Making Sense of 'Weakness' of Post-Communist Civil Society: Individual v Organised Engagement in Civil Advocacy in the Czech Republic

Starting point of this paper is alleged weakness of civil society in Central-Eastern European countries as often demonstrated by sparse organizational infrastructure, low membership in civil society organizations (CSOs), or insufficient community activism and privatism of citizens in these countries. This paper focuses on the Czech Republic and claims, first, that there is a considerable discrepancy in the citizens´ engagement in organized civil society activities depending on whether these are perceived as political (advocacy) or not, and second, that the gap between organized and individual engagement within the field of civil advocacy does not necessarily stem (only) from the “legacy of communism” but (also) from the dissidents´ conception of “non-political” civil society. First, the paper deals with the empirical analysis of EVS data showing that while organized engagement of Czech citizens within political or advocacy oriented CSOs is lower than in the case of western democracies, overall civic engagement in non-advocacy CSOs is considerably high and display relative richness of associational life. Second, based on original survey data (N=800) and focus group interviews the paper aims at understanding why the civic engagement within advocacy oriented CSOs is low, or, in other words, what are the motives of citizens and advocacy CSOs for keeping their distance. The paper further attempts to sketch more general causes of this disconnectedness: it compares the key attitudes and opinions of both individuals and (the representatives of) the CSOs with the pre-1989 dissidents’ discourse on civil society in order to show both the roots of the conflict between the categories of collective/individual and political/ethical in civil society, and to identify the source of this discursive practices in contemporary Czech political culture.