The Democratization Function Of Civilsociety At The Stage Of Democratic Consolidation

Why do civil societies have a differential development at the stage of democraticconsolidation? This paper addresses the question and makes a probe into how cancivil society push the process of democratization.Based on the exsiting research, this author comes up with a hypothesis aboutfunctions of civil society to democratization:At the stage of democratic consolidation,civil society can be an important power to push the democratization when it takes apath similar to the Neo-Tocquevillian Model.This paper researches the development of civil society with the sociologicaltheory of "structure-function". Leverage the Civil Society Index (CSI) and theNeo-Tocquevillian Model from Michael Goodhart to re-structure the question.This paper introduces a new index named “D-CSI” with four dimensions andthirteen sub-dimensions for the expanding application of CSI based on the basicprinciples of Neo-Tocquevillian Model. Through comparing the role of “CivicForum” and “Anti-Corruption League” by D-CSI, this paper provides evidence thatcivil society can play a greater role in the consolidation of democracy if it takes a pathsimilar to the Neo-Tocquevillian Model.