Though it is possible to print these browsable pages at fax quality, the result will be unsatisfactory. More information on the Open Book is available. Copyright 1998, the Brookings Institution Press. They agree upon little else but this, that mediating structures, voluntary associations, families, communities, churches, and workplaces are the corrective to an inordinate individualism and an overweening state. The ubiquity of the phrase is enough to make it suspect.
Civil society is indeed in a sorry condition.
The welfare state is a classic case of the appropriation by government of the functions traditionally per- formed by families and localities. But it is not only the weakness of civil society that is at fault. Some of the institutions of civil society private schools and universities, unions, and nonprofit foundations, civic and cultural organizations are stronger and more influential than ever. And they have been complicitous in foster- ing the very evils that civil society is supposed to mitigate. But these too are sometimes part of the problem rather than the solution.