Uncivil Society

Richard Boyd is Assistant Professor of Political Science at The University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In his book, Richard Boyd offers a thoughtful reappraisal of the relation between the idea of civil society and the tradition of liberal political thought. He questions the view held by many contemporary political theorists that the development of civil society, understood as the realm of what Tocqueville called "voluntary associations" mediating between the individual and the state, is a necessary condition for the maintenance of liberal democracy. Against this position, Boyd argues that an earlier tradition of liberal thought was justifiably suspicious of the potential for subpolitical social groups—especially, but not limited to, intolerant religious sects—to undermine rather than support liberal institutions. In a series of well-argued chapters, he traces the trajectory of the connected ideas of civil society and social pluralism from initial suspicion to perhaps uncritical acceptance.

• 1 Introduction: Civic Associations and the Liberal Tradition2 Chapter One: Thomas Hobbes and the Perils of Pluralism3 Chapter Two: John Locke, Toleration, and Sectarianism4 Chapter Three: Reappraising the Scottish Moralists and Civil Society5 Chapter Four: Edmund Burke's Defense of Civil Society6 Chapter Five: John Stuart Mill and the Modern Liberal Ambivalence to Groups7 Chapter Six: Alexis de Tocqueville and the Perils of Pluralism Revisited8 Chapter Seven: Michael Oakeshott and the Transformational (Im)possibilities of the Liberal State9 Chapter Eight: F. A. Hayek and the Limits of Liberal Constitutionalism10 Conclusion: Liberal Neutrality, Purposive Community, and the Logic of Contemporary Pluralism