These works focused on the global prospects for democracy arising from the collapse of com- munism abroad or the election of right-of-centre pro-market govemments at home and promoted a neo-Tocquevillean view of civil society as a slayer of communist or authoritarian regimes, as a beachhead for democratic forces in developing countries and as an antidote to sluggish welfare states in the industri alized world. With exceptions, the democracy-centred perspective defended the traditional binary distinction between civil society and the state. The more inno- vative political economy perspective developed in the shadows of this new liter- ature, in works such as Cohen and Arato (1994), Kaviraj and Khilnani (eds) (2001) and Colas (2002).