In his post-war essays, The Political Economy of Freedom in particular, OakeshottOakeshott, Michael discusses freedom of associationfreedom of association as the living practice of a concrete society. He highlights the symptoms of crisis and the remedies that are available with reference to an already existing tradition of moderate government and of the rule of lawrule of law. The link between the morality of individualism and nomocratic government will further be explored in his works concerned with moral history, including Morality and Politics in Modern Europe. In his mature work On Human Conduct freedom of associationfreedom of association is initially analyzed from a strictly philosophical perspective. OakeshottOakeshott, Michael traces it back to the postulates of human agency and then brings to a more specific level, showing it to be inherent in the ideal mode of enterprise associationenterprise associations whose opposite, though essential counterpart is the ideal mode of civil associationcivil association. In the final part of this work he examines the histories of modern European states in which both of these modes of associationAssociation have been implicit. While the societas or nomocracynomocracy, which actualizes civil associationcivil association, turns out to be the type of state that fosters human associative capacities, the universitas or teleocracyteleocracy (a perverted version of enterprise associationenterprise associations erroneously embodied in a state) is presented as a threat to associational freedom. Finally, when we venture to analyze them in the context of the overall moral theory expounded in On Human Conduct, both modes of associationAssociation, as well as their incarnations of voluntary associationsvoluntary association on the one hand, and the liberal state on the other, turn out to be the essential components of what might be called a liberal culture of civility. Thus, along a consistent strain of thought lasting three decades, not only does Oakeshott present the philosophical underpinnings and the political conditions of freedom of association, but also bridge the gap between civil society and the state, which has long been included among liberalism’s most suspicious dogmas.