Dreams of Civil Society Two Decades Later: Civic Advocacy in the Czech Republic

This study focuses on the state of the political dimension of Czech civil society and particularly on the relations between citizens and CSOs within the realm of civic advocacy. It consists of three main parts. First, the authors focus on the cultural roots of the idea of civil society in Czech society and reconstruct the key original ideas of political dissent – dreams – of how civil society should look and work after the fall of the Communist regime. Second, they trace the evolution of key aspects of civil society in the past twenty years, exploring the changes in its structures, actors, opportunities, and prospects. Third, they conducted an empirical analysis of mutual relations between the citizens and organizational structures of civil advocacy to illustrate the weaknesses of Czech civic advocacy.