Scholars trained in disciplines like anthropology, history, law, political science, and sociology helped to give rise to the field of law and society over the past two generations. What theories does law and society offer those disciplines in return, and are scholars in those fields looking back to law and society? To answer these questions, this article, which introduces a symposium celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Law & Society Review, brings together scholarship across disciplines to share the possible future influence of law and society on the disciplines. This theoretical and forward-looking inquiry invites us all to reflect upon law and society’s contributions over the past two generations and to consider what law and society will contribute to the next generation of interdisciplinary – and disciplinary – scholarship.

In answer set programming, two groups of rules are considered strongly equivalent if they have the same meaning in any context. Strong equivalence of two programs can be sometimes established by deriving rules of each program from rules of the other in an appropriate deductive system. This paper shows how to extend this method of proving strong equivalence to programs containing the counting aggregate.

In this introductory article to the thematic issue, our aim is to discuss the state of the art in research on co-production of public services. We define co-production, for the purpose of this article rather narrowly, as the involvement of individual citizens and groups in public service delivery. We discuss the concept along three main research lines that emerge from the literature: what are the motives for co-production? How can co-production be organized effectively? What are the effects of co-production? Secondly, we also critically assess the state of the art and discuss some conceptual and methodological issues that are still open to debate. Thirdly, we propose some directions for future research: greater methodological diversity and the need for empirical and comparative research with a specific attention for theoretical advancement in co-production research.

The proliferation of volunteering for development (V4D) models, approaches and funding sources means V4D is no longer able to be neatly located within the third sector. The enormous diversity of interactions within the Youth V4D (YV4D) field provides an opportunity to examine new and different activities and trajectories to ascertain the extent to which the traditional values of V4D, reciprocity and solidarity continue to form part of YV4D. Using the classical third sector model of Evers and Laville (The third sector in Europe, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2004), and drawing on Polanyi (The great transformation: the political and economic origins of our time, Beacon Press, Boston, 2001 [1944]) and Mauss (The gift. The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies, Routledge, London, 1990 [1925]), in particular their concepts of redistribution and reciprocity, we present three case studies of new hybrid YV4D trajectories—university YV4D, state YV4D programmes, and volunteer tourism/voluntourism—to reveal the different logics and features of contemporary YV4D. We argue that understanding these contemporary YV4D trajectories requires a focus on organisational and stakeholder structures of diverse volunteering activities, their relational logics and the forms of reciprocity they involve. We find that in the YV4D case studies we explore the neoliberal market logic of exchange, along with political ideologies and state interests, affects the YV4D model design.

Statecraft, under democratic principles in Tanzania in particular, is often considered as a total heritage from former colonial masters. Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922–1999) disputed this by advancing an African theory of democracy, articulated to inform modern statecraft in Tanzania. His theory advances a form of democracy characterized by a merger of some practices from the African past and others from the western world. In this way, he articulated the centrality of democracy in organizing public affairs without compromising its African origin but also acknowledging the influence of other democratic cultures in the modern organization of a polity. This article articulates Nyerere's contribution to African democratic discourse and the extent to which his theory of democracy is relevant in the organization of contemporary politics and democratic trajectories in Tanzania and Africa in particular.

This article makes the case that a more sociological and discursive approach to nonprofit studies is needed to analyze sectoral dynamics. Using a sociological framework, it explores how the unique experiences and strategies of the nonprofit sectors are embedded in broader shifts in governance at a macro scale. Finally, it illustrates how Canadian scholarship provides a valuable lens that extends current theoretical frameworks by linking the analysis of sectoral mobilization and organization with the in-depth investigation of government–nonprofit relationships.

Nonprofit boards of directors are responsible for overseeing executive transitions, and the practitioner literature is rich with prescriptive guidance of how they should fulfill this vital responsibility. Nevertheless, we have limited evidence of what boards actually do as they navigate the space between an outgoing and an incoming executive, and moreover, we have no research that seeks to explain this critical juncture from a theoretical perspective. This exploratory study sought to fill this gap by applying theories commonly used in other literature about nonprofit governance in the context of an executive transition. Using a sample of twenty-nine US-based nonprofits that had recently experienced an executive transition, interviews were conducted and the resulting analysis is insightful about the approach boards took, the priorities they had, and their reflections on the transitions. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for both research and practice.

Building on a Lakatosian approach that sees Social Science as an endeavour that confronts rival theories with systematic empirical observations, this article responds to probing questions that have been raised about the appropriate ways in which to conduct systematic process analysis and comparative enquiry. It explores varieties of process tracing, the role of interpretation in case studies, and the relationship between process tracing and comparative historical analysis.

Civil-military relations have long been an important topic for political science scholars. In spite of its long tradition, however, the field has been repeatedly criticised as being too detached from the greater domain of political science and being too conservative in its conceptual, theoretical and methodological foundations. In recent years, however, a new generation of civil-military research has emerged which has considerably promoted the development of the field beyond the confines of the classical texts. This symposium comprises four articles by European scholars who share a conviction to furthering the study of civil-military relations and developing closer links between the mother discipline of political science and its more specific subfields of comparative and theoretical military studies.

How do and why might different nations demarcate socioeconomic activity into distinct societal sectors? In this review and critique of sector theories, we use the case study of nonprofit sectors compared with informal economies to evidence the difficulty of drawing separate conceptual spaces for economic, human, and social-capital-producing activities. Drawing upon international research on the origins and characteristics of both nonprofit (voluntary, third, independent) and informal (underground, black market) sectors, the conceptualizations of spheres of activity that are alternative to market and state are explored. Hypotheses about the preconditions of different third sectors are generated and a basis for further theorizing about sector interdependence and overlap is provided.