I have been working in the field of community and voluntary action for some thirty years now but the language of civil society is still a relatively new one for me. One of the writers I was reading in preparation for this talk said that it was a concept that had fallen into disuse, at least in the West, prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain. But with the fall of communism – and the end of history, as some people saw it – the idea of civil society captured the imagination of all sorts of players on the world stage. Along with the language of social capital and communitarianism, it has embraced by the World Bank, the large and powerful (mainly US based) foundations and by governments searching for a ‘third way’.

It has been particularly popular in the third sector – a sector which has grappled for years with the different languages of the third sector, the non-profit sector, NGOs or non-governmental organisations, the voluntary and community sectors and even l’economie sociale. The sector has now found what might be a common language – one to which, it may feel it has more claim than most. In my own country, the Centre for Voluntary Organisations at the London School of Economics (where Tony Giddens, the architect of the third way, is director) has renamed itself the Centre for Civil Society.

And yet, and yet….

I have a number of misgivings about the use of civil society as a country fresh spray which confers social and moral cohesion on anything it touches. I am a passionate believer in the power of association and collective action. But the world in which we operate is much more complex than this unquestioning use of ‘civil society’ suggests. In the time I have available, I want to outline some of the contradictions and tensions that lie under its surface and spell out the challenges that these pose for those of us working in communities.

Civil society has for many years been conceptualised as a counterbalance to the power of the state and as a defence against the infiltration of the state into every area of life. This was uppermost in the minds of those who used it as a banner against totalitarian state regimes, particularly in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. It was certainly uppermost in the minds of those who rode to the support of the societies that emerged from the communist regime. In this view, civil society encompassed private enterprise and the market and as such was a major weapon in the hands of right wing politicians and entrepreneurs committed to the free market. However, in Latin America, it was associated with leftist critiques of the state and was also taken up widely as an alternative by those who feared the power of the market. As such, it has come to mean, in the minds of many, a way of operating untainted by either state or market.

The discourse of civil society nowadays has become overwhelmingly positive. Reading through the literature of the past ten years or so, most writers see it as being about autonomy, diversity and plurality. It is claimed as the root of democracy, equality and solidarity. It is also seen essentially as a place of integration. Small wonder that voluntary and community organisations have taken to this language.

But the danger with this approach is that, just as the state and the market have been found wanting, so this version of civil society may also fail the test of time.

Because this is a concept that assumes that the interests of communities and association members are identical. In our post-modern and globalised world, with its evident fragmentation and polarisation, it is hard to hold onto the myth of an integrating civil society, and its potential dilemmas become more apparent.

The dilemma for this version of civil society is that its strengths can also be its weaknesses. As the source of identity, mutuality and solidarity, it can also be exclusive. Associations are not always cuddly. They are about defining them as well as us. In amongst the social movements and caring organisations with which we are all proud to identify are the vigilante groups, the Ku Klux Klan, the Promise Keepers and the Freemasons - which in their different ways are essentially both exclusive and unaccountable in their vision of the good society. Civil society organisations can also be oppressive to their members as well as exclusive to those outside.

Another of the strengths of community action is its diversity, however, and this diversity can overcome some of the problems of exclusion, if there are other groups to belong to and overlapping memberships. But the fact that it contains so many versions of the good life can lead to what Cohen and Rogers call the 'mischief of factions' - it speaks with too many voices to be heard. This is something that politicians currently overlook in their arguments for social and moral cohesion.

Thirdly, civil society can be unfair. Left to itself, argues Michael Walzer, civil society generates radically unequal power relationships. Or as another writer put it, the heavenly choir of pluralism sings with an upper class accent. Those who bring most power into the civil society arena tend to hang on to it.

A fourth dilemma for civil society, if we are seeing it as an alternative to the state or market is its insufficiency. It cannot do the work of democracy on its own. To be sure, without the willingness of communities to help themselves, society would be an infinitely bleaker place for many. But the reality is, as John Keane has suggested, that trumpeting the virtues of self-help, while surrendering society to the market has lead to a hideous increase in levels of pauperisation and has marginalised former thriving communities into wastelands. Unless the State (and business) are prepared to take responsibility for the exclusion of many communities from the economic to political mainstream, these communities will end up, however imaginatively, managing their own exclusion.

Finally, the rhetoric of civil society is open to abuse. As one Canadian author notes, key political actors manipulate terms like community and civil society for their own ends, and construct particular meanings of identity and belonging through their policies. Civil society is also manipulated by those who oppose the state because it threatens their own, less visible power. It is instructive to see how, when civil society does get organised, it is dismissed as unrepresentative or as furthering special interests. Political actors claim that they want to get to the 'real people', and then make their own claims for what these 'real people' really want.

So where does this leave us? Michael Foley and Bob Edwards argue that there is nothing automatic about the contribution of civil society to the health of democracies, so where do we go from here?

Jeffrey Alexander argues that the heart of civil society lies in public discourse. In a recent book, Zygmunt Bauman talk talks about the need for spaces that are neither public nor private. He deplores the trend towards individualism and uncertainty that globalisation has caused. He argues for places that can translate private worries into collective levers for change to alleviate private misery and uncertainly. But he dismisses the idea of civil society as a separate zone in antithesis to the state, seeing it instead as a way of describing what he calls the 'great compromise' between state and society which he sees as the hub of any democracy. What debates about civil society need to do therefore is to focus on the relationships between the different spheres of economic and political life rather than privileging on over another or seeing civil society as the antithesis to the state.

Adalbert Evers has defined the voluntary and community sectors as a tension field (OH) between the state, the market and the personal. I find this a helpful way of engaging with the civil society debate. Within this territory, voluntary and community organisations are constantly in danger of being sucked into the corners. They may be co-opted into the public corner through contracts for service or more seductively through partnerships where all too often they are there for show - as very junior partners in a situation where all the rules are dictated by government.

They may find themselves becoming more business-like and more competitive in order to get funds, or they may be tempted to retreat into the personal to pursue individualistic special interests (OH). On the other hand, without the corners, this territory in the middle would simply collapse in on itself, with all the problems I have already outlined. This is not an easy territory to operate in. Bauman's ‘great compromise’ involves the need to juggle multiple accountabilities and disparate values; it means finding an equilibrium between the public interest and the diverse interests of different communities. It means finding a balance that works between public accountability and flexibility, between consensus and diversity, between leadership and participation. It is where the tensions between public and private have to be tackled

How can these balances best be found? It seams to me that this compromise needs two things. It needs the diversity and dynamism of community and other third sector organisations on the one hand to prevent stagnation. We need to remain a thorn in the side of both the state and the market. But it also needs the state to provide a framework within which the public debate, which is at the heart of civil society, can take place.

This is all very well, but what does it mean for community action in practice?

First we need political nous - an understanding of how power works and the ability to find the cracks and windows of opportunity that exist in the system. In the UK we are experiencing some important changes in policies to tackle social exclusion. It is easy to be pessimistic about the new proposals, - after all, as Gary said yesterday, 30 years of community participation policies have not shifted power very much at all. But changes, even at the level of rhetoric, provide openings where there were only walls before, they bring new allies out of the woodwork, and strengthen the arms of people within the system who want to see change. They open up new channels for debate and can bring some of the sceptics on board.

Some people see power as something that is finite. To win power you have to seize it from others. Other people argue that power is something that flows. It may flow through privileged pathways, but it can be generated and diverted into new pathways. Stuart Clegg - a writer on organisations - talks about circuits of power and I like to see community development as something which lights up neglected and disused circuits so they become functional again and switches them into the main currents of power by making as many links as possible between local people and different levels within the system.

This leads me to my second point. As I see it, the task for community action is to seek out allies. We are told that in a post-modern world the future lies not with static and bounded organisations, but with alliances and networks that can be quick on their feet and create new pathways through this territory. Power lies in learning how to use the capacity of allies, both across sectors and within the sector. The state is not homogenous. On a larger scale we are beginning to see the power of alliances even against so powerful a process as globalisation, as grass roots organisations from across the world link up and are able, through a process of globalisation from below, to affect the agendas of the most powerful actors in society, whether in Seattle and Washington or the makers of Nike trainers, or persuading the retailers of wood products to support only sustainable forestry.

Third, it is important to recognise that the strength of civil society lies in its diversity. Public debate requires difference to be aired rather than swept under the carpet, particularly if the voices of the most excluded are to be heard. This means knowing when it is important to work together but also when it is important to respect difference and work with it. It sometimes means having the skills to negotiate and mediate conflicts. But the generation of power, in my imperfect understanding of physics, requires friction and resistance and conflict in partnerships can be a sign that they're working, that people are saying what they feel. Critics of Robert Putnam’s ideas on social capital argue that his preferences for choirs and clubs and bowling ignore the role that political struggle has played in achieving democracy.

The Minister yesterday asked the question: should the community sector stay outside the system or should it play the game? The answer is both. A Canadian PhD student, who studied the campaign for sustainable forestry reported that the insider and outsider camps often argued vehemently against each other. But both were needed. The protesters forced the retailers to the bargaining table and kept them there. But once there, it was those who were willing to compromise and bargain who struck the deal and increased the chances of sustainability.

My next point is about being accountable and passing power on down the line. Michael Walzer argues that ultimately civil society is tested by its capacity to produces citizens whose interests, at least sometimes, read further than themselves and their comrades. Some of you will be familiar with Sherry Arnstein’s famous ‘ladder of participation’ which charts levels of empowerment from manipulation at the bottom, through processes like consultation to control at the top. But community leaders have to be careful not to pull the ladder up under them when they get a piece of the action. It is easy for organisations negotiating access to partnership to lose contact with their roots. But if their access to power is to be justified, they need to pass that power on to their service users and to the most excluded in society - acting as a channel for further empowerment rather than a dam and offering people a variety of ways into involvement.

My fifth point, and I am nearly finished, is the need for an effective and accountable community infrastructure which can act as a channel to support the diversity of community organisations in representing their interests. This is a difficult job and I fear we still have an awful lot to learn about how to do this effectively. The infrastructure we have in the UK is stretched to its limits by new opportunities for participation and found wanting by many of the most excluded groups. There is a desperate need for imagination and innovation here. And this brings me to my final point. I was asked to concentrate on what community action could do, but I know that there is an awful lot that government needs to do if the potential of civil society is to be realised. To spell out what needs to change there would take far more time than I have at my disposal. Much has been written about the reinvention of government, but a lot of it is just window dressing, with much of government, as one respondent in a recent research project said, doing what they've always done in a different wrapping. To me this means two things for community action. The first is, as I have already mentioned, to recognise that the state is not a homogenous entity, but to find and work with allies throughout the system. The second is to be prepared to engage in negotiations - getting stuck in opposition is not a helpful way forward - but to have the courage to say no if the rules of the game do not allow you to engage effectively.