Civil Society, Municipal Government and the State: Enshrinement, Empowerment and Legitimacy, Scotland, 1800-1929

Graeme Morton

doi:10.1017/S0963926800012955

Civil Society, Municipal Government and the State: Enshrinement, Empowerment and Legitimacy, Scotland, 1800-1929

Graeme Morton

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

32 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Civil society remains the most challenging and all-pervading of concepts, yet too rarely is it examined empirically. The potential of civil society is that it better allows understanding of local political structures as well as cross-class associational activity. Its alternatives, while many, are principally ‘public life’ and ‘influence’, both of which have their own highly respected traditions. It is argued here that civil society offers a powerful analysis of structure and action in the urban world, and that it is one mediated by municipal government. To operationalize this definition, this article will introduce three further concepts: ‘enshrinement’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘legitimacy’. Each of these is linked to the relationship of the municipal state with that at Westminster, the formal mechanism through which the stability of civil society in nineteenth-century Britain was negotiated

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	348-367
Number of pages	20
Journal	Urban History
Volume	25
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926800012955
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 1998

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10.1017/S0963926800012955

The Conservative hold over Scottish civil society: evidence from the 1854 Edinburgh Pollbook
Morton, G. (Lead / Corresponding author), 27 Feb 2026, In: Parliamentary History. 45, 1, p. 110-131 22 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Civil Society, Municipal Government and the State: Enshrinement, Empowerment and Legitimacy, Scotland, 1800-1929

Abstract

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Research output

The Conservative hold over Scottish civil society: evidence from the 1854 Edinburgh Pollbook

Cite this