Civil Society in Japan:
through an Environmental Lens
Jeffrey Broadbent
Department of Sociology
University of Minnesota
Visiting Scholar
A/PARC and Department of Sociology
Stanford University
April, 1999
The diverse definitions and interpretations of the concept of civil society share some common themes. The core meaning of the concept refers to voluntary organizations within the everyday social life of citizens (Diamond, 1992; Gold, 1990). These organizations are ’self-organized,’ distinct from and not controlled by dominant institutions such as the state or corporations. The organizations voluntarily interact to form a citizen-based society, also ’self-organized,’ autonomous from and sometimes in conflict with the state or dominant elites (Arato, 1981; Bayart, 1986; Fatton, 1991; Hall, 1995; Ngo, 1993; Weigle & Butterfield, 1992; Woods, 1992). The primary or original purpose and pursuit of people making civil society is not political power nor family life, per se. Rather, civil society is based on fulfilling needs for social affiliation beyond the family, in accord with common local norms (Ahrne, 1998; Alexander, 1997). Through these affiliations and norms, people carry out voluntary community projects (for example, bridge clubs, youth or adult sports, volunteer service clubs, and neighborhood celebrations). The existence of civil society enlivens the "public sphere" (Calhoun, 1992; Habermas, 1989 (1962)). Within the public sphere, citizens talk and build up ideas of their interests without reference to or interference by elites, such as business leaders, politicians and government officials.
By these very principles, civil society easily and readily shades into politics at time. Civil society is ’civil’ because it carries a basic normative component -- respect for other groups’ autonomy. Hence the practice of ’civility’ is a necessary component of civil society (Diamond, 1994; Shils, 1991). And this necessarily inclines civil society toward support for a pluralistic and democratic policy, a policy that respects diversity and responds to local voices (Putnam, 1993). When the state infringes upon the law-abiding autonomy or rejects the legitimate collective concerns of the community, civil society may reject or turn against the state (Diamond, 1992; Fatton, 1991; Somers, 1993).* If the state therefor attempts to circumscribe or limit the legitimate political potential of groups in the local community, it thereby hampers both civil society and democratic pluralism.
The terms civil society and public sphere grow from a Western perspective. Government officials and other leaders in Japan and other East Asian societies draw their notions of proper governance from a quite different Eastern perspective rooted in Confucianism. In the Confucian viewpoint, government, political and business leaders look upon manifestations of civil society and the public sphere with inherent suspicion and distrust. Especially, they tend to consider protest as emotional, irrational and serving little purpose. Of course, disparagement of mass participation in governance is not limited to neo-Confucian elites. In the West, it started with Aristotle's distrust of the "demos," and has continued in conservative thinking to the present (Huntington, 1968). In the 1960s and 1970s, conservative Western leaders similarly disparaged protest movements. Up to that time, even social theory echoed that disparagement (Smelser, 1963; Le Bon, 1977). However, conservative Western leaders and theorists worked against core Western values of individual rights. Leaders in neo-Confucian societies like Japan, however, find justification for state paternalism in still prevalent ethics derived from long historical practice and ideology, as the Tokugawa motto "respect the bureaucrats and despise the people" (kanson minpi) illustrates.
In traditional and neo-Confucian perspectives, government leaders should be respected, shielded from popular demands, and given a relatively free hand to govern (Tu, 1994; Pye, 1985). Ideally, then, they will use state power to follow a wise, long-range vision of the future and nurture the nation and the people. In sociological terms, in this view, the role of government leaders toward society is to paternalistically temper and balance the competing interests of groups in society, integrating their efforts toward goals functional for the entire society. In terms of environmental or other social problems, the Confucian perspective implies that the state will take care of the problem adequately without much need for even institutionalized democratic citizen input through voting, not to speak of direct democracy via unruly citizen protest.
Japan seems to possess many of the attributes of civil society. It enjoys a wealth of local associations, a wide variety of news media, and legal provisions for freedom of association and speech. How, though, do these institutions perform under pressure? When problems remain unresolved and complaint accumulates -- as was the case with pollution -- do they represent citizen opinion? Are ordinary citizens able to form their scattered complaints into coherent collective grievances and present them to the authorities, without elite interference?
To pursue such questions, I spent two and one half years doing anthropological-style field work in a community in southern Japan, in the prefecture of Oita, seeking for answers to this question. After that time, I made several return visits for further inquiry. The issue at hand was one of air and water pollution and community disruption. Government-sponsored plans to build huge industrial plants next to the community threatened it with pollution and urbanization. Local, existing community organizations became the vehicle, first of research on the plan, then of complaint to the elected politicians, and finally, when this failed, of unruly but mostly non-violent protest: signature campaigns, rallies, demonstrations, picketing, sit-ins, blockades, and court suit.
I conducted the field work using multiple methods. The main source of information was intensive, open-ended interviews. I personally conducted over 500 interviews with people involved in the political and social activities related to this issue. They were at all levels and positions, ranging from local farmers and fishing people to the heads of government ministries in Tokyo. I also participated in activities held by community organizations, town and prefectural governments, and other organizations. This participation allowed me to observe and grasp the meaning of their activities more deeply. In addition, I collected a complete archive of newspaper clippings covering the entire history of local industrialization and pollution-related politics from 1955 onward, an extensive library of government publications at all levels, and survey results from opinion surveys and the national census. The use of multiple methods and sources of data allowed me to ’triangulate’ on the subject matter, bringing it into clearer focus.
I have reported the results of my research in my new book, Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest (Cambridge University Press, 1998). I would like to present a brief section from this book to illustrate my general findings. This section presents a dramatic vignette of conflictual encounter between protesting citizens and prefectural government bureaucrats. The protestors came from the village of Kozaki in Saganoseki town, the target of an industrialization project to start with the building of Number 8 landfill on their beach. After years of protest that delayed, but did not cancel, the industrial plans, the protest groups had sued the government in court to stop the plans. The judge ruled that the government’s plans were likely to harm the health of the villagers through pollution, but were not illegal, so could not be stopped by court order.
The protest groups felt the judge’s decision gave them a moral victory, if not a legal one. They called the government planning officials for an appointment to talk about the judge’s acknowledgment of their pollution worries. But they were repeatedly rebuffed by the officials, who refused to talk with the protestors. Finally, in frustration, about 15 protestors, housewives and farmers, led by a former high school teacher, piled into cars and took their anger to the hallway outside the officials’ office in the government building. They invited me along. I went, with tape recorder in hand. The following narrative of the ’hallway protest’ bears upon the question of civil society in Japan.
**************************************
Waving copies of the judge’s comments, the group crowded into the dark third floor hall in front of the planning offices. My tape recorder caught the ensuing encounter (abbreviated here):
Several prefectural officials came out of the planning office, somewhat dismayed. Inao Toru angrily accused them:
You probably have a lot to say about how you’ve received the court decision and how you’re going to handle Landfill No. 8 from now on . . .
The officials replied that they had no appointment to speak with the protestors. Inao told his group:
Show the court statement to them. The governor said he’d respect it.
While Inao was talking, two middle‑aged women from Kozaki harshly criticized the officials: ‘Your attitude is too prideful;’ ‘Who do you think you are?...’ Inao added:
It’s high time you listened to our opinions on Landfill No. 8 . . . If you read this (No. 8) verdict, you wouldn’t be able to keep on forcing No. 8 like you have been. That’s exactly what is written.
The official replied that although the judge’s comments included passages sympathetic to the protestors, he had turned down the suit. Hence, the Prefectural Government had no legal obligation to stop plans for No. 8. Besides, the official contended, unswayed by the judge’s criticism:
We’re working to protect the environment as we go along.
A movement member interjected:
You say you’ll work on it, but there’s no real performance. It’s lousy!
Seeing moral exhortation was going nowhere, Inao turned to pleading:
Well . . . we aren’t saying meet today . . . You cut off the phone earlier, slam! So we’ve come to make an opportunity to talk about this. So even making it for next month is OK. Please do it.
Sensing the protestors’ weak position, the official replied icily:
We don’t do ‘conversation (with the people) politics’ (taiwa kensei) in this prefecture . . . We will follow the principle clause (of the judgment).
The official was referring to the citizen participation schemes of prefectures and municipalities under opposition parties, in Oita City (Chapter 7).
Since the official would admit no legal responsibility, Inao turned to moral shaming:
Even in the case of the Minamata verdict . . . They all just abide by the principal clause. If they pay money, that’s the end of it.
Inao then brought this moral argument to bear on the No. 8 case:
After [the principle clause], what’s written in it? There, the judge takes up the reasons we’re opposing you, all your lousy performance and jobs left undone, and he’s added an extra punch to it all. Right? Now there is this document, so examine it carefully. Then we can talk about it.
The official dryly replied:
We can’t promise you anything.
Departing, a woman in the protest group shouted at the official:
Don’t you realize, you’re the shame of Oita Prefecture!
In this confrontation, each side tried to justify its own stance and undercut the other. The official stuck to the narrow technical legal grounds on which he could win. The movement tried to broaden the debate to one of implicit moral responsibility. This time, however, unlike in the belly‑button confrontation eight years earlier (December 1971, see Chapter 6), such moral exhortation gained the protestors no ground. By then, each side had developed its own entrenched rationale or ideology around the issue. Regarding Landfill No. 8 they lived in quite separate moral universes. As a result, the two sides simply talked past each other.
As the residents left the hall, I lagged behind, shocked by the anger and sharpness of the confrontation. Where was Japanese harmony, I wondered? A prefectural official called my name and beckoned me into the inner offices. The officials knew me well, since I had been interviewing them over the previous months. They had been very surprised to see me there, during the confrontation, and assumed it must have been a coincidence.
A top member of the planning staff, who had just confronted the protestors, was anxious to explain what had happened. The court had denied the movement suit, he said, because the administration’s actions had not harmed anyone. They were just blueprints. They did not infringe on public rights or profits or create any actual pollution. In his comments, the judge had been unfair. He had only emphasized the bad aspects of the New Industrial City, not the many new pollution regulations the Prefectural Government had enacted. The official told me he wanted to create a consensus between the prefecture and the residents:
If there is consensus, there will be no suit...If there can be no agreement, it will lead to another suit.
His comments puzzled me. If he wanted a consensus with the residents, why had he refused to dialogue with this bunch of them? I asked how he would achieve that consensus. The official replied as if it were a purely technical matter. If the Prefectural Government carried out the promised environmental impact assessment, he said, it would be able to predict effects on the natural environment. Then the Prefectural Government would be able to judge whether planned pollution controls would be adequate or not. This information, he thought, would convince the Kozaki residents.
Playing devil’s advocate, I pointed out that the residents already distrusted the Prefectural Government, so why should they believe the results of the government’s assessment? The protest movement, I noted, had requested the right to appoint a scientist of its own choosing to the assessment committee. The Prefectural Government had rejected this request. If the goal was to achieve consensus with the movement, I asked, why not compromise with the citizens’ movement on that point? The official expressed grave doubts:
As to whether No. 8 should be built or not‑‑one must think of Saganoseki’s future progress . . . will [the residents’] scientists do that? . . . Is there any guarantee that the residents will believe us even if we do allow their recommended scientist to participate?
To back up his reasoning, he cited a case from Tokyo:
Governor Minobe (of Tokyo) had the slogan, ’If even one person objects to us putting up a bridge, we won’t put it up.’ This is difficult in practice. There are always those who complain.
A small group of complainers will always exist, the official continued. At some point, he argued, the governor has to ignore them and make decisions for the general welfare:
Therefore, such matters have to be decided by a responsible politician . . . In Oita prefecture, the governor is that decision‑maker . . . Even though some may protest to the bitter end, if the project will help everyone’s welfare, he will decide to do it. That is, if push comes to shove.
However, he added, persuasion was the better way to get things done:
Right now, we’re trying to get those opposed to No. 8 to change their minds. But there is a limit to our patience.
His comments implied that if necessary, the governor would eventually go ahead with No. 8, forcibly removing demonstrators if necessary.
What could account for the officials’ rejection of dialogue with the Kozaki residents, while being in favor of persuasion? In the United States, people tend to think of dialogue as an opportunity for each side to try to persuade the other. Dialogue is a communicative act between (at least for that purpose) equals. But the Oita official did not relish that sort of egalitarian dialogue. To the official, persuasion did not require or even indicate dialogue. To the contrary, it meant presentation of information in formal venues, such as public meetings controlled by the state, or the mass media. The attainment of ‘consensus,’ likewise, did not refer to a meeting of minds, but rather another formal situation--the non-expression of protest. If protest quieted down after the Prefectural Government presented the results of its assessment, that would indicate the attainment of consensus. To the movement, however, ’consensus’ could only occur if the government took their objections into full account. Clearly, the officials and the protestors operated within very different normative frameworks, not only about pollution, but about the status of ordinary citizens in politics as well.
The difference between their frameworks was not purely the outcome of operating within two cultural and normative contexts, however. It also reflected their different placements in society. The officials operated within a government bureaucracy that served the chief executive. Bureaucracies have often been noted for their insensitive handling of citizen concerns, their blind pigeon-holing of individual situations, and numerous other faults (Dahrendorf, 1959; Funabashi, 1980; Habermas, 1981). Mayor Sato’s example showed (Chapter 7) that bureaucracy itself need not be so insensitive. This indicates that it was the policy‑intentions of the dominant elite, rather than any inherent problems with bureaucracy, that caused this divergence of viewpoints about dialogue and persuasion. The interplay of dominant (LDP) political party and business elites set the tone of prefectural bureaucratic behavior. The LDP, allied with national big business and prefectural medium and small‑sized business, continued to urge rapid expansion of the NIC project with Landfill No. 8. As a result, neither the governor nor the bureaucracy could react favorably to citizen demands to the contrary, even if they felt sympathetic.
(from Jeffrey Broadbent, Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998, pp. 301-304)
**************************************
The prefectural bureaucrats’ initial treatment of the hallway protest group hardly demonstrates an enthusiasm for building consensus in the Western sense. In fact, as the incidents recounted here reveal, concerning public politics, Japan is far from a consensus society. To the contrary, the state and politicians actively try to avoid engaging the public in serious dialogue over political issues. In Japan, what passes for "consensus" (goi) is often in fact the muted and helpless acquiescence of lower status people to solutions imposed by higher status, more powerful leaders (Pharr, 1990; Sugimoto, 1986).
The practices, norms and ethics inherited from the Confucian tradition buttressed and justified -- in a word framed -- the bureaucrats’ evaluation of the protest group, prompting their quick dismissal. In the same way, such value-frames support and lead to the Japanese state's more general resistance to providing ordinary citizens with more legal, institutional and informational access to power. This little vignette of local conflict illustrates why many Japanese citizens think of their society as too ’bureaucratic.’ It reveals the inherent contradiction between paternalistic, technocratic bureaucracy practices and the maturation of an effective civil society. In Japan, major decisions affecting ordinary peoples’ lives tend to be taken by officials without much reference or importance given to ordinary peoples opinions. This principle holds not only for struggles over political issues, but even for getting ordinary permits. Young business entrepreneurs, for instance, often leave Japan to get away from petty officials and bureaucratic rules that hamper their creative efforts (Kotkin, 1999).
As the vignette illustrates, within the framework of their neo-Confucian values, officials think of negotiation with the public as persuasion, not open-ended discussion. They first attempt to persuade local groups, or to bribe them with various incentives, to go along with official plans. But if persuasion fails, the officials feel justified in imposing their own view of proper policy upon the community, despite local objections. The domination implicit in the relationship between Japanese local government and ordinary people makes it very hard for civil society to flourish with any sense of efficacy.
The stories leading up to and issuing from the ’hallway protest’ further exemplify many aspects of the power relationship between state and society in Japan. I cannot relate them here, but can only present in summary form some of their implications for civil society in Japan. The central finding that emerges from my research in this regard is that national and local government ministries and agencies, when they are in tight allegiance with conservative party and business elites, consistently attempt, with considerable success, to disempower civil society.
This disempowerment usually occurs not through coercive repression, not through tear gas and billy clubs. Rather , it occurs through ’soft social control’ -- non-coercive techniques of weakening the political impulses and impact of civil society. These techniques of soft social control get woven into the fabric of everyday life. They become seen by most people, most of the time, not as imposed constraints, but simply as ’facts of life’ (Broadbent, 1998; Pharr, 1990).
The difficulty common people face in getting the bureaucracy to take their demands seriously, illustrated by the ’hallway protest’ above, is but one form of ’soft social control.’ Elites, justified by their sense of paternalistic superior rationality, exercise social control techniques in much more invasive ways as well. In Oita Prefecture, a ’Triple Control Structure’ (TCS) exercised relatively constant surveillance over groups in civil society (Broadbent, 1998, pp. 215-219). This TCS was staffed by functionaries of dominant conservative political party, the bureaucratic state and big business interests. When a town or village group started to generate political opposition to elite policies, these TCS carried out, to use a metaphor supplied by a local union leader, a ’combination play’ (renkeipurei) to dissuade people from such criticism.
The TCS tried to ’gnaw away’ (nashikuzushi) at the critical group’s membership through pressure from local political ’bosses,’ home visitation by government officials, veiled threats to members working in big companies with an interest in the issue, and personal and organizational patronage from all three groups. The patronage often took the form of ‘status seduction’ opportunities given to ordinary residents to hobnob and party with the mayor and other high officials. In Japan’s vertical, status-conscious society, such ‘kinship’ gave deflated citizens a sense of self-esteem, and proved a powerful form of control. Such pressures often caused the group’s decline or demise, especially if its leader caved in to the bribes and other proffered temptations (Broadbent, 1998, pp. 278-280).
Critics might charge that Oita Prefecture on Kyushu represents a socially backward, ’feudalistic’ corner of Japan. Certainly, the pervasiveness of soft social control throughout Japan is an important question in assessing the quality of its civil society. I have found considerable evidence that the Triple Control Structure is alive and well even in the major Japanese cities. Other research reports similar conservative machines at work in other communities, including in the heart of Tokyo (Bestor, 1989; Matsushita, 1980).
I also conducted another type of research in Tokyo that revealed aspects of the TCM. Creative involvement in politics can be a type of research if viewed with proper detachment. During 1988 though 1990, I participated in founding a Japanese environmental research center on the model of the US World Watch Institute, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that would make unbiased environmental information readily available to the Japanese people . During this process, I discovered numerous restraints upon the attempts of ordinary people to create such an NGO that would not exist in the United States or probably Europe. Japanese foundations would not grant financial aid to such a venture unless a foreign philanthropy did first. The Japanese government would not grant non-profit status to such an NGO (a politician told me that the government was afraid that gangsters would take advantage of the status). If the NGO wanted to incorporate, it had to seek the sponsorship of a government ministry or agency, which would then expect to place a ministerial retiree on the NGO’s Board of Directors (usually as Managing director, Jomuriji).
As host of more general conditions added to the disempowerment of civil society. The government was reluctant to provide detailed information about policy issues to NGOs. Laws were written vaguely, so as to give the bureaucracy, not the citizen, the capacity to decide when a standard had been violated. Nor, as noted in the ’hallway protest’ vignette, did courts favor citizens in suits against government or business (Upham, 1987). Furthermore, finding a young person to lead the proposed NGO was also difficult, we realized, because the Japanese job market does not grant Japanese youth an idealistic ’searching’ period between college and corporate employment. Culture also entered in -- Japanese citizens were reluctant to join and pay dues to a national organization motivated by abstract ideals such as ’environmental protection.’ If anything, they preferred supporting an organization concerned with very local and tangible causes, such a landfill and polluting factory on their doorstep. Despite these obstacles, we succeeded in obtaining a start-up grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and founded the NGO, which is now operating in Tokyo under the name of JACSES (Japan Center for a Sustainable Environment and Society).
In sum, I think that the constraining structural weight of soft social control exercised by the Triple Control Machine staffed by the conservative dominant political party, conservative allied ministerial bureaucrats, and big business interests severely hampers the emergence of a truly self-organizing civil society in Japan, despite appearances and official pronouncements to the contrary. I further hold that the difficulties experienced by civil society in Japan are primarily the product of structural, not cultural factors. That is, the difficulties result mainly from the limitations of social choices available to the average citizen, not from deferential values internalized within the citizen’s identity. My thesis runs contrary to arguments, such as those in the ’theory of Japaneseness’ (Nihonjinron), that attribute the relative weakness of Japanese civil society to traditional Japanese values (Dale, 1986).
This analysis implies a prescription for invigorating Japanese civil society. Such invigoration does not require education for citizenship or government leadership of a reticent society, as government pronouncements often state. Rather, it requires removing the restraints of soft social control imposed by dominant elites upon civil society, and providing better resources, information and formal recognition to groups struggling to emerge. Given such conditions, civil society will flower on its own in Japan, in accord with the definition of self-organization stated at the beginning of this essay.
References
Ahrne, Goran. 1998. "Civil Society and Uncivil Organizations." Pp. 84-95 in Real Civil Societies: Dilemmas of Institutionalization, edited by Jeffrey Alexander. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Alexander, Jeffrey. 1997. "The Paradoxes of Civil Society." International Sociology 12(2):115-33.
Arato, Andrew. 1981. "Civil Society Against the State: Poland 1980-81." Telos 47:23-47.
Bayart, Jean-Francois. 1986. "Civil Society in Africa." In Political Domination in Africa: Reflections on the Limits of Power, edited by Patrick Chabal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bestor, Theodore C. 1989. Neighborhood Tokyo. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Broadbent, Jeffrey. 1998. Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Calhoun, Craig (ed.). 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: the MIT Press.
Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1959. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Dale, Peter N. 1986. The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Diamond, Larry. 1992. "Introduction: Civil Society and the Struggle for Democracy." In The Democratic Revolution: Struggles for Freedom and Pluralism in the Developing World, edited by Larry Diamond. London: Freedom House.
________. 1994. "Rethinking Civil Society: Toward Democratic Consolidation." Journal of Democracy 5(3):4-17.
Fatton, Robert. 1991. "Democracy and Civil Society in Africa." Mediterranean Quarterly 2(4):83-95.
Funabashi, Harutoshi. 1980. "Kyodo Renkan No Ryogisei - Kei'ei Shisutemu to Shihai Shisutemu (The Ambiguity of Coordination - Management System and Control System).." Pp. 209-31 in Gendai Shakai No Shakaigaku (The Sociology of Contemporary Society), edited by Gendai Shakai Mondai Kenkyukai. Tokyo, Japan: Kawashima Shoten.
Gold, Tom. 1990. "The Resurgence of Civil Society in China." Journal of Democracy 1(1):18-31.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1981. "New Social Movements." Telos, Fall, 33-37.
Habermas, Jurgen. 1989 (1962). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Hall, John A. 1995. Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison. Cambridge: Polity.
Huntington, Samuel. 1968. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kotkin, Joel. 1999. "New Home for a Lost Generation of Innovators." New York Times, Sunday, March 28, 6 (Business section).
Le Bon, Gustave. 1977. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. New York: Penguin.
Matsushita, Keiichi. 1980. "Decentralization and Political Culture: Whither Japan?" Center News, May, 7-11.
Ngo, Tak-wing. 1993. "Civil Society and Political Liberalization in Taiwan." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 25(1):3-15.
Pharr, Susan. 1990. Losing Face. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making Democracy Work. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pye, Lucian. 1985. Asian Power and Politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Shils, Edward. 1991. "The Virtue of Civil Society." Government and Opposition 26(1):3-20.
Smelser, Neil. 1963. The Theory of Collective Behavior. Glencoe: Free Press.
Somers, Margaret R. 1993. "Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy." American Sociological Review 58(5):587-620.
Sugimoto, Yoshio. 1986. "The Manipulative Basis of "Consensus" in Japan." Pp. 65-75 in Democracy in Contemporary Japan, edited by Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
Tu, Wei-ming. 1994. "The Search for Roots in Industrial East Asia: The Case of the Confucian Revival." Pp. 740-81 in Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by Martin E. Marty and Scott Applebee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Upham, Frank K. 1987. Law and Social Change in Postwar Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Weigle, Marcia and Jim Butterfield. 1992. "Civil Society in Reforming Communist Regimes: The Logic of Emergence." Comparative Politics 25(1):1-23.
Woods, Dwayne. 1992. "Civil Society in Europe and Africa: Limiting State Power Through a Public Sphere." African Studies Review 35(2):77-100.
* I am indebted to the following paper for much of the definitional clarity in this paragraph: Kim, Sunhyuk, ‘Democratization and Social Movements in South Korea: A Civil Society Perspective’ in Jeffrey Broadbent and Vicky Brockman (editors), Social Movements in East Asia (under review).