Research on civic associations blurs an important distinction between the unfunded, informal, ongoing associations that theorists like de Tocqueville described versus current participatory democracy projects that are funded by the state and large nongovernmental organizations, are open to all, and are usually short-term. Based on a long-term ethnography of youth programs in the United States, this paper shows that entities like these, which participants and researchers alike often called “volunteer” or “civic” groups, operate very differently from traditional civic groups. The ethnography systematically details prevalent tensions that actors face when they try to cultivate the civic spirit in these increasingly typical organizations.

European ex-Communist countries have been widely considered to possess little associational life. The main explanation for this observation has been the lack of organizational vivacity in the past, either during the Communist regime or before it. More recently, however, some researchers, and especially those involved with area studies, have warned such a conclusion might be hasty and incorrect. The associational history of Bulgaria—a case that has not been much studied until now—provides additional support in favor of the argument that pre-Communist associational life in the region has been abundant. The evidence provided in this paper comes from an original compilation of more than 100 organizations classified according to contemporary standards and from narratives on the most popular and populous organizations in the country since the nineteenth century.