The Development of Theories of Civil Society in an Age of Globalization : Comparative Studies of Europe, North America and Japan

该项目最初是日本政治协会（JPSA）和欧洲政治研究联盟（ECPR）之间的国际合作的五个相关项目之一。在过去的三年里，我们六个人代表JPSA政治理论部门参加了这个共同的项目。在此期间，我们在丹麦的Sanjerberg、瑞典的斯德哥尔摩、京都和东京等地组织并参加了许多国际研讨会和专题讨论会。我们可以很好地追溯欧洲、北美和日本的公民社会争论的各种发展，一个重要的发现是，由于公民社会一词的不同或模糊的含义，我们在当今世界有许多不同的公民社会争论。其次，在全球化时代，公民社会作为全球公民民主合作和参与的场所具有重要意义。第三，公民社会是每个有着自己独特历史和文化的国家的社会和文化资本的重要储存库。公民社会的概念将继续是21世纪社会科学的关键术语之一。

This project started as one of the five related projects in conjunction with the international collaboration between Japanese Political Association (JPSA) and European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). Six of us representing JPSA political theory section have participated in this common project for the past three years. During the term of this grant, we organized, and participated in, numerous international seminars and symposiums in such places as Sanjerberg in Denmark, Stockholm in Sweden, and Kyoto and Tokyo. We could well trace various developments of civil society arguments in Euorpe, in North America, and in Japan.One important finding is that due to the diverse or ambiguous sense of the term civil society we have many divergent civil society arguments in the world today. Secondly, however, civil society is siginificant as the site of global citizens' democratic cooperation and participation in our age of globalization. Thirdly, civil society operates as the important reservoir of social and cultural capital for each country which has its own distinct history and culture. The notion of civil society will continue to remain one of the key terms in social sciences in the 21st century.