The developments that took place in Central and Easter Europe (CEE) over the last three decades have consequences for how researchers define and understand the concept of civil society. This article revisits four major approaches to civil society that were developed after 1989 and provides reasons for a reconceptualization in light of new research and empirical data. It argues that civil society in CEE needs to be studied not as an outcome or a facilitator of democratization and democratic consolidation, but as a phenomenon in its own right. The article also supports an earlier claim of scholars that the static liberal approach to civil society has limited explanatory potential in the CEE context and advocates a dynamic approach, which is guided less by normative assumptions and more by the actual experience of societies practicing various forms of social self-organization. Four criteria of the dynamic model that are proposed include a broad understanding of civic activism as the key dimension of civil society, a clear focus on its potential, a better understanding of the normative content of civic activism, and finally a recognition of a value-related aspect of civil society activism.

过去 30 年中欧和东欧 (CEE) 的发展对研究人员如何定义和理解公民社会的概念产生了影响。本文重新审视了 1989 年后发展起来的公民社会的四种主要方法，并根据新的研究和经验数据提供了重新概念化的理由。它认为，不应将中东欧的公民社会视为民主化和民主巩固的结果或促进者，而应将其视为一种现象。这篇文章还支持学者们早先的主张，即对公民社会的静态自由主义方法在中东欧背景下的解释潜力有限，并提倡动态方法，它较少受到规范性假设的指导，而更多地受到社会实践各种形式的社会自我组织的实际经验的指导。提出的动态模型的四个标准包括：对公民行动主义作为公民社会的关键维度的广泛理解、对其潜力的明确关注、对公民行动主义规范内容的更好理解以及对价值的认识——民间社会活动的相关方面。