{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03228962818003914, 'fraction_numerical': 0.015655577299412915, 'mean_word_length': 5.39375, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Civil Society Research: Ten Years on

Today, as in 2005, the social science research agenda is expanding in many important directions. In the editorial that appeared in the first issue of the Journal of Civil Society (JCS) (Anheier, 2005), I introduced the Journal’s broad goal of improving the theoretical understanding and empirical knowledge of civil society, its nature, patterns and composition, its history, development, and relationships with the economy, the political system, and society at large. At the time, the social science research agenda had (re)discovered the concept of civil society, a concept that cut across disciplinary boundaries and brought into focus some of the longstanding and nagging questions about the relationship between economy, polity, and society. As in 2005, the term civil society is also a contested concept. While agreement on its precise meaning has sharpened, and overlap among core conceptual components is more readily recognized, divergent approaches remain. In 2005, I wrote: