Although we use many of the terms of this analtsis in our work on civil society our approach differs in several key respects from that of the pluralists first we do not accept the view that the civil culture most appropriate to a modern civil society is one based on civil privatism and political apathy as is well known the pluralists value involvement in one's family private clubs voluntary associations and the like as activities that deflect from political participation or activism on the part of citizens it is this which allegedly makes for a stble democratic polity moreoer it makes on difference to this model what the internal structure of the institutions and organizations of civil society is indeed in their haste to replace utopian principles with realism the pluralists tend to consider attempts to apply the egalitariam norms of civil society to social institutions as naive