During the last two decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines have argued that civil society is structurally deficient in postcommunist countries. Yet why have the seemingly strong, active and mobilised civic movements of the transition period become so weak after democracy was established? And why have there been diverging political trajectories across the postcommunist space if civil society structures were universally weak? This article uses a new, broader range of data to show that civil societies in Central and Eastern European countries are not as feeble as commonly assumed. Many postcommunist countries possess vigorous public spheres and active civil society organisations strongly connected to transnational civic networks able to shape domestic policies. In a series of time‐series cross‐section models, the article shows that broader measures of civic and social institutions are able to predict the diverging transition paths among postcommunist regimes, and in particular the growing gap between democratic East Central Europe and the increasingly authoritarian post‐Soviet space.

Media Competence (MC) enables citizens to efficiently utilize information and communication technologies, for both consuming and producing content, in order to participate in digital society in a responsible and reflective manner. Its integration in the curriculum requires inter-sectorial collaboration, which includes not only education authorities, but also key actors such as Civil Society Organizations (CSO). The present study examines the perception of CSO with regard to the integration of MC in the curriculum of basic education in Latin American countries. For this, a survey was designed that was stored in a digital platform. It was completed by 63 CSO from fourteen different countries. The main findings indicate that: a) the CSO recognize the importance of teaching MC and the associated challenges, such as the digital divide, the lack of political will, and the lack of understanding of the concept by the population in general; and b) they contribute through the creation of education resources and the teaching of classes for teachers and other vulnerable groups; however, it is crucial to strengthen the network of collaboration with other groups of interest, prioritize MC in their agendas, and ensure that CSO receive training in this area.

In the context of China’s new law against domestic violence, proposed by the State Council in November 2014 and passed in July 2015, this article examines online engagement by Chinese citizens leading up to the legislative revision, and examines the Sina Weibo microblog activities of one influential organisation, nǚquán zhī shēng (Feminist Voice). I ask how a Chinese Civil Society Organisation (CSO) uses online media to open public discourse on, and in some cases challenge, formal and informal institutions around a normatively marginalised issue, the case of domestic violence. Drawing on and synthesising literature on domestic violence, civil society and online communications in China, this study provides a timely contribution given the relative limitedness of up-to-date data, after the huge wave of publications following the 1995 Beijing conference. Findings are based on content analysis of the Feminist Voice microblog during 2012. While Chinese CSOs are often dismissed as non-confrontational and therefore ineffective change agents, Feminist Voice does challenge status quo marginalisation of domestic violence in the public sphere and facilitate discussion around formal and informal institutional reform, thereby influencing social attitudes and potentially also policy and law making.

This article deals with the social accountability activities of civil society organizations in Serbia and Cambodia. In both countries, they emerged with the conceptual and financial support of international development agencies; yet, the outputs were mediated by the social and political contexts. Still, these activities have some joint features: they (1) boost both understanding and awareness rather than solely mobilizing social interests; (2) target the interests of individual citizens rather than the interests of social-based groups or classes; (3) promote state cooperation instead of confrontation and (3) insist on the use of technical policy-related tools and mechanisms instead of political mobilization. The social accountability initiatives analyzed here have followed a policy-not-politics or depoliticized approach. As a consequence, they were ineffective in mobilizing citizens and social groups in a manner that would efficiently demand more accountability. On the other hand, governments contested civil society and appropriated its accountability discourses and strategies in an effort that can be read as an attempt to resist imposing government accountability and rule of law and pacifying present and future civic activism.

In response to the arrival of Ukrainians in March 2022, private homestay emerged as a key tool providing a flexible alternative to traditional reception systems. This paper explores the potential of homestays as a scalable model to address the accommodation needs of diverse refugee groups. We draw on a survey of 7,200 households in Germany and find that the majority of current and potential hosts express positive experiences of living together and willingness to continue offering accommodation. Despite relative preferences in favor of hosting female and Ukrainian refugees, there is still an absolute willingness to provide homestays to several nationalities in addition to Ukranians. However, reluctance to host male refugees shows not only the perseverance of threat perceptions but will likely prevent homestay from serving all refugee demographics at scale. Nevertheless, our study suggests that homestays could meaningfully complement existing reception systems beyond the initial focus on Ukrainians.

This paper assesses the contribution of South African nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to the process of democratic consolidation. By drawing on a 1998 survey conducted among 270 NGOs, on several expert interviews, and on an analysis of the structures and programmes of the umbrella body of South African NGOs (Sangoco), the author presents a multi-faceted picture of the activities of the South African NGO sector. The focus is on the NGOs’ role as (1) “schools of democracy,” (2) in bridging societal cleavages, and (3) in providing channels of interest representation for the most marginalized sections of the population. The paper concludes that the contribution of South African NGOs to the process of democratic consolidation is significant, but highly dependent on an enabling external environment.

The paper analyzes the impact of economic crises on organized civil society. A number of empirical studies have shown that a financial crisis can inflict a serious damage on the nonprofit sector—mainly through a sharp decline in revenues. However, the Greek case shows that a crisis can also have some positive effects on NGOs: many nonprofits introduced reforms that increased efficiency, the number of volunteers reached record levels, and there was a spectacular rise in funding by private philanthropic foundations. However, Greek NGOs continue to be dependent on external funding, unable to raise large sums from their members and the wider public. Organized Greek civil society continues to be turned upside down: dependency on EU and state funds is being replaced by dependency on private foundations.

In a search for the ‘good European citizen’, the prevalent views of European Union (EU) policymakers, civil society bodies, and citizens are confronted. The civil society and ordinary citizens are both content with strengthening the position of civil society and not increasing the participatory demands on citizens. Ideas among EU policymakers about civil society as a means to integrate citizens and to close the gap between citizens and the EU are misplaced and incongruent with other images of the ‘good European citizen’.

The right to the city is a concept that helps rethink spatial–social dynamics, which has recently reinvigorated the field of organization studies. Following Lefebvre and considering the failure of both the market and the state, other scholars pinpoint the need to rethink social–spatial and geographical–historical relations. They do so by theorizing the city as a host for urban commons. Collective and non-commodified, these spatial–social experiences need to be constantly reproduced and preserved through commoning practices in the struggle against spatial injustice. A case study shows that a civil society organization (CSO) uses participatory art to (re)produce urban commons at the level of a local community and to redress partially spatial injustice. We theorize participatory art-making as a social practice of commoning, i.e., a process of organizing for the commons—collective art-based activities to serve a community—and of the common—to (re)produce a community while performing them. Such commoning practices are not only about sharing urban resources but also about using and experiencing differently urban spaces. By making participatory artworks in public spaces and co-designing street furniture with residents of poor areas, TDA helps to better cope with the tensions between residents and local authorities and between amateurs and professional artists. By negotiating the long-term implementation of these creative artworks in the public space with public authorities, TDA has fostered the empowerment of inhabitants as they have experienced citizens’ reappropriation of some public spaces in Marseille.

Nonprofit organizations, though rooted in civil society and primarily committed to value rationality, must work legitimately to influence political and economic systems. To a certain degree, therefore, they must adapt to the purposive logic of power and money. This study analyzes the way in which nonprofit organizational communications respond to such tensions, using a nationwide survey of editors-in-chief responsible for magazines issued by nonprofit organizations in Switzerland as the empirical basis. These magazines often function as steering tools targeted toward members, following the logic of power and there is less danger of them being “colonized” by economic logic. The results indicate that large organizations that rely on paid staff tend to cut their ties with civil society and the “lifeworlds” of their members.

During the last two decades, there have been various attempts at measuring and assessing the health of civil society. Some have focused almost exclusively on ‘counting’ the nonprofit, while others have assessed the strength of nongovernmental organizations. Yet, these sectors are just a small part of a much larger environment. Moreover, they are the result of Western conceptualizations of civil society, thus not very helpful for one to understand civic participation in non-Western settings. Taking stock of these fundamental issues, this article presents the conceptual framework and methodology of a new global index to measure the ‘enabling environment’ of civil society, rather than its forms and institutional contours. Given the inherent diversity of civil societies worldwide, which defies any attempt at developing predetermined definitions, understanding the conditions that support civic participation becomes the most important objective for those interested in promoting a strong civil society arena. The index was launched by CIVICUS in late 2013 with the name of enabling environment index and covers over 200 countries and territories, making it the most ambitious attempt ever made at measuring civil society worldwide.

The role of civil society is vital for politicizing, contesting, and addressing human insecurity, yet there is very little analysis of the ability of civil society actors to do so. Recent critical approaches to the concept have questioned the tendency to view civil society as an unequivocal good, yet the majority of these critiques still focus on civil society at a global level or on the enabling and disabling capacity of the state at the national level. This paper argues that civil society is constrained not only by the state but by local government and other actors from within civil society. Identity politics, power relations, and existing inequalities between and within communities affect the ability of formal and informal organizations to contest the causes of insecurity. This paper examines the role of civil society in addressing gender-based insecurity in the Indian state of Meghalaya to demonstrate the influence of these factors on civil society and concludes by arguing that civil society is a much more dynamic and contradictory sphere than is often recognized by both advocates and critics. These dynamics must be understood if the constraints on civil society are to be transcended.

In this paper, we address the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in Italy with regard to the integration of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees (MRAs) in the labour market. The paper analyses the role played by CSOs in practice, looking at the dynamics of demand and offer of services through the perspective of both the CSOs and MRAs. To achieve this, we combine qualitative data from semi-structured interviews to CSO representatives as well as MRAs. Our findings point out that the fragmentation of the policy framework in terms of employment and integration, and an unfavourable legislation (above all, migration law) shape the kind of prevalent activities of CSOs and negatively impact the potential for integration of MRAs in the labour market. In general, much is left to the single CSO to fill in the needs of MRAs beyond minimal provisions established by law, with just asylum seekers and refugees having better opportunities and support. Furthermore, we can also observe how economic migrants generally tend to be less supported.

In the article, we analyse the impact of changing policy environments on the development of the third sector in Europe. Based on the results of systematic comparative research in eight European countries (Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK), we identify commonalities and differences. In a three-step analysis, we examine policy changes, effects on the third sector and responses by third sector organizations (TSOs) in the social domain. Overall, the third sector in Europe has proven resilient. However, not only have public and private funding decreased, the process for acquiring such funding has become more demanding for TSOs, as have requirements to be accountable. There are signs of a proliferation of more market-based, hybrid organizations. Despite this general trend towards marketization, the impact of policy changes varies across Europe with TSOs being better equipped to adapt and survive in countries where collaborative ties between the state and the third sector have traditionally been strong.

Civil society leadership training programmes are a new phenomenon, and they are often overlooked by civil society scholarship despite being linked to the professionalisation of the sector. In this article, we examine 14 Swedish leadership programmes in order to identify leadership ideals in the sector. Drawing on the notion of ‘symbolic boundaries’, we argue that leadership programmes produce horizontal boundaries in relation to other societal sectors and vertical boundaries between leaders of the sector and other members. Together, these symbolic boundaries form a leadership ideal that detaches leaders from their organisation and internal democratic processes, instead depicting leadership as a question of personal characteristics and values. Leaders in the sector need to be authentic and to anchor their leadership in the personal values they hold. Theoretically, our analytical model may prove useful in the study of other empirical phenomena in civil society.

This article explores Japanese civil society through voluntary activity in the Save Article 9 movement, a citizen’s activism movement reaching over 7,000 groups in Japan initiated to counter attempts of some government leaders to change or eliminate the current constitution and Article 9–Japan’s renunciation of war and militarism clause. It traces influences on Japan’s so-called “Peace Constitution” as it developed in the postwar period, cyclical challenges to it, and cyclical responses of citizens to preserve and protect it. It discusses an Austrian born woman who grew up in Japan and through circumstances after the war became part of the constitutional drafting committee though neither Japanese nor American at that time. It discusses the emergence of the Save Article 9 movement and activities of those in it. It presents the story of one woman who was a founder of a group, the daughter of a former governor of Osaka Prefecture, whose story reflects her commitment and provides a window on her father as a prisoner in Siberian camps for five years after the war ended, as an advocate for the postwar constitution, and of “social law” as Governor of Osaka Prefecture in the 1970s. It also discusses the similar orientation of the Governors of Tokyo Prefecture and Kyoto Prefecture during that decade. The article discusses how, after halting the threat to Article 9 in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Save Article 9 groups have continued to pursue a holistic vision of peace by being active in post-3.11 environmental debates, and as advocates for better relations between Japan and other Asian countries, notably Korea and China, and for greater inclusion of minorities in Japan, while remaining prepared for a re-emerging challenge to Japan’s peace constitution and its non-militarism clause Article 9.