Learning to be a citizen: Cognitive and ethical aspects of post‐communist society transformation

Both the celebration of and disappointment with civil society arise because of conceptual deficiencies and, more important, a growing gap between actual political developments and civil society theory. The result of this is the ‘overlooking of the cognitive importance of the economic component of civil society formation’, on the one hand, and a rather static reading off of civil society theory as a ‘theory of ethical and cognitive development of responsible citizenship’. More research needs to be done on local level institutions by civil society theorists, without which they cannot be alive to the importance of the ‘crafting’ of democratic institutions and practice at the local level, in order to allow for the formation of a civil society different from, but not hostile to the state.