Pilietinės visuomenės dilemos Lietuvoje ; Dilemmas of civil society in Lithuania

Abstract

The article offers an attempt to reconstruct the concept of civic society and, with the help of new instrumentation, to analyze the dilemmas of the appearance and development of the civic society in Lithuania. In the concept of the civic society, the emphasis on its non-political and self-building character predominates. The basic motive of the attempt to reconstruct the civic society, as presented in the article, accentuates the necessity of the appearance of the political component in the civic society. The political connections of the civic society have been labeled as sub-politics or non-state politics. Not only the potential of the political connections of the civic society, but also their limits have been analyzed: the civic society is able not only to take over some of the state functions that are managed inefficiently, but, by doing it in a resolute way, to stimulate the society's fragmentation. It has also been emphasized that the concept of the civic society implies two not identical, but simultaneous actions: the civic society is not built by the state "from above", however, it is not the result of a mere selfbuilding process, either. […]