In this fully revised edition of his groundbreaking book, Fred Powell looks behind -the mirror of power- to discover the real civil society--or Big Society--that lies beneath it. Articulating three forms of civil society--radical, liberal, and conservative--he examines a complex interplay between state and community, arguing that citizens contend for power via civil society. This is both a historic pursuit dating to antiquity and a contemporary democratic struggle between competing visions of modernity, the stakes of which are no less than -real- politics themselves as experienced by everyday...