Doug, you spend too much time consuming intellectual commodity. i.e. what symbol manipulators have to say on a particular subject and usually do not go beyond anecdotal evidence (if they produce any evidence at all) to suppoort their views. Surely, there is a shitload of good advice on how society and economy should ideally opearte, but most of which ain't worth the paper on which it is printed - I mean, to the reader, not the to the producer of the said merchandise.
To me, the emprical (and thus only real) meaning of the term "civil society" is the organizations that belong to this class, which represent a widely varying bunch - from arts orgs, independent theater companies, to foundations, to consumer coops and unions, to labor unions, think tanks, and even groups such as the kkk or the militias (btw, if you want to stirr some controversy, ask the "civil society" crowd if "uncivil" groups such as the kkk, militias, hell's angels etc. are a part of "civil society" and watch them sweat to find a politically correct answer). It is not reasonable to assign a value on the entire "civil society" based on selected parts (e.g. foundations, right wing organizations, or left wing organizations) or some sort of "pareto optimum" value of all such organizations. A much more rational approach would be ask about the specific roles of specific types of organizations for specific intersts groups under specific circumstances.
wojtek