Indeed, these concerns open the way to a dynamic conception of civil society, one that avoids the apologetic thrust of most pluralist analyses. Far from viewing social movements as antithetical to either the democratic political system or to a properly organized social sphere (the pluralists' view), we consider them to be a key feature of a vital, modern, civil society and an important form of citizen participation in public life. Yet we do not see social movements as prefiguring a form of citizen participation that will or even ought to substitute for the institutional arrangements of representative democracy (the radical democratic position). In our view, social movements for the expansion of rights, for the defense of the autonomy of civil society, and for its further democratization are what keep a democratic political culture alive. Among other things, movements bring new issues and values into the public sphere and contribute to reproducing the consensus that the elite/pluralist model of democracy presupposes but never bothers to account for. Movements can and should supplement and should not aim to replace competitive party systems. Our conception of civil society thus retains the normative core of democratic theory while remaining compatible with the structural presuppositions of mo dernity. Finally, while we also differentiate the economy from civil society, we differ from the pluralists in that we do not seal off the borders between them on the basis of an allegedly sacrosanct freedom of contractor property right. Nor do we seek to "reembed" the economy in society. Instead, on our analysis, the principles of civil society can be brought to bear on economic institutions within what we call economic society. The question here, as in the case of the polity, is what channels and receptors of influence do, can, and ought to exist Indeed, we are able to pose such questions on the basis of our model without risking the charges of utopianism or antimodernism so frequently and deservedly leveled against worker based versions of radical democracy.