Most research on social entrepreneurship overemphasizes agency by presenting social enterprising as something that originates solely from the intrinsic motivations of individual entrepreneurs. Research that does regard the impact of state power is almost exclusively anchored in and geared toward neoliberal policy contexts. This article examines the dialectics between state power and entrepreneurial counterpower in the institutional context of the Netherlands. Moreover, since social entrepreneurs develop different tactics and strategies for responding to challenges, we use Gaventa’s power cube to distinguish forms of power and counterpower, which we then combine with the following inductively derived social entrepreneur typologies: successful hybrids, antagonistic organizers, and autonomous entrepreneurs. This offers insights into the development of theory in relation to the social entrepreneurial potential for change and civic participation.

The paper aims to test why people from the general population intend to volunteer in the future. Our study tests empathy (affective and cognitive) as the intrinsic antecedent, satisfaction with life and meaning in life as the endocentric antecedents, and social value orientation as the ipsocentric antecedent of the intention to engage in volunteering. The paper is based on a 2-wave longitudinal online, questionnaire-based study (N = 566) performed on a general sample of Polish residents in May 2022 and May 2023. Results of structural equation modeling indicated that empathy at time 1 of the study predicted subsequent volunteering intention (when controlling for other variables in the model). Moreover, the volunteering intention at time 1 predicted social value orientation at time 2, and endocentric antecedents at time 1 negatively predicted empathy at time 2. The results suggest that concern for others and their welfare is the strongest factor associated with intentions to volunteer in the general population. Practitioners should consider that people with higher dispositional empathy might be the best targets for volunteer recruitment.

An extensive body of research documents how governing parties generally suffer electoral defeats. Varying explanations have been offered, most of which touch upon the liabilities of policy responsibility. Although media coverage is generally acknowledged as one of these liabilities, few empirical studies have examined how news content affect government support. Based on the fact that voters get their information about politics, policies and societal issues from the media, this article studies how the constant stream of negative news influences incumbent support over a 20‐year period in Denmark. Modeling a previously untested argument on the cost of ruling, it shows that the accumulation of bad news throughout tenure exerts a substantial effect on government support.

Hungary and Poland are often placed in the same analytical framework from the period of their ‘negotiated revolutions’ to their autocratic turn. This article aims to look behind this apparent similarity focusing on opposition behaviour. The analysis demonstrates that the executive–parliament power structure, the vigour of the extra-parliamentary actors, and the opposition party frame have the strongest influence on opposition behaviour, and they provide the sources of difference between the two country cases: in Hungary an enforced power game and in Poland a political game constrain opposition opportunities and opposition strategic behaviour.

Migrant community-based organizations (MCBOs) are key mediating structures between immigrants and host societies. However, when implementing this role in host societies, MCBOs often face a number of challenges that reduce their chances to be effective in promoting social justice. This paper aims to analyze the challenges that MCBOs settled in Milan (Northern Italy) experience and the coping strategies that they use in order to provide some guidelines on how to support them. In-depth interviews, observations and document analysis with 15 MCBOs were conducted. Based on a situational analysis, we present the main challenges perceived by MCBOs at three levels: internal (i.e., surviving), inter-organizational (i.e., collaborating) and community (i.e., being recognized as mediating actors). We provide specific guidelines for action on how to address such challenges and thus foster the role of MCBOs as mediating structures in receiving societies.

Scholarship has categorized referendums predominantly along their procedural and institutional features. This paper moves beyond these formal dimensions, argues that the policy subjected to a popular vote is the missing link and proposes a complementary typology based on the policy areas. This typology fosters comparisons across countries, political systems and over time within one policy area, thus serving as a powerful analytical tool for further analyses. At the same time, the typology maps out the history of referendum use showing the chronology of salient issues in different societies. The empirical evidence draws on an original dataset of 630 nationwide referendums in Europe between 1793 and 2019.

Older adults hold various social roles that are assumed to change over time due to life transitions. The (relative) importance assigned to these roles is proposed as a distinct and relevant component of later-life social functioning, yet longitudinal research is lacking. This exploratory study examined the stability and change in the (relative) importance of various social roles, as well as potential predictors of individual differences in change. It used three waves (2019, 2020, 2023) of the Health, Aging, and Retirement Transitions in Sweden (HEARTS) study and comprised 3,935 older adults (mean age 66.9 years, 54% female) who rated the importance of nine social roles across the three waves, along with baseline questions on demographics, social support and personality. Latent growth curve models showed that, over time, older adults had fewer roles, fewer important roles and rated their roles as less important, although effects were generally small. While family roles remained consistently highly valued, the relative importance of friend roles increased, whereas the importance of care-giving and work-related roles declined. Generally, individuals with characteristics facilitating role accumulation and maintenance (i.e. supportive network, good health and higher levels of extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness) identified more (important) roles. No predictors explained individual differences in the change in role importance over time. These findings provide a comprehensive view of the stability and slight change in the personal centrality of social roles early in older adulthood, offering a foundation for future confirmatory research on the impact of social roles on later-life social functioning and wellbeing.

Institutional innovations in conflict management have received considerable academic attention in the past decades. Yet few studies have considered the design of referendums in peace processes and the role of popular mandates in catalysing negotiated settlements. Drawing evidence from divided societies, particularly the contrasting cases of South Africa and Cyprus, the article points to the importance of ratification sequence and early mandate referendums. Specifically, it demonstrates how mandate referendums focusing initially on domestic constituencies enable leaders to pre‐empt ethnic outbidding challenges while concluding a peace agreement. An early ratification process could safeguard the peace process from unavoidable reversals in public opinion, increase flexibility as to the timing of critical decisions and maximise the credibility of leaders aiming for a negotiated settlement. The study of mandate referendums has important implications for broader research on international mediations since it suggests mechanisms by which political actors could ensure the ratification of significant treaties in global or regional politics.

This essay embraces a notion of critical scholarship concerned with proposing normative and actionable alternatives that can create more inclusive societies and focuses on the role of institutionalizing experimental places for inclusive social innovation as a bottom-up strategic response to welfare state reforms. By mobilizing the notions of utopias and heterotopias in Foucault, the paper sheds light on the opportunity to move from policy utopias to democratic heterotopias, discussing the politics embedded in this cognitive shift and the democratic nature of social innovation changing social and governance relations by interacting with politico-administrative systems. Some obstacles to institutionalizing social innovation are highlighted, as well as some key governance mechanisms that can be activated either by public and/or social purpose organizations to try to overcome those obstacles. Finally, we discuss the importance of linking inclusive social innovation with democratic, rather than market logics.

This introductory article to Democratic Theory's special issue on the marginalized democracies of the world begins by presenting the lexical method for understanding democracy. It is argued that the lexical method is better than the normative and analytical methods at finding democracies in the world. The argument then turns to demonstrating, mainly through computational research conducted within the Google Books catalog, that an empirically demonstrable imbalance exists between the democracies mentioned in the literature. The remainder of the argument is given to explaining the value of working to correct this imbalance, which comes in at least three guises: (1) studying marginalized democracies can increase our options for alternative democratic actions and democratic innovations; (2) it leads to a conservation and public outreach project, which is epitomized in an “encyclopedia of the democracies”; and (3) it advocates for a decolonization of democracies’ definitions and practices and decentering academic democratic theory.

Despite the growing research interest in co-production, some important gaps in our knowledge remain. Current literature is mainly concerned with either the citizens or professionals being involved in co-production, leaving unanswered the question how co-producers and professionals perceive each other’s engagement, and how this is reflected in their collaboration. This study aims to answer that question, conducting an exploratory case study on neighborhood watch schemes in a Dutch municipality. Empirical data are collected through group/individual interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. The results show that the perceptions citizens and professionals hold on their co-production partner’s engagement indeed impact on the collaboration. Moreover, for actual collaboration to occur, citizens and professionals not only need to be engaged but also to make this engagement visible to their co-production partner. The article concludes with a discussion of the practical implications of these findings.

A strong link between citizen preferences and public policy is one of the key goals and criteria of democratic governance. Yet, our knowledge about the extent to which public policies on specific issues are in line with citizen preferences in Europe is limited. This article reports on the first study of the link between public opinion and public policy that covers a large and diverse sample of concrete public policy issues in 31 European democracies. The findings demonstrate a strong positive relationship and a substantial degree of congruence between public opinion and the state of public policy. Also examined is whether political institutions, including electoral systems and the horizontal and vertical division of powers, influence the opinion‐policy link. The evidence for such effects is very limited, which suggests that the same institutions might affect policy representation in countervailing ways through different mechanisms.

Islamic welfare organizations are currently going through processes of ‘NGOization’. Drawing on qualitative data from Pakistan, Norway and the UK (2012–2015), this article examines how two Islamic welfare organizations which are embedded in Islamic political movements, become ‘Muslim NGOs’. The NGOization of Islamic charity signifies not only a change in organizational structure and legal status, but also more profound changes in organizational discourse and practice, and in the ways the organizations make claims to legitimacy. To claim legitimacy as providers of aid in changing institutional environments, the organizations draw on both religious and professional sources of authority. By analysing the NGOization of Islamic charity, the paper brings out the importance of normative frameworks in shaping organizational legitimacy and sheds light on the continued significance of both moral and transcendental aspects of the discourses, practices and identities of Muslim NGOs.

Is the environment a political issue or is it above politics? Do those who fight for environmental protection, the environmental civil society organizations (ENGOs), see the environment as an issue of politics or prefer to conceptualize it as a post-political phenomenon? In most societies, politics is viewed hesitantly. It is equated to activities undertaken legitimately only by the political parties and happening only in a parliamentary space. Political activities are perceived to be a call for destroying the social order and sometimes even an invitation for violence. However, whether the society views the issue of the environment as a political or an apolitical issue impacts the policy decisions. Hence, whether those pursuing environmental protection in environmental civil society organizations (ENGOs) see the environment as political or apolitical is highly significant. Through a survey of 119 ENGOs in the Aegean region of Turkey, this article explores the perspectives of ENGOs and examines how they perceive the nexus between the environment and politics.

How do nonstate organizations carry out their programs in political contexts hostile to civil society activity? This paper examines the case of refugee-supporting organizations in Turkey, which hosts over 3.6 million Syrians under a temporary protection regime. While the Turkish state has taken a central role in refugee reception, nonstate organizations have played a sizeable role in refugee support. Analyzing interviews with key personnel across 23 organizations in Istanbul, the paper finds that organizational capacity and organizational identity together explain variations in CSO-state relations. While high-capacity organizations that adopt a variety of “rights-based” and “needs-based” identities will cooperate with state institutions, lower-capacity organizations use comparable signifiers to justify selective engagement or avoidance of state institutions. The paper argues that analyzing how organizations negotiate their identities can help explain variations in CSO-state relations in restrictive contexts without relying on a priori assumptions about CSO alignment with or opposition to the state.

Democracy manifests itself in a range of ways and is an imperfect, dynamic struggle for collective decision-making. This article discusses the multifaceted processes of deliberative democratic praxis found in traditional Māori society. Central to decision-making in te ao Māori, hui provide formal and informal structures for deliberative democracy, precedent setting, learning, and transformation through consensus making, inclusive debate, and discussion across all levels of society. Rather than coercion and voting, rangatira relied on a complex mix of customary values and accomplished oratory skills to explore issues in family and community meetings and in public assemblies. Decisions made through inclusive deliberative processes practiced in hui established evident reasoning and responsibility for all community members to uphold the reached consensus. This article claims that practicing deliberative democracy as a fundamental way of life, learned through ongoing active and meaningful participation throughout childhood, improves the integrity of democratic decision-making.

There is growing interest in political inequality across income groups. This article contributes to this debate with two arguments about political involvement: poverty depresses internal political efficacy by undermining cognitive and emotional resources; and dissent in the party system reduces the efficacy gap to higher incomes. Specifically, conflict is to be expected between anti‐elite and mainstream parties to simplify political decisions and stimulate political attention among poor voters. These arguments are supported with comparative and experimental analyses. Comparative survey data shows that the income gap in efficacy varies with a novel measure of the anti‐elite salience in the party system. The causal impact of anti‐elite rhetoric is established though a representative survey experiment. Finally, the article investigates how these mechanisms affect both electoral and other forms of political participation.