Raimund Popper On Civil Society

Richard Vernon in his academic journal analyses works of Karl Raimund Popper and Freidrich Hayek, famous and recognized philosophers, who have written a very valuable and appreciated analysis on society and democracy. In specificity to Popper’s work according to Vernon’s analysis Popper distinguishes an open society from the closed one and analyses both of them in connection with the democratic development. Popper considers closed society as a base for authoritarian regimes and highly criticizes it considering as a primary source of challenge to democracy and for this reason he assesses it as a fundamental part of totalitarianism. On the other hand, the open society is regarded as a progressive idea and a key to liberal democracy, since it

Linz and Alfred Stephan state five essential prerequisites, which are necessary for a country to achieve democratic consolidation. Among the five essential features are: strong and active civil society, untouched and respected political society, acceptance of the rule of law, active bureaucracy in close relations democratic government and economic society. Powerful and untouched civil society is a source of challenge against authoritarian regimes, driving the state towards democratic consolidation. It is used as a tool to limit the powers of the government as it represents a union of individuals, representing the society. In some cases it is the civil society that assures peaceful transition of power from old to new government. Without this specific prerequisite a country is unable to achieve consolidate democracy. (Juan J. Linz& Alfred Stephan, 1996) as mentioned in the book civil society is a necessary precondition for democratic consolidation, which in case of my research suggests that the active work done by the civil society in the forms of NGO’s in Georgia had a huge impact on the democratic development of the country, which left many international actors

The article begins with underlining the importance of the civil society when we are talking about the quality of democracy in a country. Democratic consolidation and liberal values were always in close relations with an active and strong civil society. At the same time, the article examines historical perspective of the civil society and mentions that before 1990’s the civil society was strongly suppressed in eastern European countries by Stalin’s authoritarian regime. As soon as the civil society was given an opportunity for existence in the post-soviet countries the transition towards democratization had began progressing. (Bernard, 1993) Examples of Poland, Hungary and East Germany are very similar to the situation that took place in Georgia during 1990’s. Post-soviet societies had very similar characteristics, which included their exclusion from participation in the governance, and fear of terror, which they felt for many years during the soviet regimes. Georgia similarly to the countries mentioned in the article began to show a significant progress in democratization when civil society became strong enough to gain a right of say within the country. Creation of strong civil society and was a necessity for pushing the country from soviet authoritarianism towards