This chapter explores the role played by trade unions and nongovernmental organisations in stimulating the emergence of solidarity from below. Focusing on connections between different forms of citizen participation and social solidarity, it attempts to establish whether there is a link on an individual level between social solidarity and membership of trade unions and non-governmental organisations, given that both kinds of organisations are recognised as important agents of social solidarity (Gallin, 2000). Social solidarity is identified as a key element of modern democracy, and it is argued that globalisation, (European) integration and democratisation have given impetus to the reinvention of social solidarity on multiple levels (subnational, national and transnational). The chapter draws upon research across Europe, and locates a descriptive and exploratory approach to social solidarity in Romania within a comparative perspective.

The starting-point of this investigation stresses the importance of solidarity as a key element of modern democracy, which is far more than the political form involving elections, votes and decision-making rules. Alexander (2006) states that democracy depends on the existence of solidarity bonds that extend beyond political arrangements. Solidarity is deeply linked to identity and to belonging to a particular political community. This is actually one of the four dominant perspectives in the study of modern citizenship (see Brodie, 2002). Solidarity is even more important if one takes into account its obvious linkage with the distribution crisis of modern society (see Fisichella, 2000)/ the crisis of the welfare state. But the prospects for solidarity are quite positive because, despite the pressures to which it is being subjected, the European welfare states have proved remarkably resilient, and the necessary changes to their architecture do not seem to have had an impact on the views of citizens, who remain committed to a ‘mild egalitarianism’ (Taylor-Gooby, 2004).

In the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, solidarity is a term with different meanings, first and foremost because, having been appropriated by the communist regimes, it is loaded with memories of those past regimes and is in need of reinvention. Second, because it is shaped (similarly to Western democracies) by factors such as consumerism, individualism, the rolling back of the communist welfare state and globalisation.