Civil Society and Democracy

ABSTRACT Objective This study aims to provide a first‐cut empirical analysis of whether civil society promotes democratic governance or only supports specific aspects of democracy. Methods This study fits a battery of OLS regression models against cross‐national, time‐series data for 173 countries from 1900 to 2016. Results Civil society is likely to strengthen democracy: it is conducive to some dimensions of democracy but not as closely as we expected. Specifically, civil society is likely to help fulfill democracy's promise of electoral, participatory, and institutional conditions but exert little to no effect on other democratic dimensions. Conclusion This study hopes that the empirical findings will stimulate further research on civil society and democracy to obtain a more complete sense of how these essential concepts are connected to each other and the success of political systems. At a time when both civil society and democracy seem embattled in a range of locations, the real‐world relevance of this academic research becomes apparent as well.