This article deals with the issue of civil activeness in a system of free market democracy. Participation in social and civil dialogue is a sign of citizens’ engagement and is considered here in the context of Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action. The manifestations and consequences of the extant institutional arrangements are shown, as are the means of describing and explaining them in the Polish socio-political and economic context. The reflections presented here illustrate the weakness of the existing measures. Both the institutional structure and the theoretical tools used in Poland are imitative in nature and do not fulfil the practical expectations of either participants or researchers of civil dialogue.