It can be said that theories about how the state and civil society interact with each other appeared even before the emergence of this term. The first to "notice" the elements of such a social system Plato, highlighting them as an independent substance of the policy. He gave these components a fundamental role in his theory of the "ideal state." Aristotle, developing the postulate that a person is a zoonon is a politicon, that is, a social and political being, came to the conclusion that the state is a natural product of the development of political aspirations of citizens, however, there are areas - economic, marriage-family, spiritual - where the state does not have the right to invade. Aristotle noted that property and the middle class, as possessing property, are the basis for the stability of human society.
A great contribution to the development of the theory of how the state and civil society should interact with each other was made by the Italian writer Nicolo Machiavelli. He gives the state political power, which does not always go hand in hand with morality. Statesmen, acting for political purposes, should not abuse and violate the property and personal rights of subjects, so as not to incite the hatred of society against themselves. Thus, Machiavelli formulated the first and most important postulate of civil society - it is something independent, something that lives according to its own laws, not subject to the state.
Considering exactly how the state and civil society are connected, the English thinker Thomas Hobbes proclaims the primacy of the latter before the state, and the first introduces this term into scientific circulation. The founder of liberalism, John Locke, developed the Hobbes theory of the primacy of civil society, and came to the conclusion that the state arises only when such a need has ripened in society. Consequently, Locke develops his thought, there were times when there was no state (because there was no need for it), and there will come times when society will no longer need it. Formulating the definition of such a society, Locke calls it the main dominant equality of all its members before the laws.
Montesquieu considers the state and civil society as two mutually struggling structures, and argues that the latter is the most important guarantee against dictatorship and arbitrariness on the part of power structures. Jean-Jacques Rousseau goes even further and recognizes the right of members of such a society to overthrow the government. The thinkers of the left direction of the XIX-XX centuries - Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, other modern philosophers and political scientists - supplemented and deepened the knowledge of mankind about the role of civil society in the life of the state. The dictatorships and putsch of our time have shown a paradoxical connection between these two social phenomena: being rivals by nature, they support and balance each other, balancing between such maxims as absolute totalitarianism and general anarchy.
Paradoxically, it is a fact: the main institutions of civil society, such as various political parties, independent press, public human rights organizations, only strengthen the normal functioning of political power and the fulfillment of its duties. On the one hand, these institutions seek to control the power of those in power, to limit their influence on the daily life of citizens. This leads to the fact that the state is forced to establish laws that guarantee ordinary people rights and freedoms, as a result of which ordinary people get the opportunity to influence the government and its decisions. A prosperous and developed West European modern society is the result of the consensus of active civil society institutions with state authorities. While totalitarian - and shaky, as the "Arab Spring" has shown - states are always in open or secret war with independent associations striving to exercise control functions. And since “a bad world is always better than a good war,” the fate of such regimes is a foregone conclusion.