A global affairs column might seem an odd place to talk about the movement of Anna Hazare and his followers, but the reason I do so is that we all speak of them under the collective label of “civil society”, and yet there has been little international perspective on what “civil society” means around the globe, or its relation to law-making.

India is no stranger to protest movements, fasts-unto-death and the mass mobilisation of citizens for a popular cause. But Mr Hazare’s agitation has raised important new questions about the role of civil society in the functioning of our parliamentary democracy.

The elected Parliament and the Government of India are being accused of acting in a manner which is incompatible with or even diametrically opposed to the desires of “civil society”, a term which only serves to further add to the confusion.

What is “civil society”? Civil society is broadly understood to be composed of the totality of civic and social organisations, voluntary social relationships and institutions, whether formal or informal, that form the basis of a functioning society — as distinct from the organised structures of the state.

Browsing the literature, one finds references to any and all of these as examples of civil society: universities and schools, families and clans, companies and markets, trade unions and political parties, hospitals and clinics, temples and mosques, community and religious associations, cricket clubs and debating clubs, newspapers and media organisations, recognised non-governmental organisations and unrecognised “neighbourhood watch” groups.

Together, an entire society is made up of all these elements, and the relations between these components are often considered to be determinant in shaping the structure and character of a society.

So if that is civil society, what does it have to do with law-making? There is a fair amount of literature on relations between civil society and democracy, and the influence of one upon the other. The great 17th century political philosopher John Locke described civil society as comprising people who have “a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them”.

Locke and Hobbes, however, were more concerned with the construction of the state out of social disorder than with civil society per se. Indeed, as political philosophers grappled with theories of the state, they saw it increasingly as distinct from society: in the 18th century, German philosopher Hegel even saw the “state” as diametrically opposed to “civil society”.

Things have changed in more recent times. One of the earliest modern observers of civil society was the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, who observed it in action in the new US republic in the early 19th century and wrote about the vigour and strength of American civil society institutions in his classic Democracy in America.

In the 20th century, American political theorists like Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, using the tools of functionalism and largely motivated to study the evolution of political models toward an American democratic ideal, laid emphasis on the role of political culture in democracies. The concept of “political development”, largely credited to Almond, relied in part on his analysis of the contribution of voluntary community activities and non-governmental organisations to the development of democratic politics.

Almond, building on Tocqueville, saw such organs of civil society as serving to increase social awareness of political issues, and by involving their members in the processes of discussion, cooperation and collective decision-making, enhancing the practice (and therefore the evolution) of democracy.

The logic is clear. A thriving civil society creates a more informed citizenry, who make wiser voting choices, participate more effectively in democratic political life, and thus do a better job of promoting the accountability of democratic governments.

Half a century after Almond, the American sociologist, Robert D. Putnam, in his seminal study of contemporary US society and politics, Bowling Alone, has argued that social activities — like community sporting events — serve to strengthen political discourse and build democracy. This is because, through shared social activities, relationships of trust and shared values are built amongst members of a community, resulting in the creation of what is called “social capital”.

In turn, such relationships are transferred into the political arena, underscore the interconnectedness of society and help to bind a nation by holding society’s various elements together. Equally, the decline or disintegration of such civil society institutions creates a more fractured politics and greater intolerance, with the adoption of extreme positions by people who are insufficiently connected to each other through civil society.

If this is how civil society works in a democracy, should it have a role in law-making? It can certainly be argued that laws are made by a society to regulate itself, and that, therefore, civil society is obviously a source of law. The associations of people for various civic purposes inevitably lead to opinion-making on various subjects, including those that are determined by legislation.

The Australian lawyer and UN official Geoffrey Robertson QC, while writing of international law, claimed that “one of its primary modern sources is found in the responses of ordinary men and women, and of the non-governmental organisations which many of them support, to the human rights abuses they see on the television screen in their living rooms”.

Many would argue that in today’s world the same impetus does and should play a role in making domestic laws in a democracy. Those of us who have watched the incessant television coverage on our multiple all-news channels of the Anna Hazare movement can have no illusions whatsoever that the responses of much of the Indian public to the Lokpal issue have been driven and even shaped by what they are seeing and hearing on TV.

Whatever law eventually emerges from Parliament on a Lokpal will undoubtedly have amongst its key sources “the responses of ordinary men and women” to the mass media on this issue.

So much for the global perspective. In my next column, I will try to address how that perspective applies to India.