The second characteristic of civil society is pluralism. While the state is
burdened with the job of pursuing collective ends and public goods, in civil
society individuals come together to pursue particularist ends and groupspeciWc
goods some of which may very well also be public goods. Thus we
might think of the Sierra Club as pursuing a public good while a science
Wction book club pursues a particularist good. But from the point of view of
civil society as a whole, each good, protecting the environment or enjoying a
good time-travel novel, are group speciWc goods