Activities in civil society, seen as the sphere of society in which voluntary associations are dominant, are considered an important source of civility in modern society. By interacting and finding solutions for common problems, members of associations turn into citizens with a broader perspective and interest in the common good. The evidence for these positive roles is at best mixed, however. Not voluntarily associating in a separate sphere of civil society, but combining associational with public and commercial modes of social coordination, appears to offer a more promising option for civilizing modern society. Examples of hybridity are discussed. The paper concludes with a plea for a clearer recognition in social research of civicness as a normative perspective.

The article argues that in Denmark during the past 150 years, moral elites have been central in settling paradoxes within social policy by developing ‘classifications’ of citizens and sectors: who are deserving of help and what sector (public or third) should provide care. Contrary to widely held beliefs, historically, there is no logical or practical connection between ‘more deserving’ and ‘state support’. Theoretically, the article integrates elite scholarship and cultural sociology in developing a concept of moral elites’ power from—their sources of moral authority—and power to, the way that they have used their power to classify citizens and sectors. Empirically, the Danish moral elite and its involvement in social policy are analyzed based on secondary as well as primary historical sources. Findings: The development of the Danish moral elite has roots in the administrators of the nineteenth-century absolutist state: the clergy, medical doctors, and lawyers. Educational resources and state affiliation continue to be central to moral elite status. Economists have ascended to the top of the moral elite, while clergymen have dropped out. Three major classifications were developed during the period. ‘Help to self-help’ (late nineteenth century): deserving poor should receive help from private charity, while the public system should deter and discipline. ‘Rights’ (mid-twentieth century): the state should care for all, philanthropy mostly considered stigmatizing. ‘Workfare’ (late twentieth century to present): citizens are considered deserving as long as they are ‘active’, and sectors are considered equal in providing for citizens as long as they reach the economistic goal of activation.

While volunteering is an essential factor in service delivery in many societal areas, the inclusion of volunteers in formal settings can also lead to tensions. In this article, we combine the literature on volunteering and inter-professional collaboration (IPC) to elaborate a framework regarding remedies for tensions between professional staff and volunteers within IPC in health care provision to ensure successful collaboration. Using a dyadic survey design to interview volunteers and volunteer managers, we show that the perspectives of volunteers and volunteer managers on the antecedents of effective IPC differ in paradoxical ways. While volunteer managers apply organizational logic concerning tasks and processes to avoid tensions, volunteers seek solutions on a relational basis. However, rather than trying to resolve these paradoxes, our study indicates that carefully managing tensions arising between volunteers and professional staff may be more successful than trying to resolve all tensions.

Housing is an area in which the active involvement of citizens in the provision of services has the potential to enrich individual lifestyles, local communities and the organisations providing housing, regardless of whether public, private for-profit or non-profit. Yet in current housing markets, housing tends to be purely individual, in the form of home ownership, or collectively managed through social rented housing. The article explores the conditions under which co-production in this field could be successful, as an alternative model. The analysis, which draws upon the work of Ostrom, is based on empirical fieldwork carried out among German housing cooperatives. As it turns out, successful co-production depends primarily on the long-term maintenance of group boundaries and specific trajectories of organisational development. This can make co-production an attractive model for specific social groups, but there are drawbacks: it also tends to lead to limited use of the invested capital and an inward orientation.

How do active learning environments—by means of simulations—enhance political science students’ learning outcomes regarding different levels of knowledge? This paper examines different UN simulations in political science courses to demonstrate their pedagogical value and provide empirical evidence for their effectiveness regarding three levels of knowledge (factual, procedural and soft skills). Despite comprehensive theoretical claims about the positive effects of active learning environments on learning outcomes, substantial empirical evidence is limited. Here, we focus on simulations to systematically test previous claims and demonstrate their pedagogical value. Model United Nations (MUNs) have been a popular teaching device in political science. To gain comprehensive data about the active learning effects of MUNs, we collect data and evaluate three simulations covering the whole range of simulation characteristics: a short in-class simulation of the UN Security Council, a regional MUN with different committees being simulated, and two delegations to the National Model United Nations, for which the students prepare for 1 year. Comparative results prove that simulations need to address certain characteristics in order to produce extensive learning outcomes. Only comprehensive simulations are able to achieve all envisioned learning outcomes regarding factual and procedural knowledge about the UN and soft skills.

This article explains a dominant, curious and important pattern that emerges from our original data on 11 areas of financial regulation in the United States and the European Union from the Great Financial Crisis to 2020: sustained regulatory stringency in both jurisdictions. Our novel explanation, rooted in theories about international economic interdependence, temporal process and market power, emphasizes cross‐border interactions that arose from a build‐up of ‘border‐policing’ capacities. Our medium‐n study, which combines congruence analysis and process tracing, reveals a causal mechanism – ‘joint reinforcement’ – whereby the potential penalties imposed by one of the two jurisdictions prevent or temper the other from watering down‐regulation. The study pushes the boundaries of qualitative research, advances theory and speaks to debates about global public goods.

While scholars of management have extensively discussed paradoxes, scholars of volunteer management have given them little systematic attention. This special issue brings together the field of paradox studies with the research field of volunteer management. While many studies highlight paradoxes between different “missions” and mandates within volunteer-involving organizations, this introduction suggests using a “dramaturgical” approach that highlights the interplay between different actors, audiences, instruments for communication and action, and the broader moral, institutional frameworks in which the organizations operate. We review the field of paradox studies in management, then connect it to volunteer management, and then suggest ways that the dramaturgical approaches might help systematize some of the paradoxes that scholars have found in organizations that use volunteers. Next, the introduction summarizes this issue’s articles. Finally, we suggest that paradoxes take a more prominent role in studies of volunteer management.

The growing prominence of patient and public involvement in health services has led to the increased use of experiential knowledge alongside medical and professional knowledge bases. Third sector organisations, which position themselves as representatives of collective patient groups, have established channels to communicate experiential knowledge to health services. However, organisations may interpret and communicate experiential knowledge in different ways, and due to a lack of inherent authority, it can be dismissed by health professionals. Thus, drawing on individual interviews with organisation representatives, we explore the definitions and uses of as well as the ‘filters’ placed upon experiential knowledge. The analysis suggests that whilst experiential knowledge is seen as all-encompassing, practical and transformative, the organisations need to engage in actions that can tame experiential knowledge and try to balance between ensuring that the critical and authentic elements of experiential knowledge were not lost whilst retaining a position as collaborators in health care development processes.

This article uses Liberia’s national mental health program to explore how stakeholders make meaning of their work and how those meanings intertwine with various powers to shape program outcomes. We use interview data to analyze how the Carter Center (an INGO), Liberian government, and local mental health practitioners understood the program to address this stigmatized, often-ignored health issue. INGO officials emphasized personal connections, virtuous actions, and expertise in meaning-making, ideas intertwined with network, moral, and epistemic powers. Liberian government officials understood the program to be government directed but financially unaffordable, illustrating the government’s institutional authority but low economic power. Mental health clinicians perceived the program as a virtuous opportunity to gain expertise and economic advancement, although they used the power to exit when these aspirations were unrealized. This article illustrates that meaning-making cannot be divorced from actors’ various powers and that stakeholders’ failure to align meanings can undermine program outcomes.

This study applies a hierarchical clustering approach to identify social enterprise models that have appeared in a setting of public sector-led incubation. Within such a context, a high degree of conformity ought to be apparent due to the coercive isomorphic pressures associated with public sector patronage. We nominate South Korea for our analysis, given that the rising number of social enterprises in the country is closely related to a regulatory intervention. Based on an analysis of 468 social enterprises, we find, contrary to expectations, that distinct clusters of government-certified social enterprises have emerged, namely social utility niche, job outsourcing, market opportunity, and integrated balanced models. We typologize these models according to their strategic orientation, mission focus, and institutional alignment. In doing so, we contribute to social enterprise research by illustrating how organizational pluralism may manifest when the growth of a population of social enterprises is directly linked to public sector intervention and regulation.

Results from previous research suggest that terrorist attacks lead to relatively short‐term increases in trust in institutions. The explanation for this increase is known as the ‘rally effect’, whereby individuals respond to crises and threats with more positive support for political leaders and institutions. Even though the number of related natural experiments with survey data is increasing, these studies merely represent case studies of single incidents with limited external validity. To advance quasi‐experimental research on the effects of terrorist attacks on institutional trust, we propose a new methodological approach by assessing all jihadist terrorist attacks resulting in at least one civilian death in a European country that take place during the fieldwork of the European Social Survey and combining the results of eight unique natural experiments in five different countries using meta‐analytic and meta‐regression techniques. The results of this ‘multi‐site natural experiment’ indicate that support for the rally‐hypothesis is mixed at best. While some attacks appear to significantly increase at least some measures of institutional trust (e.g., The Netherlands 2004, France 2015, Israel 2012), others seem to have no effect at all (e.g., Germany 2015, France 2018), or even substantially decrease trust in domestic political institutions (Russia 2012). Summary effects from multilevel meta‐analyses are non‐significant for any institutional trust outcome. These results are robust to a large number of robustness tests and alternative specifications. In comparison with previous research, it appears that a lot of the European evidence for the rally‐hypothesis was based on ‘outlier’ case studies like the Charlie Hebdo attack in France, 2015. Accordingly, our results cast doubt on the unrestricted generalisability of rally effects after terrorist attacks to different geographic, political, social or historical contexts.

Ageing is shaped by biological and cultural narratives that influence perceptions of older adults’ wellbeing. Dominant narratives often reinforce ageist stereotypes, equating older adults with frailty and dependency. This study explores how artificial intelligence (AI) art could shape cultural narratives of ageing through a case study of Auntieverse, an AI art project featuring Singaporean auntie figures. Addressing the gap in understanding AI-generated imagery’s sociocultural impact, this study moves beyond existing discourses that focus on therapeutic benefits or technical aspects of AI to explore the shaping of perceptions of ageing. Through a tripartite qualitative design – visual analysis of 40 AI artworks, semi-structured interviews with the artist, and audience interviews with five Singaporean women (aged 20s–60s) – we critically analyse the meaning-making process of ageing by exploring AI-generated artefacts, artistic intention and audience reception. Findings reveal that while Auntieverse seeks to challenge ageist stereotypes by depicting female older adults as autonomous and vibrant, it also highlights the inherent biases embedded in AI aesthetics and the interpretive gap between artistic intent and audience perception. This study positions AI art as a medium for generating new cultural representations of ageing and advocates for a more critical and deliberate engagement with AI’s influence on cultural storytelling. Three central themes emerged for discussion: ‘Re-seeing age identity’, ‘Re-thinking the ageing body’ and ‘RepAInting successful ageing’. While acknowledging the limitations of AI-generated imagery, this study emphasizes the potential of AI art to reshape sociocultural understandings of ageing.

This essay argues that Descartes’ cogito, although a significant contribution to so-called ‘Western’ epistemological and ontological traditions, reveals new insights when tested against an Ubuntu-relational framework. The framework that allows for Descartes’ method of doubt and the conclusions about being that follow is, for us, inadequate, as it fails to address some crucial presumptions that trail a relational perspective. It is in this inadequacy that the cogito loses its promise and bows to what we take to be a more comprehensive foundational truth from the African perspective; that relationality precedes thought and concretises existence. What follows, then, is our attempt to show that this thesis is plausible by re-examining the Cogito in light of the Ubuntu relational framework. To do this, we will provide a brief exposition of Descartes’ journey towards the Cogito, especially as presented in the Meditations and the Discourse on Method. Having done that, we will proceed to outline a metaphysical account of the Ubuntu relational framework, and, finally, place Ubuntu in conversation with Descartes’ cogito. It is in this conversation that new insights on (at least) one foundational truth would be revealed – ‘Konke kuyikho ngokunye’; that is, that ‘all things are, through other things’.

Despite the notable successes of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activism in the region, individual European countries have varied considerably in the extent and speed with which they have adopted legislation to recognise the rights of their LGBTI citizens. Scholars have often turned to modernisation theory to explain these variable outcomes and argue that high levels of national wealth are an important factor in the success of LGBTI movements. Although the correlation between modernity, economic development and tolerance of LGBTI lifestyles is often treated as a truism in the literature, scholars have paid less attention to the precise mechanisms by which the complex processes associated with modernisation facilitate policy change. Drawing on the classic works of both modernisation theory and gay and lesbian history, we examine a less explored route by which modernisation leads to the expansion of LGBTI rights. Specifically, we posit that urbanisation facilitates the adoption of rights policies by strengthening LGBTI movements and enhancing their political effectiveness. To test this proposition, we use event history analysis and an original dataset that contains measures for institutional, cultural, economic and movement variables, as well as measures of urbanisation in 44 European countries between 1980 and 2015. Our findings support the contention that urbanisation has a strong effect on the formation of LGBTI movement organisations as well as the speed with which European states adopt both same‐sex union and anti‐discrimination legislation. The relationship between urbanisation and rights expansion persists even after controlling for a country's level of wealth, religious adherence and the influence of European institutions and norms.

It is widely believed that civic associations are capable to produce social capital, here understood as an individual asset resulting from relations of mutual support and assistance. Although hardly anybody denies that socializing is widespread in many civic associations, it still remains to be shown that this socializing provides a genuine commitment to support. This paper explores the relationship between involvement in civic organizations and social support. The data analysed come from a nation-wide survey “Organized Sport and Social Capital—Revisited” (OSSCAR) representing the adult population in Germany. Findings show that participation in civic associations is associated with higher levels of social support. This effect is stronger for active participants and weaker for passive members. Path analyses further indicate that this effect is mediated by a person’s sociability orientations as well as her commitment to prosocial values. These findings help providing a more nuanced understanding of mechanisms of social capital formation in civic associations.

The concept of ‘open social innovation’ (OSI) has not yet been fully understood, particularly in relation to social enterprises (SEs). This paper explores the use of OSI as a means of achieving social change through two in-depth, longitudinal, qualitative case studies with Scottish SEs. The researcher undertook participant observation for a year as well as conducting interviews and reviewing documents of the case study organizations. We build on Wikhamn (2013) by conceptualizing two approaches to OSI: ‘controlled’ which is closely connected to market-based attitudes, and ‘libre’ which is connected to the knowledge commons. Each approach has ramifications for how SEs achieve social change: either through exploitation of intellectual property as a means of income generation or freely revealing to accelerate social impact. The ways in which SEs manage OSI could thus determine the impact they can have on tackling some of society’s most challenging social problems.

Volunteer travel opportunities are more plentiful than ever and are now offered worldwide, with conservation projects being an increasingly popular choice. Some of the emerging questions in this field are concerned with the effective communication of these opportunities to young people. One theory that could guide the creation of these persuasive campaigns for conservation volunteering is regulatory focus theory. By adopting this theory, we reveal yet another possibility for understanding motivations of conservation volunteers. Results of the experiment suggest promotion messages are better received (more persuasive) because they induce expectations in line with general view of conservation volunteering as a hedonic experience. Moreover, this study is the first one of its kind to show this important effect of environmental attitudes on individuals’ responses to promotional messages about conservation volunteering travel.

This article examines elite European discourses during the Greek financial crisis from its pre‐history in September 2008 up to the arrival of the SYRIZA government in January 2015. The article employs the conceptual literature on Discursive Institutionalism (DI) and Historical Institutionalism (HI). Having coded 1,153 unique quotes drawn from a dataset of 15,354 news wires from Reuters, the authors argue that the communicative discourse of 63 senior European (and IMF) officials on the Greek crisis during that period demonstrates significant volatility. Four distinct narrative frames are identified: ‘neglect’, ‘suspicious cooperation’, ‘blame’ and ‘reluctant redemption’, punctuated by three discursive junctures in 2010, 2011 and 2012, which reflect the content of the changing communicative discourse of the Greek crisis. The article's contribution is twofold: empirically, it is the first to provide a systematic analysis of the protagonists’ communication of the Greek crisis; and theoretically, it combines DI and HI in an effort to conceptualise an important part of our understanding of ‘bail‐out politics’ throughout the Eurozone crisis.

This study examines how different types of international volunteering influence common program outcomes such as building organizational capacity, developing international relationships, and performing manual labor. Survey responses were collected from 288 development-oriented volunteer partner organizations operating in 68 countries. Data on the duration of volunteer service, the volunteers’ skill levels, and other variables were used to develop a rough typology of international volunteering. Binary logistic regression models then assessed differences in outcomes across five volunteering types. Findings suggest that future research needs to be more precise about how the nuances and complexity of diverse forms of international volunteering influence outcomes.