Many of those lodging the Nos- taigia Complaint are themselves hankering for a return to big movement politics, it seems. But you don't have to be Max Weber, with his famous definition of politics as the patient boring of hard boards, to have arrived at the recogni- tion that building and sustaining decent institutions is at the heart of the democratic matter. No, but institutions, sturdy but resilient institutions of democratic civil society, do. We Can't Give to the Government Civil society creates spaces for the enactment of human projects, yes, but it also reminds us that this is a world ofties that bind. In an era our own when there is widespread agreement thatAmeri- .
Government can help or hinder.