and treats them as subject and not as objects. While not a foolproof
measure of civility, if such understandings between members have been intersub-
jectively generated, and the understandings are therefore genuinely a combination
of the ‘I’ in the ‘We’, the civility of that organization will derive from the mutual
agreement to recognize each member as a valuable and contributing subject within
a framework of solidarity with others. Each subject, when intersubjectively recog-
nized and not objectified, therefore has the ability to interactively and dynamically
contest the terms of solidarity with the other members on a shared basis of equal
recognition. Such recognition can be important criteria for civility and the preven-
tion of oppression, at least within the microcosm of the association, even if the
wider political context is authoritarian.
Gathering for what ends?

In An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) Adam Ferguson wrote how
‘mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed or quarreled, in troupes or
companies. The cause of their assembling, whatever it may be, is the principle of
their alliance or union.’14 Discerning the cause of human gathering, as Ferguson
suggests, is one key to understanding the principles bringing human beings together
into ‘alliance or union’. The ‘cause of assembling’ in authoritarian states can some-
times be an aspiration to change the form of government towards something less
abusive or corrupt, which is why so many authoritarian regimes are suspicious and
brutal towards assemblies of their citizens. Yet there are also associations that
gather just to gather, because such is the way we ‘wander and settle’ more generally.
The pursuit of mutual recognition sits within this general condition of the human
need to gather together cited by Ferguson. An association does not need to
have any telos beyond merely the goal of gathering, furthermore, for
intersubective recognition and civility to be fostered within such an association.
These ‘associations without a purpose’ can matter, furthermore, in promoting

civility more generally within any society, democratic or non-democratic.
When associations are studied only in terms of the goals and products of the
association (such as research focused on an association’s contribution to political
democratization), whether or not members of an association are objects or sub-
jects to one another has no import. Yet by not asking about the internal dynam-
ics of an association in terms of intersubjectivity and in light of the possibilities of
objectification, much is left unknown about the possibilities of civility engendered
by that association. Two related concrete examples will make less abstract the
consequences of what follows. First, think of associations that are created ‘from
the outside’ as part of democratization efforts, which might create the appearance
of democratic outcomes, but would not have ever come to exist without help
‘from the outside’.15 Second, imagine a debate about undemocratic and auto-
cratic leadership styles within democracy-promotion NGOs.16 These two issues
receive little discussion in theoretical tracts about civil society, but are fodder for
serious discussion within practitioners’ debates about how to push civil societies
to grow in arid political climates. Both phenomena point to the complication of
means–ends issues within the study of associations: if democratic goals can be
achieved through associations that have top–down leadership structures or are
supported only by outsiders, then the internal dynamics of an association do not
matter for discussions about the supposedly causal relationship between civil
society and democracy. To be more blunt, if the foreign aid branch of the EU
designed and funded a civil society organization in Kazakhstan led by a dicta-
torial tribal chieftain (or a dictatorial EU bureaucrat), and this association hap-
pened to succeed in multiplying interest groups, supporting women’s rights,
encouraging multiple candidates to run for regional elections and effectively
monitored government corruption, would it really matter that its internal modal-
ity of association objectified its members? If only democratic outcomes matter,
then probing the insides of the associations that promote democracy would not
be important.17
There are, however, serious consequences should researchers choose to look at
only the outcomes of associations’ activities. A Polish dissident involved with the
Solidarity movement in Poland (seen as a pre-eminent case of a civil society asso-
ciation arising in an authoritarian context towards democratic ends), framed the
question like this:
The dissident movement was sometimes known as the ‘democratic opposition.’ This
better described the movement’s aims than the means used to achieve them . . . The
dissident movement tended to favor personal authority over democratic procedures.
Democracy is usually understood to be a system that tolerates pluralism. The empha-
sis the dissident movement placed on unity, and its tendency to indulge in black and
white moral rhetoric, were inimical to the expression and clarification of differences.
Thus, to some extent, unity and uncompromising moral stances have hindered the
attainment of democracy. Dissident protests did not concede that the other side might
be partly right, as is usually the case in political life.18
Brinton 331
In the end, however, this leadership style was not the main obstacle to the
sustainability of the association (impediments came from secret police and martial
law). Furthermore, this has not meant that the memory of Solidarity has been
recast as a case of incivility (non-violence was maintained throughout). The
author of these statements goes on to suggest that it only created a problem in
the consolidation stage, when it came time to build democratic politics out of the
authoritarian landscape. Yet if a researcher were to go back and ask of early
Solidarity members whether everyone was mutually recognized, including whether
dissenting voices were given a fair hearing, the struggles to consolidate democracy
later on could have been easily predicted. This is, therefore, a question that should
be asked of the emerging movements ‘for democracy’ throughout the Middle East,
movements largely arising from associations in non-democratic contexts.
Calling on researchers to probe the relationship between objectification and
subjectivity within associations, in addition to the usual examination of democratic
outcomes, is to ask what sort of mutual recognition occurs within associations.
When this question is asked, the value of intersubjective recognition for promoting
civility within and beyond an association comes to light. Research on associations
should continue to ask the direct goals and purposes (the telos) of why members of
an association have come together, as most investigations into civil society have
traditionally done. However, when an association is ‘found’ by researchers that
seems to have no telos – whether a political purpose or a social purpose – it should
not be assumed that such an association does not ‘matter’. An association that
might implicitly exist to provide its members with mutual recognition may not be
visible if judged and counted only by an outwardly stated political mission. In
authoritarian societies, it is dangerous to have a political mission, so one possibility
is that organizations hide true purposes to remain below the radar of the autho-
rities. Furthermore, even if there is no outright subterfuge on the part of those
gathering together, and it is the case that what is advertised as a non-political
association is actually non-political – something like a group of artists that gathers
together to paint pictures of still-life arrangements in a private apartment – this by
no means precludes asking the previous question about intersubjective recognition
arising from such gathering, and the corresponding question about the fostering of
civility therein.
A theoretical and conceptual basis for discussing intersubjective recognition as a
purpose for gathering into associations in authoritarian contexts can be found
within the writings of the dissidents who explain why they gather in authoritarian
contexts despite great risks. The deepest case of related thinking is the theorization
of ‘anti-politics’ and the ‘parallel polis’ by Eastern European philosopher-
dissidents. These concepts allow for discussion about how associations with non-
political purposes have important existential impact on their members by fostering
intersubjective recognition. If these concepts are thought about (to use Honneth’s
terms) as the customs that guide reciprocal relations in authoritarian societies, or as
vessels for the articulation of local subcultural semantics about the lack of recog-
nition, the concepts of ‘parallel polis’ and ‘anti-politics’ help researchers under-
stand associations outside of democracy more generally. While I draw here on
familiar examples from Eastern European dissidents before 1989, the thematic
repetition of these concepts would be a useful framework for examining dissidents
in many political contexts.19
When Vaclav Benda described the parallel polis, an idea taken up by his more
well-known fellow dissident Vaclav Havel, he described it as a way to associate for
the purpose of gathering together, to humanize the structures of reciprocal
relations:
I suggest that we join forces in creating, slowly but surely, parallel structures that are
capable, to a limited degree at least, of supplementing the generally beneficial and
necessary functions that are missing in the existing structures, and where possible, to
use those existing structures, to humanize them.20
For Benda, the need of a parallel society apart from the officially dictated com-
munist society was an outgrowth of how everyone already lived a dual life: one
official, public and deferential to communist regulations, the other private, unofficial
and independent from official society. The parallel polis both described and pre-
scribed. It was not just a space where individuals could pretend to be escaping the
state, but it was also where they could be moved to participate in civil discourse
distinct from the ideological discourse of mandatory gatherings, rallies and party
activities. In its daily realization, the parallel polis included various non-institutional
institutions: an underground press, religious worship in churches, a black market
economy, music concerts and other similar initiatives to gather together. ‘Parallel’
came to mean ‘separate from the established communist norms’, but also implicit in
‘parallel’ was the assumption that these spaces would not be in direct confrontational
opposition to the communist regime.21 As a Romanian dissident described:
The ‘parallel societies’ in Eastern Europe are only islands of freedom in a totalitarian
sea, tolerated only so long as they do not challenge the political power of the com-
munist party. This is not democracy, as understood in the West. But of course, these
islands are far better than nothing at all.22
The parallel spaces were above, below or to the side of the state and party; they
were not perpendicular to the state, and therefore did not challenge its existence.
As Vaclav Havel expanded the idea:
What exactly is a ‘parallel culture’? Nothing more and nothing less than a culture,
which for various reasons will not, cannot, or may not reach out to the public through
the media which fall under state control. In a totalitarian state, this includes all pub-
lishing houses, presses, exhibition halls, theaters and concert halls, scholarly institutes,
and so on. Such a culture, therefore, can make use of only what is left – typewriters,
private studios, apartments, barns, etc.23
Enacting the parallel polis, and a parallel culture to go with it, was part of
the overall attempt to carve out a space of civility away from corruption and
Brinton 333
general claustrophobia.24 Rhetoric about ‘civil society’ as a parallel sphere was an

attempt to open the doors and windows and let in some air. It was done with
acknowledgement of what could be and what could not be: the political regime
could not be changed, but something about everyday life could be changed.
Hungarian dissident György Konrad described this sway between persistence
and resignation:
Limited democratic institutions, a social contract, independent political structures – at

present, it appears, these things will not work within the framework of Yalta. Little
circles of friends, of independent people, go on. We are grouping for a firm basis, a
level beneath which it would be impossible to sink.25
Whether such a basis was found was less important that the search for it through
gathering together with one another under some guise of ‘independence’. They
were political only insofar as they existed with the threat of forceful retaliation
looming in the background.26 They were ‘anti-political’ in the sense of not directing
pursuing a change in government; dissidents focused instead on the customs that
guided reciprocal relations within the associations of civil society:
The success of this independent ferment cannot be measured by the replacement of

one government by another, but by the fact that under the same government society is
growing stronger, independent people are multiplying, and the network of conversa-
tions uncontrollable from above is becoming denser. Let the government stay on top;
we will live our lives underneath it.27
If human dignity and mutual recognition the ultimate, the success of having
such public meetings in private spaces was not measured by how some action
directly changed a government policy, as it would be in a democratic country
with free civic associations.28 These gatherings continued because they defined
success in terms of how friendship networks and informal gathering could dissem-
inate new ideas, provide shoulders to lean on and create an amorphous subversive
energy among those who came to meetings. As Konrad described:
We are not trying primarily to conquer institutions and shape them in our image but
to expand the bounds of private existence . . . considerable scope is available for the
development of civil society . . . Just imagine if interesting conversations were going on
in a million homes . . .29
The home as the last space available for genuine, honest conversation was also
the spirit behind the Flying University in Poland and the meetings of Charter 77 in
Czechoslovakia, all of which took place in private homes. These were attempts to
act ‘as if’ the home could be a meaningful public space – in the sense of an open
space – where conversation, discussion, the exchange of meaningful ideas, inter-
subjective recognition and a change of the terms of engagement could be enacted
and rehearsed, with the hope that sometime in the long-distant future a genuinely
public performance would be possible outside of the ‘private’ boundaries of the

home.
In reference to some of the first ‘organizations’ formed in 1976 in Poland, Adam
Michnik described this paradox:
The principal theme of these ideas was openness – openness at any price. Some people
went as far as to walk voluntarily into a home where an open but illegal lecture of the
Flying University was to take place and the secret police had already arrived. ‘Open
but illegal’ – in this somewhat paradoxical expression lies the very essence of the
tactics of that era. Books and periodicals were printed underground, but the names
of their authors and editors were openly disclosed. Openness was a way of fortifying
collective courage, of widening the ‘grey area’ between the censor’s scissors and the
criminal code, of breaking down the barrier of inertia and fear. The chances for
success lay in openness, not in conspiracy.30
Dissidents’ homes became places of potential truthfulness amidst lies, places

with a greater possibility of coming to recognize others as they saw themselves.
Dissidents used these private-but-public spaces to act out their vision of what
public space should be like. In Hungary, Konrad described, ‘[o]fficial premises
belong to the state, homes to ‘‘society.’’ Home and free time: these are the spatial
and temporal dimensions of civic independence.’31 In homes they gathered, and it
was there that an existential revolution occurred, long before any political revolu-
tion was foreseeable.
As Vaclav Havel wrote of the association of Charter 77 signatories, ‘it was as
though the mere awareness and acceptance of a common task and a shared experi-
ence were enough to transform people and the climate of their lives, as though it
gave their public work a more human dimension that is seldom found elsewhere’.32
This transformation began not at the level of politics, not within an open public
sphere, but at the level of individuals, a handful of intellectuals who decided to
make a claim against injustice by gathering together and mutually recognizing one
another. Such activists within totalitarian regimes had almost no outspoken rec-
ognition from the wider society; they had no recognized non-governmental status,
no volunteers, no foreign donors and no access to the press.33 What they were
doing was seen as something bordering on suicidal: as Havel wrote in the 1970s, ‘to
become a dissident . . . means to becoming a member of that microscopic ‘‘suicide-
pact’’ enclave surrounded by the unspoken good wishes of the public but at the
same time by unspoken amazement that anyone would choose to risk so much for
something as hopeless as seeking to change what cannot be changed’.34
Havel and other dissidents in the Eastern Bloc identified their efforts and their
gatherings, however, as ‘civil society’. This term had both historical and theoretical
resonance, becoming connected to their everyday actions and their insistence on
associating with one another. Their ‘civil society’ had no hope of bringing about
democratic transition when it was first initiated in the 1970s, but it did provide its
members with a venue for intersubjective recognition from their peers. This made
life much more bearable than it otherwise was, ‘changing the climate of life’ and
Brinton 335
‘fostering a human dimension’. Havel had began his dissidence as a writer trying to
find a ‘truth’, but soon found that the goal of unmasking false ideological language
required the shared experience of conversation with others to reclaim a modicum of
honest space within a world that abused human dignity.
This required, ironically, living ‘as though’ and ‘as if’ one were indeed able to
speak freely, even if this meant losing one’s freedom and going to prison. Such a
stance was central to realizing the fruits of this intersubjective recognition of a
shared experience that could transform the climate of oppression, if only one
heart and mind at a time. One had to pretend, to be slightly delusional, and in
this pretending, this ‘as if’, a new standing for individual and collective conscious-
ness could be found. Or, as Konrad hoped: ‘Our greatest act on behalf of freedom
is to behave toward everyone as though we were free men – even toward those
whom we fear.’35 Even if the events of 1989 depended more upon external political
circumstances for their peacefulness than they depended upon the actions of the
dissidents,36 the power of rhetoric such as Havel’s, when coupled with the idea of
‘civil society’, not only endured in various layers of the use of ‘civil society’ as a
social-political concept after 1989, but also gave the dissidents reason to believe
that what they did had a significance for themselves as individuals within the con-
text of the intersubjective recognition of the ‘We’ into which they put the ‘I’. When
Havel reflected on this situation, he called it an ‘existential revolution’:
This as yet unknown way out might be most generally characterized as a broad
‘existential revolution’ . . . a solution cannot be sought in some technological sleight
of hand, that is, in some external proposal for change, or in a revolution that is merely
philosophical, merely social, merely technological, or even merely political. These are
all areas where the consequences of an existential revolution can and must be felt; but
their most intrinsic locus can only be human existence in the profoundest sense of the
word.37
The principle of association behind many civil society gatherings in Eastern

Europe under communism was a type of recognition that was able to transform
participants existentially, to believe that gathering in the company of others was
worthwhile, despite hopeless and forsaken political circumstances. This was the
atmosphere where the contemporary allure of ‘civil society’ first caught on,
where it came to embody hope for a more just, more ethical, and more open
society. ‘Civil society’ was not just about democracy and democratic change; it
was, in the bleakest moments of totalitarianism and dictatorship, about the mutual
recognition of those within a group. Even without a reference to a potentially better
future, dissidents saw the meaningful benefits of such face-to-face gatherings in and
of themselves.
These gatherings also helped mitigate the effects of demoralizing objectification.
As Havel described:
For some time now I’ve been burdened by the feeling that I’ve been thrust into a
predetermined, static situation, that someone, somewhere, has already described me
and classified me, and that I’ve merely been accepting this passively and playing the
role I’ve been handed without engaging my own imagination . . . I felt the need to stir
things up, to confront others for a change and force them to deal with [this]
situation.38
While his willingness to enter into dangerous conversations was not a common
action in his own society, here Havel explains why he chose to write controversial
ideas and engage in illegal conversation with other dissidents: to avoid being put
into objective and pre-classified categories, and instead to be treated like a subject
and interlocutor, in the process engaging his own individual imagination in the
name of the common good of ‘social self-awareness’. These are lofty goals of
intersubjective recognition, and probably never fully reached even in the most
civil of civil society organizations, but this ideal type of mutual recognition sym-
bolizes an existential alternative to isolation and societal atomization. The search
for such recognition occurs in both democracies and non-democracies, and looking
at civil society in non-democracies as necessarily defined by the group’s civil dis-
obedience only towards a political regime, and only in the name of democracy,
limits our understanding of a vast array of gathering for existential purposes.
As suggested in the introduction, it also limits the researcher’s understanding of
the sustainability of associations. How did these dissident associations sustain
themselves in contexts of outright persecution? Why is it that some associations
collapse when their money runs out, but these associations kept going and going
with no money and little outside support? The wager this argument makes is that
within an association’s ability to foster intersubjective recognition sits its potential
for sustainability through good times and bad, both within and outside of the
protections of democracy. The question of sustainability is being asked with
more frequency in research on civil society, but it has not yet been asked in
terms of intersubjective recognition.39 Gatherings that do not have outwardly pol-
itical goals still promote civility within themselves by focusing on the gathering
itself as the goal, especially in contexts where gathering is difficult. On the flip side,
even gatherings with ‘democratic’ ends can be internally undemocratic and uncivil
towards members themselves, and achieving democratic goals does not inherently
mean the association also provides intersubjective recognition. The full conse-
quences of this need to be further explored within both theoretical and empirical
research.
Exclusive or plural recognition?

The most well-known theorization of recognition is Hegel’s master–slave dialectic,
where the master ‘recognizes’ the slave as enslaved, suggesting that there is some-
thing within the idea of recognition quite unrelated to civility. The other question
that therefore must be asked about the relationship of associations, recognition and
civility is about the dangers of human interactions when they are built upon the
demand for recognition.40 In other words, some types of recognition are more civil
than others. Asking what mode of recognition might be at play in any given civil
Brinton 337
society organization can help reveal both the depth of civility within a gathering of
people, as well as the incivility. Not all forms of political recognition actually
recognize the individual as he recognizes himself; many in fact turn to identifica-
tion, objectification and contentious claims of identity. ‘Identity recognition’, how-
ever, is perhaps the most commonly evoked type of recognition within academic
and policy debates about the ‘politics of recognition’. ‘Identity-recognition’ is the
demand to be recognized by others, including the state, for ‘who we are’, implicitly
meaning that I want to be recognized for who I say I am, not necessary who you say
I am. This is the battleground of identity politics par excellence: who gets to rec-
ognize me as what? This sort of demand for recognition leads to associations of
people that do indeed create battlegrounds, and might not be entirely civil, unless
such associations also provide for intersubjective recognition at the same time they
provide for identity recognition. It is therefore necessary to say a bit more about why
the politics of identity recognition points to a cautionary tale of potential incivility.
Charles Taylor, in his 1992 essay ‘Multiculturalism and the ‘‘Politics of
Recognition’’’, defines ‘identity recognition’ as one part of the historical develop-
ment of various ideas about recognition. He excavates categories from the past to
demonstrate that ‘our ancestors of more than a couple of centuries ago would have
stared at us uncomprehendingly if we had used these terms [of recognition] in their
current sense’.41 Turning to Rousseau’s notions of authenticity as the precursor to
‘the development of an ideal of inwardly generated identity [that] gives a new
importance to recognition’,42 Taylor argues that ‘[w]hat has come about with the
modern age is not the need for recognition but the conditions in which the attempt
to be recognized can fail’.43 In an age of social hierarchies before the French
Revolution, recognition was assumed and taken for granted; one was recognized
in accordance with one’s social class and one’s family, with such fixity that the
word ‘recognition’ denoted little besides identification in a pre-existing social or
political category.44 Not until aristocratic and feudal structures began to break
down did recognition of one’s own identity, in the disintegration and rearranging
of pre-existing categories, come to be seen as necessary.
Taylor identifies the current ‘politics of recognition’ as a discourse where rec-
ognition of one’s identity is seen as a concrete social good necessary for modern
life. ‘Misrecognition shows not just lack of due respect. It can inflict a grievous
wound, saddling its victims with a crippling self-hatred. Due recognition is not just
a courtesy we own people. It is a vital human need.’45 From these underlying
assumptions arise two forms of politics, the politics of equal dignity and the politics
of difference:
Where the politics of universal dignity fought for forms of nondiscrimination that
were quite ‘blind’ to the ways in which citizens differ, the politics of difference often
redefine nondiscrimination as requiring that we make these distinctions the basis of
differential treatment.46
Within both the politics of equal dignity and the politics of difference, the calls
for recognition have ‘been made explicit . . . by the spread of the idea that we are
formed by recognition’.47 In other words, if one takes recognition to be the basis of

identity formation of the human individual, then to deny recognition undermines
both human dignity and the capacity to be distinct and different. Taylor does not
address authoritarian societies, but the actions of those seeking their identities to be
recognized, even though the state denies recognition to them, would be logically
consistent with much of what Taylor argues. When identity, rather than intersub-
jectivity, is at stake, however, those reactions and struggles may be very uncivil.
The critiques of Taylor’s argument ask how we might adequately recognize
distinct groups without categorizing them according to reifying and stultifying
categories inconsistent with their own self-understanding. How do we account
for identities that change over time, furthermore, when individuals in modern
societies shift between ‘identity’ groups? Is the presumption of ‘equal worth’ ade-
quate when ‘worth’ itself is culturally and ethically constructed, perhaps only
applicable to certain societies and social structures? If ethical claims must be
made for recognition claims to be valid, are all theories of recognition culturally
bounded, unable to address global issues?48 According to Patchen Markell, identity
politics and theories of recognition based upon identity politics unnecessarily and
harmfully reify identity:
The trouble is that the politics of recognition responds to this fact [of vulnerability to
others] by demanding that others recognize us as who we already really are. Invoking
‘identity’ as a fait accompli precisely in the course of the ongoing and risky inter-
actions through which we become who we are (or, more precisely, who we will turn
out to have been), it acknowledges and refuses to acknowledge our basic condition of
intersubjective vulnerability . . . If identity can only be reliably known in retrospect,
then to wish for recognition is tantamount to wishing for the security of death.49
This critique of the reification of identity within discussions like Taylor’s pro-
vides a useful and cautionary reminder.50 We can indeed change who we are,
including which social categories we might fit into, and oftentimes involuntary
changes in our circumstances can change who we are; this is what Markell calls
‘intersubjective vulnerability’. He sees this vulnerability as an essential part of
human existence, and ‘[i]n this sense, the pursuit of recognition involves a ‘‘mis-
recognition’’ of a different and deeper kind: not the misrecognition of an identity,
either one’s own or someone else’s, but the misrecognition of one’s own funda-
mental situation or circumstances’.51
Through his critique of identity-recognition, Markell warns that harmful object-
ification can come within identity-recognition, because it assumes fixed identities in
a world where identities are more fluid and vulnerable. In the 1990s, a child with
one Hutu parent and one Tutsi parent in Rwanda, or a child of an inter-ethnic
marriage of an Orthodox Serb and Bosnian Muslim in Yugoslavia, would under-
stand in his existence the fluidity of identity-recognition as a life or death matter, a
choice between master and slave, or as the case was, between murderer and mur-
dered. When identity-recognition trumps all other forms of recognition, and the
political climate turns sour, violence is lurking very nearby. The type of recognition
Brinton 339
Markell advocates to overcome such reification of identity, which he calls ‘acknow-

ledgement’, seeks to overcome the objectification and incivility lurking within
identity-recognition:
[J]ustice does not require that all people be known and respected as who they really
are. It requires, instead, that no one be reduced to any characterization of his or her
identity for the sake of someone else’s achievement of a sense of sovereignty or invul-
nerability, regardless of whether that characterization is negative or positive, hateful
or friendly. It demands that each of us bear our share of the burden and risk involved
in the uncertain, open-ended, sometimes maddeningly and sometimes joyously sur-
prising activity of living and interacting with other people.52
In this joyous but maddening conceptualization, Taylor’s characterization of the

contradiction between ‘the politics of difference’ and the ‘politics of equality’ are
dissolved; Markell opens space for both alternatives across the span of time.53
Recognition is not constant through time, solved once and for all by a law,
policy or the imposition of an ethnic state, but rather is a momentary linkage of
past and present. At any given moment the availability of recognition for any given
individual can come into question. Recognition is not something that will be con-
sistent, and in a larger existential sense, Markell concludes that ‘[i]f we cannot do
without the bonds of recognition, we also cannot do without the dark space
between recognitions, which is the space of movement, of action, and of life’.54
This critique of the politics of identity-recognition is important for outlining the
terms of recognition applicable to civil society. The structure of analysis offered by
Taylor depends very heavily – too heavily in Markell’s eyes – on the role of the
Markell argues,
A more modest hope . . . might lie in the multiplication and diffusion of the sites
around which struggles for recognition are carried out, resisting the punitively sover-
eign state’s implicit claim to hold a monopoly on the distribution of recognition and to
be the ultimate arbiter of contests over identity . . . The point of such a pluralization
would not be to enable a more accurate regime of recognition . . . Instead, such a
pluralization might enable resistance to recognition’s injustices by weakening the hold
of any single exchange of recognition on our being: it may be safer and more con-
ceivable to contest the terms of one exchange of recognition, or indeed to refuse that
exchange altogether, if doing so does not amount to a kind of social death.55
The pluralization of sites of recognition within the wider society and the multi-
plication of places where humans can seek recognition of both their sameness and
difference is, in other language, a call for less state involvement in bestowing rec-
ognition and more focus on how the diffuse institutions of society can provide
multiple sites of recognition. Because of the injustices within the politics of recog-
nizing identity, not everyone will benefit equally from an official state policy of
recognizing sameness and difference.56 By moving the lens of analysis towards the
possibility of the pluralization of sites of recognition within society, however,
the injustices of state-based recognition, a recognition that is necessarily based

upon identity-recognition and its objectifications, can be diffused in favour of
more genuinely mutual recognition within the smaller gatherings of civil society.
Notably Markell only suggests briefly that such a plurality of sites of recognition
might possibly exist; he concludes his book with this evocation of the pluralization,
and does not go so far as to call upon the institutions of civil society specifically.
Given this opening in his conclusion, however, it seems he would be sympathetic to
looking towards civil society organizations as sites capable of fostering a kind of
recognition that transcends identity politics.
For the empirical researcher looking at a civil society organization claiming to
fulfil demands for identity-recognition, Markell’s critique also offers another set of
warnings. If an association includes the claim that it singularly and authoritatively
is the grantor of identity-recognition, that association itself will deny the plurality
of multiple kinds of intersubjective recognition. To be more concrete, certain kinds
of associations can provide identity-recognition but undermine the civility of civil
society: a nationalist association that demands its members to deny all social ties
except those to the nation; a religious organization that demands of its members
the denial of all connections with earthly associations and forces them to turn
solely to God; or any organization which demands supremacy over the recognition
claims of other organizations (i.e. racial supremacy organizations). An excess
demand for identity-recognition, in other words, and a shortage of intersubjective
recognition, can be the warning flag over an association that it will undermine the
civility of its society.
In looking at associational activity outside of democracy and outside of the
protections of the rule of law, making these distinctions between types of recogni-
tion is important when a researcher is trying to find the sources of civility within a
non-democratic society. Instead of saying that all recognition claims fall within
Hegel’s master–slave dialectic, or that all recognitions are interconnected within
repressive communitarianism, in understanding the difference between identity-
recognition and other types of recognition, interesting and relevant research ques-
tions can be added to the examination of civil society, both within and outside of
democracy.
Conclusion
When Thomas Hobbes wrote that ‘the state of men without civil society, which
state we may properly call the state of nature, is nothing else but a mere war of all
against all’,57 he did not mean ‘civil society’ in the same way we currently use the
term ‘civil society’ to describe civic associations, clubs, and other voluntary gather-
ings. To Hobbes, ‘civil society’ was the sphere of government, society, and econ-
omy bundled together, not yet differentiated as it is in current political theory; it
was a more general way of characterizing those aspects of life shared in common
with others. ‘Civility’ and ‘peace’ took primacy in Hobbes’s thinking on govern-
ment, and he might be disconcerted to learn that ‘civil society’ is now considered
Brinton 341
the arena of life where freedom and voluntary associations are spoken of as the
greatest goods, not necessarily embodying discipline and organized authority.
Hobbes’s formulation of ‘civil society’ assumed a natural human predilection for
individual isolation and anxious loneliness in a hostile world; even without the
occasion of an actual civil war, humans will naturally bowl alone, and can only
artificially be made to break out of their rather anti-social tendencies:
For they who shall more narrowly look into the causes for which men come together,
and delight in each other’s company, shall easily find that this happens not because
naturally it could happen not otherwise, but by accident . . . We do not therefore by
nature seek society for its own sake, but that we may receive some honour or profit
from it; these we desire primarily, that secondarily. How, by what advice, men do
meet, will be best known by observing those things which they do when they are met.58
Hobbes suggests we need something beyond ourselves to draw us out of our

individual isolation on fortified islands; we need to come together for ‘some honor
or profit’ to realize the fruits of trusting others and ‘delighting in their company’.
The substance of this honour or profit was not something Hobbes elaborated upon
very thoroughly; the achievement of peace and stability did not necessarily require
looking into the ‘advice’ (or reason) by which ‘men meet’, as long as they submitted
to the power of the Leviathan and did not meet for violent purposes. When
Hobbes’s men gathered together into associations, we could imagine they recog-
nized one another under a common state of submission, rather than assuming
common subjectivity of the political subject, as Hegel would later formulate.
While motivations for the act of gathering and association have changed over
time, in following Hobbes’s cue that reasons for meeting can be seen in ‘those
things they do when they are met’, researchers should ask more questions about
the mutuality of exchanges of intersubjective recognition within associations out-
side of democracy. Within such associations, in whatever type of political environ-
ment, others may potentially come closer to seeing us as we see ourselves, we may
come closer to seeing ourselves as others see us, and through such a dialogue we
may come to see the potential for civility in both ourselves and others. Such a
scenario of genuine mutuality may be rare in lived experience, but the aspiration
for such a possibility will bring people to associate with one another, and will be
one thing, in Hobbes’s words, ‘they do when they are met’.
If the contemporary idea of civil society has been recognized primarily through
its relationship to democracy, I have tried to evoke the idea that making democracy
work using civil society is a variation on a longer standing theme of making society
more peaceful through providing nodes of mutual recognition. Making democracy
work is a variation upon this theme, but it is not the theme itself. If civil society
gatherings last through time when they embody and seek to fulfil the human need
for mutual recognition, we can surmise that the search for such recognition will
continue to influence modes of gathering and modes of politics in significant ways
far into the future. This search, furthermore, while helped by democracy and aspir-
ations for democratic representation, goes beyond a mere desire for political
representation, tapping into an existential need and a human condition beyond

politics. Even though authoritarian politics may circumscribe institutional forms of
association, people will nonetheless gather together despite those restraints. By
asking questions about how mutual recognition occurs inside associations, new
horizons of research can examine how civil society creates the potential for civility
within democratic and non-democratic settings alike. While it is not the task of
theory to operationalize these proposed questions for the field, this sketch has
hopefully opened the door for such research.
Notes
1. For a short list of democracy-centred arguments, see Robert Putnam (1993) Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University
Press. Theda Skocpol (1997) ‘The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American
Democracy’, Social Science History 21(4): 455–79. Andrew Arato (2000) Civil Society,
Constitution, and Legitimacy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Adam Seligman
(1992) The Idea of Civil Society. New York: Free Press. Larry Diamond (1999)
Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
2. The recent of events in Egypt have highlighted the multi-layered contingencies within the
linkage between civil society and democracy. Dissident associations planned and orga-
nized mass protests calling for a new democratic government, but those associations
acted in a political context that was decidedly undemocratic. During the course of
mass protests, the leadership of these associations successfully practised civility them-
selves, made others practise civility and created something in Tahrir square that seemed
to be civil society. Yet, upon one non-democratic government (Mubarak) relinquishing
power, another non-democratic government (the military) took power, and the demo-
cratic outcomes of the whole process were anything but immediately locked and certain.
If a democracy does not succeed in the end, however, and Egypt does not emerge a
democracy, it would be analytically and theoretically incorrect to look back upon the
associations in Tahrir square as no longer ‘counting’ as ‘civil society’. It was clear civil
society existed outside of democracy in Egypt, but it was not clear civil society was
capable of creating democracy by itself. Just because civil society does not always succeed
in creating democracy, however, does not mean it is not civil society. The current litera-
ture obscures this category.
3. The empirical studies of civil society in individual non-democratic countries, as well as
studies of civil society in regions struggling to democratize, are growing. The works
consulted for this study – though not an exhaustive list – included the following.
Nelson Kasfir (ed.) (1998) Civil Society and Democracy in Africa: Critical Perspectives.
London: Frank Cass Amyn Sanjoo (ed.) (2002) Civil Society in the Muslim World:
Contemporary Perspectives. London: I. B. Tauris. Timothy Brook and Michael Frolic
(eds) (1997) Civil Society in China. New York: M. E. Sharp, Inc. Shelia Capapico (1998)
Civil Society in Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Marlies Glasius, David Lewis and Hakan Seckinelgin (eds)
(2004) Exploring Civil Society: Political and Cultural Contexts. New York: Routledge.
Sohail Hashmi (ed.) (2002) Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism and
Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord (2000)
Brinton 343
Civil Society Before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth Century Europe. New York:
Rowman & Littlefield.
4. Programmes that promote civil society organizations in the context of democratization
have been widely criticized for being too dependent on supposedly universal – but in
actuality very Western – ideas about what civil society should be in relationship to
democracy. The ineffectiveness of these programmes has often been attributed to
cultural and historical misunderstandings and misinterpretations, where local social
conditions have been ignored, with significant consequences and failures of aid pro-
grams. See Sarah Mendelson and John Glenn (eds) (2002) The Power and Limits
of NGOs. New York: Colombia University Press. Martha Ottaway and
Thomas Carothers (eds) (2000) Funding Virtue. Washington DC: Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom (2006) Funding Civil
Society: Foreign Assistance and NGO Development in Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
5. G. W. F. Hegel (1977) Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Milner. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
6. Alexander Honneth (1995) Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social
Conflicts, tr. Joel Anderson. Cambridge: Polity Press.
7. Honneth uses this phrase in several variations, including the ‘moral infrastructure of
interactions’ (ibid. 143) and ‘the moral logic of social struggle’ (ibid. 144). In this regard
he is discussing the moral self-understanding of individual and group participants in
social movements, and how they see their claims as moral, perhaps appealing to uni-
versal Kantian Moralitat. In the final chapters of his work, however, he turns to articu-
lating ‘a philosophical justification for [recognition’s] underlying normative principle’ by
articulating a ‘formal conception of ethical life,’ where he discusses how personal integ-
rity is defined by intersubjective conditions, therefore following Hegel’s (ethical)
Sittlichkeit. (144) He notes, in distinguishing Kantian morality from Hegelian
Sittlichkeit, that ‘the line of argument that we have been following in the reconstruction
of the model of recognition, however, does not fit clearly into either of these two alter-
natives.’ (172) The ‘structural elements of ethical life’ are not, he argues, to be confused
with an ‘entire ethos of a concrete tradition-based community.’ (172) ‘Insofar as we have
developed it as a normative concept, our recognition-theoretic approach stands in the
middle between a moral theory going back to Kant, on the one hand, and communi-
tarian ethics, on the other. It shares with the former the interest in the most general
norms possible, norms which are understood as conditions for specific possibilities; it
shares with the latter, however, the orientation towards human self-realization as an
end.’ (173).
8. Ibid. pp. 58–9.
9. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence
(New York: Harper and Row, 1969) 514. For a contemporary account of the various
types and categories of practical goals that bring people into associative relations, see
Mark Warren (2001) Democracy and Association, pp. 196–201. Princeton: Princeton
University Press. His categorization of ‘associations with potentials for coordination
and cooperation’ is helpful.
10. Honneth (n. 6), p. 122.
11. Ibid. p. 128.
12. Nancy Fraser thought the idea that everyone had a right to equal social esteem proposed
by Honneth was a ‘reductio ad absurdum.’ See Nancy Fraser (1995) ‘From
Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a ‘‘Post-Socialist’’ Age’,
New Left Review, 212: 68–93. Nancy Fraser (2000) ‘Rethinking Recognition’, New Left
Review 3: 107–20.
13. Honneth (n. 6), p. 139.
14. Adam Ferguson (1995) An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania
Oz-Salzberger, p. 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
15. See n. 4 for examples of literature on democracy promotion and civil society.
16. For a review of the literature of a growing oeuvre, see John Hailey (2006) ‘NGO
Leadership Development: A Review of the Literature’, Praxis Paper 10 (International
NGO Training and Research Center, July).
17. Mark Warren (n. 9) briefly probes the difference between the latent and manifest effects
of association, a concern echoed here with the hope of extending its relevance. This is
also a response to (and builds upon) some of the limitations of Ferdinand Tonnies’s
distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.
18. Jakub Karpinski (1992) ‘Opposition, Dissidents, Democracy’, Uncaptive Minds
(Summer): 20. This is not meant to be a generalization about all dissident associations
throughout the Eastern European communist states. When this debate emerged after
1989, there were others who followed Tocqueville’s schools of democracy idea very
closely: ‘Charter 77 was a great school of democracy and political debate for everyone
in it. Individuals with different views had to learn how to cooperate, compromise, and
represent the group’s consensus viewpoint (to the extent that a consensus could be
reached) and not their personal views. The dissidents gained a great advantage in this
respect.’ Petruska Sustrova (1994) ‘Different Legacies of Dissent’, Uncaptive Minds
(Fall–Winter) 7(3): 78.
19. A much more in depth treatment of how these ideas play out in a variety of political and
cultural contexts can be found in my forthcoming book manuscript, available upon
request. Aspen Brinton, ‘Facing the Closed Society: the Past and Future of Eastern
European Dissidents’.
20. Vaclav Benda (1991) ‘The Parallel Polis’, in Gordon Skilling and Paul Wilson (eds) Civic
Freedom in Central Europe: Voices from Czechoslovakia, pp. 36–7. New York:
St Martin’s Press.
21. Michnik described the most immediate need for such limitations as the perpetual threat
of Soviet force: ‘For social accords to function, however, social consciousness must have
engraved in it the political boundaries that must not be crossed – boundaries which are
an integral part of the Gdansk accords and which must be brought to anyone’s mind as
soon as they remember Budapest burning and Soviet tanks in the streets of Prague.’
Adam Michnik, ‘A Time of Hope, 1980’, in Michnik (1985) Letters from Prison and
Other Essays, tr. Maya Latynski, p. 105. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
22. (1988) ‘Romania: Stalinism in One Country. An interview with Mihai Botez’, Uncaptive
Minds 1(2): 23.
23. Vaclav Havel, ‘Six Asides’, in Havel (1992) Open Letters, ed. Paul Wilson, p. 276. New
York: Vintage.
24. Not all reflections on anti-politics were wholly laudatory. G. M. Tomas wrote:
‘The anti-institutional slant of the dissident idea of civil society made it ‘‘anti-political,’’
although it was not apolitical. Dissidents thought that the bigger chunk of human
life was non-institutional anyway; this is where we should conquer and realize
our independence. It was the old Stoic idea . . . There were lyrical effusions about the
civic virtue of lazing in the sun and surveying pretty girls from the pub door.’
G. M. Tamas (1994) ‘Legacy of Dissent: Irony, Ambiguity, Duplicity’, Uncaptive
Minds 7(2): 27.
Brinton 345
25. György Konrad (1984) Antipolitics: An Essay, tr. Richard Allen, p. 147. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
26. Jan Kubik offered a perceptive analysis of these dynamics:
In authoritarian or post-totalitarian systems were the elite political actors

reserve for themselves an almost complete monopoly of ‘doing politics,’ any
independent action of the ‘illegally’ autonomous civil society becomes inad-
vertently political. On the other hand, mobilizing for action within dissident
groups is unthinkable without the support of familial, kinship, and friendship
networks. For these two reasons, the borders among political society, civil
society, and domestic society are very porous. In fact, civil society cannot exist
without a base in domestic society: Gellnerian ‘cousins’ are not civil society’s
greatest enemies (as in liberal-democratic systems), but rather its necessary
benefactors.
Jan Kubik (2000) ‘Between the State and Networks of Cousins’, in Nancy Bermeo and
Philip Nord (eds) Civil Society Before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth Century
Europe, p. 198. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
27. Konrad (n. 25), p. 198.
28. Measuring impact of civil society in democratic countries has grown into its own sub-
discipline within political science. A few representative works include: Warren (n. 9).
Adam Przeworski et al. (2000) Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and
Well-Being in the World 1950–1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robert D.
Putnam (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton:
Princeton University Press. Robert D. Putnam (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Adrian Karatnycky
et al. (eds) (2001) Nations in Transit 1999–2000: Civil Society, Democracy, and Markets
in East Central Europe and the Newly Independent States. Washington, DC: Freedom
House. Marc Howard (2003) The Weakness of Post-Communist Civil Society.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Larry Diamond (1999) Developing
Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ariel Armony (2004) The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
29. Konrad (n. 25), p. 202.
30. Michnik (n. 21), p. 49.
31. Konrad (n. 25), p. 202.
32. Havel (n. 23), p. 213.
33. When dissidents emigrated from communist states to western countries, they were often
given support and recognition. But those who remained could not get assistance from
abroad easily given the monitoring and repression of these activities by the state. The
secret police tried to infiltrate many organizations furthermore, to create divisions and
rifts between the activists themselves, in order to undermine their overall solidarity.
34. Havel (n. 23), p. 297.
35. Konrad (n. 25), p. 82.
36. By ‘external political circumstances’ I mean here the fact that tanks were not sent in by
the Soviet Union (as in 1968 in Czechoslovakia), martial law was not imposed by the
local communist regime (as in 1980 in Poland), and there was not widespread state-
sponsored violence (as in Tiananmen Square earlier in 1989). This was related to
Gorbachev following the policies of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union,
but as Gorbachev was not in full control of all the leaders of the communist
bloc, there were more factors involved than just his leadership – thus the debate
about the degree of influence by civil society actors on the actions of the communist
regimes.
37. Havel, ‘Power of the Powerless’, in Havel (n. 23), p. 202.
38. Ibid. p. 85.
39. Research about the sustainability of associations has proliferated. Here are just a few
examples of articles that helped build the debate: Ian Smillie (1996) Service Delivery or
Civil Society: Non-Governmental Organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ottawa:
CARE Canada. Joseph Devine (2003) ‘The Paradox of Sustainability: Reflections of
NGOs in Bangl adesh’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
590 (Nov.): 227–42. Roberto Belloni (2001) ‘Civil Society and Peacebuilding in Bosnia
and Herzegovina’, Journal of Peace Research 38(2): 163–80.
40. Hegel (n. 5).
41. Charles Taylor (1992) Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’: An Essay,
p. 26. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
42. Ibid. p. 34.
43. Ibid. p. 35.
44. Since Taylor’s seminal essay, a longer description, and alternate story, of the develop-
ment of these ideas was provided by Paul Ricoeur (2005) The Course of Recognition, tr.
David Pellauer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pressded. See pp. 23–69
(‘Recognition as Identification’) and 69–150 (‘Recognizing Oneself’ or identity-recogni-
tion). He argues that the desire for mutual recognition has arisen from two other types of
recognition: recognition as identification of an object in accordance with a transcenden-
tal category, and recognition of the self as itself through its memory as a constitutive
element of identity.
45. Ibid. p. 26.
46. Ibid. p. 39.
47. Ibid. p. 64. ‘The charge leveled by the most radical forms of the politics of difference is
that ‘‘blind’’ liberalisms are themselves the reflection of particular cultures. And
the worrying thought is that this bias might not just be a contingent weakness of
all hitherto proposed theories, that the very idea of such a liberalism may be a
kind of pragmatic contradiction, a particularism masquerading as the universal.’
Taylor (n. 41), p. 44.
48. E.g. Nancy Fraser critiques identity recognition, as
[t]he result is often to impose a single, drastically simplified group identity,

which denies the complexity of people’s lives, the multiplicity of their identi-
fications and the cross-pulls of their various affiliations. In addition, the model
reifies culture. Ignoring trans-cultural flows, it treats cultures as simply
bounded, neatly separated and non-interacting, as if it were obvious where
one stops and another starts . . . denying internal heterogeneity, moreover, the
identity model obscures the struggles within social groups for the authority,
and indeed for the power, to represent them. Consequently, it masks the
power of dominant fractions and reinforces intra-group domination. In gen-
eral, then, the identity model lends itself all too easily to repressive forms of
communitarianism.
Brinton 347
Fraser (2002) ‘Recognition without Ethics’, in Scott Lash and Mike Featherstone (eds)
Recognition and Difference, p. 24. London: SAGE.
49. Patchen Markell (2003) Bound by Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2003), 14. In another passage (p. 5) Markell clarifies his project: ‘I offer and alternative
diagnosis of relations of social and political subordination, which sees them not as
systemic failures by some people to recognize others’ identities, but as ways of pattern-
ing and arranging the world that allow some people and groups to enjoy a semblance of
sovereign agency at others’ expense.’
50. Ibid. p. 12.
51. Ibid. p. 5.
52. Ibid. p. 7.
53. ‘Recognition links an agent’s past and present to her future; and the politics of recog-
nition involves a distinctive kind of practical relation to these different horizons of
temporality.’ Ibid. p. 10.
54. Ibid. p. 189.
55. Ibid. pp. 188–9.
56. ‘People who are able to identify relatively unproblematically with the ‘‘larger society’’
and its institutions are also typically better able to set the terms under which any
exchange of recognition with less powerful and more vulnerable others will occur,
making their desires and needs into nonnegotiable items.’ Ibid. p. 6.
57. Thomas Hobbes (1991) Man and Citizen (De Cive), tr. Charles T. Wood, T. S. K. Scott-
Craig, and Bernard Gert, ed. Bernard Gert, p. 101. Indianapolis: Hackett.
58. Ibid. p. 111.

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European Journal of Political

Association and recognition in authoritarian societies: A theoretical

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should be asked about associations existing outside of a democratic milieu, with

1. Do the members of the association see themselves as objects or subjects to one

Objects or subjects of association?

A conception of ethical life in terms of a theory of recognition proceeds from the

Honneth attributes the origins of this formulation to Hegel, but is careful to

individualizing character and generate symmetrical relationships’.10 This ‘gener-

The practical relation-to-self that such an experience of recognition allows individuals

Empirically, whether the cognitive potential inherent in feeling hurt or ashamed

The construction of the cultural-political environment matters for the form in

Gathering for what ends?

These ‘associations without a purpose’ can matter, furthermore, in promoting

general claustrophobia.24 Rhetoric about ‘civil society’ as a parallel sphere was an

Limited democratic institutions, a social contract, independent political structures – at

The success of this independent ferment cannot be measured by the replacement of

public performance would be possible outside of the ‘private’ boundaries of the

Dissidents’ homes became places of potential truthfulness amidst lies, places

The principle of association behind many civil society gatherings in Eastern

Exclusive or plural recognition?

formed by recognition’.47 In other words, if one takes recognition to be the basis of

Markell advocates to overcome such reiﬁcation of identity, which he calls ‘acknow-

In this joyous but maddening conceptualization, Taylor’s characterization of the

the injustices of state-based recognition, a recognition that is necessarily based

Hobbes suggests we need something beyond ourselves to draw us out of our

representation, tapping into an existential need and a human condition beyond

In authoritarian or post-totalitarian systems were the elite political actors

[t]he result is often to impose a single, drastically simpliﬁed group identity,

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