Democracy emerges from the tension between state and civil society, not apart from it

Evidence

Democracy (as an organizing modality of civil society) thus is not a product external to the state, the modes, styles, and substance of representation infused into the state from some perfectly autonomous generating plant that will magically transform the state from outside. It is not some perfectly neutral sphere representing no interests but those of justice. Nor is civility simply a restraining power in the public sphere, simply a mode of social (self-)control, as Edward Shils would have it. Rather, democracy has to be thought of as the very product of the tension between state and civil society, as their interactive expression, the outcome of an engagement where one cannot exist – cannot be defined, cannot express itself – without and without expression in and through the other. The color of democracy, so to speak, is that of the civility, the sort of civil society, it promotes. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 243

Democracy (as an organizing modality of civil society) thus is not a product external to the state, the modes, styles, and substance of representation infused into the state from some perfectly autonomous generating plant that will magically transform the state from outside. It is not some perfectly neutral sphere representing no interests but those of justice. Nor is civility simply a restraining power in the public sphere, simply a mode of social (self-)control, as Edward Shils would have it. Rather, democracy has to be thought of as the very product of the tension between state and civil society, as their interactive expression, the outcome of an engagement where one cannot exist – cannot be defined, cannot express itself – without and without expression in and through the other. The color of democracy, so to speak, is that of the civility, the sort of civil society, it promotes. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 243

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the liberal view of democracy as an external check on state power; resonates with Gramscian civil-society analysis the reader may know. — connects to: Party democracy’s erosion destroyed the mediating civil society that stood between citizen and state. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 150
• DEFINE: Goldberg redefines democracy as the interactive product of state and civil society tension rather than a neutral sphere.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 243