Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts: Essays in Honor of Helmut K. Anheier 3030980073, 9783030980078

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Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies An International Multidisciplinary Series

Michael Hoelscher Regina A. List Alexander Ruser Stefan Toepler   Editors

Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts Essays in Honor of Helmut K. Anheier

Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies An International Multidisciplinary Series Series Editors Paul Dekker, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands Lehn Benjamin, Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis, IN, USA

Research on the nonprofit sector and civil society has gained momentum in recent years. Whereas interest in the institutional arena located between the state and the market remained a small specialty field until the late 1980s, since that time it has become a growth area. Research and funding opportunities have multiplied, as has the number of scholars and practitioners taking part in the development of a broad and ambitious agenda across the major social science disciplines. This series publishes books of interest to a wide-ranging audience of researchers, advanced students, policymakers, and practitioners in this international area of study and practice. More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/6339

Michael Hoelscher  •  Regina A. List Alexander Ruser • Stefan Toepler Editors

Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts Essays in Honor of Helmut K. Anheier

Editors Michael Hoelscher German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer Speyer, Germany Alexander Ruser University of Agder Kristiansand, Norway

Regina A. List Hamburg, Germany Stefan Toepler George Mason University Arlington, VA, USA

ISSN 1568-2579 Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies ISBN 978-3-030-98007-8    ISBN 978-3-030-98008-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Helmut K. Anheier Photo Credit: Hertie School

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Foreword by the Series Editors

We are very honored to have this Liber Amicorum for Helmut Anheier in our series. Helmut started the series Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies: An International Multidisciplinary Series in 1999. The series was originally part of Kluwer Academic/ Plenum Publishers and then taken over by Springer Publishing soon after, when Kluwer Academic merged with Springer. Although the series received no formal introduction or announcement, its launch was part of an active effort by Helmut and others to institutionalize third-sector research as a distinct field of study. We do not have documents showing any discussion about the name of the series—Third-Sector Studies? Nonprofit Studies? Civil Society Studies?—but we can imagine that combining two to cover the third was a pragmatic and inclusive proposal of Helmut to avoid wasting time on long disputes about terminology. Below is the list of books in the series so far. Helmut started the series with an international and comparative book about funds, co-edited with Stefan Toepler. Helmut remained as series editor until 2011, in charge of publishing 17 books (5 monographs and 12 edited volumes). Ebenezer Obadare’s Handbook of Civil Society in Africa appeared in 2014 without a series editor, but with the International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR) taking on the formal management of the series. In that construction, Paul Dekker and Annette Zimmer served as series editors, and when Annette became president of ISTR in 2015, Lehn Benjamin succeeded her. In the years after Helmut’s editorship, 14 books (all edited volumes) have been published, including this one, which is one of the most voluminous. 1. Helmut K.  Anheier & Stefan Toepler (eds), Private Funds, Public Purpose: Philanthropic Foundations in International Perspective (1999) 2. Hillel Schmid, Neighborhood Self-Management: Experiments in Civil Society (2001) 3. Patrice Flynn & Virginia A.  Hodgkinson (eds), Measuring the Impact of the Nonprofit Sector (2001) 4. Tobie S.  Stein, Workforce Transitions from the Profit to the Nonprofit Sector (2002)

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5. S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Civil Society and the Professions in Eastern Europe: Social Change and Organizational Innovation in Poland (2002) 6. Ugo Ascoli & Costanzo Ranci (eds), Dilemmas of the Welfare Mix: The New Structure of Welfare in an Era of Privatization (2002) 7. Paul Dekker, Loek Halman (eds), The Values of Volunteering: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (2003) 8. Helmut K. Anheier & Avner Ben-Ner (eds), The Study of Nonprofit Enterprise: Theories and Approaches (2003) 9. Annette E.  Zimmer & Christina Stecker (eds), Strategy Mix for Nonprofit Organisations: Vehicles for Social and Labour Market Integrations (2004) 10. Benjamin Gidron, Michal Bar & Hagai Katz, The Israeli Third Sector: Between Welfare State and Civil Society (2004) 11. Soma Hewa & Darwin Stapleton (eds), Globalization, Philanthropy, and Civil Society: Toward a New Political Culture in the Twenty-First Century (2006) 12. Gunnar Grendstad, Per Selle, Kristin Stromsnes & Oystein Bortne, Unique Environmentalism: A Comparative Perspective (2006) 13. Helmut K.  Anheier, Adele Simmons & David Winder (eds), Innovation in Strategic Philanthropy: Local and Global Perspectives (2007) 14. Samiul Hasan & Jenny Onyx (eds), Comparative Third Sector Governance in Asia: Structure, Process, and Political Economy (2008) 15. Henk Vinken, Yuko Nishimura, Bruce L. J. White & Masayuki Deguchi (eds), Civic Engagement in Contemporary Japan: Established and Emerging Repertoires (2010) 16. Benjamin Gidron & Michal Bar (eds), Policy Initiatives Towards the Third Sector in International Perspective (2010) 17. Jeffrey Broadbent & Vicky Brockman (eds), East Asian Social Movements: Power, Protest, and Change in a Dynamic Region (2011) 18. Ebenezer Obadare (ed.), The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa (2014) 19. Samiul Hasan (ed.), Human Security and Philanthropy: Islamic Perspectives and Muslim Majority Country Practices (2015) 20. Lesley Hustinx, Johan von Essen, Jacques Haers & Sara Mels (eds), Religion and Volunteering: Complex, Contested and Ambiguous Relationships (2015) 21. Taco Brandsen, Sandro Cattacin, Adalbert Evers & Annette Zimmer (eds), Social Innovations in the Urban Context (2016) 22. Gregory R.  Witkowski & Arnd Bauerkämper (eds), German Philanthropy in Transatlantic Perspective: Perceptions, Exchanges and Transfers Since the Early Twentieth Century (2016) 23. Samiul Hasan (ed.), Corporate Social Responsibility and the Three Sectors in Asia: How Conscious Engagement Can Benefit Civil Society (2017) 24. Jacqueline Butcher & Christopher J. Einolf (eds), Perspectives on Volunteering: Voices from the South (2017) 25. Bernard Enjolras & Kristin Strømsnes (eds), Scandinavian Civil Society and Social Transformations: The Case of Norway (2018)

Foreword by the Series Editors

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26. Lars Skov Henriksen, Kristin Strømsnes & Lars Svedberg (eds), Civic Engagement in Scandinavia: Volunteering, Informal Help and Giving in Denmark, Norway and Sweden (2019) 27. Lonneke Roza, Steffen Bethmann, Lucas Meijs & Georg von Schnurbein (eds), Handbook on Corporate Foundations: Corporate and Civil Society Perspectives (2020) 28. Riccardo Guidi, Ksenija Fonović & Tania Cappadozzi (eds), Accounting for the Varieties of Volunteering: New Global Statistical Standards Tested (2021) 29. Benjamin Gidron & Anna Domaradzka (eds), The New Social and Impact Economy: An International Perspective (2021) 30. Anders Sevelsted & Jonass Toubol (eds), The Power of Morality in Movements: Civic Engagement in Climate Justice, Human Rights, and Democracy (2022) 31. Michael Hoelscher, Regina A. List, Alexander Ruser & Stefan Toepler (eds), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts -- Essays in Honor of Helmut K. Anheier (2022) Comparative and international research has become a thread through the series, although we still strive for more global balance in the countries and regions covered. The series does reflect the multidisciplinarity in the field, with anchors in sociology, economics, and political science as well as a consistent focus on the relationship between the nonprofit sector and civil society and the spheres of private lives, work, and government. Returning topics are volunteering, philanthropy, funds and foundations, social innovations, and movements. All these perspectives and topics come back in this volume, and so do many of the authors and editors of books earlier in the series. It demonstrates the vitality of a community of third-sector researchers and the good professional and personal relationships Helmut has developed over time as the field has become more institutionalized. We want to thank the editors of this volume for their hard work, and of course also the authors, and our publishing editors of the series at Springer, first Teresa Krauss and now Lorraine Klimowich. Paul Dekker Tilburg University Tilburg, The Netherlands Lehn Benjamin Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis, IN, USA Editors of the Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies (https://www.springer.com/ series/6339)

Foreword

I am honored by the invitation to contribute a foreword to this volume. It was my great good fortune to have gotten to know Helmut Anheier while he was a student in the Yale Sociology Department’s Ph.D. program. Helmut and I arrived at Yale at more or less the same time and were united, first, by a shared interest in network analysis and, second, by our participation in Yale’s interdisciplinary Program on Non-Profit Organizations, in which he was a research affiliate, and which brought me to Yale as a postdoctoral fellow and of which I eventually became the Director. I served as an entirely unqualified member of the committee for his comprehensive examination in Mathematical Sociology (a topic about which he knew much more than I) and as a member of his dissertation committee. More important than these formal ties were the many conversations afforded by our common membership in a relatively small group of sociologists for whom the Program on Non-Profit Organizations served as an intellectual base, conversations in which it became apparent that Helmut was a man of exceptional talents and, even then, of deep learning. I faced three obstacles in writing this brief reminiscence. The first is that throughout most of our shared time at Yale, computers (the first of which I did not own until 1984, well into our acquaintance) had very small hard drives. One therefore backed up one’s documents on tiny external disks—at first floppy and circular, then rigid and square—none of which have survived. Second, Helmut’s scholarly scope and impact have been so broad that searching my (now cloud-based) records for relevant files was like trying to find needles in a haystack. A search on “Anheier” yielded close to 1000 hits. Why so many, then? Helmut’s papers or books have appeared in the syllabi for almost every course I have taught on organizations, networks, nonprofits, or sociology of culture; in dozens of reading lists for graduate student comprehensive examinations that I have supervised; in multiple drafts of dozens of papers in which I have cited his work; and in scores of papers by other scholars that cite his work, as well as many of those publications themselves. Finally, it is impossible to view Helmut’s vitae without a paralyzing sense of one’s own underperformance: I realized that my impression that he is one of the earth’s

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Foreword

most prolific sociologists has been based on acquaintanceship with, at most, one third of his publications. Nonetheless, I shall press on. I first encountered Helmut through our shared interests in network analysis. Yale Sociology in the early 1980s was a community that encouraged strong internal bonds. The Department’s offices looked inward at a courtyard that also included a cafeteria. Because the nearest restaurants were several blocks away, students and faculty often lunched together. Moreover, for complex historical reasons, Yale sociologists were a beleaguered tribe, benefiting from the solidarity that external hostility elicits. Among those with an interest in networks, social density was stimulated as well by excitement surrounding that area, represented at Yale by Scott Boorman, whose work with Harrison White and Ron Breiger had stimulated the efflorescence of that field, and whose students included some of the Department’s most promising. Given Helmut’s immense contributions to the study of nonprofit sectors, philanthropy, and global civil society, some readers may be unaware of his important early work on social networks. His dissertation was a brilliant study of interorganizational networks among nonprofit social welfare organizations in three West African countries, combining fieldwork—he trudged through the bush to collect his data—with analysis (of negative as well as positive sentiments) that demonstrated the impact of network structure on system effectiveness. The study remains the best example I know of the value of the triad census method that emerged (through Heider and his successors) from Simmel’s famous essay on three-­ person groups. He followed this study by collecting network data from the full population of fiction authors in Cologne, producing several papers that used then new methods to address significant issues in social and literary theories. Given his unusual gift for connecting network methods to deep sociological problems, I expected Helmut to become a leader in the field of network analysis. But if networks were his first love, the study of philanthropy became his enduring passion. John Simon of Yale’s Law School and Yale President Kingman Brewster created the Program on Non-Profit Organizations in the late 1970s to strengthen scholarship on philanthropy. One of the Program’s goals was to recruit able young scholars, support their work, and create a cadre of researchers who would lead the field in the coming years. Helmut was one of the first of these, and the greatest of the Program’s several significant successes. His dissertation was one of the first studies of nonprofit sectors in the developing world and one of the first to examine the impact of social structure and public policy on the vitality of the voluntary sector in any context. By the time he left Yale, he had begun writing more broadly about the nonprofit sector in international perspective, including a brilliant paper articulating eight factors influencing the shape of voluntary activity in different countries, and one of the only two chapters in the Yale Handbook to be authored by a graduate student. Shortly after, when I agreed to write a paper for Annual Review of Sociology on the sociology of philanthropy and nonprofit organizations, I quickly recruited Helmut as co-author, for he already knew more than anyone else about philanthropy outside the United States. Helmut was a mainstay of the Non-Profit Program, a regular participant in our workshops, who could be counted on to ask the most probing questions in the most

Foreword

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polite way. Soft-spoken almost to a fault, he won respect for the substance of his ideas, rather than the performativity of their expression. He also possessed a great dry wit, which became apparent only gradually. (In a recommendation letter for an academic-year fellowship, I referred to his “keen sense of humor, which will become visible by late September or early October.”) Helmut has always been the person one wants to recruit to any new enterprise and has always had an almost supernatural ability to do many things well at once. I moved to Princeton shortly after he moved to Rutgers, which was nearby. We talked about several possible collaborations over lunch, after which I wrote that I hoped he would “substitute Princeton for [Johns] Hopkins as the place for additional commitments whenever your life is in danger of becoming manageable.” In the recommendation I quoted earlier, I noted that his unique dual immersion in research on both the US and the international voluntary sectors made him an indispensable bridge between the two academic worlds and predicted that he would be a leader in the field for years to come. Never has a bold prediction about a relatively new Ph.D. proven so accurate—indeed, in retrospect, I may have been guilty of understatement. Helmut may have started as a bridge between the US and European nonprofit research communities; but he has built so many other bridges between them, and to communities around the world, that research on civil society has become a global enterprise, in large part thanks to his scholarship and his entrepreneurial exertions. It is customary for teachers to express pride in the accomplishments of their former students; but, in honesty, Helmut was a peer from the moment I met him, so appreciation is a more appropriate emotion. Festschrifts like this one serve to punctuate a scholar’s career. Sometimes, the punctuation is a period, but in Helmut’s case, it is certainly a comma (perhaps with an exclamation point for emphasis). I look forward to the next stage. Paul DiMaggio Department of Sociology New York University, New York, NY, USA

Contents

1 Civil  Society Concepts, Challenges, and Contexts: An Introduction to Helmut Anheier’s Festschrift ��������������������������������    1 Michael Hoelscher, Regina A. List, Alexander Ruser, and Stefan Toepler 2 Scholarship,  Leadership, and Institution Building: Helmut Anheier and the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sectors������������������������   13 Steven Rathgeb Smith Part I Developing Concepts and Theoretical Frames 3 The  Theory of the Public Sphere Revisited ������������������������������������������   31 Rupert Strachwitz 4 Dealing  with Civility: Citizenship, Real Citizens, and the Science of Civil Society����������������������������������������������������������������������������   51 Paul Dekker 5 Successful  Failure: Functions and Dysfunctions of Civil Society Organizations ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   69 Wolfgang Seibel 6 Social  Innovation: Not Without Civil Society����������������������������������������   83 Volker Then and Georg Mildenberger 7 The  Hiding Hand, Persistent Fragile Action, and Sustainable Development ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  101 Gorgi Krlev 8 Using  the System of National Accounts Framework to Measure Social Impacts of Social Economy Institutions����������������������  117 S. Wojciech Sokolowski

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Contents

9 From  Anheier’s Civil Society Diamond to a Principled Fundraising Jurisprudence for Civil Society����������������������������������������  131 Matthew Turnour and Myles McGregor-Lowndes 10 Legitimizing  Foundations: Roles, Expectations, and Regulation��������  151 Stefan Toepler 11 Foundations  and Democracy: The Changing Case for the Defense����  167 Diana Leat 12 Foundations:  Is Measurement the Enemy of Creativity?��������������������  177 Gian Paolo Barbetta Part II Charting Global Challenges 13 Planetary  Politics: Reviving the Spirit of the Concept “Global Civil Society”������������������������������������������������������������������������������  189 Mary Kaldor and Sabine Selchow 14 Global  Civil Society in Retreat: Is It Cyclical or Existential? ������������  205 Éva Kuti and Miklós Marschall 15 The  Offensive Against Global Civil Society: Diffusion of NGO Restrictions ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  217 Marlies Glasius and Meta de Lange 16 Civil  Society Actors in International Cultural Diplomacy ������������������  233 Yudhishthir Raj Isar 17 Arts,  Cultural Participation, and Democracy: Analyzing the Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy ������������������������������  249 Michael Hoelscher and Regina A. List 18 Global Civil Religion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  263 Mark Juergensmeyer 19 Civil  Society and the Problem of Knowledge����������������������������������������  273 Markus Lang 20 The  Dark Side of the Nonprofit Sector: Polarization in Contemporary Society ����������������������������������������������������������������������������  285 Avner Ben-Ner Part III Changing Contexts: Local and Regional Case Studies 21 Civil  Society Encroachment in Nonliberal Democracies: The Case of Israel������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  309 Hagai Katz and Benjamin Gidron

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22 Policy  Controversies and Challenges for Organized Civil Society: The Case of England Before the COVID-19 Crisis����������������  323 Jeremy Kendall 23 Transformation  of Civil Society Organization Functions in Modern Russia ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  333 Lev Jakobson and Irina Mersianova 24 The  Skeptic Who Came in from the Cold? The Formation of a Climate-­Skeptic Alliance in Germany������������������������������������������������  349 Alexander Ruser 25 The  Recent Evolution of Foundations in France����������������������������������  359 Edith Archambault 26 Pluralism  and Inequality: Brief Reflections on Philanthropic Foundations and Their Study in the United States ������������������������������  371 David C. Hammack 27 Businesses  as Civil Society Actors? An Analysis Based on German Company Data ��������������������������������������������������������������������  381 Anaël Labigne, Olga Kononykhina, and Andreas Schlüter 28 Scenarios  for Civil Society Impact in Norway��������������������������������������  397 Per Selle, Kristin Strømsnes, and Stein Kuhnle 29 Women  in the German Nonprofit Sector: Working Conditions and Promotion Opportunities ����������������������������������������������������������������  413 Annette Zimmer and Eckhard Priller 30 Los  Angeles and the State of the Nonprofit Sector: A Review of Findings and Examination of Three Theses��������������������������������������  431 Marcus Lam, Hagai Katz, and Jennifer Mosley Appendix: Helmut K. Anheier’s Publications ����������������������������������������������  447 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  485

About the Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Michael  Hoelscher  holds a PhD from Freie Universität Berlin and is currently Professor of Higher Education and Research Management at the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. Helmut Anheier was mentor of his habilitation in Sociology at the University of Heidelberg, where Michael joined Helmut as postdoctoral assistant in 2008. They worked together on cultural topics such as the “Cultures & Globalization” series, often with a focus on data-driven and mixed-­ method analyses, for example, in the context of the indicator suites in the already mentioned series, the Indicator Framework for Culture and Democracy (IFCD) (see Chap. 17 in this volume), or the Civil Society Index. Currently, Michael is on the section editorial board for “Culture, values and identities” for Helmut’s newest journal project Global Perspectives. Regina  A.  List  is at the time of writing an independent editor, researcher, and writer, with many years of experience in coordinating multi-country, multi-­ researcher projects and pulling together edited volumes, textbooks, and similar complicated publications. She first worked with Helmut Anheier at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies as the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project was publishing works from the first phase, entering its second phase and expanding to Latin America (her earlier region of expertise) and other parts of the world. Since she moved to Germany in 2002, Regina has collaborated with Helmut on a wide variety of projects and publications, including The Governance Report series (Oxford University Press) hosted by the Hertie School (Berlin), the Journal of Civil Society, the International Encyclopedia of Civil Society, and a host of others that extended her horizons and capacities. She earned a master’s in International Development from American University (Washington, DC) and a bachelor’s in Political Science and Spanish from the University of Tennessee (Knoxville, Tennessee).

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About the Editors and Contributors

Alexander Ruser  is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology and Social Work and the Centre for Digital Transformation (CeDiT) at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. Alex met Helmut Anheier during his time as a PhD student at the Max-Weber-Institut at Heidelberg University. They continued to collaborate when Alex became a Dahrendorf Fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin and the London School of Economics. In 2016, Helmut was a mentor of Alex’s habilitation treatise Science in Society. Helmut’s work is an important inspiration for Alex’s current research on the role of non-state actors and political networks on climate politics and the role of scientific expertise and advocacy in the public sphere. Stefan Toepler  is Professor of Nonprofit Studies in the Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, outside of Washington, DC. In the course of his dissertation research at the Free University Berlin, he met Helmut Anheier first in 1991. Helmut helped arrange a research stay at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in the following year, which in turn was followed by a Hopkins Philanthropy Fellowship in 1993/1994. In 1995, he started to work as a research associate and a coordinator for Central and Eastern Europe first, and later the Middle East, with the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, under Helmut’s and Les Salamon’s direction. After Helmut’s departure for the LSE in 1998, they continued to collaborate over the years on various projects, several books, one encyclopedia, and numerous journal articles and book chapters. Among the most recent major collaborations are the Routledge Companion to Nonprofit Management (2020) and the third edition of Nonprofit Organizations: Theory, Management, Policy (2022).

Contributors Edith Archambault  Centre d’économie de la Sorbonne, Paris Sorbonne University, Paris, France Gian Paolo Barbetta  Department of Economics and Finance, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy, and Centro di Ricerche sulla Cooperazione e sul Nonprofit, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy Avner  Ben-Ner  Department of Work and Organizations, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA Meta  de Lange  Amsterdam University of Applied Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Paul  Dekker  Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands Paul  DiMaggio  Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY, USA

About the Editors and Contributors

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Benjamin Gidron  Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, and Rector’s Office, College of Management Academic Studies (COLMAN), Rishon LeTsiyon, Israel Marlies Glasius  University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands David  C.  Hammack  Department of History, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA Michael  Hoelscher  German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Speyer, Germany Yudhishthir Raj Isar  The American University of Paris, Paris, France Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Geneva, Switzerland Lev  Jakobson  Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia Mark  Juergensmeyer  Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, and Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA, USA Mary Kaldor  Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics, London, UK Hagai Katz  Department of Business Administration, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel Jeremy  Kendall  School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK Olga Kononykhina  Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany Gorgi  Krlev  Centre for Social Investment (CSI), University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany, and Politecnico di Milano, School of Management, Milan, Italy Stein  Kuhnle  Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway Éva Kuti  Budapest College of Management, Budapest, Hungary Anaël Labigne  Boehringer Ingelheim, Ingelheim, Germany Marcus  Lam  School of Leadership and Education Sciences, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA Markus Lang  Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, Germany Diana Leat  Bayes Business School, City University of London, London, UK Regina A. List  Hamburg, Germany Miklós Marschall  Transparency International, Berlin, Germany

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About the Editors and Contributors

Myles McGregor-Lowndes  Faculty of Business and Law, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Irina Mersianova  Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia Georg  Mildenberger  Centre for Social Investment, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany Jennifer  Mosley  Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA Eckhard Priller  Maecenata Foundation, Essen, Germany Alexander Ruser  Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway Andreas Schlüter  Stifterverband, Essen, Germany Wolfgang Seibel  Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany, and The Hertie School, Berlin, Germany Sabine Selchow  European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy Per  Selle  Department Bergen, Norway

of

Comparative

Steven  Rathgeb  Smith  American Washington, DC, USA

Politics,

University

Political

Science

of

Bergen,

Association,

S. Wojciech Sokolowski  († 2020) Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, Baltimore, MD, USA Rupert  Strachwitz  Maecenata Institute for Philanthropy and Civil Society, Berlin, Germany Kristin  Strømsnes  Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway Volker Then  Fondazione AIS – Advancing Impact and Sustainability, Bologna, Italy Stefan Toepler  Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA Matthew Turnour  Neumann & Turnour Lawyers, Brisbane, QLD, Australia Annette Zimmer  University of Münster, Münster, Germany

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Anheier’s collaborative network: a selection of coauthorships, 2000–2020���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5 Fig. 4.1 Civicness and politeness in a two-dimensional civility space�������������� 55 Fig. 6.1 Social investments as cross-sectoral and multifunctional phenomena������������������������������������������������������������������ 91 Fig. 8.1 Kellogg Foundation’s program logic model for nonprofit organizations����������������������������������������������������������������������� 123 Fig. 8.2 Compilation of the social economy contribution model��������������������� 127 Fig. 9.1 Anheier’s civil society diamond. Source: Anheier (2004 p.45)���������� 134 Fig. 9.2 Continua from charity to its alternatives��������������������������������������������� 137 Fig. 9.3 Civil society space defined������������������������������������������������������������������ 138 Fig. 9.4 Civil society space reduced����������������������������������������������������������������� 139 Fig. 10.1 The foundation legitimacy framework������������������������������������������������ 153 Fig. 15.1 Growth in the number of NGOs and growth in NGO restrictions, 1990–2016. (NGO numbers from Union of International Associations 2016/2017)��������������������������������������������������������������������� 223 Fig. 15.2 Average number of restrictions per country, by regime type, 1992–2016������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 223 Fig. 15.3 Percentage of states adopting selected restrictions, as of 2016���������� 225 Fig. 15.4 Average number of restrictions per country, by region, 1992–2016������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 226 Fig. 17.1 IFCD culture index and democracy index������������������������������������������ 255 Fig. 17.2 Clusters by civic and economic dimensions��������������������������������������� 256 Fig. 17.3 Clusters by freedom and equality and policy dimensions������������������ 257 Fig. 20.1 Charitable donations by individuals, foundations, and corporations, by type of receiving organization, 2014. Source: Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy (2015)��������������������������������������� 288 Fig. 20.2 Estimated charitable giving by donors’ income range and by recipient category. Source: The Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University (2007), Figure 2 and Table 1�������������������������������� 289

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Fig. 24.1 Network of climate change skeptics in Germany. Note: Node size indicates centrality degree�������������������������������������������������� 355 Fig. 27.1 Question: What is the added value of societal engagement for your company? Based on the weighted averages. Source: Stifterverband and Bertelsmann Foundation, Monitor Unternehmensengagement 2018–2020������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 388 Fig. 27.2 Question: Has your company been socially engaged in one of the following ways during the last three years? Percent of companies that indicated their engagement (both regular and occasional). Based on the weighted averages. Source: Stifterverband and Bertelsmann Foundation, Monitor Unternehmensengagement 2018–2020��������������������������������� 389 Fig. 27.3 Question: Does your company cooperate with international NGOs in the area of societal engagement? Based on the weighted averages. Source: Stifterverband and Bertelsmann Foundation, Monitor Unternehmensengagement 2018–2020����������������������������������������������� 391 Fig. 27.4 Question: How important are the following aspects when cooperating with a nonprofit organization? Based on the weighted averages. Source: Stifterverband and Bertelsmann Foundation, Monitor Unternehmensengagement 2018–2020����������������������������������������������� 392 Fig. 29.1 Employment in German NPOs by sector, gender, and employment structure. Source: Schmeißer (2013, p. 19)����������������������������������������� 416 Fig. 29.2 Employment in German NPOs by gender. Source: Schmeißer (2013, p. 23); WZB Oversampling of “Good Work” own calculation����������� 417 Fig. 30.1 Total expenditure, reporting charities, five-county region, 2006–2013. Source: Core Trend��������������������������������������������������������� 439 Fig. 30.2 Government contributions as percentage of total nonprofit revenue, by levels of government. Source: Statistics of Income Files 2008–2012������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 440 Fig. 30.3 Program service revenue as percentage of total nonprofit revenue, by levels of government. Source: Statistics of Income Files 2008–2012������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 440 Fig. 30.4 Average government contributions as percentage of total nonprofit revenues, by subsector, Los Angeles. Source: Statistics of Income Files 2008–2012������������������������������������������������� 441 Fig. 30.5 Prevalence of nonprofit organizations, civic engagement, and social capital in Los Angeles�������������������������������������������������������� 442

List of Tables

Table 4.1 The relative importance of 9 features of a good citizen in 34 countries: deviations from national averages�������������������������������� 59 Table 6.1 Comparison of different “third sector” understandings���������������������� 89 Table 8.1 Allocation of social economy units among institutional sectors in the SNA���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 121 Table 8.2 Recommended identification of social economy (SE) units in the SNA�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 122 Table 8.3 Illustrative example of a Comparative Institutional Performance Matrix for primary education, 1 year����������������������������������������������� 128 Table 10.1 Linking criticisms to roles���������������������������������������������������������������� 162 Table 15.1 Coding of NGO restriction measures, adapted from Christensen and Weinstein (2013)���������������������������������������������������� 221 Table 17.1 IFCD dimensions, components, and indicators (December 2017)��� 253 Table 17.2 Cluster assignment of countries������������������������������������������������������� 259 Table 23.1 Distribution of answers to the question: “How do you find the current condition (good, satisfactory or poor) of education, healthcare, social security, and culture in our country?” (% of respondents)���������������������������������������������������������������������������� 340 Table 25.1 Number of foundations in France, 1990–2017��������������������������������� 363 Table 25.2 Employees in foundations in France, by activities, as of December 31, 2015��������������������������������������������������������������������������� 364 Table 25.3 Evolution of French foundations: average annual growth during two subperiods���������������������������������������������������������������������� 365 Table 25.4 Foundations and associations in France, number and growth of establishments with employees, and number and growth of employees, 2005–2015����������������������������������������������������������������� 367 Table 29.1 Use of working time models in German NPOs overall and by number of employees������������������������������������������������������������ 418 Table 29.2 Agreement with the statement “I have opportunities for promotion in my NPO”�������������������������������������������������������������������� 419

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Table 29.3 Proportion of women in German NPO supervisory and advisory bodies (N = 472)��������������������������������������������������������� 420 Table 29.4 Proportion of women on German NPO executive boards and in executive management by area of activity����������������� 421 Table 30.1 Growth in registered nonprofits, United States, California and Los Angeles County, 2006–2018������������������������������ 438 Table 30.2 Distribution of total expenditures by subsector, Los Angeles County, 2013���������������������������������������������������������������� 438

Chapter 1

Civil Society Concepts, Challenges, and Contexts: An Introduction to Helmut Anheier’s Festschrift Michael Hoelscher, Regina A. List, Alexander Ruser, and Stefan Toepler Abstract  This chapter is the introduction to the edited volume Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, honoring the work of Helmut K. Anheier. Following Anheier’s broad research interests, civil society is broadly conceived to encompass nonprofit organizations, philanthropic activities, and cultural endeavors in a sphere beyond the stricter realms of state power and market interests, where society is organizing itself. First, this chapter sketches Anheier’s scientific journey over the last 40 years, demonstrating his impressive oeuvre. Second, it provides an overview of the collection. Contributors tackle important issues of theory, ranging from the need to redefine the public sphere and elevate civility within the civil society discourse to the roles of nonprofit organizations in social problem-solving and fostering innovation as well as the legitimacy of philanthropic institutions; address a wide range of current challenges to civil society, such as the continuously shrinking space for civil society; and elucidate concepts and challenges further through contextualized applications and case studies. Keywords  Helmut K. Anheier · Civil society theory · Civil society challenges · Nonprofit organizations · Philanthropy The social scientist’s basic responsibility is to doubt received wisdom, probe all that is taken for granted, question all authority, and pose questions that otherwise no one dares to ask. (Dahrendorf, 1963; authors’ translation) M. Hoelscher German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Speyer, Germany e-mail: [email protected] R. A. List (*) Hamburg, Germany A. Ruser Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway e-mail: [email protected] S. Toepler Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_1

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This volume brings together a global set of academic experts to reflect on civil society, broadly conceived to encompass nonprofit organizations, philanthropic activities, and cultural endeavors in a sphere where the “self-organization of society outside the stricter realms of state power and market interests” takes place (Anheier, 2014, p. 83). Contributors tackle important issues of theory, ranging from the need to redefine the public sphere and elevate civility within the civil society discourse to the roles of nonprofit organizations in social problem-solving and fostering innovation as well as the legitimacy of philanthropic institutions; address a wide range of current challenges to civil society, such as the continuously shrinking space for civil society; and elucidate concepts and challenges further through contextualized applications and case studies. What unites the contributors of this volume is that they represent a broad cross section of the many people whose own path intersected at some point with the wide-ranging academic career of Helmut K. Anheier in whose honor these contributions were collected. Anyone who has followed or accompanied Anheier on his career trajectory can attest to the fact that he has taken up the challenge Dahrendorf posed in 1963 and has pursued it wholeheartedly. Moreover, anyone would agree that this was no coincidence. Dahrendorf’s call for bold and consequential social sciences is reflected in many of Anheier’s writings, and the quotation can be found in recent publications (Anheier, 2019). Anheier’s academic oeuvre spans an astounding range of themes and topics. In all of his work, he has pioneered efforts to tame and measure fuzzy and contested concepts (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 11), develop theories around them, shed light on the connections between them and with other topics, deliver policy-oriented results, and, more generally, provoke and encourage academic exploration. As the contributions to this volume confirm, this is especially the case in relation to civil society. In graduate school in the Department of Sociology at Yale University, Anheier was already pushing the boundaries of knowledge. As Paul DiMaggio, a member of his dissertation committee recalls in the Foreword to this volume, “His dissertation was one of the first studies of nonprofit sectors in the developing world; and one of the first to examine the impact of social structure and public policy on the vitality of the voluntary sector in any context.” While pursuing his academic career at Rutgers (1986–1998, with a short leave for a stint with the United Nations), Anheier teamed up with Lester Salamon to direct the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (CNP) in the late 1980s (Salamon & Anheier, 1996). In CNP’s first phase, Anheier, Salamon, and colleagues from 12 countries (Salamon & Anheier, 1997) hashed out a structural–operational definition of nonprofit organizations and the International Classification of Nonprofit Organizations (ICNPO) and later with colleagues from some 20 additional countries reviewed and updated this work (Salamon et al., 1999). This definition and the ICNPO laid the groundwork for years of research and publications, as well as practical policy-related applications such as a framework on which to build satellite accounts on nonprofit institutions (UN Statistics Division, 2003). In

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addition to setting a standard for cross-national comparative research and contributing new theoretical insights (Salamon & Anheier, 1998; Anheier & Toepler, 1999), the CNP offered a gathering place for nonprofit and civil society researchers, as well as a launching pad for a whole new generation. Separately, Anheier launched, with Martin Knapp, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations in 1990 and a few years afterward a book series on Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies (Plenum, now Springer) to help generate international interest in the newly emerging research field. The first volume of the new series was based on an earlier Voluntas special issue on foundations, which jump-started his decades-­ long quest to shed more light on these often obscure and not well-understood institutions (Anheier & Toepler, 1999). In 1998, Anheier left behind the commute along the Atlantic Coast of the United States to join the London School of Economics, first as Reader, later as Centennial Professor, and then as Founding director of the Centre for Civil Society. This is where he, together with Mary Kaldor and Marlies Glasius, launched the Global Civil Society Yearbook series, ten editions of which were published between 2001 and 2012 (Oxford University Press, 2001–2003; Sage, 2004–2009; Palgrave MacMillan, 2011–2012). As Kaldor and Selchow explain in Chap. 13 of this volume, one of the ideas behind the Yearbooks was to move beyond the deeply embedded assumption of “methodological nationalism” and look to the increasingly global aspects of civil society. Among the many aspects, Anheier placed his brand on methods and measurement, in each edition proposing and testing different approaches to measuring and analyzing the global civil society phenomenon (Anheier & Katz, 2006, 2009; Anheier et al., 2008). This also led to his involvement in yet another project, CIVICUS’s Civil Society Index (Anheier, 2005). Meanwhile, the West Coast of the United States called, where Anheier joined the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2001 (and has continued in various capacities to this day). While there, and in line with his apparent fascination for cities, he launched a series of reports on the state of Los Angeles’s nonprofit sector (see Chap. 30 in this Volume), thus completing the span from cross-national to global back to local. In the meantime, to capture the expanding but scattered work on civil society, he launched a new journal, the Journal of Civil Society, to encourage and inform the range of scholarships on and approaches to civil society across disciplines and national as well as cultural boundaries. As Anheier himself was straddling Los Angeles and London, he decided to join Raj Isar in taking up yet another set of questions that few had dared to tackle: the complex relationships between cultures and globalization. Through the Cultures and Globalization series (Sage, 2007–2012), Anheier and Isar set about the tricky task of combining globalization and culture into a single analytical framework, sorting through a cacophony of definitions, contexts, and approaches in order to guide the contributions to the series (Anheier & Isar, 2007). Of course, since the project

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involved Anheier, each edition includes a suite of indicators, providing multiple angles from which to view the subject (Anheier, 2007). A specific focus was always on how the global played out in the local, as epitomized in the “global city” (Anheier et al., 2012; Anheier & Hoelscher, 2015). By the time he took up the sociology chair at the University of Heidelberg in 2006, he had begun to explore what seemed a perfect combination of previous interests: social investment and social innovation (e.g., Anheier, Krlev & Mildenberger 2018). Not long after he arrived in Heidelberg, Anheier along with Volker Then cofounded the Centre for Social Investment, where he remained Founding academic director until his official retirement in 2019 (the occasion of this Festschrift). The Centre for Social Investment has been, however, only one of Anheier’s domains in recent years, as he was “on loan” first as Dean and later as President of the Hertie School, which, under his watch, became one of the leading schools of public policy in Germany. Again, he combined rigorous theoretical thinking with innovative approaches to data to advance policy as well as scientific insights. Inter alia, he was the academic lead of the Hertie School’s Governance Report series (Oxford University Press, 2013–2019) and guided the design and preparation of various sets of governance indicators to accompany the thematic work in the series (Anheier, Haber, & Kayser 2018). He also found time to develop the Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy, which Anheier and colleagues from Heidelberg and Berlin prepared for the Council of Europe, which Hoelscher and List discuss in Chap. 17 in this volume.

1.1  Connecting Research and Researchers In the course of his illustrious career that had him shuttling between leading academic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic and traversing the globe multiple times over, Helmut evolved into an internationally recognized and much sought-­ after leading interpreter of important global and local challenges at the intersection of public and private responsibility. Moreover, his impressive academic oeuvre reflects his international network and ability to engage and collaborate with scholars across the globe. Even the briefest glimpse of his list of publications reveals that Anheier is not only interested in global social problems but also is a global social scholar himself. His collaborations span five continents and include prestigious universities as well as influential research institutes, foundations, and international organizations. Moreover, a closer look at his scholarly work shows that Anheier served as a mentor and advisor to young scholars while he maintained close and productive ties with leading academics from his own field as well as other disciplines. As a restless academic traveler, Anheier thus adopted the role of a “broker” of academic ideas and a

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facilitator of projects that would live up to Dahrendorf’s call to raise questions no one else dares to ask. To visualize Anheier’s central role in international academic networks, it is worth taking a look at these very networks themselves. Figure 1.1 shows Anheier’s collaborative network based on 249 publications he was involved in since 2000, which then does not include publications stemming from the multicountry Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. Figure 1.1 displays the number of collaborations by region, with the size of the respective squares indicating the relative importance of a country within its region and the numbers (in brackets) showing the total amount of collaborations. Despite being selective and excluding the many other forms of Anheier’s contribution to academic networks and intellectual exchange such as talks, workshops, expert discussions, or his many op-eds reaching as well into South America and Africa, the network shows that Anheier is neither a German nor an American sociologist. It rather provides proof of his role as a truly international scholar, an academic innovator, and a broker between distinct national and intellectual spheres.

UK (43)

USA (61)

NL (1) GE (91) FR (3)

CZE (1) AT (5) ITA (2)

ISR (5)

Helmut Anheier IND (1)

AUS (1)

Fig. 1.1  Anheier’s collaborative network: a selection of coauthorships, 2000–2020

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This collection of original pieces by Anheier’s colleagues, collaborators, and former students is thus more than just an honorary enterprise; it is an attempt to engage with the work of an academic whose main objective has been to engage with a multitude of people and a broad variety of ideas. The occasion might be his 65th birthday and retirement from the University of Heidelberg. The justification though is the undiminished and even increasing relevance of his work. Moreover, this academic exploration is perhaps more necessary than ever. In the past, Anheier himself has intervened, taken a stand, and raised questions on urgent and unresolved issues such as the shrinking space and deteriorating policy environments for civil society (Anheier et  al., 2019; Anheier & Toepler, 2019), the rise of populism (Anheier, 2017), a possible “decline of the West” (Anheier, 2018), and the future of public policy schools shaping the next generation of leaders and problem-solvers (Anheier, 2019). The range of these topics echoes the comprehensiveness of Anheier’s scholarly interests and intellectual aptitude.

1.2  Overview of This Collection Fully addressing the richness of Anheier’s intellectual pursuits and involving all of those who accompanied him on his way would have required the preparation of several Festschriften. In order to allow an engagement with Anheier’s comprehensive work and simultaneously make sure that the edited collection follows a clear and accessible structure, we invited contributors to focus on conceptual issues and theoretical considerations relating to civil society, nonprofits, and philanthropy; to elaborate on some of the key challenges that civil society is facing globally; and to help illustrate concepts and challenges in  local contexts. The three sections that constitute the collection reflect this division and structure the contributions along these three key aspects. Taken together, this volume provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the key issues and trends in culture, civil society, and nonprofit research by an international collection of scholars in these fields. By engaging with Helmut Anheier’s conceptual and empirical work, the collection of contributions serves as a reference guide for researchers and students. It also provides a starting point for conceptual and empirical studies.

1.2.1  Part I: Developing Concepts and Theoretical Frames Anheier pioneered diverse approaches to understanding and measuring the role of civil society and the nonprofit sector and the various institutions constituting it. Seminal work looking at the size and impact of the nonprofit sector and philanthropy in a cross-national perspective has contributed to a growing body of knowledge internationally, as well as to a number of academic journals, projects, and

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centers of research focusing on the sector and on the workings of nonprofit organizations of various types. Topics explored in this part build on this work and include how the context in which nonprofits work and civic activity takes place affects their impact, how foundations address legitimacy demands, and the functions and dysfunctions of nonprofit organizations, among others. Contributions in this section explore some of the conceptual underpinnings of civil society and nonprofits, thus highlighting how Anheier’s conceptual and theoretical thinking is shaping the current research. The first part begins with essays posing important normative, conceptual questions. With the first essay in this section, Rupert Graf Strachwitz raises the fundamental question of whether contemporary global challenges demand a reformulation of the concept of the public sphere itself. He makes a normative, conceptual case for elevating citizen action and engagement vis-à-vis state bureaucracies that simultaneously seek to limit and restrain civil society while failing to contain global market forces and corporations. In the second contribution, Paul Dekker reflects on whether the lack of focus on civility in the expanding research on civil society since the turn of the century might reflect a more general reluctance in the modern social sciences to address moral questions and normative considerations. He argues that reconsidering civility provides a common thread that helps differentiate the good from the bad of civil society (which later contributions in this volume discuss further), leaves behind conceptualizations of civil society as a “space” outside other sectors, and thus enables researchers to focus on relevant entities and institutions rather than on always including the “futile” ones, as de Tocqueville had done, while keeping the voluntary association of citizens at the center of analysis. In another theoretical contribution, Wolfgang Seibel reviews the historical and normative reasons for having civil society and nonprofits and explores the nature of hybridity and their managerial ambivalence, which calls their ability to perform highly and the desirability of nonprofits to do so into question. He revisits his successful failure argument that nonprofit organizations are sometimes deployed to address intractable, effectively unsolvable problems. Having nonprofits working on such problems allows the state and society to maintain the pretense that efforts are being taken while issues are not being solved. Volker Then and Georg Mildenberger turn to the issue of social innovations, providing a counter-position of sorts, as they highlight the quintessential role of civil society in creating and promoting innovations designed to solve complex problems that escape both state and market. Gorgi Krlev then explores how civil society organizations (CSOs) and social movements move forward to pursue social impact without necessarily considering the impossibility or unlikelihood of some tasks. Leaning on Hirschman’s (1967) concept of the hiding hand, the cultivation by civil society of “persistent fragile action” based on idealism rather than rationality allows them to stumble over unlikely solutions, which may be one way to overcome Seibel’s successful failure. Success, failure, performance, and, more broadly, social impact require the development of proper measurements to have any practical utility. The following two contributions play off two major measurement efforts that Anheier has closely been involved with. Wojtek Sokolowski outlines the approach of using the System

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of National Accounts framework that would allow researchers to capture the “functions and dysfunctions of nonprofit organizations” by measuring social benefits. Matthew Turnour and Myles McGregor-Lowndes then draw on the indicators of Anheier’s “civil society diamond” to develop specific conceptual guidelines for reforming fundraising laws. The production of social benefits, as captured in expectations about functions and role performance, is a significant source of civil society legitimacy, but one that has been traditionally lacking for philanthropic foundations. Stefan Toepler proposes a conceptual framework tying foundation role performance to public expectations, regulation, and organizational behavior. If foundations behave in a manner that corresponds to expectations about their roles and functions, their work will be perceived as legitimate. A perceived failure to meet expectations, by contrast, results in mounting criticism and will draw regulatory sanctions meant to adjust foundation behavior to bring it back in line with expectations. Diana Leat further expands on the issue by probing how major foundation leaders in the past perceived their institution’s roles and functions in light of recurring criticisms and suggests that foundation responses plant the seeds for the next round of criticisms. Paolo Barbetta concludes the first part with a third contribution on the foundation theme, returning to the measurement topic in this context. Focusing on creativity and the importance of the innovation role, he argues that measurement is not the enemy of civil society creativity but that, on the contrary, foundations need to employ rigorous evaluation methods to be successful in their quest to fulfill their social roles and functions.

1.2.2  Part II: Charting Global Challenges The second part is concerned with global civil society and its current challenges. Since its (re)discovery by scholars, thinkers, and political activists in the 1980s, the concept has brought into focus some of the long-standing questions about the connections between economy, polity, and society. This combination of being both contested and strategically located makes civil society a very fruitful and intellectually lively field of research; at the same time, it places it at the heart of the key global developments of the moment. The fact that “the concept global civil society is not only difficult to define and to fit into conventional social science terminology [but] also difficult to measure using standard systems of social and economic accounts” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 17) does not reduce its relevance. The contributions in this section examine the role and place of civil society in democracies and the connections between civil society, religion, culture, and politics. This section also discusses the boundaries between civil society and the market. These topics, anticipated, conceptualized, and investigated in Anheier’s work, have (re)gained urgency with the current backlash against democracy and the repression of civil

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society in authoritarian and hybrid regimes, on the one hand, and the regained significance of social movements and the latest wave of populist mobilization, on the other. The first three chapters in this part highlight how the idea and reality of global civil society have developed in recent times. In the first essay, Mary Kaldor and Sabine Selchow revisit the concept of “global civil society.” Almost two decades after it was introduced as a research program at the London School of Economics and became the focus of their Global Civil Society Yearbook series with Anheier, their critique is that despite many discursive achievements it failed to overcome methodological nationalism. The authors explore conceptual and methodological paths forward via “planetary politics.” Éva Kuti and Miklós Marschall then provide an overview of the external attacks and internal challenges facing global civil society. They claim that the current retreat mainly results from two different cyclical developments. One is the life cycle of transnational civil society organizations and the other an economic and political cycle. However, recovery from this “shrinking” will be dependent on actions taken by civil society organizations. Marlies Glasius and Meta de Lange follow up on the external challenges to civil society globally, focusing on the increasing repression of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) via restrictions. In their more pessimistic contribution, they focus on the growing legal restrictions against NGOs around the globe. In his essay, Raj Isar then turns to a topic in which he not only shares a particular interest with Helmut but which also might indicate a growing role for civil society: “cultural diplomacy.” He questions the latter’s claim for fostering cultural understanding and investigates to what extent it is again used merely as a soft tool for legitimizing established power relations. Keeping the focus on culture, Michael Hoelscher and Regina List’s essay on the Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy, which they developed alongside Anheier for the Council of Europe, highlights the challenges and opportunities of comparative approaches to understand such “fuzzy” and “contested” concepts mentioned above. Moreover, if we consider religion to also be a part of culture, Mark Juergensmeyer’s contribution sheds some light on a particular aspect of global civil society, which is often neglected by researchers. He asks to what extent religion and civil society could build a kind of “tactical cooperation” or “reluctant partnership” and tries to answer this by tracing Bellah’s thoughts on global civil religion. The two final chapters in this section address the problems faced by contemporary democracies around the globe: (too much) knowledge and polarization. First, Markus Lang addresses civil society’s apparent failure or reluctance to act regarding (mis)information excess that strains today’s democracies. He encourages civil society actors to engage in creative strategies “that seek to facilitate the discovery of alternative feedback infrastructures,” thus helping citizens become politically informed. This section then closes with an essay by Avner Ben-Ner, who examines how some basic civil society practices and orientations inadvertently or intentionally foster the increasing polarization experienced in many societies.

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1.2.3  P  art III: Changing Contexts: Local and Regional Case Studies The final part takes both theory and global trends to the local level, elucidating them by application to country and regional case studies. The contributions in this last section take the concepts and controversies outlined, debated, and refined in the previous sections to the field. By bringing together empirical examples from diverse topical and geographical areas, this section seeks to provide insights and impulses for further research. The overall aim is to reverse the lack of “comparative and international research questions” that Anheier and Seibel (1990) criticized almost three decades ago. This section’s first two contributions deal with the challenges to civil society and democracy at the national level. In the first, Hagai Katz and Ben Gidron examine how civil society is being encroached upon in nonliberal democracies such as Israel, whereas in the second, Jeremy Kendall addresses the gaps between rhetoric and reality and policy challenges that threaten to destabilize England’s third sector. The following two chapters focus on transformation processes that are stimulated by and affect civil society organizations. Lev Jakobson and Irina Mersianova investigate how CSO functions are changing in modern Russia. Alexander Ruser then explores the role of civil society in the formation of climate-skeptic alliances in Germany. Turning to the topics of philanthropy and engagement, Edith Archambault has provided an account of the recent evolution of foundations in France. Next, David Hammack provides an overview of philanthropic foundations and their study in the United States. In addition, focusing on German corporations, Anaël Labigne, Olga Kononykhina, and Andreas Schlüter examine whether for-profit corporations might come closer to the border with civil society in light of their corporate engagement practices. The final case studies switch the focus from the challenges to the prospects and potentials of civil society and nonprofit activity. Per Selle, Kristin Strømsnes, and Stein Kuhnle develop scenarios for civil society impact in Norway. Annette Zimmer and Eckhard Priller put the emphasis on women in the nonprofit sector, paying particular attention to their working conditions and promotion prospects, taking Germany as an example. To close, Marcus Lam, Hagai Katz, and Jennifer Mosley return to the work that they conducted with Anheier more than a decade ago on the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles to explore how the sector’s development has (or has not) followed the theory’s trajectory. Acknowledgments  This volume is the product of many dedicated friends and scholars. Without the willingness of the contributors to rearrange their busy work schedules and dedicate time and effort to this project, there would not have been much to edit. We therefore express our deepest gratitude to all who made this project possible. Philipp Komaromi and Felizitas Maier helped with the formatting and layout. We specially thank Volker Then, Georg Mildenberger, Kathia Serrano Velarde, and other colleagues at the University of Heidelberg’s Centre for Social Investment for arranging the festive celebration held in Heidelberg on September 28, 2019 to honor Helmut Anheier and present him with a collection of early chapter drafts that eventually became this book.

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References Anheier, H.  K. (2005). Measure for measure: A commentary on Heinrich and the state of civil society indicators research. Journal of Civil Society, 1(3), 241–246. Anheier, H. K. (2007). Introducing “cultural indicator” suites. In H. K. Anheier & Y. R. Isar (Eds.), Conflicts and tension (pp. 335–347). Sage. Anheier, H.  K. (2014). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management and policy (2nd ed.). Routledge. Anheier, H.  K. (2017, July 27). Democratic resilience for a populist age. Project Syndicate. Retrieved August 10, 2021, from https://www.project-­syndicate.org/commentary/democratic-­ resilience-­a gainst-­p opulism-­b y-­h elmut-­k %2D%2Danheier-­2 017-­0 7?barrier=access reg Anheier, H.  K. (2018, October 26). The decline of the west, again. Project Syndicate. Retrieved August 10, 2021, from https://www.project-­syndicate.org/onpoint/the-­ decline-­o f-­t he-­w est-­a gain-­b y-­h elmut-­k %2D%2Danheier-­2 018-­1 0?barrier=accesspay log/ Anheier, H. K. (2019). The future of public policy schools. Global Policy, 10(1), 75–83. Anheier, H. K., Glasius, M., & Kaldor, M. (2001). Introducing global civil society. In H. K. Anheier, M. Glasius, & M. Kaldor (Eds.), Global civil society 2001 (pp. 3–22). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., Haber, M., & Kayser, M. A. (Eds.). (2018). Governance indicators. Approaches, progress, promise. Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Hoelscher, M. (2015). Cultural sustainability in small and medium-sized cities. What are the issues? In S. Hristova, M. Dragićević Śešić, & N. Duxbury (Eds.), Culture and sustainability in European cities. Imagining Europolis (pp. 17–31). Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Isar, R. (2007). Introducing the cultures and globalization series. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), Cultures and globalization: Conflicts and tension. Sage. Anheier, H.  K., Isar, Y.  R., & Hoelscher, M. (Eds.). (2012). Cities, cultural policy and governance. Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Katz, H. (2006). Learning from history? Comparative historical methods and researching global civil society. In M. Glasius, M. Kaldor, & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Global civil society 2005/6 (pp. 288–302). Sage. Anheier, H.  K., & Katz, H. (2009). Introducing futures research: Forecasting and scenarios. In A.  Kumar, J.  A. Scholte, M.  Kaldor, M.  Glasius, H.  Seckinelgin, & H.  K. Anheier (Eds.), Global civil society 2009: Poverty and activism (pp. 238–250). Sage. Anheier, H.  K., Katz, H., & Lam, M. (2008). Diffusion models and global civil society. In M. Albrow, H. K. Anheier, M. Glasius, M. E. Price, & M. Kaldor (Eds.), Global civil society 2007/8: Communicative power and democracy (pp. 245–256). Sage. Anheier, H. K., Krlev, G., & Mildenberger, G. (2018). Social innovation. Comparative perspectives. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., Lang, M., & Toepler, S. (2019). Civil society in times of change: Shrinking, changing and expanding spaces and the need for new regulatory approaches. Economics: The Open-­ Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal. https://doi.org/10.5018/economics-­ejournal.ja.2019-­8 Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (1990). The third sector: Comparative studies of nonprofit organizations. De Gruyter. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (Eds.). (1999). Private funds, public purpose: Philanthropic foundations in international perspective. Springer. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (2019). Policy neglect: The true challenge to the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit Policy Forum, 10(4). https://doi.org/10.1515/npf-­2019-­0041 Dahrendorf, R. (1963, March 29). Der Intellektuelle und die Gesellschaft. Die Zeit. Nr. 13. Hirschman, A.  O. (1967, Winter). The principle of the hiding hand. The Public Interest, 6(10). Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/magazines/principle-­hiding-­hand/ docview/1298118396/se-­2?accountid=10503 Salamon, L. M. & Anheier, H. K. (1996). The Emerging Nonprofit Sector, Manchester University Press.

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Salamon, L. M. & Anheier, H. K. (eds.) (1997). Defining the Nonprofit Sector: A Cross-National Analysis. Manchester University Press. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1998). Social origins of civil society: Explaining the nonprofit sector cross-nationally. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9(3), 213–247. Salamon, L. M., Anheier, H. K., List, R., Toepler, S. & Sokolowski, S. W. (eds.) (1999). Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector. Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies. UN Statistics Division. (2003). Handbook on non-profit institutions in the system of national accounts. United Nations.

Chapter 2

Scholarship, Leadership, and Institution Building: Helmut Anheier and the Nonprofit and Philanthropic Sectors Steven Rathgeb Smith

Abstract  Over the course of his illustrious career, Helmut K. Anheier has not only been among the most influential contributors to the international discourses on nonprofit institutions and civil society but also to broader questions of governance and global policy perspectives. Based on the keynote speech given at his retirement from his University of Heidelberg chair, this chapter commemorates Anheier’s contributions to building the academic infrastructure of the field and focuses in particular on how his scholarship has shaped research in the fields of governance, social innovation, and philanthropic foundations. Keywords  Helmut K. Anheier · Nonprofit studies · Governance · Social innovation · Philanthropy Philanthropy and nonprofit organizations are increasingly important in public policy, civil society, and civic and community engagement. For over three decades, one of the most prominent scholars of philanthropy and nonprofit organizations has been Helmut Anheier, a professor at the Hertie School in Berlin and a former president of the School. He has held distinguished faculty positions at the University of Heidelberg, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the London School of Economics, and Rutgers University. In addition, he founded and directed major nonprofit academic centers including at the UCLA, the London School of Economics, and the University of Heidelberg. He was also the founding editor of two leading journals in the field of civil society and philanthropic studies, Voluntas This chapter is based on the keynote address given at the festive celebration of Helmut K. Anheier’s 65th birthday and retirement from his chair at the Max Weber Institute of the University of Heidelberg, September 28, 2019. S. R. Smith (*) American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_2

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and the Journal of Civil Society. This chapter is an appreciation for Anheier’s profound and enduring influence on the scholarship, the academic infrastructure of the field, and our broader understanding of civil society organizations and philanthropy. Furthermore, this chapter will connect the critical aspects of Anheier’s scholarship and academic leadership to the key developments and trends in nonprofit management, public policy toward nonprofits, and the practice of philanthropy, especially by foundations.

2.1  The Comparative Study of Nonprofit Organizations In the early years of Anheier’s career in the 1980s, he was a scholarly pioneer in the comparative study of nonprofit organizations. His chapter in the influential The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook focused on grassroots, indigenous nonprofits in Africa and the organizational and sustainability challenges they face due in part to their community and informal roots (Anheier, 1987). Shortly thereafter, along with Wolfgang Seibel, he edited one of the first major books on comparative research on the third sector, The Third Sector: Comparative Studies of Nonprofit Organizations (Anheier & Seibel, 1990). This important book contains many noteworthy chapters on the nonprofit sector and calls attention to the value for both policy and theory building of thinking about the nonprofit sector in an international and historical context (see also Anheier & Kendall, 2001). Subsequently, he was a central member of the research team of the comprehensive worldwide Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (CNP) based at the Johns Hopkins University in the 1990s (Salamon & Anheier, 1996, 1997). Overall, the Project launched the careers of countless scholars (many of whom are contributors to this volume) and helped create a database and detailed portraits of the nonprofit sector in many countries that formed the basis of multiple important publications. The CNP was also important for the nonprofit scholarly community because it offered an opportunity for scholars to build more robust comparative theories of nonprofit organizations. In the early period of nonprofit sector research, theories of the sector including the pioneering works of Burton Weisbrod (1975) and Henry Hansmann (1980) were primarily based on the nonprofit sector in the United States. However, the CNP vividly demonstrated the striking differences across countries in the role and prominence of third sector organizations and philanthropy. With these data now available, Anheier and Lester Salamon of Johns Hopkins University set out to construct a new theory of the differential development of the nonprofit sector in advanced industrial countries. Thus, Anheier and Salamon proposed a “social origins” theory for understanding the differences across countries in the size, scope, and responsibilities of nonprofit organizations. Building upon Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1965) and the work of Gosta EspingAndersen (1990) on welfare state regimes, Salamon and Anheier (1998) argued

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that the development of the nonprofit sector in advanced industrial countries could be classified into four basic types, each associated with a specific constellation of state–society and class relationships. Scandinavian countries such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are considered to be a social-democratic type characterized by a long history of volunteer citizen involvement in associations and civil society organizations but where the public sector tends to dominate service delivery to the citizenry. Consequently, nonprofit organizations tend to play a small role in providing key public services such as healthcare and community care. Philanthropy tends to be quite limited. The “corporatist” regime type is typified by Germany (also see Anheier, 1990; Anheier & Seibel, 2001), The Netherlands, and other European countries that have long-­standing, cooperative relationships between the state and peak interest groups including business, labor, and social welfare groups, with a major role for the state in funding public services but a reliance on nonprofit organizations to provide those services, in particular health and social services. Individual philanthropy tends to play a very minor role in supporting most nonprofit service organizations. The third “liberal” regime type is exemplified by the United Kingdom and the United States where nonprofit organizations are vital to public service delivery and often rely upon private philanthropy and market income to support their operations. Volunteering is a major factor in many nonprofit organizations in countries in this regime. The fourth type is the “statist” model of relatively low levels of government spending on social welfare services and a highly modest nonprofit sector, as measured by the number of employees and the size of organizational budgets. In statist countries such as Japan, private philanthropy is quite limited. These differences can be traced to key moments in the development of the modern state in these countries and to the relationship of the state with major societal stakeholders including business, labor, and the church. Over time, a distinctive path dependency develops, and so the structure of the government–civil society relationship established in the early decades of the twentieth century shapes the role and prominence of civil society organizations, their funding, and their relationship with the government. The social origins framework established a new and influential comparative perspective to further our understanding of nonprofit organizations. Many scholars have subsequently employed social origins theory in their own comparative research. Anheier and colleagues have recently revisited social origins theory given the development of comparative research on the nonprofit sector in the 20-some years since the original article was published (Anheier et al., 2020). As they note, a mismatch can occur between the regime type and the actual development of the nonprofit sector in specific countries. Moreover, social origins theory relies heavily on measuring paid employment in the sector, thus downplaying the critical role of volunteering and civic engagement in many countries including Scandinavian countries with a sizable public sector and a smaller nonprofit service sector. Nonetheless, social origins theory continues to influence comparative nonprofit sector research including scholarship that seeks to refine and revise the theory to fit specific countries (see Anheier et al., 2020; Selle & Wollebæk, 2010).

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2.2  Governance and Social Innovation The ongoing development of the nonprofit sector around the world has also been affected in recent years by important trends in public management and philanthropy. Indeed, these trends have produced parallel developments affecting civil society organizations in countries with very different historical traditions, in particular, the New Public Management (or NPM) initially advanced in the UK, New Zealand, and other countries in the late 1980s, 1990s, and thereafter (Hood, 1991; Rhodes, 1996; Ongaro et al., 2018). In practice, the NPM entails changes to the public services that introduce more market-oriented strategies and policy tools: government contracting with nonprofit and for-profit service agencies; competition among service agencies providing public services, especially health and social services; more consumer choice and control over services including vouchers; and new types of public–private partnerships with foundations, individual philanthropists, and private investors. A key aspect of the NPM and public sector reform more broadly is a greater focus on accountability, evaluation, and program outcomes (Phillips & Smith, 2019; Henriksen et  al., 2012). It is now a routine for nonprofits, especially if they are receiving public funds, to be required to measure and track their outcomes. Larger programs are often expected by their funders to have independent third-party evaluations. The intersection of this accountability movement with extensive support for the government contracting with nonprofits and public–private partnerships is reflected in the widespread enthusiasm around the world for social innovation because it offers the possibility of more effective and more responsive public services (Anheier et al., 2019). Although social innovation can assume many different organizational structures in practice, it often involves hybrid organizations that mix nonprofit and for-profit logics or themes (Smith, 2010b; Skelcher & Smith, 2015). For example, social impact bonds (SIBs) are complicated public–private partnerships involving private investors, performance contracting between the government and nonprofit entities, and rigorous outcome evaluation and assessment. SIBs are also an example of the social finance movement that strives to tap private investors to support third sector organizations and more generally build partnerships between civil society organizations and corporations and investors. With their emphasis on both private investors and greater attention to outcomes, SIBs are also examples of impact investing that entails foundations, philanthropists, and corporations seeking to maximize their potential outcomes (Monitor Institute, 2009). Other examples of impact investing include foundations providing loans at below-market rates to local community organizations to promote economic development. Private investors might financially support a for-profit start-up focused on clean energy. Social innovation can also involve novel strategies to engage citizens and communities through the coproduction of local services, which generally refers to the active participation of service users and citizens with professionals and volunteers in the development and delivery of key public services. For example, a local government program to help at-risk youth might focus on helping to maintain a local park.

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A nonprofit social enterprise might employ disadvantaged adults in its restaurant so that these individuals can learn key employment skills (Smith, forthcoming 2021). Many place-based urban regeneration programs in the arts and culture sector have also been creative examples of coproduction that directly involve citizens in economic development projects (Cancellieri et al., 2019). As Anheier observes, many social innovations are especially well-suited for the nonprofit sector, given their relatively low start-up costs and organizational flexibility, particularly compared with public sector organizations (Anheier & Fliegauf, 2013). Many examples of social innovation also offer more efficient and effective forms of service delivery (Anheier et  al., 2019). However, social innovations are frequently disruptive to the existing service network, leading to new governance arrangements at the local level. Thus, Rey-Garcia et al. (2019) noted that in the field of social services, social innovation is leading to more decentralized systems involving a network of interdependent and diverse actors as well as greater pressure for the integration of services, market competition, and coproduction. The increased complexity of local service systems, in turn, creates new governance challenges for public and private leaders. For example, the previously mentioned SIBs have many players and stakeholders: government officials, nonprofit service agencies, project evaluators, foundations, clients, and private investors. Not surprisingly, SIBs tend to have high transaction costs and often take significant time to plan and implement. They can also interject new uncertainty into local service networks because they raise the prospect that services may lose funding if they do not meet specific performance targets. Various coproduction initiatives also require new forms of local governance. A good example is a partnership between the local government and an informal neighborhood group to maintain a local park. These partnerships between the government and local volunteers present opportunities for new forms of community engagement, but they can also raise sustainability problems given volunteer turnover and attrition (Smith, forthcoming 2021). Importantly, the formal nonprofit sector including foundations, service agencies, and associations overlaps with the broader civil society of civic engagement, social participation, and social movements (Anheier et al., 2020, p. 656). Many existing nonprofits initially emerged from the informal sector as a good idea of an individual or a dedicated, socially minded group with a commitment to a certain community of people such as a neighborhood or at-risk youth in a metropolitan area (Smith & Lipsky, 1993). Making the transition from an informal collection of individuals to a more formal organization can create complicated issues of sustainability and governance since a viable long-term business plan may hinge on recruiting and retaining new volunteers, staff, and board members. Working with a community group—whether an informal group or a more formal service organization—creates challenges for the government in terms of accountability and the assessment of impact. One response of governments around the world has been to increase the regulation of local services, even as they decentralize the administration and funding of public services. For instance, an increasingly prevalent policy tool in many countries, i.e., performance contracting, is a form of

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more targeted regulation of nonprofit programs and operations. (SIBs typically involve performance contracts.) However, performance contracting can often require extensive negotiations between the government and local agencies on the appropriate performance measures. In many jurisdictions including in the United States, Canada, and the UK, governments have used additional regulations to more fully integrate local services. Many countries have also increased their regulation and oversight of nonprofit operations and finances. These complicated governance innovations have been incisively researched and documented in an important series of Governance Reports published annually from 2013 to 2019 by the Hertie School with Anheier as one of the key faculty leads. These wide-ranging reports highlight the governance complexities facing public sector and civil society organizations and profile governance innovations in different fields. One central theme is the need to govern in the context of greater interdependence among public and private actors and across various levels of the government. For example, the Governance Report on administrative capacity and innovation profiled the Barcelona Social Inclusion Plan, which led an agreement for greater cooperation among 235 local charities, businesses, and universities pertaining to immigrant services (Wise et al., 2014). Overall, many nonprofit organizations find themselves in a funding and political environment emphasizing both competition—i.e., government contracting—and collaboration among local agencies as well as across sectors. Service integration, for example, often entails encouraging collaboration among agencies by requiring that they work together through regulations and/or financial incentives. As these collaborative networks expand, effective governance requires extensive consultations among the key stakeholders and appropriate leadership and participation as well as supportive relationships from the key public and private funders. These system- and community-wide governance changes can also produce major internal governance changes in nonprofits. The pressure to be more market-oriented and more entrepreneurial may shift the governance of nonprofits away from their members and community of interest to public and private funders. Performance contracts, greater competition among organizations for resources, and a greater outcome orientation also encourage transparency and professionalization, creating incentives for fundamental shifts in organizational governance such as new types of board members and staff leadership. More generally, Hwang and Powell (2009) concluded that public funding of nonprofits led to greater professionalization. Internally, performance measurement can prompt conflict and dissension among staff who believe that new performance measures are contrary to the values and mission of the organization. For instance, government performance measures may require a nonprofit workforce development agency to focus on short-term placements as a condition for receiving funding; yet, the agency may have initially regarded its mission as supporting long-term employment. Nonprofit social enterprises dependent upon earned income may emphasize the key financial measures related to their programs that may not be consistent with the views of the staff who prefer a more community-focused emphasis for the nonprofit. Both of these

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examples illustrate the governance dilemmas faced by nonprofits with competing norms or logics such as the government, community, and market (Skelcher & Smith, 2015). Moreover, coproduction through greater engagement of volunteers and citizens in public and nonprofit organizations can create complicated management challenges especially in the context of constrained resources. Many nonprofit organizations were established by local organizers to take greater control over the services in their community. The diverse array of coproduction initiatives around the world exemplifies the desire of the community to be more engaged in local service delivery. Citizens might work with local officials to repurpose an abandoned factory for new uses. Neighborhood or ethnic associations work with the police on crime prevention strategies or with the city on youth programming. An ethnic organization, for example, might rely on staff and volunteers from its local ethnic group and work closely with municipal agencies on a range of important programs. Agencies for citizens with development disabilities might also have representation of parents and service users on their board of directors and as staff and volunteers (Smith, 2021). These coproduction examples also illustrate the more informal, loose, and horizontal networks that characterize coproduction, requiring nonprofit and public agencies to develop new approaches to managing this network. Careful attention to the design of the network including the roles and participation of different stakeholders is imperative. Increasingly, the demand for greater accountability also means that many nonprofits need to invest more resources in managing volunteers. Many local nonprofits have experienced a drop in volunteers due to the COVID-19 pandemic that began spreading in the United States in 2020; the lack of volunteers required some organizations such as Meals on Wheels, a food security program for seniors and the disabled, to hire paid staff (Sullivan, 2020). Given these organizational challenges, the mix of agencies could become more concentrated as smaller, grassroots agencies struggle to compete with larger organizations with resources and significant political and community connections. Internal management changes within nonprofit organizations may also reflect a great incentive toward self-regulation of the emergent regulatory regimes. For instance, organizations are more likely to receive public funds if they have invested in their own infrastructure and capacity. Coalitions and associations representing nonprofits have also tried to encourage more self-regulation through the dissemination of best practices for management including board governance. More transparency in organizational operations including financial and tax information can also promote more self-regulation since nonprofits will be aware that they are subject to greater scrutiny from government regulators as well as local citizens. From the perspective of nonprofits, these evolving regulatory regimes can create significant difficulties: they may not have the resources to comply, especially if they are smaller, grassroots organizations; new regulations may require nonprofits to alter their mission in order to comply; and smaller and newer organizations may find that they lack an appropriate and sufficiently skilled board of directors to navigate the increased complexity of program development and implementation. The need

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for capital and economies of scale has also provided an advantage for resource and program development to well-capitalized agencies. Not surprisingly, then, for-profit service agencies in many countries and regions are increasing their market share in fields previously dominated by nonprofit organizations, especially in community care such as home health, hospice, and behavioral health services. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these trends. Due to the pandemic, the business model of many nonprofits has collapsed amidst a sharp decline in conferences, fundraising events, fee-paying clients and customers, and corporate donations. Consequently, many nonprofits are fundamentally rethinking their mission and developing new plans for sustainability (McCartney, 2020). As a result, the governance of many nonprofits is under severe stress, especially since the continuing effects of the pandemic on organizational programs and finances require flexibility, entrepreneurship, and sometimes quick decision-making; thus, many nonprofits may need to restructure their governance and their relationships with the government, philanthropic funders, and local communities. As nonprofits strive to navigate these highly uncertain fiscal, political, and programmatic environments, Anheier’s research and writing on governance and management in nonprofit organizations can be especially helpful (Anheier, 2014). He has written very incisively about nonprofit management to help provide insights into the potential strategies for nonprofits to adapt to a rapidly changing fiscal and political environment. Equally important though, Anheier’s research on governance helps us understand the context for nonprofit management and changes in the governance of public policy, broadly defined, especially in terms of the impact on nonprofits. More than ever, nonprofits need to be open to new opportunities and input and feedback from many different public and private stakeholders, particularly given the need of many nonprofits to develop new sources of revenue and community support. Indeed, Anheier and his coauthor, Mark T. Fliegauf (2013), call attention to the importance of “governance innovations” and argued that they were “highly context bound” and reflected an ongoing interaction between multiple public and private actors and organizations. Because civil society organizations can often emerge from social movements dedicated to change in prevailing public policies, they can also be an important source of governance innovations. Civil society organizations may also help overcome the “presentist bias” evident in many advanced democracies (Boston, 2017). Politicians tend to focus on short-­ term rewards and not on solving longer-term problems such as climate change, environmental pollution, and structural inequality. Boston (2017) observes that institutions can be designed to overcome the presentist bias and the likelihood can be enhanced by empowering advocates for more future-oriented public policies. Nonprofit organizations can be crucial advocates for these longer-term policies. Furthermore, some types of nonprofits can be neutral intermediaries bringing together groups with different goals to forge a consensus on specific policies. To be sure, nonprofits can also be an obstacle to reaching an agreement on policy problems, which also means that public officials need to create institutions guided by evidence, best practices, and decision-making structures fostering trust and shared goals. As highlighted in the case studies of governance innovation in the Governance

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Reports of the Hertie School, in particular the 2014 edition, nonprofits are often crucial as part of governance innovations to improve the effectiveness of our public policies and institutions.

2.3  Philanthropic Foundations Foundations play an increasingly prominent role in supporting nonprofit organizations. Anheier has been on the forefront of research on foundations (Anheier, 1995; Anheier & Toepler, 1999; Anheier & Leat, 2006). He has consistently offered incisive and rigorous analysis of these unique societal institutions including his work with David Hammack on foundations in the United States (Anheier & Hammack, 2010; Hammack & Anheier, 2013) and his more recent book with Diana Leat (Anheier & Leat, 2019) on the performance of philanthropic foundations in different countries. His insightful research on foundations is especially important for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners, given the increase in the number and assets of foundations in countries around the world. Many large foundations are actively tackling major social problems such as deadly diseases, poverty, and homelessness. Moreover, some foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Society Institute have achieved international prominence and attention for their grantmaking. Not surprisingly, given their wealth and policy and programmatic ambitions, foundations face criticism from the left and the right, as they have grown in size and influence (see Reich, 2018; Giridharadas, 2018; Husock, 2013). As Anheier has noted in his extensive research on foundations, they can be central to the support and building of civil society. They provide seed grants to start-up organizations, invest in professional development, support new program initiatives, and can promote a local culture of philanthropic giving and engagement. In the current polarized politics in the United States, UK, and elsewhere, foundations can also be essential in supporting democratic institutions. They can invest in the infrastructure and capacity of social movements and advocacy organizations (Cohen, 2020). Foundations can take advantage of their autonomy and resources to convene different groups and individuals to deliberate and discuss important and sometimes controversial issues. At a time of profound distrust of key societal institutions, foundations can help build a civic infrastructure to promote civic participation and greatly strengthen our important political, educational, and cultural institutions. The support of foundations for civil society can also bring them into conflict with the government. The Ford Foundation and the Open Society Institute, for example, have funded local nonprofits in Russia, the Middle East, and Central Europe; that support, in turn, prompted national governments to restrict nonprofit activity and their foundation funding partners (for more on increasing nongovernmental organization (NGO) restrictions more generally, see the chapter by Glasius and de Lange in this volume). Some governments have also implemented new forms of oversight and regulation of advocacy and lobbying by nonprofits (Phillips & Smith, 2019).

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Foundations in many countries have faced increased governmental scrutiny and reporting for their programmatic activities such as on their international grantmaking and/or funding from foreign philanthropic sources. In China, many nonprofits are effectively controlled by the government. In New Zealand, the government has revoked nonprofit tax exemption in circumstances where it deems the organization to be too political. Foundations also face important limitations in supporting civil society and, more broadly, in achieving impact. As Hammack and Anheier (2013, p. 148) observed, foundations are characterized by an insufficiency of resources and particularism. Resources are constrained, especially since many foundations are relatively small. Even large foundations do not have the resources to match the public sector. Partly due to constrained resources, foundations also tend to pick a specific service niche and type of local programs to support. However, this particularistic emphasis can then create obstacles to impact. Constrained resources are also a major contributing factor to the preference of foundations for short-term project grants rather than for long-term and/or operating grants (Letts et al., 1999). Short-term project grants can have a destabilizing effect on nonprofits since it is often difficult for nonprofits to secure alternate funding and invest in their administrative infrastructure, staff, and capital. This preference for project grants also reflects the cautious approach of foundations to grantmaking and a concern among foundations about creating organizational dependence among their grantees. As Anheier observed, foundations are also increasingly concerned with demonstrating impact (Anheier & Leat, 2019). This search for impact reflects in part the pressures for greater accountability and the desire for relevance and influence (Hammack & Anheier, 2013). They are regarded by many citizens as out-of-touch elite institutions in an era of populism and growing distrust of societal institutions. On a practical level, a growing recognition of the complexity of social problems means that many foundations are challenged to make a difference with their grantmaking. The economic crisis of 2008–2009, growing inequality, and the COVID-19 pandemic have also pressured foundations to increase their grantmaking beyond the legally required standard of 5% of their assets in the United States. Some foundations are even pledging to give away all of their money within a prescribed period of time. Nonetheless, foundation grantmaking continues to be very modest compared to public sector spending, thus challenging foundations to find a program niche where they can make a substantial difference. The diversity of the nonprofit service sector also complicates foundation grantmaking, so impact measures help foundations rationalize their grantmaking by identifying programs with a likelihood of success. Higher expectations regarding foundation performance has, in turn, affected the strategic planning and governance of nonprofits. Many foundations (and public agencies) now require their nonprofit grantees to articulate their “theory of change” and identify their short-term and long-term outcomes. Some foundations even condition their funding on the submission by grantees of their theory of change or logic model (Kellogg, 2004). Logic models encourage nonprofits to map the process of program implementation and their expected outcomes. When used as a strategic

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planning tool, logic models can help match a nonprofit’s management structure to the appropriate implementation processes to facilitate program success. Not surprisingly perhaps, foundation funding can also lead to professionalization in nonprofit grantees. Yet, one criticism of the emphasis of many foundations on performance measurement is the potential for changes in grantees’ governance and mission that may be inadvisable and precipitate internal disagreement and conflict. When a local school receives a grant from a major foundation, for instance, the school’s governance may need to be restructured to reflect a mix of public and foundation priorities. Given the demand for impact, foundations may also be tempted to emphasize short-term measures that may conflict with the existing priorities for a nonprofit. Foundations themselves may also struggle with conflicting and/or contradictory goals, partly due to their own underlying assumptions and approaches. Anheier and Leat profiled several foundations in their 2019 book on performance measurement illustrating this critical point. One chapter focuses on the Walton Foundation and its extensive grantmaking in support of charter schools. A major overall objective is systemic change in the local and state educational systems to favor charter schools and more school choice. Yet, these long-range systemic goals can conflict with the short-term measures of success at the individual school level (Anheier & Leat, 2019, pp. 72–73). Overall, Anheier and Leat argue that the struggles of foundations to achieve their stated goals are rooted in their very independence: they are among the most independent of societal institutions because of their lack of reliance on external funds; yet, this very autonomy means that they face what Anheier and Leat call a “benign fallibility syndrome” (also discussed in Paolo Barbetta’s contribution, Chap. 12 in this volume). Foundations have autonomy, but they also then lack the usual feedback mechanisms from the community, market, and public sectors, which provide incentives and information for good performance. The consequence for foundations is a tendency toward ambiguous results. The Walton Foundation case, for example, illustrates the autonomy of foundations to adopt the free-market priorities of their founders and leadership, but they then find themselves unable to adequately respond to other types of feedback on school reform such as the effect of poverty and systemic racism on student educational achievement (Anheier & Leat, 2019, p. 167). Overall, Anheier’s diverse, comprehensive body of research on foundations and civil society organizations helps place these challenges in a broader context. Importantly, Anheier also suggests that foundations could reduce the “ambiguity” of their performance by devoting greater attention to the political and economic context of their grantmaking; in general, foundations need to be more “proactive” in their approach to supporting their grantees and in the attainment of foundation goals and priorities (Anheier & Leat, 2019, p. 178). Contemporary foundations may also strive to enhance their impact by focusing on specific market niches such as the environment, a geographic area, or at-risk youth. Many small local foundations focus on supporting capital projects rather than on program areas. The desire for greater impact and influence has also produced innovations in fundraising, grantmaking, and organizational forms. Many

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foundations have encouraged their grantees to diversify their revenue base and increase their fundraising through new strategies and campaigns. Community foundations have grown rapidly in terms of assets since the 1990s primarily through an emphasis on attracting donor-advised funds, which give the donor greater control over their grants. These donor-advised funds face less government regulations than do traditional foundations (Hammack & Anheier, 2013). Donor-advised funds have also been a major growth area for investment firms including Fidelity and Schwab; indeed, their assets now far exceed the assets of most foundations. In another example of new hybrid organizational forms, wealthy philanthropists, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have eschewed creating a traditional foundation and instead created a for-profit limited liability company (LLC) for their grantmaking called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Laurel Powell Jobs has a similar LLC (the Emerson Collective) (Piper, 2019). The proliferation of social innovations and social enterprises has also been fueled by foundation grants that have often provided the initial seed money for program start-up. In summary, the landscape of organized philanthropy including foundations is much larger and more diverse. Nonetheless, foundations remain a prominent and entrenched institution in America that continues to play a leadership role in solving important public problems at the international, national, and local levels. Anheier’s broad and wide-ranging research on foundations has greatly aided our understanding of these complex societal institutions.

2.4  Concluding Thoughts The COVID-19 pandemic, economic crises, the rise of authoritarianism, and political polarization mean that we are at an especially fraught moment for nonprofits and philanthropy (see Avner Ben-Ner’s contribution, Chap. 20, and Marlies Glasius and Meta de Lange’s, Chap. 15, in this volume for more on these challenges). Yet, Anheier’s work suggests that we have cause for optimism, despite these challenges. Foundations are an enduring and growing institution that also has substantial autonomy from the state. Widespread interest exists in social innovation and coproduction that engages citizens in new, creative, and more effective programming. Moreover, we know a lot about the best practices in the governance and management of nonprofits. Indeed, Anheier has played a major role in deepening our understanding of governance, broadly defined, and in nonprofits, in particular. Furthermore, Anheier has been part of a broad international effort to build an infrastructure for the sector including educational and training programs, improved professionalization, and new research capacity to understand the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit centers, foundations, and journals have also helped disseminate research and information on the sector around the world.

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Finally, comparative research on philanthropy and civil society suggests, perhaps, that fundamental shifts in organizational structure and philanthropic giving may also be underway. Hybrid alternatives to foundations have emerged as highly prominent aspects of the philanthropic landscape. As noted earlier, wealthy philanthropists have created for-profit LLCs for their philanthropic giving rather than conventional foundations. Benefit corporations are touted as for-profit entities with a social mission, which have more financial flexibility than do traditional nonprofits. Donor-advised funds are now the leading destination for philanthropic giving in the United States. Many community foundations have grown substantially, primarily through a significant rise in donor-advised funds. The expansion of online giving has also made it much easier for individuals to bypass third-party philanthropic organizations such as the United Way and instead donate directly online to a charity. Nonprofits are facing pressure to raise earned income from the sale of goods and services and to develop various types of corporate partnerships. More organizations have affiliated foundations, for-profit subsidiaries or corporate partnerships, and receive funds through third-party intermediaries (Smith, 2010a, b). Many long-­ standing charities at the national and local levels are encountering competition for public and private resources from new, more entrepreneurial nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Interest in social innovation continues to lead to new organizational and program models. Distinctive country differences remain in terms of the character of the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors and their relationship with the government and public policy. Nonetheless, many of the same developments have emerged across countries, which are then shaped by long-standing institutional patterns, creating new policy and organizational dynamics, especially at the local level. This uncertain and unpredictable environment for nonprofit organizations and philanthropy challenges the academic community to craft a research agenda that can provide not only strong conceptual and empirical contributions but also, at the same time, helpful guidance to policymakers and practitioners. This advice is sorely needed, given the complexity of governance, broadly defined, and the increased diversity of organizational structures and philanthropic instruments. Moreover, government oversight has often lagged the development of these new hybrid organizations with a social mission. In this context, board members and leaders of civil society organizations are pressed to improve the effectiveness of their programs while remaining true to their mission and priorities. In-depth research on the philanthropic sector and civil society organizations could not be more timely, relevant, and useful. Fortunately, we have Anheier’s extensive body of research to guide us as well as the academic infrastructure that he has helped create over the course of his long career to help scholars, policymakers, and nonprofit leaders craft effective, responsive governance and programs for the citizenry. Acknowledgments  I gratefully acknowledge the very helpful feedback of Putnam Barber, Regina List, and Stefan Toepler in the preparation of this chapter.

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References Anheier, H. K. (1987). Indigenous voluntary associations, nonprofits, and development in Africa. In W.  W. Powell (Ed.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (pp.  416–433). Yale University Press. Anheier, H. K. (1990). Profile of the third sector in West Germany. In H. K. Anheier & W. Seibel (Eds.), The third sector in comparative studies of nonprofit organizations (pp. 313–332). Walter de Gruyter. Anheier, H.  K. (Ed.) (1995, October). Foundations: International perspectives. Special Issue of Voluntas, 6, 3. Anheier, H. K. (2014). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management, policy (2nd ed.). Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Fliegauf, M. T. (2013). The contribution of innovation research to understanding governance innovation: A review. In H. K. Anheier (Ed.), Governance challenges and innovations: Financial and fiscal governance (pp. 137–170). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Hammack, D. C. (Eds.). (2010). American foundations: Roles and contributions. Brookings. Anheier, H. K., & Kendall, J. (Eds.). (2001). Third sector policy at the crossroads: An international nonprofit analysis. Routledge. Anheier, H.  K., Krlev, G., & Mildenberger, G. (Eds.). (2019). Social innovation: Comparative perspectives. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., Lang, M., & Toepler, S. (2020). Comparative nonprofit sector research: A critical assessment. In W. W. Powell & P. Bromley (Eds.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (3rd ed., pp. 648–676). Stanford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2006). Creative philanthropy: Towards a new philanthropy for the twenty-first century. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2019). Performance measurement in philanthropic foundations: The ambiguity of success and failure. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (Eds.). (1990). The third sector in comparative studies of nonprofit organizations. Walter de Gruyter. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (2001). The nonprofit sector in Germany: Between state, economy and society. Manchester University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (1999). Private funds, public purpose: Philanthropic foundations in international perspective. Kluwer. Boston, J. (2017). Governing for the future: Designing democratic institutions for a better tomorrow. Emerald. Cancellieri, G., Turrini, A., Sanzo Perez, M.  J., Salido-Andres, N., Kullberg, J., & Cognat, A.  S. (2019). Place-regeneration initiatives driven by arts & culture to achieve social cohesion. In H. K. Anheier, G. Krlev, & G. Mildenberger (Eds.), Social innovation: Comparative perspectives (pp. 79–103). Cohen, C. J. (2020). Death and democracy. Knight Foundation. Retrieved from https://knightfoundation.org/death-­and-­democracy/ Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Princeton University Press. Giridharadas, A. (2018). Winners take all: The elite charade of changing the world. Knopf. Hammack, D. C., & Anheier, H. K. (2013). A versatile American institution: The changing ideals and realities of philanthropic foundations. Brookings. Hansmann, H. B. (1980, April). The role of nonprofit enterprise. Yale Law Journal, 835–901. Henriksen, L. S., Smith, S. R., & Zimmer, A. (2012). At the eve of convergence? Transformation of social service provision in Denmark, Germany, and the United States. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 23(2), 458–501. Hood, C. (1991). A public management for all seasons. Public Administration, 69(1), 3–19. Husock, H. (2013). Philanthropy under fire. Encounter Broadside No. 34. Encounter Books.

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Hwang, H., & Powell, W. W. (2009). The rationalization of charity: the influences of professionalism in the nonprofit sector. Administrative Science Quarterly, 54(3), 268–298. Kellogg Foundation. (2004). Logic model development guide. Retrieved from https://www.wkkf. org/resource-­directory/resources/2004/01/logic-­model-­development-­guide Letts, C.  W., Ryan, W.  P., & Grossman, A. (1999). High performance nonprofit organizations: Managing upstream for greater impact (p. 1999). Wiley. McCartney, R. (2020, August 3). Nonprofits in trouble: One-third of organizations may not survive pandemic, recession. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ non-­profits-­coronavirus-­fail/2020/08/02/ef486414-­d371-­11ea-­9038-­af089b63ac21_story.html Monitor Institute. (2009). Investing for social and environmental impact: A design for catalyzing and emerging industry. Retrieved from https://hipinvestor.com/wp-­content/uploads/Investing-­ For-­Social-­and-­Environmental-­Impact.pdf Moore, B. (1965). Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant and the making of the modern world. Beacon Press. Ongaro, E., van Thiel, S., Massey, A., Pierre, J., & Wollmann, H. (2018). Public administration and public management research in Europe: Traditions and trends. In E.  Ongaro & S. van Thiel (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of public administration and management in Europe (pp. 11–39). Palgrave/Macmillan. Phillips, S. D., & Smith, S. R.. (2019). Public policy for civil society in high income countries: Renewing and innovating, or belling the cat? Paper presented at the International Research Society for Public Management, Wellington, NZ. Piper, K. (2019, February 7). Why this billion-dollar foundation is becoming a corporation: More philanthropists are putting their money in LLCs. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/ future-­perfect/2019/2/7/18207247/arnold-­foundation-­corporation-­nonprofit-­charity Reich, R. (2018). Just giving: Why philanthropy is failing democracy and how it can do better. Princeton University Press. Rey-Garcia, M., Felgueiras, A., Bauer, A., Einarsson, T., & Cancellieri, G. (2019). Social innovation for filling the resource-needs gap in social services: New governance arrangements. Social Innovation: Comparative Perspectives, 104–129. Rhodes, R. A. W. (1996). The new governance: Governing without government. Political Studies, XLIV, 652–667. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1996). The emerging nonprofit sector: An overview. Manchester University Press. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1997). Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-national analysis. Manchester University Press. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1998). Social origins of civil society: Explaining the nonprofit sector cross-nationally. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9(3), 213–248. Selle, P., & Wollebæk, D. (2010). Why social democracy is not a civil society regime in Norway. Journal of Political Ideologies, 15(3), 289–301. Skelcher, C., & Smith, S. R. (2015). Theorising hybridity: Institutional logics, complex organizations, and actor identities—The case of nonprofits. Public Administration, 93(2), 433–448. Smith, S. R. (2010a). Foundations and public policy. In D. C. Hammack & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), American foundations: Roles and contributions (pp. 371–387). Brookings. Smith, S. R. (2010b). Hybridization and nonprofit organizations: The governance challenge. Policy and Society, 29(3), 219–229. Smith, S. R. (2021). Governance challenges in co-production. In E. Loeffler & T. Bovaird (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of co-production of public services and outcomes (pp.  595–611). Palgrave. Smith, S. R., & Lipsky, M. (1993). Nonprofits for hire: The welfare state in the age of contracting. Harvard University Press.

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Sullivan, P. (2020, November 13). Demands on nonprofit groups rose in the pandemic, even as volunteering fell. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/ your-­money/nonprofit-­groups-­volunteers-­pandemic.html Weisbrod, B. (1975). Toward a theory of the voluntary nonprofit sector in a three-sector economy. In E. S. Phelps (Ed.), Altruism, morality, and economic theory (pp. 171–195). Russell Sage. Wise, R., Wegrich, K., & Lodge, M. (2014). Governance innovations. In H.  School (Ed.), The governance report 2014 (pp. 77–111). Oxford University Press.

Part I

Developing Concepts and Theoretical Frames

Chapter 3

The Theory of the Public Sphere Revisited Rupert Strachwitz

Abstract  In the public sphere as we have come to see it, the state sets the rules, admits and rejects participants, and, commonly preferring to be alone, persists in harassing and excluding other arenas, i.e., the market and, most particularly, civil society. What is frequently overlooked is that this is a historical concept and is by no means an anthropological constant. This chapter argues that this concept is outdated and in urgent need of fundamental revision. The failure of the nation state and of institutions in particular should serve as an alarm call to revisit the public sphere and devise a new model of organizing it. To this end, theoretical groundwork is needed. However, empirical studies alone, as important as they are, will not produce satisfactory results. A normative approach is called for in attempting to define the role of different contributors, notably the private (business) sector and civil society in a new and inclusive public sphere that suggests an active interplay of these arenas on a level playing field. This chapter analyzes a number of deficiencies of the present model and suggests some thoughts on how it should be adapted to the realities of modern society. Keywords  Public sphere · Normative approach · Nation state · Private sector · Civil society

3.1  Introduction Parag Khanna has recently suggested that “the era of organizing the world according to political space (how we legally subdivide the globe) is giving way to its organizing according to functional space (how we actually use it)” (2018, p. 44). Although in no way revolutionary or widely upheld, this view categorically contrasts with what governments worldwide perceive as their position. The German R. Strachwitz (*) Maecenata Institute for Philanthropy and Civil Society, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_3

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Chancellor Angela Merkel, when questioned about transnational influences proceeding from the American National Security Agency (NSA), Google, etc., famously remarked that German law was enforced on German territory. Nevertheless, most of the new systems of communication are controlled by their commercial inventors and managers. The public sphere of old, the village square, the debating networks of the metropolis, and parliaments and assemblies are being crowded out. Authors like Raghuram Rajan, who argues “for a devolvement in power from federal government through the regional government to the community” (2019, p. 325), are dangerously wrong in supposing that shifting executive powers from one level of government to another could solve the problem of how to cope with a complete reframing of the public sphere: Today many scholars still hold that political boundaries are the most fundamental man-­ made lines on the map due to a bias toward territory as the basis of power, the state as the unit of political organization, an assumption that only governments can order life within those states, and a belief that national identity is the primary source of people’s loyalty. (Khanna, 2018, p. 46)

What we see is a fundamental dichotomy between those who claim that the public sphere is exclusively theirs and many others who believe that they too legitimately operate in the public sphere. Although neither the market nor civil society would aspire to be the sole occupants and would readily admit that the state was an important co-player, agents of the state would not necessarily adopt this view, and agents of the market would probably admit to the state but not to civil society being part of the public sphere. Since the early 2000s, in particular, we have been observing increasing alliances between the state and market to the detriment of the third group of players. It would seem that our discussion about what constitutes the public sphere is trapped between a Hegelian notion of state supremacy and William Beveridge’s concept of the welfare state, on one side, and Herbert Spencer’s and Milton Friedman’s ideas about the survival of the fittest and shareholder value, on the other. This may be an exaggeration, but we certainly need to realize that these two pillars seem to have been more successful in determining how modern society should be organized than has Habermas’ call for deliberative democracy (Habermas, 1994) or Dahrendorf’s “third approach which differs from both the wet democratic left and the democratic right[. . .]. We have called it, institutional liberalism” (Dahrendorf, 1985, p. 160). Attempts to search for alternative ways forward that developed in the 1990s (Salamon et al., 1999), though widely accepted as an eye-opener with regard to the strength and potential of civil society worldwide, have been unsuccessful in either reigning in global capitalism or applying brakes to an ever larger government. The traditional divide between the right and the left no longer adequately represents the basic differences of opinion and should perhaps be replaced by a divide between hope for and fear of the future while taking into account that neither an eschatological vision nor gnostic despair will provide the right roadmap for dealing with the issues mankind is facing.

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This chapter will discuss whether we should not instead adopt a new notion of the public sphere and admit the citizen, civil society, the market, and the state to it on a level playing field. Given the attempts by many governments to actively crowd out civil society while helplessly retreating compared to global market players, it seems timely to initiate this discussion. However, this is not a subject to be tackled exclusively by way of empirical research. On the contrary, it involves a normative approach that considers what kind of society we wish to live in. In doing so, one will meet with some reservations, as, over the last generation or so, the damnation accorded to normative statements of any kind has been such that few attempts were made to argue for them, despite warnings from political theorists like Eric Voegelin against copying methodologies that apply in economics and the natural sciences to the social sciences and humanities (Voegelin, 1952). I would contend that it is becoming increasingly obvious that empirical research alone, indispensable as it of course is, will not suffice in providing answers to the challenges to present-day society. “If, as Einstein famously stated, we cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it, then the problems of a state-centric world require thinking beyond that world” (Khanna, 2018, p. 64). Therefore, this chapter, while not venturing to develop a normative concept of a public sphere that may provide a solution to the deficiencies of the present one, will attempt to put forward a few elements of analysis of these deficiences and some very preliminary ideas on what a new one might look like.

3.2  The Public Sphere The public sphere has been defined as the space in which public affairs, which means affairs of consequence for every member of a given community, are debated and decided upon, are monitored and evaluated, and are potentially brought up for change. In Europe, perhaps more than elsewhere, this definition is closely linked to the state—to the extent that traditional political theory has granted the state a monopolistic license to operate within this space. Since Jean Bodin in the late sixteenth century first developed a theory that the so-defined public sphere should be constructed in a manner that hitherto important players, i.e., the churches, would relinquish their power of definition, the development of the concept of a nation state has progressed to a point at which the nation state, and more recently and in some parts of the world, one organized along the principles of representative democracy, has come to be seen as the principal organizational classification of the world. Nation states and their governments are either near oblivious of alternative sources and centers of power, political thoughts, ideas, and discourses or actively engaged in holding them down. Governments uphold the pretense of a monopoly of serving the public good in the face of ample evidence to the contrary. Besides big public social movements, notably to do with racial and gender equality, the fall of the Berlin Wall is a good example of citizen action assuming the lead in bringing about momentous changes. Strangely, however, most citizens, while possibly quite

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unhappy with an overbearing state, still believe it to be a kind of anthropological constant and fail to recognize it as a concept with a history, and not an ancient one at that, and highly probably with an end, for the simple reason that any theory of political order has a lifespan and will eventually be replaced by another. It would be highly unrealistic, and indeed dangerous, to surmise that our present concept of political governance will fare otherwise. Looking back at antiquity, we find heterarchical and hierarchical systems of government side by side, with hierarchical systems at their best employing a high degree of consultation to minimize the effects of hierarchical decision-making and heterarchical systems leaning toward hierarchical solutions in times of a crisis (as may be seen in personalities like Pericles and Caesar). Religion and politics were historically closely intertwined (Strachwitz, 2019, p. 329); religion was specific to a particular state, until Christendom broke this alliance (Mt 22, 15–22; Mk 12, 13–17; Lk 20, 20–26) only to reinvent it in a different form a few centuries later. In the Middle Ages, the church and the state fought for power, albeit both remaining convinced that a common religion was the base for any political entity. What Jean Bodin, the father of the notion of the nation state, achieved in the late sixteenth century was to accommodate the very real contingency of different religious denominations existing within the same political structure. Over the next few centuries, religion was gradually crowded out of the political sphere altogether, whereas the state increasingly ruled paramount. The twentieth century, building on political arrangements conceived in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, notably the Peace of Westphalia treaty (1648), the Constitution (1789) and the Bill of Rights (1791) in the United States, and the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna (1815), rendered the state absolute, in an extreme manner in both the fascist and the Bolshevist regimes in Europe and in a softer version everywhere else. The struggle was for individual freedom and human and civil rights, not for a new collective arrangement. Modern-day democracies have not shied away from preserving a high ratio of absolute state power. “Russia no longer exports communism, America scarcely proffers democracy; China has abandoned Maoism for hyper-capitalist consumerism” (Khanna, 2018, p. 50). However, their rulers firmly believe in an ever stronger state. Arguably, they have further extended its powers and used security, fighting terrorism, money laundering, and tax evasion as excuses to step up control mechanisms. It is hardly surprising that to this day, the public sphere is widely regarded to be the sphere of the state. Although political leaders and theorists will occasionally pronounce statements like “The state is all of us!,” conventional terminology betrays a different perception. In talking about “The United States of America” or “The City of Berlin” more often than not what is implied is not the totality of citizens (commonly downgraded to tax payers and voters) but the government of that particular entity. “Diplomats have tended to distinguish between the ‘high politics’ of security, alliances, and arms control—matters of survival to the state—and the ‘low politics’ of economics, rights and environmental issues” (Khanna, 2018, p. 49). In short, in the public sphere as we have come to see it, the government sets the rules, admits

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and rejects participants, and, preferring to be alone, persists in harassing and excluding other arenas, i.e., the market and, most particularly, civil society. Some attempts have been made to at least contemplate a new approach, but there seems to exist a modern trend, highly visible in contemporary Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and the United States, to revive the notion of a public sphere of old and to use it to drum up loyalty to the nation state at the expense of other loyalties. In Germany, toward the end of the twentieth century, political leaders picked up on slogans used by civil society in East Germany in 1989 (“Wir sind das Volk,” “Wir sind ein Volk,” “Deutschland einig Vaterland”) to try and substitute a functional concept of a public sphere by one that was emotionally more viable (Kronenberg, 2013, p. 4). As the hidden agenda emerged (to ease the pressure on the government coffers), these attempts were doomed. They have survived in an undercurrent of right-wing populist sentiment. In Britain, as elsewhere, sidestepping the processes of representative democracy has produced disastrous results in triggering a crisis of democracy. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the challenges that the twenty-first century is facing on a global scale cannot be met by continuing to ignore non-state actors or reduce them to a subservient role. This sharply contrasts with the ambitions of the modern nation state. A steady increase in tax income, staff, control mechanisms, rules, and regulations and a policy of shutting out citizens under the pretext of security have created an atmosphere of mistrust among the citizens far beyond anything seen in the past. However, a society based exclusively on the exercise of power, as vividly pictured by George Orwell (1949), may persist for a while but cannot be sustainable. A new political order needs to be found. “Historical models of order have been built on spheres of influence, but a stable global society today must be based on co-creation across civilizations” (Khanna, 2018, p. 64). We should remember that the whole logic of the nation state is crumbling and will be replaced by a new logic of how public governance should be organized. Our present system is fast losing its license to operate. “Majority rule, just as majority rule, is as foolish as its critics charge it with being. […] The essential need […] is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion, and persuasion” (Dewey, 1927, pp. 207–8).

3.3  Changes As in history, the ongoing concepts of an ideal state that not only enjoys a monopoly on the use of force (an achievement hardly anybody would wish to miss) but also aspires to rule over and regulate every single aspect of citizens’ lives are prone to overlook a very basic fact: “The state does not generally offer love, friendship, or engagement with our emotional needs, and at a material level, it is concerned with what we need rather than what we want” (Elvidge, 2012, p. 30). Empathy, friendship, and engagement with emotional needs are at the very core of what constitutes a healthy societal arrangement. Communities depend on emotions, which modern governments horribly fail to convey, and, as states fail,

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countermovements are bound to emerge. The sentiment of compassion, as described by Adam Smith (1759), is often connected to the solidarity deemed essential to keep a community together. Richard Sennett and others have objected to this on the grounds that solidarity entails a top-down approach and an urge to dominate the process (Sennett, 2012), whereas Habermas and others use it to explain the existence of an arena beyond the state and the market (Habermas, 1994, p. 363). Be that as it may, the failure of the state is not restricted to the examples chosen from serious deficiencies in pursuing the day-to-day business of the government but should be seen as a general theoretical phenomenon that calls for corrective action. Although many ideas have been put forward (viz. Khanna, 2011), nothing substantial has been achieved in providing a practical solution to this fundamental dilemma. Habermas’s model of discursive democracy that connects democratic political processes to a normative concept of institutionalizing the interplay between diverse societal arenas has been widely received in academic circles but seems to have had little impact on the development of society, the crisis of democracy in recent years, and the slow erosion of traditional political processes notwithstanding (Habermas, 1994, pp. 361–363). A wide range of different arguments demonstrates the fragility of the traditional concept of a state-focused public space. A number of reasons merit a mention, albeit cursory: 1. In general terms, the nation state has come under attack from different sides: • • • • • • •

internationalization globalization regionalization individualization the collapse of state dominance the rise of the market the rise of civil society

2. When communication and travel were revolutionized in the course of the nineteenth century, the first modern international agreements were concluded to cope with the necessities of enabling these services to function across national borders, thereby setting the tone for a plethora of international conventions that have curbed the sovereignty of individual states and have been agreed upon in a democratic procedure. The Universal Postal Union (UPU) was first established in 1874 and the International Union of Railways (UIC) in 1922. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 attempted to provide very basic international rules on warfare, and since the League of Nations was founded in 1920 and the London Charter was proclaimed in 1945, national sovereignty has in actual fact been substantially and increasingly curbed. Recently, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, which accords the international community with the right to protect citizens worldwide from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity has done much to hasten the process of limiting national

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sovereignty,1 while it has become ever more evident that major powers are neither prepared to abstain from protecting their own interests nor from protecting their allies, be they governmental or not. In so doing, the whole issue of what is governmental and what is not has become increasingly questionable; other trends add to the confusion. 3. Every country in the world has entered into so many international agreements that to talk of a nation’s sovereignty would seem farcical even in relation to the largest state and totally ridiculous in relation to smaller states. Yet, the approximately 200 states, ranging from China to Andorra, still cling to the notion of being sovereign and in full and sole control of the public sphere within their territories. Although professing to be keen on innovation and social change, in practice, they do everything they can to prevent innovation and change, affecting the myth they have been cultivating, let alone letting change come their way. At the time of writing, Brexit demonstrated how a totally unreasonable slogan (“Take Back Control”) was about to reshape a relatively important power’s global position to its detriment. 4. The Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, the People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine, the Kurdish region in Iraq, and many others are examples of real power centers with unclear status with regard to sovereignty and with very diverse international arrangements of recognition. Entities like the Holy See and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, both widely accepted as subjects of international law, expressly do not base their claim to a sovereign status on their command of a territory or nation, whereas entities like Scotland and Catalonia profess to be nations, albeit not enjoying sovereign status. Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco, and a number of islands in the Pacific are sovereign in law, albeit with minimal or no political maneuvering space and diverse levels of representation and voting rights in international bodies. 5. Big internationally operating corporations exert an influence on policy, regulation, and practical political decision-making that renders constitutional procedures farcical. The revolution in communication, to echo Khanna (2018, p. 64), has finally eroded any notion of a closed society being a sustainable option. Big global businesses are the masters of states, not vice versa. 6. State actors are compelled to deal with non-state actors at many levels and may not always seek refuge with their singular position as lawmakers and regulators or their overwhelming financial strength. They depend on non-state actors for services to be performed and a host of other reasons. On the other hand, even the most forceful use of the states’ prerogatives has increasingly come to be used against non-state actors. When George W. Bush declared war on terrorism following the events of September 11, 2001, he was not using “war” as a phrase in its more general sense but as a formal announcement of military action directed at identified non-state enemies of the United States. The whole system of com1  The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine was first articulated in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in December 2001 and adopted in the United Nations World Summit Outcome Document in resolution 60/1 in 2005.

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batants and noncombatants as defined by the Geneva Conventions thus no longer corresponds to the reality of modern warfare. It would seem that most of today’s political decision-makers lack the leadership qualities required to grasp the implications of this wide range of political and societal changes and the vision required to contribute to disruptive and yet constructive innovation. They demand loyalty and put the responsibility on others—the European Commission, right-wing populists, or whomever. Citizens should not be obliged to choose a single identity or loyalty, let alone be forced to adopt the nation state as their prime identity or to rally around their elected political leaders without reflecting on other options. The modern world is also able, compelled by the circumstances of citizens’ lives, to accommodate an individualistic approach to multiple identities and loyalties, provided there is a general agreement that differing loyalties deserve respect. In today’s society, most people identify with causes more strongly than they do with families, local communities, and nations. Communities of choice have replaced communities of fate (and indeed of faith) as prime focal points of identity and loyalty and will legitimately attempt to introduce these to the public debate (Habermas, 1994, p. 399). These may be causes by which the individual is or is not immediately affected. Worldwide protests against the United States’ war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s should not summarily be associated with fears of being drafted to fight in it, as the government attempted to do; it was the threat of a “domino effect” (the war developing into a world war that would affect everybody) and a universal longing for peace that drove protests worldwide. Citizens were genuinely concerned with what was going on in a faraway part of the world. This too points to the fundamental impossibility of closing a public sphere. Any public community must be seen as an ongoing process, which necessarily includes progressing into a hitherto unmapped territory (Karakayali, 2013, p. 26). “To adopt a ‘cause of others’ (Rancière, 2004) is not only due to the impossibility of a closed community, but also to the fact that minorities and ‘others’ carry a momentum of acceleration, social change, and decomposition within a social structure” (Karakayali, 2013, p. 26). At the same time, citizens will increasingly adopt causes that they are affected by and will not be content to voice their opinions about them only at the ballot box. The borderline between civic action and lobbying is sometimes difficult to draw and may be blurred, but there can be no doubt that civic action has become a prime nudging force in determining the direction of politics. Higher educational standards and mobility and vastly improved global communication have served as catalysts. Gender and environmental issues and the transformation process in Central and Eastern Europe, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, would not have come about without the persistent action of non-state actors in the public sphere.

3.4  Civil Society The division between civil society, the state, and the market is necessarily conceptual, and overlaps and unclear edges exist in reality. In 1999, Salamon and colleagues, Helmut Anheier prominently among them, concluded that there was a

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vital need to improve the general awareness of [the nonprofit sector] in virtually every part of the world, and to monitor the trends affecting it on a more pervasive, and more sustained basis. The existence of a vibrant nonprofit sector is increasingly being viewed not as a luxury, but as a necessity for peoples throughout the world. Such institutions can give expression to citizen concerns, hold governments accountable, promote community, address unmet needs, and generally improve the quality of life. Putting this sector firmly on the mental map of the world is therefore a matter of some urgency. (1999, p. 38)

Modern nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), commonly referred to as civil society organizations (CSOs), have been officially recognized as partners of sorts in world affairs since 1947, when in accordance with Article 71 of the United Nations (UN) Charter, 41 NGOs were granted consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).2 Many of these organizations, let alone a plethora of others, have a much longer history than that, and many have acquired a place in the public sphere by their own activities and successes. Notable examples are the International Committee of the Red Cross, created at the initiative of Henri Dunant, a private citizen, in 1863, and the International Olympic Committee, founded in 1894 by Pierre de Coubertin. Both these organizations undoubtedly operate and are highly visible and influential in the public arena. Arguably, religious communities also continue to operate in the public sphere, and although some of these have had a particularly close relationship with governments in general and the nation state in particular, most of them are not formally part of the constitutional structure of the state (Strachwitz, 2019, p. 348). Considering that Christian churches trace their origin back to the first years of the Common Era (CE) and Islam to the seventh century CE, one may well contend that nongovernment has coinhabited the public space for a longer period of history than the nation state. Civil society has, however, not only traditionally been anything but coherent but has also always grossly underestimated the need to teach the general public what its overall mission and range of activities consist of. The perception of what civil society organizations can and cannot do is decidedly blurred and ill-informed. A typical misconception might read: “I don’t want a volunteer carrying out my heart surgery” (Elvidge, 2012, p. 30).3 In the eyes of many public decision-makers, the whole of civil society is about radical political protests that need to be curbed and controlled, whereas others associate it with volunteerism—which is correct, but not the whole picture—or with a cheap provision of social services—which is what public servants would approve of to alleviate the pressure on the government coffers. Few people realize that the civic space is about organized as well as unorganized civil society, about movements, organizations, and institutions, about “exit, voice, and loyalty” (Hirschman, 1970), about giving as opposed to exchanging and to applying force (Perroux, 1960), and, perhaps most importantly, about service provision, advocacy, watchdog functions, self-help, intermediaries, community building, political participation, and personal growth in complex and highly individualistic  Today, nearly 6000 NGOs enjoy this status.  John Elvidge quotes this statement, heard in a public discussion, as a typical example of the misunderstandings around the role of various players in the public sphere and, in this case, as an expression of purposeful derision of civil society. 2 3

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amalgams (Strachwitz, 2019, p. 10). Only if civil society and academia can bring the message across to the public that civil society is about all of these, can the notion of civil society as the third public arena beside the state and the market become entrenched as a concept of the modern public space (Anheier, 2019, pp. 1–2). Yet, beyond any doubt, a sizable number of civil society organizations today have an important public function. Sports clubs, welfare and health organizations, protest movements, and watchdogs are part of societal life and have learned to voice opinions in the public sphere. They can on occasion be extraordinarily powerful in setting the agenda, moving issues, nudging lawmakers, or restraining them. Admittedly, some find this easier than do others. Many traditional civil society organizations are caught up in a neo-corporatist arrangement with the state and depend on public money to perform their services. They find it more difficult to shed their subservient attitude than do the younger advocacy organizations that can rely on donors’ support. Recently, to offer just one example, the Fridays for Future movement has been successful in putting the issue of climate change back at the top of the political agenda. Public affairs without civil society participation is unthinkable, and the power of example is pushing more and more citizens everywhere in the world to actively contribute to public affairs and doing this in more ways than just by going to vote for a political party or leader once every few years. “Much of what Tocqueville saw as the reasons for modern democracies being lively and diverse and having the potential to integrate (the importance of associative life, of a community culture, and of religion) is just as important in twenty-first century society as it was then” (Kronenberg, 2013, p. 6). It has been argued that a theory of three interwoven arenas may at any time be surpassed by one of four, five, or more, as distinctions that have not so far been discovered are introduced. This is of course not impossible, with Popper’sf theory of falsification applying here as it does in any debate. However, it does seem unlikely that, as an alliance, a “figure” of three, historically and theoretically constitutes the most probable solution (Koschorke, 2010, p.  15). Although rediscovered in the twentieth century, this principle may be traced back much longer in history (Strachwitz, 2014, p. 20).

3.5  The Civic Space Hegel’s divide between the state and non-state led to a synonymous use of “state” and “public,” on one hand, and “non-state” and “private,” on the other. However, although Hegel’s concept of Buergerliche Gesellschaft is commonly translated as “civil society,” this is actually a misnomer, indeed a faulty translation of the term (Ilting, 1983, p. 316). What Hegel was referring to was the nonpublic sphere in its entirety and should be termed “bourgeois society” to distinguish it from the public sphere (Pozzo, 1990, pp. 599–600). It seems extraordinarily unfortunate that this misconception has developed into one of the most widespread misunderstandings about the public sphere in general and the role of civil society in particular.

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The civic space, on occasion but not always used as a synonym for “the space for civil society,” has seemingly grown considerably since Arato and Cohen argued that “the concept of civil society is more than a mere slogan” (Arato & Cohen, 1988, p. 40). Clearly, the civic space touches on the human and civil rights of individual citizens as much as it does on those of associative bodies and philanthropic institutions. However, the unclear definition also shows how much nearer the citizen is to civil society than to the modern state, despite the fact that political theory defines liberal democracies as ruled by the people.4 Adding the fact that volunteers are overwhelmingly active in civil society, it is reasonable to assume that civil society is in many ways the civic space, provided spontaneous civic action and individual public mindedness are counted in. “Indeed, if properly reconstructed, the concept can resolve several theoretical and practical problems confronted by contemporary analysis and social actors” (ibid.). This has not gone unnoticed by governments, who, while obviously being concerned with the practical rather than the theoretical problems, have developed an increasing suspicion that their own power might erode if not only the market, i.e., large multinational corporations, but also a third force gained a hold over citizens’ opinions, actions, and visions. Starting in countries such as Russia, Egypt, and Turkey, where civil society had mushroomed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but no longer suited the authoritarian regimes that were gaining political power, the phenomenon of measures being applied to roll back civil society has spread to almost every country in the world, including Western Europe (Bouchet & Wachsmann, 2019; Anheier et al., 2019) and North America. While these measures are commonly believed to be of a regulatory nature only, their dimension and thrust become much clearer if the whole set of instruments at the command of governments is taken into account. These may include reigning in CSO activities through carrots-and-sticks policies and philanthropic protectionism by way of patronage of acquiescent subsectors, as well as attempts to discredit CSOs. There may be restrictions regarding international funding or restrictions for CSOs on the basis of dubious counterterrorism measures. Domestic laws regulating the operation of CSOs more broadly may be manipulated by imposing new rules on registration, accounting, or financial and narrative reporting. Policies and practices affecting the rights of freedom of assembly and association may be coupled with criminalization and stigmatization of human rights defenders’ activities, while restrictions of freedom of expression online and offline may be stepped up to include intimidation and violent attacks against civil society actors (Ayvazyan, 2019, p. 8). More often than not, the courts are happy to comply with governments’ wishes, and the national press will usually side with the government, except when distasteful governmental regimes in faraway countries are concerned. Besides, civil society itself is hardly in a position 4  viz. Art. 20, 2 of the German Constitution (Grundgesetz): “Alle Staatsgewalt geht vom Volke aus—All state power originates with the people.” (1949)/Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America: “We the People of the United States…”(1789)/Preamble of the United Nations Charter: “We the peoples of the United Nations…” (1945—changed from the original draft wording: “The High Contracting Parties…”).

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to correctly assess what is happening. The CIVICUS State of Civil Society Report (2019) relies on bona fide information received from correspondents in various countries, which may or may not be comparable to those received from others and certainly contains a high degree of subjective assessment. For example, it has been only recently, and prompted by a court ruling against the German branch of ATTAC (Association pour la Taxation des Transactions Financière et l’Aide aux Citoyens), that the German civil society has come to realize that it may be in danger.5 In particular, soft measures including selective funding and regulation enforced under the pretext of fighting money laundering, tax evasion, and financing of terrorism (Anti-­ money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism, AMLCFT6) are not necessarily seen to be potentially connected to political maneuvering designed to crowd out civil society from the public sphere. Furthermore, we are seeing that governments and international governmental organizations are developing a taste for citizen participation, open government partnerships, and otherwise labeled formats of direct contact between the rulers and the ruled. Although this may be a good way of overcoming the increasing divide between the “political class” and increasingly frustrated citizens, it should not be overlooked that it may easily be manipulated in order to be able to present openness and dialogue in public while using events with uninformed citizens to keep those who have real knowledge on particular issues out of the debate. It remains to be seen whether this policy will ultimately succeed or whether the citizens concerned will undergo a gradual development and form an informal civil society movement and eventually a formalized civil society organization.

3.6  A New Paradigm Clearly, a new model for the public sphere is required that takes the talent, insight, civic engagement, and know-how of more than just the traditional contributors into account. Expertise of the highest degree is a resource that exists among the very different members of society, and none of this should be left untapped. One of the many reasons for gender equality always was that society could not afford to exclude half the citizens’ mental and emotional resources. This argument may also serve to drive home the argument that neither the insight vested in the individual citizen nor that collectively gathered in civil society—and in business for that matter—should be wasted if we are to be successful in meeting the challenges we face. The big question is what to do to ensure that this happens. At the moment, it seems that governments are informally losing out on their monopoly of the public 5  The CIVICUS 2019 State of Civil Society Report (https://www.civicus.org/index.php/state-of-­ civil-society-report-2019) ranks Germany in the top category as “open.” 6  The acronym AMLCFT denominates all actions taken to fight money laundering, tax evasion, and financing terrorism in the widest possible sense. The main intergovernmental agency dealing with these issues is the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

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sphere, are trying to save what they can, and are leaving it to providence what might possibly be the outcome. They profess to be set on innovation and refuse to take into account that innovation in technical matters implies an innovative solution to the dilemma of an antiquated political order. Whether this solution can be disruptive and at the same time evolutionary rather than repeating the mistakes of the twentieth century and attempting to create a “new man” by way of revolution is an open question. The answer will depend on how widespread a readiness for change may be and on how many centers actively develop models and ideas for a new order. It is of course a total misconception that new orders have come about as a result of a singular revolutionary act and an ensuing one-off brainstorming session. In each and every case, new arrangements had a longish history of preparation, of civil society at its very best designing and discarding competing ideas to a point where consensus could be achieved over a compromise. It is for this reason if for no other that we need to start thinking now about what the public sphere might look like in the future. Arguably, one of the most challenging tasks in reshaping the public sphere is to regain trust in the public sphere as such. Today, the majority of citizens are highly mistrustful of the government, politics, any large organization or institution, of business, and indeed of each other. This has a lot to do with the fact that “the system” has actively engaged in a growing mistrust of its citizens. Rules and controls have crowded out all previously entertained conventions of interaction between citizens and public bodies. For many, it is easily apparent that if they are not trusted, why should they trust others? The downside of this is that “findings suggest that individuals who distrust and fear to be exploited show self-serving, and hence untrustworthy, moral cognition themselves” (Weiss et al., 2018). The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer, while reporting an overall modest rise in the overall level of trust, shows that it is still far removed from being satisfactory. In the “general population” bracket, 56% trust businesses and NGOs, whereas 47% trust the government and media. In the “informed public” bracket, the figures are 69% for NGOs, 68% for businesses, and 58% for the government and media (Edelman, 2019, p. 5). One cannot envisage the roughly 50% of the citizens who trust neither businesses nor NGOs nor the state being more trustful if these three arenas decide to cooperate on a more level playing field. On the contrary, civil society in particular will have to be careful not be seen as part of the “system” or as having finally succumbed to government (and potentially business) pressure. Its reputation as the civic or citizens’ arena is at stake. If the idea of a new public sphere is to catch on, all concerned and most specifically civil society urgently need to improve on the trust placed in them. Antonio Gramsci, the Marxist philosopher and communist politician, was one of the first to introduce a modern concept of civil society into political theory. Although based on a Marxist concept of society as such, Gramsci’s ideas differ considerably from classical Marxism as much as from Leninist Bolshevism (Gramsci, 1971). Given Gramsci’s extensive thoughts about the existence and role of civil society, it is wrong to associate it with the existence of a liberal “Western-style” democracy and a political system that respects the rule of law. On the contrary, as events in Central and Eastern Europe, China, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and other parts of the world have demonstrated, civil society can on

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occasion conquer and dominate the public sphere in an autocratic surrounding and herald societal changes. In doing so, it faces two sorts of criticisms: 1. Activists are accused of only looking at one issue and not taking the complexity of public affairs into account. To this, one may respond by arguing both that politics too tend to attach supreme importance to comparatively small issues, in that they suit their political game, and that it is the debate and ultimately the compromise between different viewpoints and arguments that makes democracy. 2. CSOs are criticized for accusing others of not doing what they should be doing while not engaging in sustainably solving the problem. Again, there are two answers to that. First, this is an extremely one-sided view of civil society. Looking at it from the personal engagement angle, most volunteers are busy providing the vital services that CSOs offer and have been doing so for centuries. Second, the state (in this case, the German state) collects approximately 50% of people’s earned income by way of taxes and fees for the express reason that it is charged by the citizens to provide a legal framework, an infrastructure, security, educational facilities, social services, etc. To this end, the state has developed approximately 300,000 rules and regulations to be obeyed by each and every citizen at all times (Hardinghaus et al., 2013, p. 51) and is continually seeking to augment its hold on the citizenry. It seems grossly out of place to argue that others should be required to do what the citizens as principals have mandated the state as an agent to do. Those who argue in this manner should be reminded that “the obligation to be disobedient to the state is no longer sufficient—the point today is that the state needs to be obedient to the citizen” (Dahn, 2013). In the face of many attempts by the state, on occasion operating hand in glove with businesses, to reign in or crowd out other players in the public sphere and given the many failings of both the state and the market, it would seem no more than logical to reconstruct the public sphere as an open space to be occupied by those who wish to be included for as much time as they would wish to be there. This would pick up one of the most fundamental insights of the twentieth century, written in the face of Nazi and Bolshevik dictatorships—Karl Popper’s (1945) concept of an open society: It has been widely believed, and in [the twentieth] century more than any other, that rationality, logic, the scientific approach, call for a society which is centrally organized, and planned and ordered as a whole Popper has shown that this, beside being authoritarian, rests on a mistaken and superseded conception of science. Rationality, logic, and a scientific approach all point to a society which is “open” and pluralistic, within which incompatible views are expressed and conflicting aims pursued; a society in which everyone is free to investigate problem situations and to propose solutions; a society in which everyone is free to criticize the proposed solutions of others, most importantly those of the government, whether in prospect or application; and above all a society in which the government’s policies are changed in the light of criticism. (Magee, 1973, pp. 77–8)

Many people will argue that this well reflects the situation that Western liberal democracies are in: freedom of speech is guaranteed, public criticism of political and public affairs is not restricted, and pluralism is becoming an increasing aspect

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of society. In parts, this is of course true. However, looking at the widening divide between the political elite and the citizenry as a whole, the sharp decline of trust between the two, and the real manner of conducting public affairs, it seems reasonable to assume that there is considerable room for improvement. Habermas (1994, p. 361) has argued that you first need to determine whether this liberal model is not in fact concentrated on the state and may thus easily discard any notion of decisive participation. Furthermore, opposition to government policies of a more fundamental nature, whether this opposition is to an authoritarian regime or to reluctance to reframe policies, “involves bringing hostile legislators to voice opposition to the causes they support. It involves plenty of meetings, complicated logistics, incessant fundraising, and any number of boring tasks that can seem strangely disconnected from the noble purpose they supposedly serve” (Mounk, 2018, p.  187). Khanna (2011), while recognizing the stumbling blocks, remains confident. He describes our present age as a new middle age that we are compelled to live through before we reach a new renaissance era and argues that the only way to live through this age properly is by all collective entities—governments, corporations, religious communities, NGOs, academic institutions, and many others—learning to live with and respecting each other. He does not see this as a trial but as a dance in which everyone may join. In order to achieve this state of public affairs, adopting a more open approach is seemingly of essence. Habermas’s discourse theory may be useful. He puts the political process of forming opinions and eventually a public will at the center of a democratic society and argues in favor of an institutionalized procedure and matching communicative conditions (Habermas, 1994, p. 362). These clearly do not exist at present. Although any politician’s views are widely publicized, other citizens’ views are not. This is due both to a persisting state orientation in the media that automatically assumes politicians’ views to be more relevant and important and to the immense amount of funding available to politicians to help spread their views. To change this, a basic shift in outlook on society is necessary. A few elements of this disruptive shift shall be briefly discussed here: 1. I would argue that we need to go well beyond ideas of an “open government partnership,” citizen participation, and corporatist models of civil society involvement in public affairs. In order to achieve this paradigm shift, “raising citizens” (Mounk, 2018, p. 245) rather than specialists is the essential first step. Adapting educational curricula to include the knowledge base needed for performing in the public sphere is a precondition to changing attitudes (D’Ambrosio, 2018, p. 44). 2. Education alone will not suffice. Following education, participation and finally responsibility must evolve (Alcide de Gasperi, quoted in D’Ambrosio, 2018, p. 44). All evidence shows that big public projects do not take longer to realize whether an honest, transparent, and thorough process of stakeholder ­participation was organized from the very beginning. Big corporations have learnt that this is the more effective and, in the last instance, cheaper way to get things done.

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3. Rebuilding trust may be seen as a prime goal to restabilize society. Society cannot possibly exist on the basis of control mechanisms but needs to contain a core of mutual trust. Mechanisms to restore this trust have been put on the table; they need to be discussed and adopted (viz. Alter et al., 2019). 4. The survival of the fittest is as little suited to govern the market’s contribution to society as are Friedman’s notions of shareholder value. Extreme capitalism can be reined in by refocusing it toward stakeholder value and using sustainable and responsible development and measures to bridge rather than widen the divide between the rich and the rest of society. The expectation that the very rich “will transform the character of governments, shrinking the realm of compulsion and widening the scope of private control over resources” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1999, p. 256) cannot—and should not—persist. 5. Given the crisis of democracy and the failures of constitutional arrangements and procedures after long periods of seemingly good or at least adequate functioning, there are people who are looking with interest at systems that combine a market economy with an authoritarian government. Little do they realize that a China-type political order will not favor those who believe that they can exert more influence on such a system. However, to stop democracy from drifting in that direction, it has to acquire a new license to operate, a new lease on life. 6. The demise of the nation state will not be halted by slogans of “take back control,” and less so, since the inventors of the slogan are waiting for their country to enter into new global alliances (O’Toole, 2018, p. 169). The sooner everybody is made to understand that multiple real-life identities and loyalties have replaced a mythical loyalty to only one nation, the complexities of a twenty-first century public sphere will become apparent and be a subject of acclimatization. 7. The notion of three arenas into which individuals may move of their own free will to be part of whichever collectivity they wish to belong for a certain task or time is worth taking up. It underpins the supremacy and unique dignity of the individual human being, while not forgetting each human being’s responsibility for the community he or she happens to belong to by fate or chooses to belong to by choice, and of the society as a whole. According civil society with adequate and permanent representation seems therefore to be a logical step, all the more so as civil society actors bring presents of empathy, ideas, know-how, reputation, time, and resources to the table. The state may well be expected to relinquish powers in favor of a level playing field that embraces nongovernmental and nonbusiness players. 8. Given the growth of the world’s population, global challenges, of which climate change is arguably the most pressing, global communication as the result of the communicative revolution, the global fight for commodities, a globalized economy, and a number of other new elements of a contemporary paradigm, it seems that a global world order is not to be avoided, even if many citizens feel terrified at the thought. However, “Globalization is almost always written about in terms of how it operates within the existing order, rather than how it creates a new

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order” (Khanna, 2018, p. 48). In order to be acceptable and indeed workable, the new global world order will have to include a massive measure of subsidiarity, an extremely careful assessment of cultural differences and traditions, and a clear view as to which problem needs to be discussed, decided upon, and solved at which level of a multitier and multi-arena societal order.

3.7  Conclusions “There is a mounting perception that democracy is in retreat all over the world. […] International conditions are clearly less favorable for democracy today than they were in the years following the end of the Cold War” (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018, p.  204–205). However, that is not all! Today, besides the challenges of climate change, migration, the information technology (IT) revolution, and others, we should be addressing four issues that concern the public sphere: 1. the crisis of capitalism 2. the crisis of democracy 3. the crisis of the nation state7 4. the crisis of institutions Since 2020, a global pandemic on a scale never hitherto experienced needs to be added to this list of crises. Henry Kissinger titled an article published on April 3, 2020: “The coronavirus pandemic will forever alter the world order” (Kissinger, 2020). Given the enormity of the challenge and also given that both the private sector and the state in their traditional form are obviously part of the problem rather than part of the solution, it would seem rational to invite other players in the public sphere to join the search for a new world order. Just as “Rome was not built in one day,” a new world order will take time to evolve. However, we must now start discussing what it might look like. Neither economists nor engineers as such—nor politicians and public administrators for that matter—are going to be able to provide much help. It is for engaged and informed citizens to march on ahead, as they have done so many times before in history. Global society is necessarily coming. However, we need to prepare now for the political sphere that will carry it. As Khanna (2018, p. 63) writes: “We are building this global society without a global leader. Global order is no longer something that can be dictated or controlled top-­ down.” This is why creating a new and more comprehensive public sphere is so essential.

7  Listed in this order by Stephen B. Heintz, President, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in an address delivered at the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal, on September 5, 2019.

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References Alter, R., Strachwitz, R., & Unger, T. (2019). Philanthropy. Insight—Work in progress. Maecenata (Observatorium no. 31). Anheier, H. (2019, September 5). Die herausgeforderte Zivilgesellschaft—Quoi faire?. BBE Newsletter, no. 18. Anheier, H. K., Lang, M., & Toepler, S. (2019). Civil society in times of change: Shrinking, changing and expanding spaces and the need for new regulatory approaches. Economics: The Open-­ Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 13(2019–8), 1–27. Arato, A., & Cohen, J. (1988, May 1). Civil society and social theory. Thesis Eleven, 21(1), 40–64. Ayvazyan, K. (2019). The shrinking space of civil society—A report on trends, responses, and the role of donors. Maecenata (Opusculum no. 128). Bouchet, N., & Wachsmann, I. (2019). A matter of precaution—Watching the shrinking civic space in Western Europe. Maecenata (Observatorium No. 29). Civicus State of Civil Society Report (2019). Retrieved from https://www.civicus.org/index.php/ state-­of-­civil-­society-­report-­2019 D’Ambrosio, R. (2018). Democrazia e politica: risvolti etici. In R.  D’Ambrosio & C.  Venturi (Eds.), La democrazia: voci a confronto. Gregorian and Biblical Press. Dahn, D. (2013). Wir sind der Staat. Warum Volk sein nicht genügt. Rowohlt. (Translation by the author). Dahrendorf, R. (1985). Law and order. Stevens & Sons. Davidson, J. D., & Rees-Mogg, L. W. (1999). The sovereign individual. Touchstone. Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. Henry Holt. Edelman. (2019). 19th Edelman Trust Barometer. Retrieved from https://www.edelman.de/fileadmin/user_upload/2019_Edelman_Trust_Barometer_Global_Report.pdf Elvidge, J. (2012). The enabling state: A discussion paper. Carnegie UK Trust. Gramsci, A. [1929–1935, first published 1948–1951] (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. Lawrence & Wishart. Habermas, J. (1994). Faktizitaet und Geltung. Beitraege zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaates. Suhrkamp. Hardinghaus, B., Kuntz, K., & Neufeld, D. (2013). Mutter Staat. Der Spiegel, 12/2013, 52–58. Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty—Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states. Harvard University Press. Ilting, K.-H. (1983). Erlaeuterungen zu G.W.F.  Hegel, Die Philosophie des Rechts—Die Mitschriften Wannemann und Homeyer. Klett. Karakayali, S. (2013). Kosmopolitische Solidaritaet. In: APuZ 13–14/2013. (Translations by the author). Khanna, P. (2011). How to run the world—Charting the course to the next renaissance. Random House. Khanna, P. (2018, Summer). Bridges to everywhere—Connectivity as paradigm. Horizons, 12, 42–64. Kissinger, H.  A. (2020, 3 April). The coronavirus pandemic will forever alter the world order. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/ the-­coronavirus-­pandemic-­will-­forever-­alter-­the-­world-­order-­11585953005 Koschorke, A. (2010). Ein neues Paradigma der Kulturwissenschaften. In E.  Esslinger, T. Schlechtriemen, D. Schweitzer, & A. Zons (Eds.), Die Figur des Dritten—Ein kulturwissenschaftliches Paradigma (pp. 9–31). Suhrkamp. Kronenberg, V. (2013). Was hält die Gesellschaft zusammen? Ein Blick nach vorn. In: APuZ 13–14/2013. (Translations by the author). Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die—What history reveals about our future. Penguin Random House. Magee, B. (1973). Popper. Fontana.

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Mounk, S. (2018). The people vs. democracy—Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Harvard University Press. O’Toole, F. (2018). Heroic failure—Brexit and the politics of pain. Head of Zeus. Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteeneightyfour. Secker & Warburg. Perroux, F. (1960). Économie et société: contrainte, échange, don. Presses universitaires de France. Popper, K. (1945). The open society and its enemies. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pozzo, R. (1990). “Bourgeois” oder “citoyen”?—Zu Hegels Begriff der buergerlichen Gesellschaft. In K.-O.  Apel & R.  Pozzo (Eds.), Zur Rekonstruktion der praktischen Philosophie— Gedenkschrift für Karl-Heinz Ilting. Frommann-Holzboog. Rajan, R. (2019). The third pillar—How markets and the state leave the community behind. Penguin. Rancière, J. (2004). La cause de l’autre. In Rancière: Au bord du politique. Salamon, L. M., Anheier, H. K., List, R., Toepler, S., Sokolowski, S. W., & Associates. (1999). Global civil society. Dimensions of the nonprofit sector. The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. Sennett, R. (2012). Together—The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. Alan Lane. Smith, A. (1759). The theory of moral sentiments. Strachwitz, R. G. (2014). Social life and politics in voluntary organisations: An historical perspective. In M. Freise & T. Hallmann (Eds.), Modernizing democracy (pp. 19–30). Springer. Strachwitz, R.  G. (2019). Introduction. In Strachwitz (Ed.), Religious communities and civil Society in Europe (Vol. 1). De Gruyter. Voegelin, E. (1952). New science of politics. University of Chicago Press. Weiss, A., Pascal, B., & Mussweiler, T. (2018). Two-faced morality: Distrust promotes divergent moral standards for the self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44(12), 1712–1724.

Chapter 4

Dealing with Civility: Citizenship, Real Citizens, and the Science of Civil Society Paul Dekker Abstract  This chapter reflects on the civility of civil society and the ignorance of normativity in civil society research. The meanings assigned to “civility” vary widely in the literature, but two dimensions might be useful for structuring the conceptual field: good manners versus substantive civility (Edward Shils) and emphasis on social relations versus emphasis on politics. The focus here is on substantive and political civility, i.e., civicness. It turns out to be of minor importance for ordinary citizens when they characterize good citizenship, and it is often something to be avoided (Nina Eliasoph) when they practice active citizenship as volunteers. Nevertheless, it should be a key focus for researchers who want to take the “civil” part of civil society more seriously. Approaches for doing so are briefly discussed: the old idea of “cleaning” the sphere of civil society and getting rid of uncivil elements, dropping the idea of a societal sphere and focusing exclusively on civility (Dieter Rucht), reconceptualizing civil society as a civil(izing) sphere (Jeffrey Alexander), or focusing more on elements that can foster civility in voluntary associations. Keywords  Civicness · Civil society · Civility · Citizenship · Volunteering

4.1  Introduction In 2007, Helmut Anheier addressed the lack of interest in civility among scholars of global civil society: The failure to take adequate conceptual and empirical account of civility resulted from its implicit treatment, perhaps even being taken-for-granted, via the adjective ‘civil,’ and the focus on organizations and individuals suggested by the descriptive definition and its emphasis on observable elements. To remedy this neglect requires a revision of the definition of global civil society that makes the concept of civility explicit, and a refocus, indeed, broadening of the empirical approach taken. (Anheier, 2007a, p.  45; cf. Anheier, 2007b, 2010)

P. Dekker (*) Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_4

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Following a plea by Rupert Taylor (2004) to combine empirical social research with “moral and political understanding,” Anheier proposes a new definition of global civil society that makes civility explicit: Global civil society is the sphere of ideas, values, institutions, organizations, networks, and individuals that are based on civility, located between the family, the state, and the market and operating beyond the confines of national societies, polities, and economies. (Anheier, 2007a, p. 46)

The ignorance of or lack of interest in civility is not limited to global civil society but is typical of most literature on civil society. With regard to the concept in its national applications, civility has primarily been an implicit orientation, or just an assumption, quite similar to the manner in which Robert Putnam (1995, p.  665) focuses on social capital: “[For present purposes,] I am concerned with forms of social capital that, generally speaking, serve civic ends.” In addition, in the same manner, he and most social capital scientists after him acknowledge the “dark sides” of their concept; many writers about civil society will admit that uncivil things might happen under the cover of their concept (see, for example, Ben-Ner, Chap. 20 in this volume). Much of the research described in the empirical literature focuses on the shortcomings of civil society—deprived groups, lack of commitment, failing political impact, etc.—but normative and political issues are seldom addressed explicitly. Civility was not a big topic in the expanding research on civil society until 2010 (cf. Anheier, 2010), and it has not been since then. This could well reflect a more general reluctance in the modern social sciences to address normative considerations in research. I will come back to this at the end of this chapter. First, we will explore the meanings of civility in Sect. 4.2 and its political correlates in Sect. 4.3. Two empirical sections follow: Sect. 4.4 is about citizens’ ideas about citizenship, whereas Sect. 4.5 focuses on the political impact of volunteering. Against this background, we return to the lack of civility in research on civil society in Sect. 4.6.

4.2  Civility What is “civility”?1 Let me simply start with a dictionary—for a more sociological and historical introduction to the term, see Anheier’s “Civility” entry in the International Encyclopedia of Civil Society (Anheier, 2010). According to the Collins Essential English Dictionary (2nd edition, 2006), “civility” means “politeness, consideration, courtesy, tact, good manners, graciousness, cordiality, affability, amiability, complaisance, courteousness.” According to the same dictionary, the adjective “civil” has a broader range of meanings than does the noun “civility.” Civil refers to “1. of or occurring within the state or between citizens: civil unrest; 2. of or relating to the citizen as an individual: civil rights; 3. not part of the military, legal  Parts of this section and Sect. 4.5 overlap with Dekker (2009).

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or religious structures of a country: civil aviation; 4. polite or courteous: he seemed very civil and listened politely.” The noun associated with civil, i.e., the state or quality of being civil, is not civility but the unusual term “civilness.” “Civil” and “civic” seem to be more or less synonymous, and, for a non-native English speaker, it is sometimes difficult to understand when which term is used. It is civic action but civil obedience, civil society but civic culture and civic community, civil rights but civic duties, and there is both a civil service (the public servants) and a civic service (the alternative to military service). In daily life, civility is mostly associated with virtues and individual manners. People demonstrate civility when they hold back in the pursuit of their own self-­ interest; are polite and helpful to other people, but, on the other hand, are perhaps a little aloof; when they show an interest in public affairs but without being too fanatical; and so on. People show a lack of civility when they behave selfishly and aggressively, are oblivious to the norms and conventions of interaction in public, and are completely indifferent to issues of communal and public interest. These meanings in ordinary life are reflected in the philosophical and social science literature, cropping up in various guises and often accentuating a perspective of common interest and a relationship with public controversies and democratic politics. Edward Shils, to quote one of the most prominent thinkers on civility, draws a distinction between civility as “good manners” and “substantive civility”: The term “civility” has usually, both in the past and in its recent revival, been interpreted to mean courtesy, well-spokenness, moderation, respect for others, self-restraint, gentlemanliness, urbanity, refinement, good manners, politeness… Yet there is more to civility than good manners and conciliatory tones. Civility is a mode of political action… [This] Substantive civility is the virtue of civil society. It is the readiness to moderate particular, individual or parochial interests and to give precedence to the common good. The common good is not susceptible to an unambiguous definition; consensus about it is probably not attainable. It is however certainly meaningful to speak about it. Wherever two antagonistic advocates arrive at a compromise through recognition of a common interest, they redefine themselves as members of a collectivity, the good of which has precedence over their own particular objectives. (Shils, 1997, pp. 337–338, 340, 345)

Shils’ aspects of respect and courtesy or politeness, and self-restraint and moderation, are mentioned by many authors (Banfield, 1992; Billante & Saunders, 2002; White, 2006; Anheier, 2010; Rucht, 2011; Edyvane, 2017, 2020; Sifianou, 2019). This civility is not only a condition for interpersonal and intergroup relationships but also for political democracy and a democratic culture in society. Civility is necessary for mutual understanding, searching for common interests, and finding compromises between citizens, and it is required when agreement cannot be reached and people have to continue living with their conflicting interests and different views on the common good. By supporting self-regulation and preventing social clashes, civility can help obviate the need for state intervention. Civility is of particular importance in public spaces, regarding relations between people who might not know each other. Carter (1998, pp. 279 ff.) sees civility as “an ethic for strangers,” a moral duty, not dependent on liking the other person. Rucht

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(2011) posits “recognition of the other” as the moral rationale behind virtues such as self-control, compassion, and tolerance. Boyd (2006) describes civility as a way of coping with diversity. So does Keane (2003, p. 199): Civil are those individuals and groups who use such techniques as indirection, face-saving and self-restraint to demonstrate their commitment, in tactful speech and action and bodily manners, to the worldly principle of a peaceful plurality of morals.

Anheier (2010, p. 477) broadens the diversity argument to see civility as a core element of the idea of global civil society: Civility is still primarily seen in the context of national societies, especially in its capacity to help “manage” diverse communities. However, in the context of globalization, civility could play a similar role in the many emerging transnational arenas of economy and society, including culture and politics. Civility, as often tacit, culturally embedded “agreements to disagree agreeably” allows for routinization of collaborative behaviors that may involve actors that are different in a variety of respects. Civility creates predictability, and builds social capital through successful encounters across national, cultural, political, economic, and linguistic borders.

In the rest of this chapter, I do not follow the path to global civility but instead focus on politics as a sphere of diversity, in which civility is almost by definition seen as a virtue, whether to temper polarization or to increase engagement with public affairs.

4.3  Civility, Politics, and Civicness In the quote from the previous section, Shils (1997) distinguished between the civility of good manners and the substantive civility of civil society. Many authors make similar or somewhat different distinctions or polarities. Here are just a few examples (see Sifianou, 2019, for more). Boyd (2006) distinguishes between formal and substantive civility, Laden (2019) likewise between civility of politeness and civility of responsiveness, and Keith and Danisch (2020, p.  18) between weak civility (“to maintain the appearance of comity, ease, comfort and belonging”) and strong civility (“to engage differences in a sense that will deepen a sense of community and over time help communities move towards nonviolent systemic change”).2 Edyvane (2017, 2020) distinguishes between civility in conduct and civility in attitude and between an ethical concept (behave politely) and a political concept (behave as a person with rights and duties). I think there are perhaps two main dimensions behind these and other distinctions: one between form and content (the vertical dimension in Fig.  4.1) and one between the sphere of social interactions and the sphere of

2  Keith and Danisch (2020, p.  18) call these “communication practices” and add a third one: “Pseudocivility. The invocation of weak civility norms against strong civility behaviors, resulting in a refusal to engage on the grounds that engaging some differences is always uncivil, even if the difference is arguably of great public and moral importance.”

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substantive civicness social

political

politeness good manners Fig. 4.1  Civicness and politeness in a two-dimensional civility space

politics.3 The dimensions are seen as related in the literature, with what I will call politeness (how to behave decently) and civicness (how to be a good citizen)4 as primary focus points—although in some countries, the literature about the restoration of civility in politics and media is concentrated in the bottom right of the scheme, and there has always been a good deal of moralizing literature in the opposite corner. In the “civicness” corner, people are expected to be civil as members of a political community. Here, various authors stress more active and assertive values as being part of civility. In the case of discriminatory and unsustainable policies and social practices, civility could imply a duty to civil disobedience and provoking conventions. Civility “values diversity, disagreement, and the possibility of resistance” (Carter, 1998, p. 242). It implies tensions and ambivalences in various ways (White, 2006) and calls for social conformity and acceptance as well as civic courage. People should be not only tolerant and ready to revise their opinions but also self-confident enough to engage in controversies and politics. The tolerance side of civility might undercut the commitment to active citizenship and encourage passivity (Walzer, 1974). Empirical evidence has been found for a kind of trade-off between the two (Mutz, 2006): in more diverse groups, tolerance and mutual understanding may rise, but the ability to act collectively may decrease. Conservatives and progressives, communitarians and liberals, will take different positions on these issues, and there are shifts over time and differences between 3  I am aware that the vocabulary of “spheres” is vague. The political sphere here refers both to political institutions (formal politics, the state) and to the disputed common good of a society and the direction in which it should go. 4  See Dekker (2009) for my reflections on “civicness” as a normative term. See Paul Lichterman (2012, p. 211) for an interesting approach to “civic” as a “descriptive rather than evaluative term,” based on the American pragmatism of John Dewey and others: “Civic, in this pragmatic approach, refers to people participating in voluntary, collective problem-defining and problem-solving action that participants imagine to be significant to some collective identity, not necessarily their own, whether local, national, or global.” My problem with this definition is less a lack of normativity than the breadth of “some” (= any) collective identity.

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cultures with regard to the priorities. For interesting cross-national comparisons, see, for instance, Almond and Verba (1963/1989) and Pye (1999). In The Civic Culture, first published in 1963, Almond and Verba show how individuals and cultures in Europe and America combine subject and activist orientations. For Asian cultures, Pye (1999) analyzes different patterns of general norms of personal interaction in intimate relationships and public relationships concerning superior–inferior relationships, control of human aggression and management of conflict situations, and how these facilitate or impede democratic developments. Several authors stress the importance of civility in the social sphere for a civilized political sphere, for instance, in terms of the importance of the well-anchored principles of nonviolence or the importance of social trust between citizens with different interests and ideals (Almond & Verba, 1963/1989). Good manners are a condition for civilized disagreement about political goals. In these relations between elements of civility, the notion of civility itself is an issue of social and political controversies. Civility can be translated into both respect for the powerful and support for the struggle of the powerless. Civility can be used equally well as an argument for demanding equal rights and as an argument for declaring the associated demands to be unfit, uncivil. A civil discussion about the limits of civil disobedience can go hand in hand with a deeper conflict about the value of broader “incivility as dissent” (Edyvane, 2020; cf. Zerrilli, 2014; Eliasoph, 2011; Peterson, 2019, p. 30 ff.). In the following sections, we will explore the notion of civicness empirically in public opinion about good citizenship and in the connection of civic participation with politics.

4.4  Good Citizenship According to Citizens Experts see civility as a mix of politeness, tolerance, care for others, interest in the common good, and a readiness to protest. However, what about the objects of these reflections? How do citizens themselves think they should behave? I am not aware of any research on people’s ideas about civility,5 but people have been asked about good citizenship in various large-scale surveys and small-scale qualitative research projects. The first major survey to focus on good citizenship was probably the study published in 1963 by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1989) on the political culture in Mexico, the United States, the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Italy at the end of the 1950s. After defining the ideal of the politically engaged citizen, they pose the question: “If the model democratic citizen is active, participating, and influential, is this what the ordinary man aspires to be?” (Almond & Verba, 1989, 5  By this I mean research on what civility means as an ideal to ordinary citizens, not research on how civil people are according to researchers (see, for instance, Ferriss, 2002; Labigne, 2014) or how uncivil other people, especially politicians, are according to ordinary citizens (see, for instance, Mutz, 2016, and contributions in Boatright et al., 2019).

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p. 119). To investigate this, they used surveys to ask about the desire for involvement by citizens in the local community and politics. Support for an active role for the citizen (“attending meetings,” “joining an organisation that is concerned with local interests,” etc.) varied from 10% among Italian respondents to 51% among American respondents. Less active involvement (“taking an interest in” and “informing oneself about” local affairs, “going out to vote”) was seen as desirable by 22% of the Italian and 27% of the American respondents. Added together, that is 32% of Italians and 78% of Americans, with between them the Mexicans (59%), West Germans (60%), and residents of the UK (70%). Exerting influence on and participating in decision-making were recurring themes in people’s ideas about active citizenship (Almond & Verba, 1989, pp.  126–130). However, this might have been because the researchers themselves were focusing strongly on politics.6 In an approach based less on political science, Robert Lane (1965) conducted interviews with 15 working class and lower middle class men in Eastport in the United States in 1957/58 to glean their ideas about citizenship. The lengthy interviews (averaging 12 h each!) revealed four main ideas about good citizenship, referring to being “a moral man” (unselfish, honest, tolerant), “a good family man,” “a good community member” (helping others, going to church, donating blood), and “a good member of a political community” (being informed, having opinions, voting, paying taxes). He concludes among other things: … the political scientist at least, and perhaps any middle class observer, is likely to think of voting and participation in the democratic process as central to the citizen concept. I observed that about half of the men mentioned voting in their definition of citizenship, and a few others included an attention to public issues in one form or another. For these people, it was possible, then, to achieve the status of good citizen by discharge of their electoral obligations. But for others, the idea of a substantial political element in the idea of citizenship came as an afterthought or not at all. (Lane, 1965, p. 747)

Conover et al. (1991) used population surveys and focus groups to ask American and British subjects the following question: “The term ‘citizen’ means different things to different people. When you hear the word ‘citizen’ what do you think of first: a person who is a member of the community, or a person who has legal rights and duties?” The surveys showed that around two-thirds of Americans initially thought of rights and duties, whereas two-thirds of the British respondents thought first about membership in the community. According to the researchers, this difference could be caused by the smaller size and greater cultural homogeneity of Great Britain. More interesting for the researchers was the difference in the focus groups’ reactions to the question. Most of the British respondents had difficulty even forming a view about the concept: they associated it with the French Revolution and, although the term had been used a lot in recent years, did not regard it as a usual or meaningful concept. Members of the American focus groups, by contrast, used the notion of citizenship naturally and were familiar with the distinction drawn in the 6  That applies even more to the study by Theiss-Morse (1993). She distils statements about good citizenship from (political) theories of democracy and then distinguishes citizens’ ideas about citizenship based on reactions from citizens to those statements.

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question. When asked what a good citizen should do, the American focus groups mainly suggested tangible citizen responsibilities such as paying taxes, helping to defend the country in times of war, voting, and also protesting against a bad law. The British focus groups tended to refer more to general aspects such as adhering to norms and rules and politeness. In addition to these broadly endorsed basic obligations, a minority of respondents in both countries suggested moral obligations such as looking after fellow citizens, volunteering, and taking the initiative when something goes wrong in the community. The British focus groups more often added the caveat that people could also be good citizens in the private sphere, for example, in bringing up their children. The main conclusion from this study was that there were no model liberal and communitarian citizen typologies but there were differences of emphasis: the British were more oriented toward the community than were the Americans. Robert Wuthnow (1998) asked American respondents in a survey what was needed to be a good citizen. No fewer than 90% of the respondents believed that it was highly important “to be a person of strong moral character,” making this the most strongly endorsed characteristic. The importance of a strong personal moral certainty also emerged from the interviews conducted by the author. The respondents were concerned about a growing moral uncertainty resulting from the many changes and the surfeit of conflicting information in modern society. Contrasting with the idea espoused by “political scientists and community leaders” that good citizenship demanded that everyone should take part in volunteering, political campaigns, and associational life, the interviewees argued that everyone should act in accordance with his or her specific talents. Devoting efforts to parenting or professional life can also be a form of good citizenship (Wuthnow, 1998, pp. 157–178). In The Netherlands, we used open questions in 1996 and 2004 to ask what “a good citizen” does and does not do. According to the responses, the most important quality of a good citizen is being a social person: not being a burden on others, having a positive attitude (tolerance, understanding), and also doing good for others. People mention volunteering but more in an informal sense of helping others than in the formal sense of doing things for or in organizations. As well as this social side, respondents mention other aspects such as obeying the law, not driving too fast, not committing crimes, etc. A large majority of the respondents do not mention either pure politics or the intimate sphere but rather attitudes and behaviors in the more or less public space in between. The focus is on responsibilities toward other, less well-known citizens and toward the community as a whole. Active political involvement is not part of this (Dekker, 2009). Overall, qualitative studies have found that the “good citizen” is more socially than politically engaged. Where politics does figure, this is more about voting as a civic duty than about purposive participation. This is probably not unique to the countries mentioned so far. In Table 4.1, I present findings from countries all over the world, taken from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2014

Country (and average) Mean national scores (72) Australia (75) India (67) Japan (70) Philippines (82) South Korea (73) Taiwan (71) Austria (69) Belgium (66) Croatia (74) Czech Republic (66) Denmark (72) Finland (67) France (69) Georgia (79) Germany (69) Hungary (67) Israel (72) Iceland (74) Lithuania (69) The Netherlands (72) Norway (75) Poland (67) Russia (65)

Obey lawsb 14 16 11 19 7 13 19 9 16 14 21 12 16 11 13 12 23 14 13 15 11 10 20 18

Pay taxesc 12 13 −3 19 2 14 15 7 14 12 21 11 15 16 14 13 20 11 11 16 10 11 13 15

Voted 8 11 10 7 11 11 1 7 5 4 5 18 9 15 8 5 12 6 12 12 6 15 8 8

Help in countrye 4 4 6 −4 5 −2 8 10 1 12 0 2 3 −1 14 5 −5 10 6 7 3 1 5 −1

Understandf 4 5 −5 0 0 3 −1 1 9 5 8 4 10 6 1 4 5 1 6 0 8 2 0 3

Monitor politicsg 0 5 −3 4 4 2 2 −3 −1 −6 −8 −1 0 −5 −3 0 −1 5 3 3 6 2 0 −4

Help in worldh −9 −16 −6 −9 −5 −17 −9 −9 −10 0 −10 −12 −15 −14 −5 −8 −20 −18 −9 −13 −9 −5 −7 −13

Table 4.1  The relative importance of 9 features of a good citizen in 34 countries: deviations from national averagesa Boycotti −13 −10 −3 −15 −18 −6 −11 −6 −12 −15 −15 −12 −6 −12 −17 −8 −11 −17 −14 −25 −15 −16 −19 −14

(continued)

Civic involvementj −20 −28 −7 −22 −6 −18 −25 −17 −20 −25 −23 −23 −32 −16 −26 −24 −22 −13 −28 −14 −21 −22 −20 −12

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Obey lawsb 18 15 8 10 7 6 18 12 11 15 13

Pay taxesc 14 14 12 11 12 8 18 6 6 8 13

Voted 3 3 −2 14 4 8 4 7 −3 10 5

Help in countrye 6 11 9 −2 4 5 1 5 9 12 3

Understandf 4 5 6 5 7 −3 7 1 6 6 2

Monitor politicsg −6 −2 −4 7 −7 −4 4 2 12 −5 8

Help in worldh −4 −7 0 −8 −6 −1 −14 −3 2 5 −16

Boycotti −14 −15 −6 −7 −5 −6 −14 −18 −20 −27 −12

Civic involvementj −21 −24 −21 −29 −17 −13 −24 −11 −23 −23 −17

Reading example: For Australians, the average importance of the nine traits is 75 on a 0–100 scale. Always obeying the law scores the highest (75 + 16 = 91) and being active in social and political associations the lowest (75 − 28 = 47) Source: ISSP citizenship module (2013–2016), population aged 18 and older, weighted results a “There are different opinions on what it takes to be a good citizen. As far as you are concerned personally… how important is it …?” Answers from 1 (not at all important) to 7 (very important) are recoded as 0–100. Shown are deviations from the national average score for all nine traits. Bold = most important; italics = least important b … always to obey laws and regulations c … never to evade taxes d … always to vote in elections e … to help people in (your country) who are worse off than yourself f … to try to understand the reasoning of people with other opinions g … to keep an eye on the actions of the government h … to help people in the rest of the world who are worse off than yourself i … to choose products for political, ethical, or environmental reasons, even if they cost a bit more j … to be active in social and political associations

Country (and average) Slovak Republic (62) Slovenia (72) Spain (79) Sweden (74) Switzerland (72) Turkey (85) United Kingdom (73) South Africa (73) Chile (76) Venezuela (79) United States (77)

Table 4.1 (continued)

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citizenship module.7 Respondents are asked about the importance of nine activities for good citizenship; unfortunately, there is no mention of (pro-)social behavior in local communities. Almost everywhere, respondents give high scores to activities related to obedience (obey laws and pay taxes). The typical civil society act of being “active in social and political associations” languishes at the bottom by a large margin. Voting takes third place overall. When explicitly asked about voting, many people conform to the moral duty, but it is much less usual for them to suggest voting themselves as an example of good citizenship.

4.5  Volunteering as Civics? Voluntary associations are supposed to be of special relevance to developing civicness because they bring together people from different social groups as citizens, in a more or less public setting. Theorists and policy makers hope that participation in “civic” associations naturally teaches people how to be “civil” – to be polite, respectful, tolerant, and decent to one another. They also hope that learning this face-to-face civility goes naturally with learning to act “civicly” – that is, to press for wider changes, including political policies, that will extend respect and decency throughout society. These three elements – civility, civicness, and the civic association – come from different strands of theorizing about civil society … … When civic associations bring civility (decent, face-to-face consideration of others) together with civicness (fighting for social and political change) they can find an important key to lasting transformation and the achievement of the good society. (Eliasoph, 2011, pp. 220–221)

This is basically (with more stress on collective self-help and less on political action) what de Tocqueville saw in America in the 1830s and what Putnam (1995, 2000) saw as (threatened) civic community and as a source of social capital again at the end of the twentieth century. In the setting of diverse community-oriented voluntary associations, citizens can develop social trust, experience feelings of political efficacy, broaden their perspectives, discover issues of common interest, and develop collective action. In reality, associations nowadays are often quite homogeneous (Theiss-Morse & Hibbing, 2005) and often cover a very limited area of interest. The promotion of group interests can also lead to a narrowing of perspective and acting against the interests of the wider community (Bell, 1998). A modern consumerist sports club is quite different from the kind of voluntary associations that de Tocqueville studied long ago (Dekker, 2014). They were often focused on community problems—“build schools, hospitals, and jails”—which acted as a natural bridge to politics. Voluntary associations were often multipurpose groups (looking after interests, socializing, and so on) with an important role in people’s daily lives, more important than modern specialized organizations focusing on a specific 7  Fieldwork September 2013–June 2016, version 2.0 (2016-8-24). GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA6670 Data file Version 2.0.0, https://doi.org/10.4232/1.12590. See Bolzendahl and Coffé (2013) for similar findings in the ISSP survey 10 years earlier.

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interest or one leisure need. They are less important for people today, and the amount of time spent in voluntary associations is generally very small compared to the many hours of paid work, study, family life, and informal socializing. The majority of present-day voluntary associations are not the “schools of democracy” that de Tocqueville saw all those years ago. However, even for voluntary associations and volunteers seeking to address social issues and serious problems in their communities, there are reasons to question their civicness. This is what Nina Eliasoph (1998, p. 63) found among a number of American groups: Silencing public-inspirited political conversation was, paradoxically, volunteers’ way of looking out for the common good. Volunteer work embodied, above all, an effort aimed at convincing themselves and others that the world makes sense, and that regular people really can make a difference. To show each other and their neighbors that regular citizens really can be effective, really can make a difference, volunteers tried to avoid issues that they considered “political.” In their effort to be open and inclusive, to appeal to regular, unpretentious fellow citizens without discouraging them, they silenced public-spirited deliberation, working hard to keep public-spirited conversation backstage.

There is also the conclusion from a study of a group of Japanese housewives who helped disabled people: The longer a woman participated in the volunteer world, the more likely she was to blame politics for social situations that she found unacceptable. Nevertheless, this blame seldom drove a volunteer to conclude that she must dedicate herself to changing the structure of politics and policy to eliminate those situations. Instead, she often remained committed to avoiding politics when possible. Volunteers spoke of the importance of individuals, of the world close to home, of “human networks”. (LeBlanc, 1999, p. 112)

Or in a study about volunteers in American mobile soup kitchens (MSKs): … as food charity has become an American pastime, it has led to the institutionalization of emergency food services which, in turn, has come at the cost of more profound changes in the way poverty and homelessness are addressed through policy. By participating with programs like MSK, volunteers may come to confuse their efforts to address problems symptomatic of homelessness with efforts that might address its underlying structural and systemic causes. (Horvath, 2020, p. 992)

In these and other cases (cf. Guenther, 2017; Malafaia et al., 2017), volunteering, even for collective issues, such as injustice and suffering, does not lead to political concerns and involvement. In fact, it is quite the opposite: this volunteering might be experienced as an alternative to politics. In statistical analyses of individual behaviors, we usually find positive relationships between social volunteering and political involvement, but that is probably due to the common backgrounds of both and not because of the civilizing–politicizing effects of civic participation (Dekker, 2014).

4.6  Civility in Further Research on Civil Society Should we, as civil society researchers, devote more attention to civility? If so, how might we do that?

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It seems clear to me that civility warrants more attention. Those not wishing to focus on the “civil” part of civil society can probably still carry out their research empirically as a study of the nonprofit sector or third sector, of voluntary associations or of social and political participation or volunteering. However, anyone purporting to study civil society must be able to explain what is civil about the object of their study or how their research relates to the expectations and aspirations that are (or were) associated with civil society as a public and normative concept. It will not do to appropriate a term because of its political and social attractiveness or its political theoretical embedding and then to act as if it is about nothing more than a delimitation of a section of society or a set of empirical phenomena. Civil society is something worth striving for, despite the very different and sometimes contradictory ideas about precisely what it is that is worth striving for. In that regard, the concept is akin to the notion of democracy. Moreover, just as political science is sometimes referred to as the science of democracy or seeking to promote democracy and just as medical science is about combating disease and promoting good health, and not simply about studying the body and mind, so too a “science of civil society” can perfectly well have the promotion of civility as one of its aims. That does not rule out research on uncivil phenomena (on the contrary) and also does not imply the employment of research for the promotion of specific values; but it can contribute to focus and relevance. How can civility play a role? I see four ways to use civility in civil society research. First, civility might be seen as what is common in a civil society that is defined as a sphere or conglomerate of interactions and associations or, in most cases, simply organizations of voluntarily associating citizens. After defining it as distinct from the state, economic, and intimate spheres, the question that then arises is whether the organizations that are left are sufficiently civil and whether glaring examples of a lack of civility—the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia, or Al Qaeda, for example—should not be banished to the “uncivil society” (Roggeband & Glasius, 2020). There might be a quick consensus about the most extreme cases, but, thereafter, things will rapidly become complicated: civility is multidimensional, organizations have different facets, they bring about unintended consequences in the longer term, etc. It seems unlikely to me that civility criteria will be sufficient to arrive at a precise definition of civil society as a societal sphere containing certain voluntary associations; nonetheless, a discussion about this can be useful. Second, civility can be a reason to give up attempts at a spatial understanding of civil society and to replace it with research into civility per se. That is the view propagated by Dieter Rucht (2011), among others: The conception of civil society as a space in conflict with or opposition to the state made sense when civil-society actors were mobilised to abolish the remnants of an absolutist state in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or to challenge Communist, right-wing or religious-­fundamentalist authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century and the present. Although it still prevails in the minds of most scholars and the public at large, this spatial conception of civil society is more or less outdated in contemporary liberal-representative democracies. (Rucht, 2011, p. 399)

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In this historical perspective—and perhaps taking the victory of liberal democracy for granted too readily—Rucht rejects the idea of civility as something that is a part of society and propagates it as a universal yardstick. The entire society, Rucht argues, is to be analyzed as civil society: … neither the so-called “third sector” (beyond the state and the economy) or differently defined societal subsystems should be defined categorically as civil society. Nor should “civility” be used as a behavioural yardstick to measure non-state and non-economic actors only. Why should the norm of civility, which is probably most appropriately defined as “recognition of the other”, not be valid when people act as politicians, state employees, heads of corporations, teachers in private schools, and parents and children in the family context? (Rucht, 2011, p. 400)

Third, civility can lead to a change in the spatial understanding of civil society. Instead of giving up civil society in the name of civility, Jeffrey Alexander reconceptualizes civil society in the perspective of growing substantial civility. He recognizes the irrelevance of many voluntary associations and stresses the relevance of institutions such as the mass media and the judiciary and political organizations in a broader civilization process of expanding and defending the principles of equality and justice and the inclusion of the disadvantaged and outsiders: We need a new concept of civil society as a civil sphere, a world of values and institutions that generates the capacity for social criticism and democratic integration at the same time. Such a sphere relies on solidarity, on feelings for others whom we do not know but whom we respect out of principle, not experience, because of our putative commitment to a common secular faith. . . .[C]ivil society should be conceived as a solidary sphere, in which a certain kind of universalizing community comes to be culturally defined and to some degree institutionally enforced. To the degree that this solidary community exists, it is exhibited and sustained by public opinion, deep cultural codes, distinctive organizations—legal, journalistic and associational—and such historically specific interactional practices as civility, criticism, and mutual respect. (Alexander, 2006, p. 4, 31)

The civil sphere is the public battlefield of emancipation movements, vested powers, and countermovements, distinguished from non-civil spheres such as the economy and family life. The civil sphere can be fragmented and its boundaries vague and shifting, but it is still a good idea to focus on it as the societal center of growing civility. Fourth and finally, it is possible to hold on to the notion of voluntarily associating citizens as the core of civil society. It clusters in an associational sphere that is distinct from the state and its politics for professionals, the economy, and people’s private lives. Civility could then be the perspective from which to analyze this sphere, not with the assumption that it has a monopoly or at the least a highly prominent position in the defense and dissemination of civility but rather searching for conditions and interventions to foster civility. Different aspects of civility can be in the picture here, both on the more social side of being able to deal with diversity in daily life and showing respect for strangers and on the more political side of civicness, which I have placed at the forefront in this chapter. Further research in the same vein could delve more deeply into citizens’ ideals of civility and ideas about how to approach them, to be investigated using interactive methods such as focus

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groups (which, by the way, could be seen as a modern version of de Tocqueville’s freely associating citizens). I find Alexander’s approach most intriguing and, as an empirical researcher, the final option more attractive. I am unsure about how Helmut Anheier’s ideas relate to this fourfold division. In the second quote at the beginning of this chapter, he persists in localizing civil society outside the sphere of the family, state, and market, but precisely what it is in his broad summing up of “ideas, values, institutions, organizations, networks, and individuals” that makes this a distinct sphere is not entirely clear to me. He is more specific when talking about the content of the civility of (global) civil society in his Encyclopedia contribution: [C]ivility offers the field of global civil society research potentially an explicit “independent” and “dependent variable”: to what extent, under what conditions and how is civil society able or unable to create, maintain, and grow zones of nonviolence and predictability at local, national, international, and transnational levels? (Anheier, 2010, p. 477)

For Anheier, civility is primarily a construct of behavioral characteristics (nonviolent, predictable, also facilitating social cooperation) and not so much of orientations toward the common good, politics, and collective action, i.e., aspects of civicness that I personally find more appealing. That might be a question of personal taste and specialization, but it would be interesting to hear more from Helmut Anheier about the substantive aspects of civility and how they are embodied in a sphere of civil society. That does not have to be a book with 800 pages; half of that might suffice.

References Alexander, J. C. (2006). The civil sphere. Oxford University Press. Almond, G. A., & Verba, S. (1989). The civic culture. Sage. (Original work published 1963). Anheier, H. K. (2007a). Bringing civility back in—Reflections on global civil society. Development Dialogue, 49, 41–51. Anheier, H.  K. (2007b). Reflections on the concept and measurement of global civil society. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 8(1), 1–15. Anheier, H. K. (2010). Civility. In H. K. Anheier, S. Toepler, & R. A. List (Eds.), International encyclopedia of civil society (pp. 475–477). Springer. Banfield, E. C. (Ed.). (1992). Civility and citizenship in liberal democratic societies. Paragon House. Bell, D. A. (1998). Civil society versus civic virtues. In A. Gutman (Ed.), Freedom of association (pp. 239–272). Princeton University Press. Billante, N., & Saunders, P. (2002). Six questions about civility. The Centre for Independent Studies (Occasional paper 82). Boatright, R. G., Shaffer, T. J., Sobieraj, S., & Young, D. G. (Eds.). (2019). A crisis of civility? Political discourse and its discontents. Routledge. Bolzendahl, C., & Coffé, H. (2013). Are ‘good’ citizens ‘good’ participants? Testing citizenship norms and political participation across 25 nations. Political Studies, 61(S1), 45–65. Boyd, R. (2006). The value of civility? Urban Studies, 43(5/6), 863–878. Carter, S. L. (1998). Civility: Manners, morals, and the etiquette of democracy. Harper.

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Conover, P.  J., Crewe, I.  M., & Searing, D.  D. (1991). The nature of citizenship in the United States and Great Britain: Empirical comments on theoretical themes. Journal of Politics, 53(3), 800–832. Dekker, P. (2009). Civicness: From civil society to civic services? VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 20(3), 220–238. Dekker, P. (2014). Alexis de Tocqueville did not write about soccer clubs. In M.  Freise & T. Hallmann (Eds.), Modernizing democracy? Associations and associating in the 21st century (pp. 45–58). Springer. Edyvane, D. (2017). The passion for civility. Political Studies Review, 15(3), 344–354. Edyvane, D. (2020). Incivility as dissent. Political Studies, 68(1), 93–109. Eliasoph, N. (1998). Avoiding politics. Cambridge University Press. Eliasoph, N. (2011). Civil society and civility. In M. Edwards (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of civil society (pp. 220–231). Oxford University Press. Ferriss, A. L. (2002). Studying and measuring civility: A framework, trends, and scale. Sociological Inquiry, 72(3), 376–392. Guenther, K. M. (2017). How volunteerism inhibits mobilization. Social Movement Studies, 16(2), 240–253. Horvath, A. (2020). The transformative potential of experience: Learning, group dynamics, and the development of civic virtue in a mobile soup kitchen. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 31, 981–994. Keane, J. (2003). Global civil society. Cambridge University Press. Keith, W., & Danisch, R. (2020). Beyond civility: The competing obligations of citizenship. Pennsylvania State University Press. Labigne, A. (2014). The attitudinal dimensions of civility. Voluntary associations and their role in France, Germany, and the United States. Nomos. Laden, A.  S. (2019). Two concepts of civility. In R.  G. Boatright, T.  J. Shaffer, S.  Sobieraj, & D.  G. Young (Eds.), A crisis of civility? Political discourse and its discontents (pp.  9–30). Routledge. Lane, R. E. (1965). The tense citizen and the casual patriot: Role confusion in American politics. Journal of Politics, 27(4), 735–760. LeBlanc, R. M. (1999). Bicycle citizens. University of California Press. Lichterman, P. (2012). Reinventing the concept of civic culture. In J. C. Alexander, R. N. Jacobs, & P.  Smith (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of cultural sociology (pp.  207–231). Oxford University Press. Malafaia, C., Luhtakallio, E., Menezes, I., & Neves, T. (2017). Being civic while disavowing politics. Current Sociology, 66(5), 769–787. Mutz, D. C. (2006). Hearing the other side. Cambridge University Press. Mutz, D.  C. (2016). In-your-face politics: The consequences of uncivil media. Princeton University Press. Peterson, A. (2019). Civility and democratic education. Springer. Putnam, R.  D. (1995). Tuning in, tuning out: The strange disappearance of social capital in America. Political Science and Politics, 28(4), 664–683. Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster. Pye, L. W. (1999). Civility, social capital, and civil society. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 29(4), 763–782. Roggeband, C.  M., & Glasius, M.  E. (2020). Uncivil society. In R.  A. List, H.  K. Anheier, & S.  Toepler (Eds.), International encyclopedia of civil society. Springer. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­3-­319-­99675-­2_6-­1 Rucht, D. (2011). Civil society and civility in twentieth-century theorizing. European Review of History—Revue Européenne d’Histoire, 18(3), 387–407. Shils, E. (1997). In S. Grosby (Ed.), The virtue of civility. Liberty Fund.

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Sifianou, M. (2019). Im/politeness and in/civility: A neglected relationship? Journal of Pragmatics, 147, 49–64. Taylor, R. (2004). Interpreting global civil society. In R. Taylor (Ed.), Creating a better world: Interpreting global civil society (pp. 1–10). Kumarian Press. Theiss-Morse, E. (1993). Conceptualizations of good citizenship and political participation. Political Behavior, 15, 355–380. Theiss-Morse, E., & Hibbing, J. R. (2005). Citizenship and civic engagement. Annual Review of Political Science, 8, 227–249. Walzer, M. (1974). Civility and civic virtue in contemporary America. Social Research, 41(4), 593–611. White, M. (2006). An ambivalent civility. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 31(4), 445–460. Wuthnow, R. (1998). Loose connections. Joining together in America’s fragmented communities. Harvard University Press. Zerrilli, L. (2014). Against civility: A feminist perspective. In A. Sarat (Ed.), Civility, legality and justice in America (pp. 107–131). Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 5

Successful Failure: Functions and Dysfunctions of Civil Society Organizations Wolfgang Seibel

Abstract  Although the crucial role of civil society in both the enrichment of political culture and the enhancement of societal participation is undisputed, normative perspectives on civil society organizations (CSOs) tend to neglect their ambivalence. The very fact that CSOs are operating on a nonprofit basis implies vulnerable resource dependencies, which, in turn, translate into differentiated stakeholder action orientations. Although the ideational action orientation—the commitment to a common purpose—unites the constituent groups, utilitarian action orientations may differ. Board members may be interested in gains in terms of reputation and power as well as in networking as an end in itself rather than strengthening the organization’s autonomy through managerial performance. Accordingly, the utilitarian orientation of board members may be incompatible with the action orientation of CSO managers. All this makes CSOs likely candidates for the phenomena of successful failure. Relative failure in the form of underperformance may be tolerated as long as the main stakeholders continue to mobilize resources sufficient for organizational survival. This may be a comparative advantage relative to both private businesses and governmental agencies when it comes to serious societal and political problems that, for various reasons, turn out to be unsolvable but nonetheless need to be addressed somehow without undermining the stability and legitimacy of the institutional core of a democratic polity. Keywords  Successful failure · Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) · Civil society organizations (CSOs)

W. Seibel (*) Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany The Hertie School, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_5

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5.1  On the Nature of Civil Society Organizations The notion of civil society organizations (CSOs) refers to the social and organizational sphere between the individual and the constitutional order of the state. Typical examples are voluntary associations, advocacy groups, civic movements, labor unions, charities, consumer organizations, cooperatives, foundations, professional associations, and religious organizations. The role of CSOs is thus not restricted to the political sphere. It is not only about mobilizing and aggregating the will and interests of particular groups in society. Instead, civil society-based organizations such as cooperatives, foundations, charities, or even religious organizations and trade unions also take part in the delivery of goods and services. Many of those goods and services are public in nature in the sense that they are typically not produced by for-profit firms. Cases in point are social services organized by nonprofit charities or private voluntary organizations, education provided by foundations, or cultural institutions in the form of private endowments. The notion of CSOs thus refers to a societal, political, and economic sphere of social structure that entails a threefold logic: social integration, mobilization and articulation of political will and interest, and delivery of public goods and services. Civil society as a social integrator is a common phenomenon. We join clubs or voluntary associations not just because of the services they provide but also for the purpose of social bonding. We go to the church or to the mosque not only for the sake of worship but also in order to see or to make friends. We join a sports club not only for health purposes but also for having a chance to chat or to build networks. Many CSOs have the mobilization and articulation of political will and interest as their prime purpose. This holds, for instance, for advocacy groups, issue-specific political initiatives, and movements (e.g., environment protection movements) and for political parties. The richness and density of civil society in terms of mobilization capacity is an important indicator of democratic maturity in a given country. It is primarily this political role of CSOs to which the notion of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) refers. The delivery of public goods and services through CSOs is a common phenomenon in many countries, including well-developed industrialized democracies (cf. Anheier & Seibel, 1990). At the same time, it is here where institutional patterns and cultures differ most in a cross-national perspective. For example, in Scandinavian and many continental European countries, schooling and higher education is the almost exclusive domain of the government, whereas in the United States, the United Kingdom, and countries of the “emerging economies,” private schools and private universities are dominant, especially in the elite segment of higher education. Similarly, even in a country like Germany with a strong tradition of a government-­controlled welfare state, the core segments of social and health services such as daycare for children and the elderly or hospitals are being provided by CSOs with hundreds and thousands of employees (Anheier & Seibel, 2002). Just as the term “NGOs” has been coined to characterize the political role of CSOs, the term “nonprofit organizations” (NPOs) refers to their service delivery function.

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What makes the sphere of CSOs peculiar relative to governmental or private business organizations is that their socially integrative, political, and service delivery roles and functions are almost inseparably intertwined. Usually, CSOs have a prime or dominant role that shapes their main purpose and identity. Local initiatives of environmentalists, for example, define themselves primarily as political groups regardless of the social bonding that may take place within their ranks. Nonprofit hospitals, by contrast, define themselves almost exclusively as professional providers of healthcare regardless of the networking that undoubtedly takes place among the members of their board of trustees. Political parties necessarily define themselves as being exclusively committed to the mobilization and articulation of political will and interests but at the same time may be running businesses in the form of publishing companies or even travel agencies.

5.2  Why CSOs at All? There are two ways of thinking about the “why” of civil society organizations. One is based on the empirical perspective in assessment of why and under what circumstances civil society structures and related organizations emerged historically. The other is based on normative reasoning on the function of civil society, regardless of actual statuses and organizational forms.

5.2.1  The Historical Perspective In a cross-national perspective, CSOs have a peculiar history in a given country that largely defies generalization. For instance, in many European countries, the emergence of the modern state created a cleavage between the government and the Christian church that had its roots in both power rivalry and competition in the provision of healthcare (hospitals) and education. By contrast, the emergence of civil society in the United States was based on the notion of local democracy and a general mistrust vis-à-vis the government, dating back to the days of colonial rule and the experience of successful mobilization of civic power. However, the struggle for civic freedom and the right of free associational life was also shaping the conflict between the emerging bourgeoisie and the ruling nobility in many European countries. Interestingly enough, France was an exception. There, the revolution of 1789 not only eliminated the political power of the nobility but also suppressed any sort of associations existing between the individual citizen and the state. It was only in 1901 that associations were fully legalized in France. Although Germany is known for the richness of associational life ranging from local sports clubs to powerful trade unions, donations to charitable organizations and volunteerism are less developed than, for instance, in the United States or the UK.  To some extent, this reflects the relative strength of the government as a

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provider of public goods and services and the role of the German state as a subsidy giver. After all, German welfare associations such as the Catholic Caritas and the Protestant Diakonie, the social-democratic Arbeiterwohlfahrt, or the German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, DRK) not only act like state agencies but also are heavily subsidized by the government in various ways. So, ironically, the flipside of a structural strength of civil society in Germany is a certain weakness of civic support. On the other hand, however, the same richness and tradition of CSOs and of cooperative linkages between civil society organizations and governmental agencies enhances the capacity for flexible reaction in terms of increasing demand for public goods and services or effective response to emergencies and crises. The refugee crisis of 2015–2016 is a prominent example. What characterizes the German response to the refugee crisis with an increase of some 500% of refugees and asylum seekers in a single year is a combination of regular governmental activity in cooperation with welfare associations and spontaneous local initiatives. It comes with the very nature of CSOs—their multiple functions as socially integrating, service-providing, and politically active organizations—that their role in each of the relevant segments remained ambivalent. • As a socially integrating force, CSOs cannot compete with families or other types of kinship, but they may nonetheless facilitate social bonding as well as informal networking in a manner that neither governmental agencies nor private businesses can organize or stimulate. • As providers of public goods and services, CSOs may lack professionalism as well as formal standards of control and accountability but may nonetheless fill the gap between individual helplessness and the formality and anonymity of governmental agencies. • As mobilizers and platforms of political will and interests, CSOs represent an indispensable ingredient of lively democracy, but, as para-constitutional entities, they may also undermine the legitimacy and, thus, the stability of the constitutional democratic polity. As a matter of fact, both communist and fascist movements in the twentieth century gained support and momentum to the extent to which they were able to establish the image of progressive civil society movements as a counter model to the democratic constitutional order that was denounced by communists and fascists alike as being an oppressive system estranged from the life and necessities of ordinary people. Accordingly, one should refrain from stylizing CSOs as an alternative to democratic government and rule-of-law-based professional administration. Civil society organizations remain a supplement to both private businesses and governmental agencies whose productive impact in terms of civic involvement is dependent on firm linkages to the democratic constitutional order and related requirements of transparency and accountability.

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5.2.2  The Normative Perspective The relevant normative perspectives focus on civil society-based compensations for government failure and on compensations for market or business failure. Both variants occur again in two versions depending on whether they focus on the supply side or on the demand side of goods and services or opportunities for social integration and political participation. Theories of government failure point to the structural disadvantages of the provision of public goods by state agencies such as high costs of decision-making and resource allocation, weak incentives stimulating performance, and lack of sanctions in case of underperformance in public administration, inefficient monopolies, and free-rider risks when it comes to the consumption of public goods and services free of charge. In quite a similar vein, some theorists focus on the political and administrative dilemmas of democracy. By their very nature, democratic governments have to apply nondemocratic tools to achieve what democratic decision-making imposes. Legislation results from political deliberation and majoritarian decision-making in the parliament, but it is implemented by the hierarchical organization of public administration based on the principle of order and obedience. What results from this, according to some theorists, is a responsiveness gap with respect to the ability to respond to minority demands and actual circumstances. After all, regular public administration is working on the basis of majoritarian decision-making and inelastic standard operating procedures. In a normative perspective on government failure, therefore, CSOs may compensate for the shortcomings of majoritarian decision-making and rigid implementation through public agencies. According to this strand of the literature, CSOs are prominent candidates for the provision of goods and services that do not enjoy the support of the majority of voters in the democratic process but are in strong demand among minorities. It is also stated that CSOs, due to their proximity to the individual consumers, which may even include direct participation of consumers in the production and delivery of goods and services, are better equipped than are state agencies to take into account individual needs. Moreover, for-profit businesses also do not take into account direct participation of consumers in the production and delivery of goods and services. Moreover, nonprofit and/or nongovernmental organizations may mitigate the negative impact of a separation of the consumption and the payment of services (for instance, daycare homes for the elderly where the consumer is not necessarily the one who pays for the service). In this perspective, it is the relative trustworthiness of nonprofit organizations relative to for-profit organizations or participatory structures relative to bureaucratic hierarchy that characterize the advantages of CSOs relative to state agencies.

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In contrast to conventional theories on the emergence of a “third sector” between the market and the state, CSOs as providers of quasi-public goods and services have also been characterized as problem nonsolvers and agents of successful failure (Seibel, 1989, 1996). Complex societies in combination with a democratic polity generate more problems than they are able to solve. The resulting risk of losing the legitimacy and stability of the democratic system as such requires institutions that address the relevant problems without actually solving them but, at the same time, are peripheral enough to avoid negative effects that might harm the democratic polity. Successfully failing organizations form a niche in the institutional landscape of rational organizations designed to solve problems as effectively and efficiently as possible, regardless of whether they are governmental or market-­ driven organizations. Civil society organizations that satisfy the demand for social integration as well as for political participation are better equipped than are public agencies and private businesses to tolerate low performance. They are thus likely candidates for “successful failure” in the sense that coping with problems rather than solving them is exactly what is required in a situation in which problem pressure exceeds institutional capacities of problem-solving. CSOs may indeed survive not despite but because of permanent failure as long as they create the illusion that “something is being done” in an effort to address problems that can be neither solved nor ignored. In the world of CSOs, successful failure can be tolerated as long as the secondary functions of social integration and political participation remain intact, regardless of the actual performance in terms of service provision and problem-solving. However, CSO stakeholders have various roles and preferences connected to the very existence and perceived purpose of the organization. In terms of a CSO’s day-­ to-­day operations, four groups typically form the core of responsibility and action: managers, paid staff, board members, and volunteers. Managers have to run the organization, paid staff are supposed to ensure that the service is delivered or action is undertaken, board members are expected to secure access to government funding and to mobilize donations, and volunteers want to support a good cause. Ideally, those purposes and preferences converge. This, however, cannot be taken for granted, which is why the hybrid nature of CSOs and the managerial ambivalence related to it deserve some more attention.

5.3  Hybridity and Managerial Ambivalence of CSOs In the real world, the boundaries between governmental agencies, private businesses, and CSOs are fluid. This is important in two dimensions, namely, the macro level and the micro level. At the macro level of a given country, the provision of public goods and services is subject to a traditional arrangement or division of labor between the government, private businesses, and CSOs. Scandinavian welfare states, for instance, are more state-centered, and, accordingly, CSOs are less important in the provision of public goods than in Germany or Austria, let alone the

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United States. We are, thus, unable to define a particular division of labor between the government, the market, and civil society when it comes to the provision of public goods and services. What we do know, however, is that the existing division of labor between the sectors—governmental, business-like, and civil society-­ based—has to be taken into account in any attempt to foster and to strengthen CSOs as an important institutional segment in any given society or country. Moreover, at the micro level, CSOs themselves are subject to overlapping logics and requirements that need to be addressed one way or the other by leading staff and management. To some extent, running a CSO for the sake of effective and efficient service provision is not different from running a private, for-profit business, while in terms of regulation and observance of accountability standards it might not be different from governmental agencies. What makes CSOs peculiar, however, remains their embeddedness in a particular social structure along with a spirit of self-organization and, quite often, political activism. In this sense, CSOs are, by definition, hybrid arrangements whose effective organizational management may be more complex and demanding than running a private business or a public agency precisely because of the variety of overlapping and potentially divergent logics of action. Dealing with CSOs as a manager, a client, or a partner requires a realistic approach that takes into account their given social and political embeddedness as well as their hybrid nature shaped by various and potentially divergent logics of action (cf. Seibel, 2015). That realism should entail the acknowledgment of the basic structural peculiarities of CSOs and the action orientation of their constituent groups. Those groups themselves belong to the peculiarities since in their particular configuration they do not exist in the public sector or in the private, for-profit sector. That affects board members, management, staff, and volunteers. The configuration of these groups results from the specific resource dependency of CSOs. Since these organizations are neither part of the state budget (and, thus, not financed by taxpayers’ money) nor subject to for-profit entrepreneurial activity, they need to rely not only on management and paid staff but also on board members and volunteers. Board members are instrumental in mobilizing monetary resources through personal networks and personal reputation, whereas volunteers provide their own labor for free. Management and paid staff are obviously two groups that exist in private businesses and public agencies as well. However, in CSOs, it is the management that acts under the necessity to coordinate the various logics of action shaping the existence and identity of a given organization, and staff members may have joined the organization not just because they want to make money but because they are committed to the cause of the organization itself. This is because board members, management, staff, and volunteers are acting under peculiar conditions known as the not-for-profit principle and the nondistribution constraint. CSOs are not-for-profit businesses and they are subject to state regulation that constrains their ability to set incentives in the form of earnings among individuals such as board members and senior staff who oversee and control the organization. Elevated salaries or bonuses are incompatible with the nonprofit status of a CSO. Therefore, board members, management, staff, and volunteers certainly

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have a certain utilitarian orientation—an action orientation based on some sort selfishness—but in the absence of significant monetary incentives, a major motivational force is the ideational orientation connected to the particular purpose of the specific CSO.  Most CSOs mobilize their members—board members, management, staff, and volunteers alike—through a spirit based on the notion of “working for the common good” and identification with the organization’s charitable or otherwise public-­ interest purpose. Accordingly, a realistic approach to the actual management of CSOs has to take into account both the utilitarian and the ideational action orientations of the organization’s constituent groups. • The utilitarian orientation of board members is shaped by their interest in reputational gains, building social capital through networking, and maintaining or improving power positions. • The utilitarian orientation of the managers running the organization is focused on promoting their individual career and improving their own power position. • The utilitarian orientation of staff members focusses on decent payment and work conditions. • The utilitarian orientation of volunteers focusses on socializing, bonding, and making sense of idle time. Those utilitarian orientations notwithstanding, one should take the ideational orientations of those various groups seriously. After all, most of them have alternatives when it comes to functions and jobs, so they do connect some spirit of “working for the common good” or a particular charitable purpose to their specific role within the organization. • The ideational orientation of board members otherwise involved in for-profit businesses who become involved in the business of a nonprofit CSO may be connected to the countervailing identity of unselfish altruism. • The ideational orientation of volunteers who would otherwise find some other way to spend their time may be connected to enhanced sense-making beyond the boundaries of family life and friendship. • The ideational orientation of managers who otherwise would have better career options in either the for-profit world or governmental agencies may be connected to the notion of making organized altruism more effective. • The ideational orientation of rank and file staff members may be connected to the feeling of “doing something good” that compensates for the absence of actual career options. One of the problems faced when actually managing CSOs is that the ideational action orientations of the constituent groups converge, whereas the utilitarian action orientations differ. The challenge is thus to mobilize the converging ideational action orientations and to prevent or neutralize negative coalitions based on diverging utilitarian action orientations.

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Facing this challenge requires a realistic view on both the utilitarian and the ideational action orientations of the various constituent groups, including the orientations of the managers themselves. This realism can be based on a series of premises that follow from the structural peculiarities and presumed action orientations of the constituent groups of CSOs. The rules that govern CSOs—the nonprofit principle and the nondistribution constraint—strengthen the board members relative to the management. At the same time, they do not affect the divergence of the utilitarian action orientations of those two groups. As an example, board members may be unilaterally interested in gains in terms of reputation and power as well as in networking as an end in itself. By the same token, they may be interested in keeping the nonprofit organization dependent on them rather than strengthening the organization’s autonomy. Accordingly, the utilitarian orientation of board members in terms of reputational and power-related gains may be incompatible with the utilitarian orientation of the management in terms of career development and enhancement of power positions. Staff members and volunteers provide a potential battleground for competing interests of board members and the management since both the utilitarian and the ideational orientations make managers interested in the improvement of organizational performance, if necessary at the expense of all the other constituent groups. If that is the case, both the board and the management will seek allies in an attempt to build winning coalitions in internal power struggles. Board members, in accordance with their own utilitarian orientation, may offer staff members to maintain the status quo. They may do this in reference to the charitable or common-good purpose of the organization even if this is just another attempt to conceal their own utilitarian motives. If board members manage to at least keep the volunteers neutral, they may well win any power competition with the management. By contrast, the management is in control of the most direct positive and negative incentives to staff members, namely, payment and career development. If CSO managers can mobilize the necessary resources for positive utilitarian incentives for staff members in terms of payment and career development, they may be able to form the “winning coalition” that checks the influence of board members. Given the specific utilitarian and ideational action orientations of the constituent groups of CSOs, an inverted principal–agent relationship could well arise. Conventional principal–agent theory predicts that those in charge of an organization—the “principals”—are interested in high performance of their “agents.” Under the condition of a CSO, board members may be defined as “principals,” whereas managers are their “agents.” It turns out, however, that we have good reasons to assume that the basic assumption of the conventional principal–agent theory does not apply to the conditions under which CSOs work: “principals” (board members) are not necessarily interested in the high performance of their “agents” (managers) since the utilitarian interests of the board members in terms of reputational and power-related gains are satisfied relatively independently from the organization’s performance. The interest of the principals in reputational and power-related gains

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as well as in networking and social bonding is satisfied through the mere existence of a CSO (as long as the organization is not involved in outright scandals or visible disasters). In fact, high performance of the “agents” (managers) may even be incompatible with the interest of the “principals” (board members) since high managerial performance may make the organization more independent from the principals’ influence while strengthening the power of the managers. An even more differentiated perspective on the role of CSOs and related perceptions and expectations of society as a whole can be achieved when we consider not only board members of the given CSO but also the public at large—in other words, people like you and me—as principals. After all, the public at large has a stake in CSOs as soon as those organizations are the beneficiaries of tax deductions or direct state subsidies at taxpayers’ expense. Moreover, we might conceive of a situation in which the overall public is also not interested in CSOs that perform well. One must remember that this might be the case when it comes to definitely or temporarily unsolvable problems that are being dealt with by CSOs without being truly solved. High-performing managers would permanently demonstrate the impossibility of solving those problems, thus confronting society with problems we might rather be inclined to ignore. Standard examples taken from quite stable and prosperous countries with full-fledged welfare states and appropriate infrastructure are mistreatment and abuse of women, persistent substance abuse, and dealing with the mentally ill, among many other problems. Rather than addressing those problems as effectively and efficiently as possible, CSOs may deal with them as permanently failing organizations whose success parameter is the effective insulation of unsolvable problems and the neutralization of their risk to social integration and political legitimacy.

5.4  T  he Particular Role of International Nongovernmental Organizations (INGOs) Many CSOs that we spontaneously think of are in fact international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). Prominent examples are Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières, Amnesty International, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, World Wildlife Fund, Attac, and Greenpeace. INGOs mushroomed in the course of the last two or three decades; they are today an integral part of what experts and journalists alike call “global governance.” It is worth remembering, however, that some INGOs such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (founded 1876) or its equivalent in the Islamic world, the Red Crescent, are much older and play an important role in mitigating conflicts and hardship for millions of people. INGOs have a consultative status with the United Nations (UN) on the basis of Article 71 of the UN Charter. The UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations or the NGO Committee was established as early as 1946 in the framework of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Back in those days, one of the prime tasks of NGOs was the repatriation of displaced persons in the aftermath

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of the Second World War. As a matter of fact, it is today unthinkable to organize humanitarian aid or disaster relief under UN auspices without the massive support of INGOs and the close cooperation between them and both UN bodies and national governments. This is clearly the bright side of INGOs and their activities. The dim side of INGOs and their role in both international and national politics is the lack of transparency and accountability. Some INGOs are powerful actors able to mobilize not only public opinion but also a large number of activists around the globe without being held accountable for their actions and the consequences of their actions. When, for instance, the Srebrenica massacre was in the making in early July 1995, Greenpeace had just initiated a worldwide campaign against the resumed nuclear tests of France on the Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific. The Greenpeace campaign dominated front-page news in the print media almost everywhere, especially in Europe (bear in mind that the Internet was virtually nonexistent back then). When the military forces of Serbia and Serbian militias started to massacre the (mostly Muslim) male population of the UN “safe area” (!) Srebrenica on July 12, 1995, media attention in Europe was absorbed by events in the South Pacific, thus largely neglecting a genocide committed in the middle of Europe. In quite a similar vein, INGOs are rarely challenged when organizing protest rallies that put the physical integrity and even the lives of participants at risk. A sad example is the 27th G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, of 2001, where the INGO Attac called for the deliberate violation of the security perimeter around the conference site, thus provoking the massive (and certainly exaggerated) response of security forces in the course of which dozens of activists were injured and one was shot to death by Italian police forces. Although the question of proportionality of state response to the protests was widely discussed in the critical assessments of the events of Genoa in 2001, the question of responsibility of Attac and other INGOs was virtually never raised.

5.5  Conclusions: Successful Failure of CSOs In both scholarly and political discourses, CSOs are predominantly portrayed with a positive connotation. There is good reason for this perspective, given the mobilizing effect of civil society that may compensate for the inherent and inevitable deficiencies of state-centered institutions, however democratic their constitutional status. The plurality of interests and values in society is not only and cannot only be organized through political parties and formal political institutions such as the parliament and government. The self-organizing capacity of society is of pivotal importance for the livelihood and richness of actual democracy. Whether or not CSOs are independent from governmental interference, let alone restrictions or repression, remains a key criterion of democracy and its actual quality.

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However, the very same independence from the government and the unrestricted spectrum of societal and political values that characterize the world of CSOs may imply that those organizations and initiatives undermine rather than strengthen the democratic political system. This affects three critical dimensions. • First, hybrid arrangements between CSOs and the state may blur governmental responsibility and thus weaken a fundamental principle of democratic governance. Hybrid arrangements combining civil society-based and governmental organizations may create an opportunity of blame avoidance when it comes to risky decision-making and its consequences. We know from organization studies and investigations into the origins of serious administrative failure that public– private partnerships (PPPs) involving CSOs may dilute clear-cut structures of responsibility and accountability to the detriment of legality and even the protection of physical integrity of citizens. • Second, CSOs may evolve into powerful contenders of democratic government. Although we may think of positive examples of civil society movements forcing governmental institutions to enhance and improve democratic standards and civil rights (e.g., the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s or the Solidarność movement in Poland and its trigger effects in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s), one should be aware of fateful counterexamples such as the Nazi movement in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s or present-­ day right-wing populist movements such as “Pegida” in Germany or neo-fascist groups in Hungary. • Third, even if the power ambitions of CSOs remain limited, they may preserve nondemocratic values whose relatively isolated and “invisible” nature may emerge as a latent threat of the democratic polity. The racist Ku Klux Klan in the United States, the phenomenon of vigilantism in states with weak security agencies, or “unions” or “societies” with ties to an authoritarian foreign state and its repressive actions are relevant examples. CSOs cannot replace solid and enduring governmental institutions as the backbone of stable democracy. Their positive impact on the democratic quality of society and government is dependent on cooperative and complementary linkages to the constitutional institutions of government and a commitment to democratic values in the first place. However, the perspective on CSOs as “problem nonsolvers” as presented above may ironically enough, be helpful and encouraging especially under dire conditions full of unsolvable problems. Rather than paying tribute to a rose-colored vision of civil society and CSOs as a panacea and a compensation for the deficiencies of the market economy and governmental activity, one should acknowledge the enormous variety of organizational logics and performance levels. Whether or not CSOs actually do solve problems or are just dealing with what basically remains an unsolvable problem is an empirical question that defies sound predictions. What is predictable, however, is that CSOs do enhance the institutional coping capacity of society as a whole.

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References Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (Eds.). (1990). The third sector. Comparative studies of nonprofit-­ organizations. Walter de Gruyter. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (2002). The nonprofit sector in Germany: Between state economy and society. Manchester University Press. Seibel, W. (1989). The function of mellow weakness. Nonprofit organizations as problem non-­ solvers. In E. James (Ed.), The nonprofit sector in international perspective: Studies in comparative culture and policy (pp. 177–192). Oxford University Press. Seibel, W. (1996). Successful failure. An alternative view on organizational coping. American Behavioral Scientist, 39, 1011–1024. Seibel, W. (2015). Welfare mixes and hybridity: Analytical and managerial implications. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 26, 1759–1768.

Chapter 6

Social Innovation: Not Without Civil Society Volker Then and Georg Mildenberger Abstract  This chapter makes a case for the central role of civil society in successful social innovation. Of course, social innovation is not restricted to one sector of society. However, we argue that civil society actors have special resources to identify unsolved social problems and broad competencies to develop solutions, and their independence allows them to easily pilot solutions. After the concept of social innovation is introduced, we discuss the potential for social innovation of the three sectors as well as their typical failures as described in the literature. A closer inspection of the process of social innovation through the lens of the social investment concept shows that the unique resource of civil society is legitimacy—a key factor in successful social innovation. Keywords  Civil society · Social innovation · Sector theories · Social investment

6.1  Introduction This chapter argues that civil society has a privileged role with regard to social innovation. We even put forward the hypothesis that social innovation cannot successfully happen without civil society. By successfully, we refer to the broad dissemination of a social innovation in society beyond the original starting point, location, or social niche. At the same time, this chapter is a resume of the developments of the research agenda at the Centre for Social Investment (CSI) at the University of Heidelberg and its journey with Helmut Anheier. The initial concept of social investment developed by Anheier, Then, and Schröer and the early CSI team led to work on social entrepreneurship, hybrid organizations, and social innovation. Anheier inspired and supported the team in spelling out the concept of social

V. Then (*) Fondazione AIS – Advancing Impact and Sustainability, Bologna, Italy e-mail: [email protected] G. Mildenberger Centre for Social Investment, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_6

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investment that is understood as an active interest in effective social problem-­ solving or effective private contributions to the public good.1 We pursue a five-step argument. First, we start by introducing the concept of social innovation in its different versions. Second, we pose the question, which parts of society are most apt to generate social innovation? Third, we revisit the existing sector definitions and the respective sector failures that each of these strands of theory have identified. This sets the stage for the fourth step, i.e., the introduction of the concept of social investment as a distinct understanding of civil society as differentiated from the three sectors. In the fifth step, we will then make clear why civil society is a main actor in all social innovations, which is strongly supported by the evidence from our research. This chapter then makes its main argument in explaining the role of civil society in the social innovation process by applying the wider concept of social investment in the form introduced by Then and Kehl (2012), in contrast to a narrow one primarily focusing on economic action with a social purpose. As it avoids the narrow focus on a single sector or a positivist legal standard, we come to understand social innovation as a process in which the interrelatedness of the sectors plays a crucial role and civil society gets involved as a transformer or an intermediary. Social innovation may occur in each and every sector. Indeed, it may start from prompts in any of the sectors, but civil society plays a key role in its transformation to implementation, broader dissemination, and sustainability. It not only proves to be the hotbed of new ideas concerning social problems but also provides resources, both financial and nonfinancial, to foster the seedlings and prepare them for the “wild open.” In this process, a particular emphasis is put on the contribution of nonfinancial resources to foster the social innovation process.

6.2  The Concept of Social Innovation “Social innovation” as a concept has gained more and more importance. In recent years, it has seemed to gain dominance over more political concepts such as “revolution” or “reform” and less intentional understandings such as “societal change.” Some use social innovation as another version of social change caused by a transformation in social practices (Franz et al., 2015; Howaldt et al., 2015). Such use of social innovation in an extremely broad understanding makes it difficult to distinguish between changes in society, namely, in social practices and social relationships, caused by

 This chapter elaborates on an earlier paper written by CSI members as an internal contribution to the project: “The theoretical, empirical and policy foundations for building social innovation in Europe” (TEPSIE), European Commission—7th Framework Programme, Brussels: European Commission, DG Research. That earlier version was presented and discussed at the 2014 conference of the International Society for Third-Sector Research (Münster, Germany) (Then & Mildenberger, 2014). 1

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technological changes and intentional modifications of societal relations. The introduction of the assembly line by Ford, the invention of the smart phone, and the design of social media would be social innovations according to the first perspective. Others have a narrower understanding of social innovation. According to this more limited perspective, social innovations are far from being just any innovation with an effect on the fabric of society. They are rather the type of innovations that are intentionally directed toward solving social problems, enhancing the well-being or the quality of society, or are directed toward social needs. This social needs orientation is the core of the “social” in social innovation, where social needs are understood as the needs of individuals for which society at large feels responsible. This type of definition was introduced by the Young Foundation, which continues to adhere to it (Murray et al., 2010). However, it is not only the problem-solving aspect that is important in the concept of social innovation. Many authors point out that social innovation is not only about new products, services, or processes but also that these novelties change relations in society. The Bureau of European Policy Advisers stated in their seminal report: “Social innovations are innovations that are social in both their ends and their means. Specifically, we define social innovations as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs (more effectively than alternatives) and create new social relationships or collaborations. They are innovations that are not only good for society but also enhance society’s capacity to act” (Hubert et  al., 2011). They go on to state, “The process of social interactions between individuals undertaken to reach certain outcomes is participative, involves a number of actors and stakeholders who have a vested interest in solving a social problem, and empowers the beneficiaries. It is in itself an outcome as it produces social capital” (Hubert et al., 2011). In a similar but more elaborated perspective that built on earlier work, the Impact of the Third Sector as Social Innovation (ITSSOIN) team stated that social innovations have a functional aspect and a transformational aspect (Crepaldi et al., 2012): the function is the fulfillment of an unmet need, and the transformation occurs as a by-product of the social innovation process (Krlev et al., 2019, p. 17). The basic concept of innovation clearly stems from economics, mainly from the work of Schumpeter whose distinction of different phases of innovation—invention, innovation, and diffusion—is still highly important. Quite often, “innovation” is used as a synonym of “invention.” However, as Schumpeter argues, it is not enough to have an idea or a working prototype. Innovation sensu stricto starts when a new product, service, or process is actually used by more than one or two others. Moreover, when—after some time—the newness has worn off and diffusion has taken place, then innovation becomes the new normal. Innovation is thus the act or process of establishing a novelty in the markets or society (Schumpeter, 1939; Schumpeter & Opie, 1934). However, with the instruments of traditional innovation theory, at best, only the functional aspect of social innovation can be analyzed.

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In many cases, we need additional theoretical concepts and even new methodologies to better capture the transformational aspect.2

6.3  Defining Sectors and Their Failures It seems commonplace that business innovation takes place in the private sector. New ideas may come from wherever they want but innovation—the combination of ideas into a potentially useful product, service, or process—has to prove its value on the market. Here is the place where it has to find buyers (and investors in the first place). If this does not happen, the innovation has failed. History knows innumerable examples of such failures. However, the picture changes when it comes to social innovation. Here, all sectors may be the source of social innovation, and it remains to be seen whether there are other mechanisms for proving the viability of a social innovation. While different sector definitions are available from different strands of theoretical reflection, they all include the state (or the public sector) and the economy, whereas the remaining sector references differ (e.g., the household or the informal sector) (Caulier-­ Grice et al., 2012, pp. 17–18). We will address the “third” dimension in its different options. Each sector has its predominant rationality and corresponding limitations, commonly referred to as sector failures, which, in turn, have been used to explain the existence of the third or nonprofit sector (Enjolras, 2009; Johnson, 1998; Streeck & Schmitter, 1985). However, this is an ideal-type argumentation, and we have developed our concept of social investment and its implications for social innovation against this background of ideal-type arguments (Weber, 1980, pp. 9–10). We therefore briefly explore the definitions and failure arguments for each sector in the following paragraphs.

6.3.1  The Economy/The Market Sector Economic or market activity is characterized by competition and the profit motive. Price mechanisms are in place to decide which transactions take place, and actors are assumed to act according to economic rationality.3 Decisions about transactions

2  Havas (2016) has a skeptical view; Krlev et al. (2014) are a bit more optimistic but see the need to complement typical indicators of business innovation with additional indicators from more social science-oriented datasets. 3  We are aware of the fact that market organizations must fulfill requirements other than economic rationality too. This aspect has been discussed by numerous scholars, e.g., scholars of neo-­ institutionalism. They argue that the fulfillment of institutional requirements or the requirements from stakeholders, respectively (besides profit maximization in the sense of economic rationality), are essential for organizations’ survival (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991, p. 66). Meeting these require-

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effected in the market can be explained by market organizations functioning to maximize profit via the output of private goods (Anheier, 2014; Enjolras, 2009). When it comes to providing all necessary goods in society, however, the market fails. Titmuss was one of the first to ask how it is possible that some of the most important and valuable goods do not have a market price or are not exchanged by the market mechanism even if we assume that the price mechanism balances both supply and demand and therefore expresses the value of goods and services (Titmuss, 1973). Market failure occurs when the cost of a service or a good is higher than the price users are willing or able to pay. What is more, that good or service would have desirable general social benefits in terms of a healthy and productive society (Gruber, 2005). The following aspects may lead to failures in free market systems: (1) information asymmetry, (2) the need for trust, (3) externalities, (4) transaction costs, (5) moral hazard, and (6) limitations of the voluntary system (free-rider problem) (Anheier, 2014; Young & Steinberg, 1995). A particular form of market failure involves the exchange of intangible goods (Haskel & Westlake, 2018). As a result, perfect competition is not possible, and the allocation mechanism only works with (sometimes) severe limitations. Hansmann (1980, 1987) used the market failure argument to explain the existence of nonprofit organizations. He states that nonprofits “arise in situations in which, owing either to the circumstances under which service is purchased or consumed or to the nature of the service itself, consumers feel unable to evaluate accurately the quantity and quality of the service a firm produces for them” (Hansmann, 1987). Nonprofits have a competitive advantage in such information asymmetry situations because the nondistribution constraint increases their trustworthiness.

6.3.2  The Public Sector Contrary to the market, public sector rationality is oriented toward the maximization of social welfare by producing public or collective goods (Anheier, 2014). Furthermore, power relations have been perceived as the main factor influencing the public sector (Habermas, 1996). Thus, the main coordination mechanisms are law and coercion (Enjolras, 2009; Streeck & Schmitter, 1985). As public agencies in democracies are answerable to political oversight and direction, there are two implications. First, the public goods offered are not oriented toward a marginal group (unless the marginal group enjoys a high level of legitimacy) but are intended to secure majority support for the next election (orientation toward the median voter4). Second, the responsiveness of public agencies to emerging social needs is further restricted by a preference for established (policy) ments increases the legitimacy of the organizations. While it is clear that legitimacy is crucial, only few highly legitimate organizations can survive although they do not follow an economic rationality. 4  A highly simplified (rational choice) perspective on political action; see Downs (1957).

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approaches (path dependency). This is both a consequence of budget accountability to the public at large and of the balance of advocacy frameworks, which needs to be readjusted to formulate new policy approaches. In both regards, the public sector will only react in a flexible manner once new social needs have been strongly articulated and advocated—which requires civil society involvement. The weakness of the public sector in the provision of necessary goods is expressed in the government failure discourse. Weisbrod (1975) explains the existence of nonprofits with the help of two concepts: demand heterogeneity and the median voter. Nonprofit organizations emerge to fulfill demands not necessarily claimed by the median voter. Therefore, the number of nonprofits is positively correlated with increasing demand diversity, i.e., pluralism (Anheier, 2014). Weisbrod’s arguments correspond to a more recent understanding of the policy process that has resulted from advocacy coalition frameworks and policy entrepreneurs.5 Since the late 1990s, another problem arose that can be added to the government failure argument. Governmental funds are stagnating or decreasing, whereas social demands have increased due to demographic changes and more people in need. This is why more and more social services and public goods cannot (or can no longer) be provided by the government due to budget constraints. In such a situation of (a perceived need for) social expenditure restrictions, it is all the more hazardous for governments to abandon the median voter and to break the chains of path dependency. Thus, when clients’ and voters’ demands begin to change, usually it is not the government but enterprising nonprofits that develop alternative approaches for a particular (particularistic) group of people, e.g., in the field of eldercare (Kehl & Then, 2013).

6.3.3  The Third Sector The third corner of the sector triangle has frequently been referred to using different categories depending on the theory: civil society, third sector, nonprofit sector, and social economy. Table  6.1 summarizes the different definitions in a comparative manner. The term “civil society” gained momentum after the breakdown of the Soviet Bloc in the early 1990s. It stresses the mobilization and discursive power of citizens within society. The concept has a distinct political connotation as it refers to the self-organizing power of citizens to create a critical counterpublic to state authorities. The term is frequently used to refer to discourses within society; sometimes it also covers formalized discourse in the form of organizations, especially nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and advocacy groups. While civil society usually refers to organized contributions to the public good, the more informal contributions are identified by some authors as part of the family/community sector.

 See Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1999) and Kingdon (1995).

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Table 6.1  Comparison of different “third sector” understandings Main perspective

Civil society Political relevance

Third sector Economic relevance

Main roles

Advocacy

Service provision Formal

Formalization Informal and formal Legal forms Nonprofit Main Democratic characteristic features Profit motive Examples

Absent Social movements, NGOs, associations

Nonprofit sector Absence of profit maximization motive Service provision Formal

Social economy Combination of different legitimate coordination mechanisms (participation) Service and good provision and the vanguard role Formal

Nonprofit Nonprofit Nondistribution Nondistribution of profits of profits Absent Tax-exempt legal forms

Nonprofit and for-profit Profit distribution constraints and democratic features Absent Blended value motivation Tax-exempt legal Tax-exempt legal forms, forms legal forms with democratic features, legal forms guaranteeing constrained profit distribution or generation, for-profit legal forms with a social goal, and profit self-constraints

Both third sector and nonprofit sector actors make their contributions to the public good without seeking to maximize profits. Although the nondistribution constraint is used as a distinguishing criterion in both cases, it does not imply that profits could not be generated rather they would normally not be distributed to owners or shareholders. While the nonprofit reference indicates that despite this constraint these organizations may well pursue economic activity, the third sector reference actually emphasizes several characteristics such as its participatory nature, self-organization, addressing market and state failure alike, and contributing to political advocacy. Social economy, by contrast, is a sphere in which organizations contribute their private resources to the public good, intending to meet social needs by producing private and/or public goods irrespective of a primary interest in profit maximization (Hubrich et al., 2012, pp. 6–15). Actors in the social economy sphere are not liable to general voter or advocacy concerns as a result of which they enjoy an increased flexibility to meet the needs of marginalized groups. Yet, the organizations frequently exhibit democratic procedures in their own governance and operations, which also give them an advantage when it comes to considering the needs of marginalized groups. Independence from the state helps these organizations develop solutions quickly and without the demand for uniform solutions. This allows for heterogeneity of solutions, which more closely matches the heterogeneity of social needs—also referred to in the definition of social innovation.

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It is important to understand that the different terms show a certain degree of overlap. While civil society boundaries are mainly expressed in terms of political activation, the terms “third sector” and “nonprofit sector” refer to organizations with a tax-exempt status but exclude several organizational forms. Social economy covers all organizational forms that stress the absence of the profit motive as the main focus and the prevalence of democratic, participatory features in their governance. Irrespective of the specific sector characteristics of the different concepts summarized in Table 6.1, any organization in this field (nonprofit, third sector, or service-­ providing civil society) is characterized by social investments, as we will argue below, and can well foster social innovation by helping to substantiate the social character of social innovation. The blended value motivation guarantees that the organizations aim at the social needs of deprived groups, which are unable to pay. Democratic proceedings help assure social solutions that gain the legitimacy of all stakeholders involved. As a consequence of combining blended value motivations and democratic criteria of procedure, social economy organizations (based on social investment) are well positioned to respond to both heterogeneous needs and the normative expectations of citizens. By contrast, the CSI proposed a different view of the sectoral model (Then & Kehl, 2012). We do not place the third sector in the third corner of the triangle; instead, the third corner is taken up by community (or family) following the welfare triangle that Pestoff (1992) used to explain hybridity. The focus of our interest shifts to the center of the triangle where the multiple concepts of civil society, third sector, nonprofit sector, and social economy are now located. We call this area the field of social investment (see Fig. 6.1). Social investment is characterized by combining different mechanisms of coordination including reciprocity and solidarity, which are usually ascribed to the family or community sector (Enjolras, 2009; Streeck & Schmitter, 1985).6 This blend explicitly includes democratic participation proceedings, which offer particular opportunities for establishing the legitimacy of social innovation contributions. It is implied that different types of civil society organizations based on a variety of social investment mixes exhibit different characteristics of this blend. Our view contrasts with the typical sectoral view: rather than regularly identifying hybridity as an exception to the rule of the different sector logics, we view the hybrid nature of civil society organizations as the norm. We are not so much interested in identifying whether they are hybrid or not but rather prefer to explicitly address the blend and its advantages in social problem-solving. We therefore further elaborate on this potential of civil society organizations for social problem-solving using a refined and comprehensive social investment framework.

 For a civil society perspective, see Dekker and van den Broek (1998).

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Community Social Function

Social Investment

Cultural Function

Informal SM

Association

Civil Society NPO

Economic Function Market

NGO Formal

Political Function State

SM = Social movements NGO = Nongovernmental Organization NPO = Nonprofit Organization Fig. 6.1  Social investments as cross-sectoral and multifunctional phenomena

6.4  U  nderstanding Social Innovations Through a Social Investment Framework 6.4.1  Social Investment Framework Social investment in our understanding is a relational, multidimensional concept. The shortest version of our definition refers to private investments in the public good made on a voluntary basis. This reference to the public good or a perceived social mission, a deep interest in “doing good,” leading to an action orientation that is not primarily caused by personal, religious, socioeconomic, or legal pressure, but is voluntary in nature, is a unique attribute of and indispensable to civil society. The multidimensional concept of social investment, as depicted in Fig. 6.1, squares the circle and includes three dimensions: four societal core functions (square), three sectors (triangle), and the distinction between formal and informal contributions (or rather the degree of formality). Strictly speaking, this multilateral relational concept replaces a simplified understanding of hybridity and promises more explanatory and distinction power (Then & Kehl, 2012).

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It is important to note that we understand any social investment as contributing to each of the functions or sectors, but to substantially varying degrees and with quite different priorities for each, depending on the goal of the investment. It is also relevant to our understanding that we do not think of social investment as limited to financial resources invested for a social mission but rather include any kind of resources (financial, time, social networks and ties, reputation, and other intangible assets such as public or political legitimacy) invested for a hybrid blend of motivations or returns. Such a social investment can therefore contribute to several societal functions at the same time. An investment made in an innovative community development to deal with the care of senior citizens in a multigenerational setting contributes to the economic function and seeks to provide a service, but, at the same time, it serves to develop social capital and networks in the community, foster values (cultural function), and finally advocate a policy strategy to address the relevant social problem. Impulses starting from one corner of Fig. 6.1 (i.e., from one function or sector) will at the same time involve the other functions and sectors, although to varying degrees and in quite different combinations. These very combinations are themselves part of social innovation processes. Rather than continuing to speak of hybridity (which frequently refers merely to the blend of two sector logics), we prefer to include the outer circle, reaching beyond civil society domination and referring to hybrid action, in the sphere of social investment (Dees, 1998; Pache & Santos, 2011). Social investment can be seen as an “extension” of the traditional perspective as it does not privilege any one of the sectors but rather highlights actual contributions to society and the public good. Since these contributions may be accomplished in contexts in which it is extremely difficult to decide without a normative proposition whether the state, market, community, or civil society is dominating, we suggest reconsidering the categories. The state, market, and community contribute to social order each with distinctive qualities and corresponding to certain aspects of human needs: the state provides collective goods by making binding decisions through hierarchical coordination of power (Streeck & Schmitter, 1985). The trade of private goods and services happens on markets, based on competition and exchange. The system of families and communities accounts for solidarity goods in terms of primary, social, and cultural integration as well as informal welfare (depending on personal and emotional bonds, specific trust, and moral obligations). Civil society as an intermediary sphere lies in between this “triangle” as it contributes to society and the sectors with a distinct logic (Berger & Neuhaus, 1981; Dekker & van den Broek, 1998; Kocka, 2004). As a result, it generates rather mixed (or collective–solidarity) goods and balances society’s functional performance by combining the ordinary value rationalities of the sectors on a voluntary basis (Offe, 2000). Even the market, which has increasingly been challenged by social movements and globalization-critical initiatives, closely relates to civil society—both in historical perspective and with regard to the notion of global civil society in times of turbo-­ capitalism—since market players and economic principles (such as individual freedom and self-organization) are crucial for civil society. At the same time, efforts to “civilize markets” encounter the disparate logic of pure profit maximization

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(Keane, 2006; Kocka, 2004; Kumar, 2007; Pérez-Díaz, 2009). So, we observe both the marketization of the social and the moralization of the market (Glänzel & Schmitz, 2012; Then & Kehl, 2013), which Battilana et al. (2012) called the “hybridization movement.” Another expression of this development is the debate on social impact investment, which is, in turn, a consequence of blended value or shared value arguments made earlier (Emerson et al., 2003; Porter & Kramer, 2002).

6.4.2  S  ocial Investments in the Process View on Social Innovation Social innovation is generally viewed as a process. In the process description offered by the Young Foundation (Murray et  al., 2010), social innovation starts with a prompt or inspiration followed by proposals and ideas in the second step. The third step is the prototyping phase, which is followed by the fourth step, i.e., sustaining the solution. Next comes the scaling and diffusion of the social innovation as the fifth step, which finally leads to the sixth step of systemic change. This six-stage model corresponds to a differentiation of invention, innovation, and diffusion. The first two steps (prompts and proposals) represent the invention or idea phase, the third and fourth steps (prototype and sustaining) would be mapped as steps of the innovation or implementation phase, and the final two steps (scaling and systemic change) would correspond to the diffusion process. If we blend the social investment concept as we understand it with the process concept of social innovation, we come to an understanding in which the impulse for a social innovation process (invention, prompt) can originate in any of the sectors and favor any of the functions. However, in the course of the process and especially when it comes to sustaining, scaling, and systemic changes, the other sectors will get involved, and civil society and organizations based on social investment will play a crucial role in mediating7 the transmission of the idea to society at large (Evers, 2005). Our research on the role of civil society in social innovation has shown that organizations that were crucial for the development of a social innovation are typically closely intertwined with local communities and have a clear social needs orientation (Anheier et al., 2019). By way of illustration, this process can be thought of in different ways. A social innovation prompt can start in the market but rely on a social movement (civil society and social investment) to prepare the normative ground for a new market niche or a segment or a product differentiation (organic food or textiles, renewable energy, fair trade products, and the like). At the same time, its uptake might depend on support from public sector legislation (e.g., feed-in tariff regulations in renewable energy markets), which, in turn, is more likely to be passed if civil society actors advocate it (Glänzel & Schmitz, 2012; Schmitz, 2015).  The social science literature refers to this in terms of intermediary organizations.

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If, on the other hand, an innovation impulse emerged from the public sector, it would be faced with a highly critical distinction: will it be offered to all citizens in the same manner (through legislation ensuring equal opportunity and equality before the law) or will it be tried out in an experimental manner and initially only implemented in particular settings? While the first is the prerogative of the state, the latter is facilitated and frequently organized by some form of cooperation with private players (be it civil society or market actors). The decision to transfer an experiment or a model to the level of systemic application or change again requires political decisions to be taken, which implies that private parties will be part of an advocacy coalition to get the measure passed (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1999). If we imagine an innovation prompt starting from the community/family sector, it needs to gather momentum in the form of a social movement and “travel” through a certain level of formal organization, until it has a chance to be implemented in any market or public sector approach or in some sort of a hybrid solution. The agenda of a social movement can therefore translate into either political action and reform or social entrepreneurship initiatives and their innovative ways of offering solutions to the issue at stake. Moreover, quite often, we see a two-track development where a social entrepreneurial initiative is complemented by supporting policies and legislative action. The development of social housing in Europe, for example, can be understood as just such a process: on one side, the diverse activities of philanthropic-­ minded individuals and the collective actions of workers in the cooperative movement before World War I and, on the other side, growing state support after World War I that established more favorable legal environments for cooperatives and provided financial instruments. This two-track action for social housing became even more important after World War II (Schimpf et al., 2019). From this short overview, we can conclude that for processes of social innovation, civil society (and related to it the social economy) and the sphere of social investment (as illustrated by its central position in Fig.  6.1) play crucial roles as transmitters of prompts or impulses into wider application, dissemination, and systemic relevance. Civil society organizations are well positioned to take on this role in light of their very nature of being intermediaries, whether mediating value propositions held by citizens in their pluralistic views of society, social concerns as expressed by different interest groups, or contested policies promoted by different advocates and members of advocacy coalitions. In this argument, we reflect on the inherently political nature of civil society as well as the inherently normative nature of deciding whether a social innovation is valued as a positive contribution to the public good or is actually contested as detrimental to the welfare of at least certain groups in society. In this process, any social innovation—irrespective of its original prompt—will have to pass the legitimacy test of the general public or relevant stakeholder groups in society.

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6.4.3  The Legitimacy Test from a Social Investment Perspective The legitimacy testing and mediating role of civil society in social innovation is thus relevant in different regards. Social innovation originating from the market sector needs to generate acceptance among clients, investors, and the public or prepare the normative ground for its services and products; innovations originating from the public sector have to get the approval of voters, and those from the local communities have to pass the value test of being accepted in their normative substance. While market players have to satisfy both investors and other stakeholders (and in a more complex picture of markets, also gain the legitimacy of the general public—corporate social responsibility!), public sector players have to consider power relationships and convince voters (and ideally administer legal provisions according to the principle of equality of all citizens before the law). The relative autonomy of civil society organizations allows them to initiate change irrespective of these constraints and then win over a sufficient amount of support for an initiative, combining the resources from any of the functional logics and sector backgrounds.

6.5  Social Innovation and Social Investments 6.5.1  S  ocial Innovation: Implementing Solutions for Social Needs—A Process Perspective In elaborating the process perspective of social innovation and connecting it to the concept of social investment, we argue that the civil society (understood as the field of social investment) plays a crucial role in the innovation or implementation phase (steps 3 and 4 of the Young Foundation concept) in particular. More boldly stated: social innovation—not without civil society. The previous section on social investment showed the role of civil society or social investment organizations in transforming the prompt phase into a social innovation. In this process, responsiveness to social needs will predominantly be organized, be it through innovative combinations of resources across sector boundaries, by organizing value-driven client demand by new groups, or by mobilizing advocacy coalitions in public policy discourses. We also expect that the different ways in which civil society and social economy organizations perform this task normally occur in combinations of community or individual value creation, market forces, and policy approaches. The government can change the rules of the game by setting incentives to attract organizations to niche markets. This can be done both by provision of government funds for specific services or goods directly and by policy regulation of quasi-­ markets (guaranteed prices, quality standards) influencing or generating attractive market conditions. These mechanisms can be observed in renewable energy or organic (food, textile) production markets as well as in most social service markets

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or even in education markets. It will therefore be highly interesting for the analysis of social innovation to differentiate the points of intervention, which public policies and regulation choose.

6.5.2  S  ocial Economy and Social Innovation: The Legitimacy Perspective For social innovation to be successful, the relevance of a perceived need, the solution to the problem, and the process of organizing the solution have to pass the legitimacy test of public acceptance. This is why we argue in favor of participatory structures on an organizational level, which allow stakeholder voices to be heard, as well as in favor of process legitimacy among the general public (Then & Kehl, 2012). In the prompt and ideation phase, civil society plays a crucial role in legitimizing the social needs being expressed. As Edwards puts it, “by itself civil society cannot solve problems of poverty and discrimination, since these things also require action through politics, government and business. But civil societies do provide the ‘soil’ in which democratic politics can flourish—by organizing citizens, exerting accountability, and animating public spheres in which different visions for society can be debated” (Edwards, 2008, p.  30). This again refers to our notion of civil society as an inherently political sphere balancing the other sectors’ logics (Habermas, 1996; Offe, 2000). For the implementation phase that includes prototyping (step 3) and sustaining (step 4), the connection to civil society actors remains important as these serve as legitimacy sources for innovative social solutions. This is why we stress the democratic features of social economy organizations, which allow pluralistic voicing of concerns and inclusion in the decision-making process. Thus, this is not a guarantee but a necessary condition for legitimacy to be created in a discursive manner. Even for-profit organizations increasingly face this kind of legitimacy test, as the market and price mechanism is not accepted as the only driver of business strategies. Environmental or social value concerns (blended value!) are increasingly challenging the ideal-type concept of pure profit motivation.8 The rapidly growing markets for sustainable investments and the more recent market segments of social impact investment have provided ample evidence of this trend.

 This perspective is supported by notions of increasing moralization of markets (Stehr et al., 2010).

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6.5.3  S  ocial Entrepreneurship: Start-Ups and Existing Traditional Nonprofits Civil society’s role in social innovation based on social investment can be played by quite different types of organizations. Recent debates have attributed a strong share of this role to new social entrepreneurial start-ups. However, in the light of our argument that the whole of civil society plays a crucial transmission role in social innovation processes, this preference needs to be revisited. Do all social entrepreneurs really work in favor of social innovation, on the one hand, and do traditional nonprofits not contribute to it, on the other hand? In appraising the reality that social entrepreneurs in their start-up period merely have a tiny market share and that even the whole market segment of start-up organizations in aggregate plays only a marginal role in providing all the social services for which an urgent need is expressed, the question of how social innovations get disseminated arises (in view of their highly hybrid or blended value “business models,” it seems difficult to just speak of scaling). On the other hand, existing nonprofits may also contribute to social innovation. They can be identified as organizing intrapreneurship approaches toward social innovation, they have taken on the role of a social investor investing in new social ventures,9 and they have developed product differentiation strategies in their service provision (Krlev & Then, 2018; Netzwerk SONG, 2009; Schmitz & Scheuerle, 2013). Looking at the challenges that start-up social entrepreneurs most frequently report, it seems appropriate to put forward a new hypothesis: only complementary action of both start-ups and existing nonprofits will fulfill the transmission role in social innovation. If, on the one hand, existing, large, and financially strong nonprofits support the dissemination of start-up social innovations and, on the other hand, start-up organizations serve as incubators of innovative impulses, the combination of the two types of organizations makes for the strongest drive toward social innovation in a society. To slightly overstate the case: if social innovation had to rely only on start-ups, its dissemination would be severely hampered, and if social innovation had to rely exclusively on existing nonprofits, the degree of innovativeness would likely suffer. Therefore, it is good that we see (in Germany as in other European countries including France and Italy) more and more cooperation between the different organizations of the social investment sphere.

9  For example, Le Comptoir de l’ Innovation, a social impact investment subsidiary of the French Groupe SOS, comp. https://www.france.pulse-group.org/

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6.6  Conclusions This chapter has demonstrated that civil society plays a crucial role in social innovation. The hypothesis that social innovation cannot succeed without civil society has been tested and further qualified in several steps. However, our argument is based on a specific and concise understanding of social innovation, which is primarily understood as a process of social problem-solving rather than a mere change in social practices. Testing the different sector logics, their respective definitions, and failures lead us to an integrated concept of social investment, which theoretically resolves the hybridity issue by putting civil society center stage. This takes hybridity to be the norm rather than the exception. Civil society that is understood as the blend of all the different kinds of social investments has a strong power of integrating normative processes of generating legitimacy as well as functional processes of mobilizing resources for addressing a (new) social need. This highly intermediary—we could also argue, at its core, political—nature of civil society positions it to be an indispensable structure for successful social innovation. The success of social innovation is determined by a process reaching far beyond scaling a solution; ultimately, it depends on the effective integration of all mechanisms of replication and dissemination, be they market, policy, or community forces. In pluralist democratic societies, the demand for this integrative power of civil society is higher than ever. At the same time, reactionary political forces fear this capacity to drive social innovation and therefore work toward a shrinking space for civil society, as discussed in several chapters in this volume, especially Kuti and Marschall (Chap. 14) and Katz and Gidron (Chap. 21). The social needs of citizens—and, above all, of vulnerable citizens—will not benefit from this attempt.

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Chapter 7

The Hiding Hand, Persistent Fragile Action, and Sustainable Development Gorgi Krlev Abstract  Robust action has been proposed as a key to sustainable development. I suggest the contrary: we need to cultivate what I call “persistent fragile action” to achieve sustainability. Such persistent fragile action is performed by social movement organizations. They prioritize contestation over participation, exclusivity over multivocality, and experience over experimentation. They contribute to important societal transformations because they embrace the principle of the hiding hand: driven by unreasonable expectations of being able to meet a major challenge, without knowing how, they succeed in achieving the seemingly impossible. This chapter discusses why and how more, not less of the hiding hand and the persistent fragile action it promotes would help us address the grand challenges of our time. Keywords  Social movements · Civil society organizations · Hiding hand principle · Persistent fragile action · Robust action · Sustainability Our world seems more uncertain and less predictable than ever before. We face existential challenges, which society must meet successfully or, as pundits across the board assert, suffer immensely—even to the brink of collapse. While the issue of limiting global warming and the ensuing climate catastrophe is most pertinent, sustainable development rests on many interconnected questions of social and environmental equity (Howard-Grenville et al., 2019). Some scholars have suggested that robust action would prove to be a source of innovation and institutional change (compared to, for example, Furnari, 2014; Hargadon & Douglas, 2001), which can be harnessed to meet the immense challenges we are facing (Ferraro et al., 2015). Robust action refers to a pragmatic approach to uncertainty that rests on fulfilling short-term goals while maintaining flexibility for strategic adaptions in the future and has been compared to Cosimo de’Medici, the famous Italian merchant’s, “style

G. Krlev (*) Centre for Social Investment (CSI), University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany Politecnico di Milano, School of Management, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected]

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of control” (Padgett & Ansell, 1993). A triad of its properties including (a) participation, (b) multivocality, and (c) continuous experimentation has been held up against global initiatives in reporting, good governance, or certification (Ferraro et al., 2015), suggesting that these would prove to be effective tools for addressing our societal problems. There is an entirely different, almost antagonistic theoretical approach to deal with uncertainty and fundamental challenges: the principle of the hiding hand (Hirschman, 1967). The principle posits that a driving mechanism of economic development, and of progress more generally, is humans’ tendency to close their eyes to what seems extremely risky or almost impossible to achieve because they would otherwise not even venture to try. Hirschman (1967, p. 13) sees this behavior as a necessary prerequisite for bringing creativity to the fore: “[T]he only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity that it will turn out to be.” In his review of two handfuls of large-­ scale development projects supported by the World Bank, he ultimately comes to the conclusion that the hiding hand is a benevolent force guiding humans to achieve greater things. Hirschman (1967, p. 14) asserts that the reformist Martin Luther’s own words acknowledge the principle most explicitly when he said: “Had I known all in advance, God would have been put to great trouble to bring me to it…God has led me on as if I were a horse and he put blinkers on me so that I could not see who came running up upon me.” Some scholars have fiercely attacked the principle on the basis of extensive datasets on infrastructure projects, whose analyses statistically reject the hiding hand and demonstrate that when projects are started out of ignorance, costs tend to outweigh the benefits (Flyvbjerg, 2016). On the basis of such analyses, they argue that the hiding hand is malevolent rather than benevolent and that it provides the ground on which the “planning fallacy,” by which people tend to overestimate their abilities especially when tackling major projects (Kahneman, 2011), is built rather than evidence against it (Flyvbjerg & Sunstein, 2016). Others have asserted that such critiques “fail to see the broader problem of incomplete information and uncertainty in planning processes” (Anheier, 2016, p. 1005) and that the principle of the hiding hand is of use in understanding value creation beyond purely rationalist approaches (Anheier, 2017). I take Anheier’s vantage point and explore what the hiding hand means for progress beyond narrow conceptions of economic development or infrastructure planning. More precisely, I examine how the hiding hand may contribute to sustainable development. I conceptualize persistent fragile action as an antithesis, or at least as a complement, to robust action and demonstrate how social movement organizations in particular achieve positive change by venturing into the unknown based on ideals rather than pragmatic considerations. I believe that this has important implications in how organizations and policy should seek to contribute to a sustainable future.

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7.1  Revisiting Concepts and Claims 7.1.1  The Potency and Problems of Robust Action Robust action as a concept initially focused on the actions of successful individuals, rationales informing their strategic moves, and how social relations, in particular networks, enabled them to reach their goals (Leifer, 1991; Padgett & Ansell, 1993). Later, scholars showed how robust design helped create and institutionalize innovations that would transform the world, such as electric lighting (Hargadon & Douglas, 2001), or how some of the elements of robust action, such as multivocal coordination or collective experimentation, enabled the emergence of new social practices that built the foundation for the institutionalization of Silicon Valley (Furnari, 2014). Recently, colleagues have advanced the argument that the principles of robust action can and should be harnessed to promote sustainable development (Ferraro et al., 2015). They list several global initiatives as enabling a high degree of participation (The Global Reporting Initiative), multivocality (United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing), or experimentation (greenhouse gas reduction initiatives). Although these initiatives have done a lot to put sustainable development on the agenda of the business world (de Bakker et al., 2019), we know that the initiatives continue to face major challenges, which inhibit their ability to effectively contribute to sustainable development. Let us look at the records of accomplishment using examples of initiatives that seem to display a high degree of at least one of the robust action properties, i.e., participation, multivocality, and experimentation. First, the Global Compact, for instance, “the largest voluntary corporate responsibility initiative in the world” (Rasche et al., 2013), retains close to 10,000 active participants but also has had to expel more than 13,000 businesses (UN Global Compact, 2020), mostly for failing to adhere to the minimum member obligation, namely, “to submit an annual report that outlines implementation progress” (Rasche, 2019). This is neither a clear sign for the failure of the initiative nor is there a simple explanation for why firms drop out or need to be expelled. However, the fact that followers of the initiative were more likely to drop out than were pioneers (Rasche et al., 2020) could be read as a signal that the principle of open and voluntary participation in robust action may at times be more detrimental to than beneficial for advancing sustainability. Second, the responsible or impact-investing fields are populated by such a diversity of actors that they can certainly be considered as one of the most multivocal fields at present. The fields are thriving when it comes to market shares and policy take-up, yet, a continued stress on financial logics voiced by some of the actors involved may lead to the erosion of responsible practice (Yan et  al., 2018). The meaning of impact evaluation principles, for example, became all the more vague the higher the number of commercially oriented actors that became engaged in the market. Impact evaluation, which started off with the ambition of being anything but another version of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting principles (Simon

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& Barmeier, 2011), ultimately became just that (Barman, 2020). Another downside of the multivocality of robust action initiatives is that they remain vulnerable to legally permitted but morally corrupt behavior. DesJardine et al. (2020) showed that activist hedge funds that seek to strengthen the voice of shareholders relative to other stakeholders attack firms with many responsibility initiatives and thereby impose high reaction costs on these firms. They also showed that the negative effects resulting from this behavior were more severe in industries with lower overall levels of CSR, which means that the vanguards of CSR tend to suffer the most. This circumstance might discourage responsible practice, in particular where more sustainable practices are in dire need. Third, the take-up of experimental schemes such as emissions trading or new environmental norms and labels tends to be slow because actors retain the freedom to prioritize their own experiences and practices rather than adhere to shared standards (Bansal, 2002). Push factors such as industry pressures or pull factors such as opportunities for product and process innovations that may benefit the organization enhance compliance with the schemes (Pinkse, 2007), and, firms, especially in resource-intensive industries, engage in coping strategies that prevent violation of the standard (Martin & Rice, 2010). However, none of these behaviors leads to fundamental change in emission levels. This observation holds for the organizational as well as the field level, where innovation capacity in favor of lower emissions is limited because of a “lack of stringency and predictability and the relatively greater importance of context factors,” whereby the term “context factors” means the emissions trading system of the European Union (EU) (Rogge et al., 2011). We have also seen failures in setting up emission schemes in the first place, for example, as a result of vested industry interests in the United States (Howard-Grenville et  al., 2014). Such continued experimentation instead of an adoption of “minimal policies” (Nordhaus, 2018) has resulted in a complete lack of improvement in emission trends. This situation, as Nordhaus (2018) asserts, now demands a substantially higher carbon price to achieve the climate targets than would have been needed had effective action taken place in the past. Now that we have seen some of the limits of the robust action approach to sustainable development, what does the principle of the hiding hand have to offer instead?

7.1.2  The Promise and Limits of the Hiding Hand The principle of the hiding hand came into being supposedly as a swipe at Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (Anheier, 2016). It also rests on a small but important modification of Karl Marx’s famous quote by stressing that mankind does not, as Marx put it, “only take up such problems as it can solve,” but “such problems as it thinks it can solve” (Hirschman, 1967, pp. 13f., italics in original). By adding this particular emphasis, Hirschman highlights that it is humans’ spirit, imagination, or conviction that makes them tackle issues that, if analyzed carefully and purely

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rationally, would be dismissed as impossible, irrelevant, or unbeneficial. He formulates the principle in relation to his research on large development projects in developing countries, which turned out to be unexpected successes, not despite but, as Hirschman argues, because of the magnitude of the challenge. Because of his skepticism of generalizations in social science after the example of the laws of nature, Hirschman suggested the principle merely as “one of his little ideas” (Flyvbjerg & Sunstein, 2016). Although far from being a fully fledged concept, let alone a theory, it has received wide academic recognition and continued reception (Anheier, 2016). Scholars use the hiding hand to explain, for example, the rise of unexpected champions of the digital transformation such as Estonia (Kattel & Mergel, 2019) or the success of Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa (Gil et al., 2019). To put it in a very pointed manner, the hiding hand, in contrast to robust action, stresses future vision over pragmatic achievement of more immediate goals, elevates ignorance and unquestioning dedication over evolutionary learning and experimentation, and implies that adversity rather than collaboration is the main source of creativity and innovation. This does not sound like anything a strategic decision-­ maker and innovator would embrace (Drucker, 2002) nor anything much in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One should think only of SDG 17, which stresses the importance of cooperation and “partnerships for the goals” (George et al., 2016). In fact, the principle has suffered fierce rebuttal on a number of grounds. Among them are that the principle does not withstand wider empirical tests about actual benefits and costs, that Hirschman sampled on the dependent variable, that his examples were too selective to warrant any wider implications, and that rather than an early behavioral scientist, Hirschman was the victim of bias (Flyvbjerg, 2016). In consequence, scholars have warned against applying the principle in policy planning and decision-making more generally (Flyvbjerg & Sunstein, 2016). Others have met this criticism and claimed that it was beyond the point because it dismisses the validity of qualitative evidence and blocks progress by applying old paradigms of thought (Lepenies, 2018) or because it underestimates the complexity of social realities and how the hiding hand could help master such complexity, which puts limits to pure rationalism (Anheier, 2017). The last point, in particular, establishes a link to sustainable development. Although there is disagreement about effective strategies to achieve it, there is agreement across the board that complexity and uncertainty are among its core traits (Blok, 2018; Dahlmann & Roehrich, 2019; Mezger et  al., 2020; Tsolakis et  al., 2020). This suggests that the hiding hand and the visionary, ignorant, and dedicated actions it drives, which are prone to adversity, may have something to offer for achieving a sustainable future after all. When we further think about which types of organizations exhibit such traits, we quickly arrive at civil society organizations, in particular social movement organizations. Such organizations tend to act as vanguards and address issues that others shy away from (Anheier, 2014, pp.  293f.). Civicness, values, and local embeddedness, all properties that social movement organizations exhibit, are critical enablers of innovations that benefit society (Krlev et al., 2018). By the same token, civil society organizations more generally have

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been closely associated with ignorance, organizational struggles, and even permanent failure. These traits are said to determine not only these organizations’ inability but also their success in dealing with deep-seated social problems (Seibel, 1996; Seibel, Chap. 5 in this volume). In the following section, I conceptualize how the principle of the hiding hand is driving what I call “persistent fragile action,” how and why such action is performed by social movement organizations, and how it effectively contributes to sustainable development.

7.2  Persistent Fragile Action for Sustainable Development 7.2.1  One Case in Point A central pillar of sustainable development is the switch to renewable energy production. The German Energiewende legislation has been portrayed as an essential policy move for achieving this goal (McCarthy, 2018). Yet, its history was influenced more by social movement organizations than the eventual passing of the laws would suggest. The roots of one of the leading renewable energy cooperatives go back to the late 1980s (Hockenos, 2019), when its founders were part of the antinuclear power movement that surged in response to the Chernobyl disaster. The initial goal of a small group of protesters based in the little village of Schönau in southern Germany, like that of many other protestors, was to create a better future for their children, a future free of nuclear energy. In contrast to many other local movements, however, this specific group saw several risky, but in their view imperative, opportunities to take concrete actions. The informal group decided to pursue a dual strategy: it founded a citizen initiative called “parents for a future free of nuclear power” (one should note the parallel to the “Fridays 4 Future” and similarly named movements of the late 2010s) and a small firm. The firm set up small and decentralized hydropower stations and combined heat and power plants or photovoltaic systems. The citizen initiative, instead, called on the municipality to support renewable energy production and the local energy monopolist to change its production practices—with no effect on either. When the monopolist tried to prematurely prolong its supply contract with the municipality for another 20 years, a plan that the municipality had initially given in to, the movement’s initiative forced a citizen referendum to prevent this from happening. Although the initiative won the vote with only an extremely narrow lead, it thereby bought time for further action. In 1994, the group founded a commercial partnership under German civil law that involved 650 shareholders with executive rights at the time of foundation to bid for the concession to supply the municipality with electricity. Through a second political campaign and another extremely narrow citizen vote, the activists officially became the “democratically most legitimized energy provider in the world” (EWS Schönau, 2020)—at the time, without the means to actually produce the electricity.

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To buy the electricity grid from the former monopolist for a price of 8.7 million DM, the activists engaged in a crowdfunding initiative of exceptional success and dynamics, at a time when the term “crowdfunding” had not even been invented. Only half of the necessary budget could be raised through investments of the partnership’s members and ethical banks, since the firm would otherwise have become commercially unviable. Therefore, the other half was raised through a donation campaign to support the democratic commercial endeavor. This campaign was developed pro bono by some of the biggest German advertisement agencies, featured and supported by national newspapers, broadcast in cinemas, and supported by various environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The appeal of the so-called “Störfall”1 campaign went as far as people forgoing gifts they would receive from relatives or friends at private celebrations in favor of donations to the activists, which enabled them to raise more than four  million DM within a few months. This enabled the group to acquire the grid and to start supplying the municipality with electricity. When the German energy market was liberalized in 1998, so that every customer could freely choose their energy supplier, the organization started selling renewable energy throughout the country and later also sold biogas. Since 2009, the Elektrizitätswerke Schönau (EWS) is organized as a renewable energy cooperative in order to further develop its democratic character as well as its business. Throughout, the organization maintained its protest character of counteracting what its members saw as an unsustainable status quo of nuclear, coal, and gas-based energy production perpetuated by the big four utility companies and the German government. The organization and its members have called themselves “electricity rebels” since their year of foundation and have continued their political lobbying and resistance to the market dominance of the established utility companies ever since. The EWS was the first provider of 100% green electricity in Germany almost 10 years before the update of the renewable energy law in 2008 set 30% as the target rate of renewable energy to be achieved in the market by 2020. Two of its founders and leaders, the married couple Ursula and Michael Sladek, received the Federal Cross of Merit in 2004 for “breaking up rigid and stagnant structures in a monopolistic market.” This happened 7 years before the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima in 2011 prompted the German government to pass a law to phase out nuclear energy production, while an extension of operating permits for nuclear plants had been debated in the parliament until shortly before. In this story, we clearly see the hiding hand at play. Initially, the activists knew what they were against but had little clue about what they stood for. They were driven by passion and the will to create a better world for their children. The group constantly engaged in moves of exceptional risks and unlikely gains. The activists were driven by their ambition to counter conventional wisdom, which said that 1  Störfall represented a play on words. On the one side, it symbolically related to the threat posed by nuclear energy (Störfall as a reference to nuclear accidents). On the other, it referred to the activists’ role as challengers of the established industry (Störfall as a reference to the disruptions caused by the activists).

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conducting ecological business “is economically impossible to do.”2 They also wanted to provoke a mind shift among industry leaders, politicians, and the population, away from a technocratic regime of electricity production and toward a future of an energy sector conscious of political issues. Decentralization and democratization were the central goals for the activists early on. The organization had to manage a high degree of uncertainty and complexity throughout its evolution: “We had to pair the ecological dimension and the economic dimension. People were very afraid: Can this succeed at all? Are we not going to finally sit there without any electricity?” The founders were also highly aware that there was no explicit cause-and-­ effect pattern behind their actions. They described their strategy as hands-on and bottom-up democratic work driven by the desire to set an example for others. The central motives for the organization were always contestation and protest, despite the limits that these principles would put to acquiring more customers who did not share the activists’ values, which at that time was clearly the majority of the population. The organization also constantly engaged in actions that would not withstand a cost–benefit analysis, such as politically motivated “electricity seminars” to educate the population about renewable energy production, or the provision of financial support to other people’s projects that aimed at furthering the social and cultural aspects of sustainability. In return, these activities had an exceptional, community-­ building effect on customers and associated them with the organization beyond anything a conventional business approach could have achieved. Ursula Sladek described it like this: “It very often happens that people approach me and say: Hey, Ms. Sladek, I am now also a member! They don’t mean that they have just joined the cooperative, but that they started buying electricity from us.” Disillusioned by the lack of support from the local and national authorities and policymakers, the activists found themselves at the crossroads more than once during their organization’s history: There were only two options: to give it all up, or roll up our sleeves and engage in bottom­up work…This was backbreaking work. Theoretically it would have been much easier to convince several hundred people, namely those who make the decisions [referring to politicians] than to convince millions of citizens…But at some point, we completely gave up on politics. Well, not on politics, but on politicians…Working with the base is more sustainable, and probably more democratic too.

Based on her experience, Ursula Sladek was skeptical of the value of coordinated action and labeling initiatives that would mark and elevate responsible business practices. The main question is: What standard does such a certificate have? Is it strict or does it focus on the least common denominator? If it is to be of any value, it would need to be very strict. It should only be given to a selected few, so that others would strive for it as a result…If the standard is low, it is of no value at all. In that case, if some other organizations with lower standards than ours received this label, it would degrade our organization and cause.

2  All direct quotes and indirect accounts are from an interview of the author with Ursula Sladek for his Master’s thesis back in 2010.

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The liberalization of the energy sector not only represented a major opportunity but also a major challenge to the organization because none of the big utility companies wanted to lose customers and because switching energy providers, despite being allowed, was complicated for customers at the time. Ignorant of these difficulties, the organization remained true to its ambitious and combative nature: We said to ourselves, if someone steals a customer from us, we’ll steal three of theirs in return. That was quite courageous in a situation in which no one actually knew how that would work…Eventually we benefitted from being so rebellious…And a key principle for us was to explore new ways, not to back down, not to let us be scared by anyone.

The EWS is a striking example of how social movement organizations engage in what I dub “persistent fragile action.” Persistent fragile action is driven by the principle of the hiding hand. Organizations pursue persistent fragile action not for pragmatic reasons but for grand visions. Such organizations are most creative and innovative when they face challenges, with which they willingly engage rather than circumvent. They do so because of dedication and passion and often against reason. In consequence, they frequently enter situations of significant risk. To cope with the high degrees of uncertainty and complexity, organizations are relentless and continuously challenge the obstacles they are presented with, very often against the odds. Although such action, in order to succeed, needs to be persistent, the political contestation it often entails will make it persistently fragile. Organizations pursuing persistent fragile action will often face adversity to a degree that brings them to the edge of organizational collapse. Rather than play it safe, however, the organizations will manage the next leap by proactively tackling new problems they believe they can solve, even when they have only the slightest idea of how to do it.

7.2.2  Many Cases in Point I argue that the EWS is not an exception but that the principles of persistent fragile action apply to social movement organizations more generally. Social movement organizations pursue utopian agendas (Crossley, 1999), push their agendas through against great resistance (de Bakker et al., 2013), and are motivated by their dedication to values and virtues, often located at the brink of what counts as rational (Brunner, 2017). Hess Natur, for example, a German pioneer in organic fashion, which has a strong grounding in the ecological movement in Germany, resisted a bailout from an organizational crisis by the private equity firm Carlyle because Carlyle’s profit-maximization logic and other business areas that the firm was engaged in were not in line with Hess Natur’s philosophy. Although this behavior brought the social movement organization into an existential crisis, it also was a source of innovation and helped maintain the image of the apparel company as a beacon for others (Schmitz, 2015).

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Social movement organizations’ success often depends on conflict and contestation (Schneiberg & Lounsbury, 2008) as well as on acting outside the existing institutions rather than on seeking collaboration (King & Soule, 2016). At times, organizations perform political and commercial activities conjointly, which applies not only to the EWS but also to other renewable energy cooperatives (Huybrechts & Haugh, 2018). At other times, commercial social movement organizations may benefit from other and somewhat detached movements, as was the case for production cooperatives in the United States that benefitted from the anti-corporate initiatives of the early twentieth century (Schneiberg, 2013). Commercial activities may add directly to the momentum of the movement and its impact on the surrounding industry, such as in the case of Fairphone, which seeks to change the electronics industry by demonstrating how smartphones can be produced sustainably and with fair labor standards (Akemu et al., 2016). Even movements that primarily engage in acts of protest rather than product or service provision tend to achieve their goals more effectively when they cause material disruptions and not merely symbolic disruptions (Banerjee & Case, 2019). However, ultimately, the motivation of social movement organizations is to transform the wider social system. True crime podcasts, some of which are strongly grounded in social movements promoting criminal justice reform goals (Sherrill, 2019), are adding to social sustainability by sensitizing the population to current injustices. To make progress on their goals, social movement organizations engage in satisficing or muddling through (McAdam, 2017), even within highly institutionalized settings such as medical care (Greenhalgh & Papoutsi, 2019). In order to propel transformations, they engage in complicated strategies such as the “frame brokerage,” the practice of shifting perceptions of negatively charged social issues, observed in an enterprise combatting Mafia racketeering (Lee et al., 2018), or the “partial organization,” which refers to acts of organizing and being organized outside formal organizational settings, observed in a Finnish timebank (Laamanen et  al., 2020). The coalition building that social movement organizations often engage in takes a lot of time and involves internal conflicts (Reinecke & Donaghey, 2015). Since the original members initially have little else in common than a shared goal, such conflicts and tensions could cause social movement organizations to lose momentum (Reinecke, 2018). In the worst case, the organizations are susceptible to decline because they violate the rules of the game and may not be able to meet conventional accountability standards (Martinez & Cooper, 2017). All of these traits add to the vulnerability of social movement organizations and the persistent fragile action they engage in. If we compare the traits above to robust action, we see that persistent fragile action is different. First, a political process of contestation and conflict usually precedes participatory and collaborative settings, and the desire to achieve greater things is often driven by a cohesive group outside the established system. This may produce greater momentum and novelty than in robust action initiatives, even if the latter may be accelerated by community-oriented tools such as crowdsourcing (Porter et al., 2019). Second, persistent fragile action shares with robust action that both are marked by the execution of democratic voice by engaged stakeholders.

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However, persistent fragile action also strongly embraces exclusivity in terms of rebutting external parties that are not fully aligned on values or perform actions under the leading actors’ own standard. This limits its multivocality and diversity of viewpoints as compared to robust action. However, the controversy that an unmovable position generates may ultimately help push standards upward, as observed in certification alliances (Wijen & Chiroleu-Assouline, 2019). Third, persistent fragile action is about pushing local innovations through despite resistance, independent of whether there is an immediate case for wider scaling. The approach in pushing those innovations through is often chaotic rather than structured and experiential rather than experimental. Although this may limit the evolution of agreement on shared standards, it sets an example for others to follow by raising expectations of what is possible, desirable, or acceptable, thus altering the level playing field (van Dijk et al., 2020).

7.3  Conclusions Robust action is driving the incremental improvements of a wide variety actors, including large-scale ones. The short- to mid-term sustainability impacts of those improvements will likely be higher than those of persistent fragile action. However, it seems that the more fundamental shifts we require in view of our massive challenges are bred on the radical practices of small-scale, decentralized actors that perform persistent fragile action. This claim is in line with what we know from the historic study of socioeconomic transitions, for example, of the shift from sailing ships to steamboats (Geels, 2002). Such studies outline how practices that are initially dismissed as superfluous, unnecessary, or foolish and therefore only manage to exist in niches provide blueprints for solutions, which lead to reconfigurations of dominant landscapes once the time is ripe. The triggering force in technological transitions is usually that the economic case for the niche solution grows so strong that it replaces the old mainstream solution. In sustainability transitions, instead, the driving force may be a new principle of producing, consuming, or living rather than a specific product or technology so that the underlying mechanism is more indirect (Pel et al., 2020). The impact of fair trade, for example, is not primarily defined by the size of the market for fair trade products but by how it affects the consumption preferences of customers as well as the business practices in the food and fashion industries (Nicholls, 2010). Unfortunately, in persistent fragile action, the economic case may be weak, or not present at all, and systems often remain unreceptive to innovative contributions to sustainability. For example, although the coalescing that social movement organizations performed around charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in California influenced public awareness and acceptance of the issue, it had no direct effect on the available infrastructure (Dutta et al., 2018). Moreover, although social movement organizations’ activism may lead to important piecemeal changes in racial

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inequality, those are often limited to the micro level as long as institutional distribution of resources and power remains unequal (Alves & Gomes, 2018). In consequence, we do not need robust action or persistent fragile action, we need both. In particular, we need better ways of integrating the two. Organizations, including large firms and multinational alliances, would do well to screen for persistent fragile action that they could incorporate into their operations or imitate. When the more radical innovations that persistent fragile action and the hiding hand are likely to produce meet a forum of diverse stakeholders who use them as a benchmark to bounce own practices against, then wider and faster impact could ensue. Policymakers or international institutions, in turn, should have an interest in learning from the ecological and social sustainability struggles that those performing persistent fragile action have gone through, in order to identify effective strategies of better meeting the SDGs. While the principle of the hiding hand would suggest that once these obstacles are removed creativity and innovation would abate, our world (un)fortunately offers enough opportunities for the vanguards of persistent fragile action to tackle the next problem they think they can solve.

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Chapter 8

Using the System of National Accounts Framework to Measure Social Impacts of Social Economy Institutions S. Wojciech Sokolowski

Abstract  Although social economy (SE) institutions are widely credited with generating significant social benefits, measuring their actual impact on society has been a daunting task. The assessment of social economy contributions toward broader policy goals requires a macro-level perspective, allowing a comparison of social economy institutions to other types of economic actors across industries and countries. A conceptual framework allowing such a macro-level analysis has been developed with the Satellite Account on Non-profit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work, which provides a set of officially sanctioned recommendations and methodologies for separate identification of social economy institutions in the national economic statistics known as the System of National Accounts (SNA). This chapter offers a brief introduction of this methodology to the general audience that may not be familiar with the technical intricacies of the SNA. Keywords  Social economy institutions · Social impact measurement · Cross-­ national data · System of National Accounts

8.1  Challenges in Measuring Social Economy Impacts Social economy, defined as a wide array of institutions producing broadly defined social benefits, such as nonprofits, cooperatives, social enterprises, professional associations, labor unions, foundations, and various membership and voluntary associations, occupies a peculiar place in national economies. On the one hand, these institutions are commonly believed to make valuable contributions to society, as their name implies, for which they often receive generous rewards in the form of S. Wojciech Sokolowski passed away before this volume went to press. S. W. Sokolowski († 2020) (*) Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, Baltimore, MD, USA © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_8

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tax exemptions, government grants, private donations, and free volunteer labor. On the other hand, the exact nature of those social benefits remains elusive, which raises questions as to whether the economic rewards given to those institutions are justified. To some critics, these institutions should be treated as any other business: earn their income by market sales and pay taxes or go out of business if they cannot. For that reason, measuring social impacts occupies a central place in the performance management of these institutions and is often requested, if not mandated, by regulatory agencies and donor organizations. Yet, such measurement faces several extremely serious challenges that often make its implementation highly difficult, if at all feasible. For-profit businesses’ contribution to economy and society is measured, for the most part, by the monetary value of the products they sell on the market, but social economy organizations often provide goods or services at significantly reduced prices or for no charge at all. Therefore, financial transactions are likely to significantly underestimate the actual contribution these organizations make to society. At the root of the problem is the micro-level focus of most impact assessment efforts. Such efforts, such as the program logic model (PLM) approach to nonprofit evaluation proposed by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (2001), tend to concentrate on individual organizations and their programs. This micro-level focus is of primary interest to managers and sponsors of these organizations and programs, as it provides valuable feedback to organizations’ operations or to decision-making in awarding grants to such organizations. However, this information is extremely difficult, if at all possible, to generalize at the macro-level of analysis, i.e., that of a nation. However, this is the level of analysis that is of primary interest to public policymakers and public opinion leaders: what effect, if any, do those organizations have on achieving broad policy goals, such as improving quality of education, improving healthcare, eradicating poverty, creating employment opportunities for people with barriers to employment, ensuring gender equality, or providing affordable housing? To meet this challenge, numerous experimental approaches to measuring the social impacts of organizational activities, not necessarily limited to those of social economy organizations, have been proposed by a wide array of research and consulting firms around the world (Board of Governors, 2011; Olsen & Galimidi, 2008; Thornley & Dailey, 2010). An important driving force behind these efforts is the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development initiative to define measurable indicators of sustainable development (United Nations, 2007). A group of prominent social scientists and statisticians in the United States developed a series of recommendations to incorporate social outcome measures into the System of National Accounts (SNA) (Abraham & Mackie, 2005). Unfortunately, measuring social impact and benefits is not easy, as Barbetta (Chap. 12, this volume) explores in the case of foundations. Those benefits are difficult to define, and no common understanding exists of what those benefits are or ought to be. Oftentimes, claiming social benefits is a sham to cover up ruthless profiteering. One of the most notorious examples is the Congo Free State, a private colonial estate of King Leopold II of Belgium engaged in exceptionally ruthless

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exploitation and genocide of the native population but internationally recognized as a humanitarian and philanthropic endeavor (Gifford, 1971). The situation is further complicated by the fact that social economy organizations tend to concentrate on human service fields providing assistance to people in need: people without adequate income, victims of abuse or neglect, the chronically ill, people with mental disorders, victims of natural disasters, refugees, and the like. While the impulse to help people in need is seldom questioned, the results that this help is supposed to achieve are less clear. Although the policymakers, donors, and general public would like to see lasting solutions to social problems and an increase in the general well-being of a society, the management and professional staff involved in service delivery perceive such lofty goals as utterly unrealistic and instead tend to focus on those aspects of their activities that they can directly control. The results of these activities are often contingent on many general social and economic forces that make it difficult to determine what outcomes can be attributed to those activities and what are the effects of those broader social and economic forces. This chapter discusses one solution to these challenges offered by the SNA in a manner that is accessible to nonspecialists. The SNA (United Nations, 2009), along with its European equivalent, the European System of Accounts (ESA), is the internationally agreed standard set of recommendations on how to measure economic activity in accordance with strict accounting conventions based on economic principles. The resulting accounts provide a comprehensive and detailed record of the complex economic activities taking place within an economy and of the interactions among the different economic entities and groups of entities. Although the compilation of SNA statistics entails high levels of technical complexity, these statistics are widely used in policymaking and public discussions of national economies. Perhaps the most popular SNA statistic is the gross domestic product, widely used to measure economic growth and level of economic development. On the surface, the SNA, which focuses almost exclusively on financial transactions, is an unlikely candidate for a tool for measuring nonmonetary social impact. However, the handbook titled Satellite Account on Non-profit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work (UN Satellite Account Handbook; United Nations, 2018) provides a conceptual framework for identifying social economy institutions and systematically comparing them on both financial and nonfinancial dimensions to other sectors of the national economy, as well as making cross-national comparisons. Those comparisons, in turn, allow statistical control for many intervening factors to flesh out the net contributions of the social economy and to measure them on a scale that is comparable to that used to measure other sectors of national economies.

8.2  Social Economy in the System of National Accounts In most general terms, social economy consists of institutions that meet the following three criteria:

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1. They are private, i.e., not owned or controlled by the government. 2. They primarily serve a social or public purpose, i.e., their main purpose is to produce public or collective goods for others rather than to maximize returns to invested capital. 3. Participation in their activities is voluntary and without any compulsion. This conceptualization includes a broad range of institutions, from nonprofit healthcare or social assistance organizations to foundations, labor unions and professional associations, cooperatives and mutual societies, and various types of social ventures (SVs). A great majority of such institutions regularly engage in economic activities, and, for that reason, they are covered by economic statistics that form the basis of the SNA. However, classification systems used in the SNA group them together with other types of institutions in national economies, making them invisible in statistical data tables. To understand this problem, it may be useful to think of the SNA framework as two classification systems: the classification of institutional units themselves and the classification of economic transactions in which those units engage (such as selling, buying, borrowing, paying wages, saving, and the like). Although the latter constitutes the bulk of the SNA, it is out of the scope of this chapter. This chapter focuses on the classification of economic units themselves because it is necessary for identifying social economy institutions and systematically comparing them to other types of institutions, such as government agencies or corporations and businesses. As it will be shown later in this chapter, this comparison is critical for netting out contributions attributable exclusively to the social economy. This classification system assigns institutional units to different institutional sectors based on the type of economic activities they perform. Specifically: • Units that undertake production in the market and aim to sell their products at market prices are assigned to the corporation sector, which may be further subdivided into nonfinancial corporations and financial corporations (coded as S11 and S12, respectively), based on the secondary criterion of their main product. • Units that undertake production of goods at below-market prices and that undertake consumption of goods and saving on behalf of the population are assigned to the general government sector (S13). • Units that undertake consumption on their own behalf are assigned to the household sector (S14). • Units that are not market producers and that are supported by households and not controlled by the government are assigned to the nonprofit institutions (NPIs) serving the household (NPISH) sector (S15). Since social economy units engage in all these functions—production in the market, nonmarket production, and consumption—the SNA assigns them to those institutional sectors to which all other units performing similar functions are allocated. As a result, they are merged with other types of units in those sectors, lose their separate identity, and become invisible in SNA statistical data tables (Table 8.1).

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Table 8.1  Allocation of social economy units among institutional sectors in the SNA Type of institutional unit For-profit corporations Government agencies Households Nonprofit institutions (NPIs) Cooperatives Mutual societies Social ventures Visible in SNA statistics

Sectors of the system Financial Nonfinancial corporation corporation sector (S12) sector (S11) C C

General government sector (S13)

Household sector (S14)

NPISH sector (S15)

H NPIsa

NPIs

G

NPIs

NPIs

NPIs

Coops

Coops M

M SVs ∑S11

SVs ∑S12

∑S13

∑S14

SVs ∑S15

Unlike the SNA, which does not allocate any nonprofits to the household sector, the ESA allocates unincorporated or economically insignificant nonprofits to that sector

a

Since social economy institutions are often of considerable policy interest, the UN commissioned a methods handbook, the aforementioned UN Satellite Account Handbook (United Nations, 2018), developed by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society Studies. This handbook outlines the methodology for identifying social economy institutions in national economic data and provides guidance for assembling financial and nonfinancial statistics describing these institutions. This methodology allows the subdivision of SNA institutional sectors into subsectors as shown in Table 8.2. This modified institutional sector classification system is instrumental to separate identification of social economy units in the SNA statistics. Based on the criteria outlined in the UN Satellite Account Handbook,1 both nonfinancial and financial corporations (i.e., units primarily engaged in market production) are subdivided into social economy units (e.g., nonprofits, cooperatives, mutual societies, and social ventures) and all other units (e.g., for-profit businesses and corporations). The classification also calls for identifying government-controlled NPIs (GCNPIs) in the general government sector, but such NPIs are not included in the scope of the social economy sector by definition. All NPISHs meet these criteria by definition, 1  These criteria include being an organization, being self-governed, being noncompulsory, substantially limiting profit distribution, and not being controlled by the government. For more details, see United Nations (2018), Chap. 3, pp. 17–29.

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Table 8.2  Recommended identification of social economy (SE) units in the SNA Sectors and subsectors of the SNA Nonfinancial Financial corporations (S11) corporations (S12) SE Other SE Other subsector units subsector units Industry 1 SE1 S11 SE1 S12

Industry

a

Industry 2 SE2 S11

SE2 S12

Industry n

SEn S12

SEn S11

General NPISH government (S13) (S14) SE Other subsectora units GCNPI1 SE1 S14 GCNPI2 SE2 S14 GCNPIn SEn S14

Social economy

∑SE1 ∑SE2 ∑SEn

Not included in the social economy sector because of government control

so no division into subsectors is necessary. The sum of these SE subsectors and NPISHs forms the institutional component of the social economy sector.2 This subsector classification system also allows side-by-side comparisons of social economy units and other institutional units engaged in the same type of economic activity (and thus allocated to the same institutional sector in the SNA) at the level of individual industries. This feature is critical for the method of measuring social impacts of social economy recommended in the UN Satellite Account Handbook.

8.3  Social Economy Contribution Model The social economy contribution model proposed in the UN Satellite Account Handbook (called the “TSE sector contribution model,” where TSE stands for “third or social economy”) is based on the program logic model (PLM), a conceptual tool widely used by managers and evaluators to assess the effectiveness of organizational activities or “programs” run by organizations. The PLM provides a conceptual framework for defining the different elements of a program and placing them in the context of a purpose-oriented rational action that encompasses the goals to be achieved, the process leading to their achievement, and the resources used in the process. The W. K. Kellogg Foundation (2001) developed such a PLM specifically designed for evaluating nonprofit organizations and their programs. It consists of five elements: Resources and Inputs, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes, and Impacts (Fig. 8.1). “Resources and Inputs” identifies the human and material resources employed to execute a program. “Activities” describes what the program does to achieve its objectives. The last three elements, in turn, describe different conceptualizations of

2  The social economy sector also includes the volunteer work component, which is outside the scope of this chapter.

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Resources and Inputs

Acvies

Outputs

Outcomes

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Impacts

Fig. 8.1  Kellogg Foundation’s program logic model for nonprofit organizations

the goals or contributions of the program. “Outputs” denotes the volume of goods produced or the number of people served by the program within a defined reference period. “Outcomes” identifies the benefits accrued, or expected to be accrued, by people as a direct result of program activities, such as improvements in health, education, job skills, social skills, and the like, within a relatively short reference period (typically less than 1 year). Finally, “Impacts” extends the focus to direct and indirect (consequential) benefits accrued over a longer time period not only directly to the beneficiaries of a program but also to the community in which they live. The challenge facing this PLM is attribution of Outcomes and Impacts, i.e., the ability to plausibly link (attribute) a particular outcome or impact to actions of a specific organizational unit. The longer the time and the larger the physical space separating that action from its purported outcome or impact, the more difficult it is to attribute. For example, if a social assistance organization provides job training to people with a long history of unemployment, identifying the inputs and outputs of that program is relatively easy. These are, respectively, financial resources used and people hired to run the program, and the trainees that participated in the program. However, attributing the expected outcome (employment) to participation in this training program may be challenging, more so the longer the time gap is separating participation in the program and obtaining employment. If a program participant finds a job the next day after completing the program, it is plausible to attribute this outcome to program participation, albeit other factors (e.g., new job openings) cannot be ruled out. However, if a participant finds employment 1 year after completing the program, attributing this outcome to program participation is moot, as many other intervening factors, from upswings in labor demand to mere luck, could have been responsible for this outcome. A commonly used tool to address this attribution challenge is statistical control. This process, also known as Mill’s method of difference (Mill [1882] 2009), involves a systematic comparison of two elements or groups of elements – people or organizations – that are similar in most respects, except one – some have the characteristic under investigation and others do not. The first group is typically referred to as the test group and the second one the control group. For example, this comparison may involve juxtaposing individuals who participated in a job training program being evaluated (the test group) and those who did not (the control group) or comparing different types of organizations providing employment training services, e.g., some nonprofit (the test group) and others for-profit or government-owned (the control group). The goal of this comparison is to determine what outcomes these two groups achieved. The outcome must be of course linked to the activity under scrutiny. In case of the PLM, this link is established by the intended goal of that activity, e.g., helping the unemployed find a job. If the test group achieved different results

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than did the control group, the difference between these results can be attributed to having or not having the characteristic under the scrutiny. The logic here is that all these people were subjected to similar general conditions, so they should achieve similar outcomes. However, if they achieve different outcomes, that difference is attributable to how these two groups differ from each other, i.e., whether individuals participated in the job program or not or whether the organization seeks profit maximization or not. The key to successful control is thus finding units that are similar in most respects, except that being evaluated. The social economy contribution model proposed in the UN Satellite Account Handbook achieves this by taking advantage of the sector and subsector classification system outlined in Table  8.2. This matrix allows a systematic comparison of social economy units to units that are similar in terms of their economic functions defining their allocation to key economic sectors (i.e., corporations or government) and type of activity defined by their allocation to specific industries. That comparison serves as a way of controlling for external influences by measuring the performance of several types of entities on the same set of outcomes during the same time period. The actual construction of the TSE sector contribution model starts from the end of the chain outlined in the PLM (Fig. 8.1) and progresses “backward” from Impacts to Resources and Inputs. The key advantage of this approach is the focus on specific results sought by policymakers and the activities and resources that can be directly linked to achieving these results. The goal here is not to address the question of whether those numerical target outcomes fully achieve the desired impact. Rather, it takes the achievement of outcomes as evidence of progress toward the achievement of that impact and systematically compares and contrasts the success or failure of social economy institutions in making such progress with that of the other involved institutions, taking into account the resources that they are able to deploy. The conventional PLM, by contrast, focuses on specific organizations and their programs, leaving the range of their possible outcomes and impacts broad and difficult to define and measure. This focus on program activities rather than on specific outcomes and impacts may be useful to managers responsible for running those programs, but its usefulness for assessing progress toward broader policy objectives is rather limited. The TSE sector contribution model starts with identifying the specifically desired impact and then the outcomes that policymakers believe could contribute to its achievement. In the UN Satellite Account Handbook, these impacts are defined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which are designed to guide the global development agenda until at least 2030, but any national policy goals whose implementation involves social economy organizations may be used for this purpose. The next step involves identifying all institutions that will deliver those outcomes and categorizing them into industries (similar activities), institutional sectors (similar economic functions), and different subsectors—social economy institutions (if any) versus other types of institutions, as outlined in Table  8.2. The subsequent step entails determining the outputs produced by these different types of units and the inputs used in that production.

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The SNA defines “output” as the goods and services produced by an establishment or a group of establishments. In the standard SNA approach, output is measured by the monetary value of those goods and services. However, for the purpose of assessing the social contributions of different types of economic units, the UN Satellite Account Handbook recommends an alternative measure of outputs by assessing the physical quantities of their central products3 delivered to recipients during the reference period (typically 1  year). Since social economy institutions tend to concentrate on the service sector (e.g., social assistance, education, health, or culture), their “physical” outputs can be adequately measured by the number of persons who participated in their programs, e.g., clients, patients, students, etc., or attendees of cultural events. If the central product involves manufacturing or distribution of material goods (e.g., a building, food, clothing, etc.), the measure of their “physical” outputs represents the quantity of these goods produced within the reference period (e.g., their total count, weight, volume, area, or other appropriate physical measures). Although assembling data on “physical” outputs may require additional effort, their advantage is greater accuracy in accounting for all forms of outputs, those sold on the market and those provided free of charge or at significantly discounted prices. “Outcomes,” in turn, are defined as benefits obtained as a direct result of program interventions, and these may be difficult to define or empirically measure. In the ideal case, the policy may specify outcomes and an effective way of measuring them—for example, a specified number of households with incomes initially below the poverty level that attain income above the policy-specified threshold within a specified period, or the number of students who have successfully completed a given level of education and found employment, or a specific number of households or individuals who received basic healthcare services. However, in many cases, the policy objective may be stated in terms of outputs or even inputs rather than outcomes—for example, enrolling a specified number of low-income children in primary schools or hiring a specific number of doctors or nurses. Although policymakers obviously expect some benefits flowing from enrolling children in schools, such as literacy, job skills, or increased earning potential, those benefits may not be clearly spelled out in policy documents and thus are subject to different interpretations. In other cases, the outcomes may be specified but difficult to measure, e.g., inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable human settlements. Defining and measuring outcomes is thus the most challenging step in constructing the social economy contribution model. This step almost always depends on specific policy goals and objectives sought by program managers and sponsors. Consequently, it requires collaboration between policymakers, program officers, and statisticians. The goal is to work toward clearly specified and measurable outcome indicators, typically as the number of individuals who demonstrably benefited from a program, e.g., the number of students who successfully graduated from school, the number of job seekers who successfully obtained employment, the

 A list of central products can be found in the Central Product Classification (United Nations, 2015).

3

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number of patients cured of a particular medical condition, or the number of people who obtained adequate housing. Inputs are measured by assessing the quantities of resources used in the production of these outputs. These may be measured in monetary terms, such as total expenditure, labor expenditure, cost of equipment and materials, or similar terms, or by “physical” measures, such as the number of staff (employees and volunteers) engaged in the production of output. The advantage of the monetary measures of input is their availability, and, as such, measures are routinely assembled for the purpose of regular releases of SNA statistics. However, the advantage of using “physical” measures of input is their accuracy in accounting for all types of input, especially volunteers whose contributions are valued at zero in the standard SNA approach. The final step of the model involves the compilation of a Comparative Institutional Performance Matrix for each set of inputs, outputs, and outcomes. This matrix is simply an aggregate measure of inputs, outputs, and outcomes for each subset of institutions—social economy, for-profit businesses, and government agencies (if any)—directly involved in delivering programs aimed at achieving the policy goal of interest. In most situations relevant to social economy activities, these measures would involve tallying people who achieved benefits sought by the policy (measure of outcome), the number of people who participated in the activities of organizations seeking to achieve these benefits (measure of output), and the number of people engaged as paid workers and volunteers in the delivery of these activities (measure of input). The entire process of assembling the social economy contribution model is shown in Fig. 8.2. The compilation of the matrix allows assessing the relative contributions of social economy institutions to the desired policy goal vis-à-vis that of other types of institutions. To this end, the UN Satellite Account Handbook recommends two measures that can be constructed from the data in the matrix: Relative Efficiency Index and Relative Effectiveness Index. As in most input/output models, efficiency is defined as the units of output per unit of input, e.g., students per teacher, patients per doctor, and so on. Effectiveness, in turn, is defined as units of outcome per unit of output. Since these measures depend on the units of measurement of each element, e.g., different values will be obtained if input is measured as the number of workers or the salaries they received; the proposed indices standardize these measures using percentage shares for each type of institutional units rather than actual tallies. As a result, the standard value of the index is 1 and values smaller than 1 represent less efficiency or effectiveness, whereas values greater than 1 represent superior efficiency or effectiveness. Thus, the Relative Efficiency Index for subsector i is calculated as SPi/SIi, where SIi represents the input engaged in that subsector as a percentage share of the total input engaged in the delivery of services aiming to achieve the policy goal of interest (e.g., the number of teachers in nonprofit schools as a percentage of the total number of teachers in nonprofit, for-profit, and public schools), and SPi represents the output produced by that subsector as a percentage of the total output of interest

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Step 1. Idenfy desired policy impact.

Step 2: Idenfy outcomes needed to achieve the desired impact.

Step 3: Idenfy the instuonal units producing those outcomes and separately idenfy TSE instuons among them. Step 4: Determine the outputs of TSE and other units and measure outcomes resulng from those outputs and the inputs used to produce them. Step 5: Compare outcome/output/input raos of TSEs with those of other types of units in order to gauge relave effecveness and contribuons.

Fig. 8.2  Compilation of the social economy contribution model

produced by all types of institutional units. Similarly, the Relative Effectiveness Index for subsector i is calculated as SOi/SPi, where SOi represents the outcome achieved by the subsector i as a share of the total outcome achieved by all institutional units working toward the policy goal of interest (e.g., the number of students successfully graduating from nonprofit schools as a percentage of students successfully graduating from all schools working toward a given policy goal). Table 8.3 provides an illustrative example of a Comparative Institutional Performance Matrix constructed for a hypothetical policy objective of “improving literacy in the countryside.” The data used to compile this illustrative matrix represent rudimentary administrative statistics compiled by most educational systems in the world that count the number of teachers employed, the number of students enrolled, and the number of students successfully graduating or passing a final examination. Values recorded in column (1) and in rows (1), (3), and (5) simply represent the aggregate values for all schools working toward achieving the hypothetical policy goal of interest, e.g., all schools located in rural areas. Populating other cells in that matrix depends on the successful sector and subsector classification of these schools, as outlined in Table 8.2 and, more generally, in the UN Satellite Account Handbook. Columns (2) through (4) represent three subsectors: social economy (e.g., nonprofit schools), government (public schools), and for-profit corporations. The values in rows (2), (4), and (6) are simple percentage shares calculated by dividing the respective values in the lines directly above by those in column (1). For column (1), these values are by definition 100%. The values in rows (7) and (8) are calculated from those calculated shares. Specifically, Relative Efficiency Indexes (line 7) are calculated by dividing the respective values in row (4) by those in row

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Table 8.3  Illustrative example of a Comparative Institutional Performance Matrix for primary education, 1 year Desired impact: Intervention: Annual target goals: Line Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Inputs (teachers) Input shares Outputs (students enrolled) Output shares Outcomes (students graduating) Outcome shares Relative efficiency indexes Relative effectiveness indexes

Improve literacy in the countryside Provide primary education to children in rural areas One million children receiving primary education in rural areas Type of institution All schools Social economy Public For-profit (1) sector schools (2) schools (3) schools (4) 40,000 10,000 28,000 2000 100% 25% 70% 5% 1,000,000 230,000 740,000 30,000 100% 200,000

23% 50,000

74% 142,000

3% 8000

100% 1

25% 0.92

71% 1.06

4% 0.60

1

1.09

0.96

1.33

(2). Relative Effectiveness Indexes, in turn, are derived by dividing the values in row (6) by those in row (4). This tool makes it possible to compare each of the subsectors in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness toward achieving the hypothetical policy goal of interest. Thus, public sector schools not only account for the major shares of output (74% of all students) but their efficiency index (1.06) is higher than those of social economy and private schools. In substantive terms, this means that these schools have higher student-to-teacher ratios—larger class sizes—than do either social economy or private for-profit schools. However, that efficiency also carries a cost, as reflected by the Relative Effectiveness Indexes. Effectiveness in this situation means the ratio of students who graduate to those who enrolled. The higher the ratio, the greater is the share of those students who graduate; the lower the ratio, the higher is the share of those who drop out without graduating. This kind of analysis allows evaluating contributions of social economy to specific policy objectives in terms that are relative to the contributions of other types of institutions. The main advantage of this approach is that comparing units that are similar and differ only in their sector allocation “controls” holds constant a wide range of factors that may affect the outputs and outcomes, so any differences in efficiency and effectiveness can be plausibly attributed to the features determining sector allocation (e.g., profit distribution or government control). There may be of course situations in which holding the industry and subsector constant may provide insufficient control (e.g., there may be significant regional differences affecting outputs or outcomes), in which case a more granular classification system (e.g., by subsector, industry, and region) may be necessary.

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8.4  Conclusions Although social economy institutions are widely credited with generating significant social benefits, measuring their actual impact on society has been a daunting task. At the micro level, impact assessment efforts tend to concentrate on individual organizations and their programs. This focus is undoubtedly useful for the managers and sponsors of these organizations and programs, but it eludes a set of questions that are of primary interest to public policymakers: What effect do those organizations have on achieving broad policy goals? These broad policy objectives occupy the central stage of international and national development as documented by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The assessment of social economy contributions toward those broader policy goals requires a macro-level perspective allowing a comparison of social economy institutions to other types of economic actors across industries and countries. A conceptual framework allowing such a macro-level analysis has been absent until recently. The main reason was that social economy institutions are invisible in national economic statistics, as they are merged together with other types of economic units. This situation has been changing since the release of the Satellite Account on Non-profit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work (United Nations, 2018), which provides a set of officially sanctioned recommendations and methodologies for separate identification of social economy institutions in the national economic statistics known as the SNA. In addition to creating financial statistics, this UN handbook also introduced a methodology for measuring the nonmonetary contributions of social economy institutions in a manner allowing a systematic comparison of social economy to other types of institutions, for-profit businesses, and government agencies. This chapter offers a brief introduction of this methodology to the general audience that may not be familiar with the technical intricacies of the SNA. At the core of this methodology is the program logic model widely used to evaluate the performance of individual social economy organizations or their programs. However, this methodology links the PLM to broader policy objectives, such as those envisioned in the Sustainable Development Goals, and integrates it with the institutional sector classification consistent with the SNA structure, which makes it possible to compare and gauge social contributions of social economy against those of for-profit corporations and government agencies. The social impact measurement model recommended in the UN Satellite Account Handbook is primarily geared toward the service sector, especially units providing individual services. However, it is also possible to apply this model to manufacturing, institutions providing public goods, or even those engaged in expressive activities such as issue advocacy.

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References Abraham, K. G., & Mackie, C. (Eds.). (2005). Beyond the market: Designing nonmarket accounts for the United States. National Academic Press. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. (2011). Proceedings of the conference on advancing social impact investments through measurement, Washington, DC. Gifford, P. (1971). France and Britain in Africa: Imperial rivalry and colonial rule. Yale University Press. Mill, J.  S. [1882, 2009], A system of logic, ratiocinative and inductive. Retrieved from https:// www.gutenberg.org/files/27942/27942-­h/27942-­h.html Olsen, S., & Galimidi, B. (2008). Catalog of approaches to impact measurement: Assessing social impact in private ventures. Social Venture Technology Group. Thornley, B., & Dailey, C. (2010). Building scale in community impact investing through nonfinancial performance measurement. Community Development Investment Review, 6(1), 1–46. United Nations. (2015). Central product classification (CPC) (Vol. ver. 2.1). United Nations. United Nations. (2007). Indicators of sustainable development: Guidelines and methodologies. United Nations. United Nations. (2009). System of National Accounts 2008. United Nations. United Nations. (2018). Satellite account on non-profit and related institutions and volunteer work. United Nations. W. K. Kellogg Foundation, & W. K. (2001). In B. Creek (Ed.), Kellogg foundation logic model development guide. W. K. Kellogg Foundation.

Chapter 9

From Anheier’s Civil Society Diamond to a Principled Fundraising Jurisprudence for Civil Society Matthew Turnour and Myles McGregor-Lowndes

Abstract  Across the common law world, fundraising regulation evolved in an ad hoc manner, almost invariably as a political reaction to localized scandals. The case law that developed across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has not provided any substantial organizing principles. Consequently, fundraising law is fragmented, not always fit for purpose, often confusing, commonly supervised by multiple regulators, and frequently difficult to navigate. There is a need for a unifying jurisprudence to facilitate reform, but the combination of these significant paradoxes, problems, and puzzles makes the development of such a jurisprudence challenging. Ideally, such a jurisprudence will resonate, also, with internationally accepted principles and be locatable in the widely utilized civil society theory. In this chapter, we develop three principles that could underpin a fundraising jurisprudence from Helmut Anheier’s civil society diamond. The three principles are the Equality Principle, the Enabling Principle, and the Encouraging Principle. Acknowledging that the application of the principles will be different from one jurisdiction to another, but recognizing the importance of examples, this chapter illustrates how these three principles might provide a basis for fundraising law reform, with particular reference to Australia. Keywords  Civil society diamond · Fundraising law · Donations · Charity · Income tax exemption · Income tax deduction

M. Turnour Neumann & Turnour Lawyers, Brisbane, QLD, Australia M. McGregor-Lowndes (*) Faculty of Business and Law, Queensland University of Technology, QLD, Brisbane, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_9

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9.1  Introduction One of the most enduring contributions of Helmut Anheier’s work is the structural– operational model that became known as the civil society diamond (Anheier et al., 2001). It flowed from much early research including the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (Salamon and Anheier, 1996), which contributed in no small measure to standardization of the national measurement of civil society in the United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA) (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018). To date, governments in 33 countries have committed to the implementation of the handbook (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018), and 27 statistical agencies have either completed or are working on at least one civil society satellite account (Enjolras et al., 2018). In 2004, he further developed those ideas in a book (Anheier, 2004). The measurement tool set out in the book was utilized for further research in 50 countries between 2003 and 2005. Research using the framework is ongoing (CIVICUS, n.d.). In 2009, that mapping was taken as the inspiration for a jurisprudence, that is, a theory of law, for civil society (Turnour, 2009) (hereafter “the Jurisprudence”). The Jurisprudence was developed from the common law doctrine of charity. This chapter sets out the foundations of that work and then offers an example of how those ideas might provide a basis for fundraising law reform, with particular reference to Australia. This chapter has four substantive sections. The next two sections set out a summary of Anheier’s civil society diamond and then an explanation of how the ideas have been developed into a jurisprudence for civil society. Anheier’s other work informs the discussion, but the focus is on the application of the civil society diamond. The following section outlines the paradoxes, problems, and puzzles inherent in fundraising law reform. Finally, this chapter suggests possible ways in which these ideas might provide a basis for fundraising law reform in Australia.

9.2  The Civil Society Diamond By the late twentieth century, civil society research was plagued by problems of philosophical diversity. This led to a quest for models for theoretical discussion. By the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century, civil society discourse had developed to a point where there were internationally accepted models for this theoretical discussion (Salamon and Anheier, 1996; Salamon et  al., 2017; Steinberg, 2006). At the forefront of those frameworks was Anheier’s civil society diamond. It was attractive because it provided a framework in which a priori assumptions could

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be contested (Anheier, 2004, p. 128;1 Turnour, 2009, p. 20). Anheier explained that his goal was to set out a “common map,” a “compass,” and “a set of instruments that could frame and guide the conversation” (Anheier, 2004, p. 6). First, at the foundation of Anheier’s framework is the conception that civil society is a space or sphere of society different from business, government, and family. According to Anheier (2004, p. 22), “civil society is the sphere of institutions, organizations and individuals located between family, the state and the market in which people associate voluntarily to advance common interests.” Second, civil society is a multifaceted concept (Anheier, 2004, Chapter 1). Anheier (2004, p. 32) theorized that there are four major areas of discourse in relation to civil society: 1. Structural, which he stated incorporates “size, composition and sources of support of the civil society unit under consideration”. 2. Legal and political space, which he defined as “the regulatory environment in which civil society operates”. 3. Impact-related, which he defined as “the contributions of civil society, generally, or in a particular field”. 4. Value-related, which he .defined as “norms and cultural elements”. Anheier brings these four quite different dimensions into one theoretical framework by projecting them into a common “property space.” He achieved this using common or almost common units of measure, namely, numerical assessments of the key components of civil society. The standout common measure is a percentage, or a rating, on a scale of 0–100. The result is a diamond as set out in Fig. 9.1, where each dimension is allotted one quadrant (Anheier, 2004, p.  45). Importantly, in assessing “space,” the preferred focus is law. Third, Anheier asserts that civil society must be viewed at three levels—institutional, organizational, and individual. Clarifying the level is integral to clarity in legal analysis, as charitable purposes attach to organizations. Indeed, charities are expressions of organizational purpose (Anheier, 2004, pp.  23–26; Luxton, 2001, p. 5). The principal area for the regulation of civil society is, then, at the organizational level. Fourth, Anheier suggests that the preferred indicators of space, measured through the law, are indicators designed to measure the degree of enablement. The indicia Anheier points to are three: fiscal and other incentives, freedom of association, and civil liberties (Anheier, 2004, p. 41). As freedom of association is a subset of civil liberties, it was argued in the Jurisprudence that these could be addressed as one group under the more general category of association (Turnour, 2009, pp. 254–255). Tax expenditures and other fiscal favors amount to preference over other organizations that do not enjoy the tax incentive. It is a critical distinction, highlighted in the

1  It is noted that South African users of the civil society diamond have criticized the definition of civil society at its foundation, as the “free market assumptions” were not accepted by many South Africans (Anheier, 2004, p. 128).

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Fig. 9.1  Anheier’s civil society diamond. Source: Anheier (2004 p.45)

Jurisprudence, that preference is quite different and distinct from regulating. It is possible to regulate but not to preference.

9.3  A  Jurisprudence Developed from the Civil Society Diamond 9.3.1  Introduction to a Jurisprudence for Civil Society The development of the Jurisprudence begins by locating common law jurisprudence in the wider civil society discourse—the discourse from which the civil society diamond is constructed. From that base, an architecture is developed for defining and then regulating the sector as a whole. The civil society diamond allows for a conception of the space as one with potentially dynamic boundaries. Drawing inspiration from the idea developed by Foucault of an “operating table” or tabula used to order and divide items into similar and dissimilar (Foucault, 1994, p. xviii), a jurisprudential space was developed in which the boundaries between civil society

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organizations, on the one hand, and businesses, government organizations, and families, on the other, are movable and are in contest. The three indicia to which Anheier pointed (fiscal and other incentives, freedom of association, and civil liberties) are distilled to two: the foundational dimension measures the degree of enablement, whereas the other measures preference. The concept of “regulation” of the sector therefore took on a more nuanced understanding than that applicable to other sectors. It is an understanding that regulation is primarily for the purpose of enabling voluntary contributions and only secondarily for constraining conduct. As that usually occurred through associations, it was theorized under the title “Association Law.” The laws by which civil society organizations are favored because of their contributions to public benefit were discussed under the title of “Benefit Law.” This division, between regulating associations and preferencing voluntary contributions that are of public benefit, is a division that follows from the architecture inherent in the civil society diamond. This division is a threshold, which must be crossed to go beyond charity law as a common law concept to a jurisprudence for civil society (Luxton, 2001, p. 16).2 However, it is not a division presently evident from within the doctrine of charitable purpose (Luxton, 2001, p. 16)3 nor is it a division that is common in tax law. Across the world, once an organization is recognized as a charity, the organization is usually entitled to both income tax exemption and deductible gift recipient (hereafter “DGR”) status. Generally, no distinction is drawn between entities that ought to be enabled and those entitled to both tax exemption and tax deductibility.4

9.3.2  Association Law It is theorized that civil society organizations have charitable purpose (not technically defined) as their essence and they are differentiated from business, government, and family. It follows that although charitable purpose is central to the Jurisprudence, it is not a concept that is constrained by the technical definition of common law. Rather, it is defined as a concept that lies at the heart of civil society 2  The fact that the law centers on the charitable trust is pointed out by Luxton as a reason for difficulty in development of the law (Luxton, 2001, p. 16). 3  This distinction is implicit in Luxton (2001, p. 16) who notes: “The result is that all charitable institutions are subject to two sets of laws: those that relate to status and those that relate to structure.” 4  This general principle is subject to many exceptions. Four examples are the distinction in Australia between division 30 and division 50 entities under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth), the different treatment of charities under 13(1)(zm) of the Income Tax Act (revised 2014), Institutions of Public Character under Income Tax (Approved Institutions of a Public Character) Regulations 2004 in Singapore, and the distinction drawn by s.170 between entities that fall within s. 501(c)(3) and other entities such as those that are within s.501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code in the United States of America.

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organizations. In the Jurisprudence, civil society organizations are those that manifest: 1. Altruism. 2. Benefit for the public. 3. Sufficient absence of coercion for the association to be voluntary. Altruism has been held to be an essential element of charitable purpose.5 By contrast, the purpose of business is principally private profits, that is, self-­interest. Between these two positions is an increasing number of expressions of social enterprise that combine elements of both. It follows that some purposes are more altruistic than are others and consequently that organizations might be ranked or valued according to the extent to which they manifest altruistic purposes. Factors that inform altruism and indicia of altruism capable of quantitative measurement exist, so it is possible to rank altruism quantitatively (Atkinson, 1990, p. 501; Benabou and Tirole, 2003, p. 489; Piliavin and Charng, 1990, p. 27; Ting and Piliavin, 2001, p.  51; United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division, 2003, p. 69). Using the civil society model, it follows that it is possible to reduce the measurement to a percentage or scale from 0 to 100 so that a continuum of altruism emerges (Anheier, 2004, p. 32). Turning now to “benefit,” if many people who would otherwise be strangers voluntarily associate, then the association is public. If the purpose of the association is one that leads to public benefit, it is a public benefiting association. By contrast, if a small number of people associate for private purposes (such as an extended family gathering to celebrate Christmas), then the association is private and the benefit is private. A civil society organization is a public benefiting association. An extended family is a private benefiting association. As with altruism, there is evidence in the literature of methods of grading or ranking publicness and objective criteria by which public benefit can be assessed (Atkinson, 1990; Colombo and Hall, 1995; Weisbrod, 1977, p.  51). In the Jurisprudence, it is stated that the ranking varies on the basis of the extent to which the purpose is to benefit the public as distinct from the purpose being private benefit (Weisbrod, 1977, p. 51). As with the recognition of altruism and public benefit in civil society organizations, the Jurisprudence suggests that coercion is not one dimensional. It is argued that the absence of coercion can also be theorized as scalable between 0 and 100. If the association is of a large group of persons but the reason for association is coerced, then the fundamental character of voluntariness is missing. The organization is an arm of the government. The philosophical contests over the extent to which citizens should be permitted to associate free of the coercive influences of the government are such that different parliaments, courts, and regulators may draw upon different factors to determine 5  In Re Delany, Conoley v Quick [1902] 2 Ch 642, 648-9 Farwell J held that: “Charity is necessarily altruistic and involves the idea of aid or benefit to others; but, given the latter, the motive impelling it is immaterial.”

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how much, or how little, communities should be allowed to self-organize and self-­ regulate through civil society organizations. Some countries have constitutionally protected freedom from state coercion for certain associations. Between these constitutionally protected freedoms and the right of the state to take and maintain control of an organization is a continuum of coercion. At some point, the level of coercion is so great that the organization must be described as an arm of the government and no longer as a civil society organization. There are differences in coercion, and it is suggested that coercion can be ranked or graded, also, on a scale of 0–100 or as a percentage. All the continua have charitable purpose as the starting point, and the charity sector is differentiated from three others: business (the first sector), government (the second sector), and family (the fourth sector). Charities and related organizations are often considered to be the third sector. At some point on these lines, drawn between organizations with charitable purposes and each of these others, a boundary is crossed from civil society (as defined in the Jurisprudence) to one of these others. The three continua, each with charity as the starting point, are projected into a common property space in the way developed by Anheier. This can be done because each has charity at the center, and each has a 0–100 scale. When drawn in this manner, the diagram in Fig. 9.2 emerges. In this diagram, the overlapping conceptions between charity and its alternatives, and consequently the boundary of civil society, are even more apparent. Civil society is differentiated from business by altruism, from family by benefits being public not private, and from the government by its voluntariness, that is, absence of coercion. At a certain

Fig. 9.2  Continua from charity to its alternatives

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point, there is insufficient altruism, public benefit, or voluntariness to call the organization a civil society organization. When the concept of a charitable purpose is expanded in the way proposed in the Jurisprudence, it reaches the borders of civil society. By joining the lines, a theoretical space is created, which forms the bounds of this new jurisprudence for civil society. It is the jurisprudence that continues to have charitable purpose at its center, but the concept of charity is not constrained by common law cases. That space, in a theoretical sense, is illustrated in Fig. 9.3. The theoretical space will change shape according to the society. This can be illustrated by considering fundraising. If business and private fundraising are less tightly regulated than are fundraising by charities, then the space for civil society fundraising will be reduced. This is illustrated in Fig. 9.4. The contests over where these boundaries lie are, though, reducible to three, so far as it is relevant to the development of the Jurisprudence and its application to fundraising law reform. They are over: 1. The extent to which the purpose is altruistic, which is manifest in the contest over where the boundary between the space for civil society should end and the space for business should begin. 2. Whether the association is for private or public benefit, which is manifest in the contested boundary between civil society, on the one hand, and small private groups such as family, on the other.

Fig. 9.3  Civil society space defined

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Fig. 9.4  Civil society space reduced

3. Freedom, which is manifest in the contest over the boundary between the space for civil society, on the one hand, and the extent of government intrusion into that space, on the other. This body of law, which has at its center the law of charities, marks out more than just a space for association. In practice, it marks the boundaries for the regulation of those organizations that constitute civil society, as illustrated by the above discussion and in Fig. 9.4. It is this body of law that involves enabling and regulating civil society organizations that is called Association Law.

9.3.3  Benefit Law The other limb of the Jurisprudence is that it provides a basis for entitlement to preference. The Jurisprudence theorizes that once there is evidence of voluntariness and altruism, it is public benefit that justifies preference. As the subject is benefit, for convenience, this body of law, of which entitlement to preference is the object, is called Benefit Law. How, though, can public benefit be assessed? The Jurisprudence suggests two ways: jurists could look either to the nature of the public benefit supplied or to the extent that the public benefits. If the nature of the public benefit is adopted as the criterion, then the Jurisprudence suggests three contexts that give rise to preferential treatment (Nygh and Butt, 1998, p. 152): 1. Private goods supplied to a person dealing with a disadvantage, thereby advancing equality. 2. Quasi-public or public goods supplied to people for encouraging edification, thereby advancing fraternity.

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3. Ligaments binding together the polis (the community as a whole), which facilitate freedom to advance liberty.6 Within the Jurisprudence, preference is afforded to civil society organizations that advance equality, fraternity, or liberty. The good of the polis is the basis for preferencing civil society organizations with purposes that facilitate freedom. Benefiting people is the basis for encouraging edification in civil society organizations. When dealing with disadvantage as the basis for preferencing a civil society organization, it is enough that the public benefit manifests in the supply of a good to a person who is at a disadvantage. There is no reason, in theory at least, why each of these social goals ought to be ranked equally, and there may be justification for using these different classes for different rankings. As with the measurement of altruism, benefit, and coercion used to map the space for civil society, so can the concept of public benefit be treated as a dynamic. Entitlement to preference will increase as evidence of public benefit increases.

9.4  A  pplying the Jurisprudence to Reform of Fundraising Law 9.4.1  I ntroducing Problems, Paradoxes, and Puzzles in Fundraising Law Reform In this section, we first set out both the international nature of the problems and, yet, the need for context-specific reform. We propose a way through this by developing principles from the theory. We take Australia as the context to show how the principles can be applied to reforming laws relating to fundraising. With that broad frame in mind, we consider some problems, paradoxes, and puzzles.

9.4.2  Problems Across the world, fundraising regulation is inconsistent and not always fit for purpose. This is a problem. It is a problem for all entities across all sectors as the Internet has internationalized the “market” for funds.

6  In this alternative jurisprudence, equality, fraternity, and liberty are treated as values and diversity is acknowledged. For example, in classical Greek theory, three kinds of equality are recognized: isonomia (equality before the law); isotimia (equal respect for all); and isegoria (equal freedom of speech and political action). In post-Enlightenment theory, the three kinds tend to be covered by one of a trilogy of principles: liberty, fraternity, and equality (Nygh and Butt, 1998, p. 152). Our limited purpose is to label three ideals. A particular jurisprudential worldview or common law country may give shape and expression to the value in a particular context.

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The problem has been compounded by the shifting boundaries between private, charitable, and commercial fundraising. To illustrate this blurring of boundaries, one can take the example of international Internet fundraising for education. The impecunious Chinese student Deng Linjie raised funds over the Internet, personally and successfully, for his education at an elite New York university (Zuo, 2018). The university could have also raised funds for him. The funds could have been raised by a commercial fundraising business or by an employer. Should fundraising regulation, if it is to be imposed, be imposed upon the individual, the charity, or the commercial operation? These problems are international in nature, and jurisdictions across the world are struggling with how to both facilitate and regulate civil society-­ centered fundraising.7 The problem is aggravated by the context-specific nature of law. Although the problems are international and the ideas developed here might be able to be explained in a manner that applies universally in theory, law reform must be jurisdiction-­specific. To proceed practically, as distinct from theoretically, the law of a particular jurisdiction must be chosen for reform.

9.4.3  Paradoxes Paradoxically, instead of the internationalization of fundraising, leading to a more generalized, principled, internationally consistent fundraising regime with uniformity in regulatory approach, the opposite has occurred. Civil society organizations in common law countries are often subjected to multiple regulatory environments designed for fundraising in the early twentieth century, which have been amended over and over again. They may also be subject to multiple fundraising regulators in addition to the often more effective general criminal or commerce-centered regulation. The situation confronting a charitable fundraiser in the United States is an example. There, an array of “regulators” from local, state, and federal jurisdictions combine with revenue authorities, accounting bodies, and sector supervisors to create an environment in which it is difficult to be confident about compliance without specialized assistance (Barber, 2011). There has been an attempt at consolidation by the Parliament for England and Wales. It established a specific regulator for fundraising by charities, but simply focusing on charities is not enough. The difficulty with this approach is that fundraising is cross-sectoral as illustrated by the

 For example, UK: Sir Stuart Etherington et al. (2015); USA: Barber (2012, p. 737); Australia: Senate Economics References Committee, Parliament of Australia (2008, pp. 95–98); Productivity Commission (2010, p. xxiv); Deloitte Access Economics (2016, p. 2); Consumer Affairs Australia and New Zealand, Australian Government (2017, pp. 75–76); NZ: Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand Government (2015).

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discussion about the student Deng Linjie’s fundraising. Reform must address the boundary issues.8

9.4.4  Puzzles It is puzzling why, if civil society organizations are more altruistic or if the purpose of the fundraising is for public benefit, they are often more onerously regulated. Why are some organizations more and others less regulated in similar situations? Why are Richard Steinberg’s nonprofits and for-profits in disguise (Steinberg, 1991, p. 351) or even governments in disguise not unmasked by fundraising regulation? Perhaps the greatest puzzle is how so much law can be enacted without any clearly articulated jurisprudential underpinning. Putnam Barber analyzed the US legislative regime and its model legislation and identified three broad areas of concern informing fundraising regulation: “Protection of charitable assets; Consumer (or donor) protection; and Tax policy,” which linked “loosely” to “trust law, donor protection, and tax” (Barber, 2011, pp. 2, 4). He also explained the absence of a unifying jurisprudence as arising from the lack of any clear conceptual base discernible in the initial and subsequent legislation. The reason for that is because civil society fundraising law emerged, almost invariably, as a political reaction to scandals. The case law that developed across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has not provided any substantial organizing principles. The deeper puzzle then is to find and articulate principles that can underpin this developing body of law. It is to that project that we now turn.

9.4.5  W  hy Focus on Australian Problems, Paradoxes, and Puzzles? Demands by civil society for fundraising law reform, arguably, have not been more vociferously expressed anywhere else other than in Australia. A recent review has found fundraising law reform to be the issue of greatest concern to participants in the nonprofit sector (McClure et al., 2018, p. 98). The Bipartisan Australian Senate Select Committee on Charity Fundraising in the twenty-first century unanimously recommended that the Australian Government commit to working with state and territory governments and the not-for-profit sector to develop a consistent national model for regulating not-for-profit and charitable fundraising activities within a

8  Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 (UK) c 4. The regulator has said it “will assess on a case-by-case basis whether any responsibility can reasonably be assigned to the charity in respect of the activity concerned” (Fundraising Regulator, 2019).

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time limit of 2 years (Senate Select Committee on Charity Fundraising 2019). The government minister responsible for nonprofit fundraising announced on August 2, 2019 that “harmonising and streamlining [fundraising] regulatory requirements across jurisdictions will be a key focus for this Government” (Senator the Hon Zed Seselja 2019). Australia then provides a jurisdiction where there is both an articulated priority expressed by the sector and possibly a government and a parliament willing to consider reforms. In the remainder of this chapter, we step from high-level theory into granular examples of actual law reform with the laws of Australia as the context.

9.5  The Civil Society Diamond Leads to Three Principles In this section, we suggest that three principles emerge from the Jurisprudence to frame the agenda for fundraising law reform. They are: 1. The Equality Principle. 2. The Enabling Principle. 3. The Encouraging Principle. Across the remainder of this section, we first explain the principles and then how they might be applied to fundraising law reform in Australia.

9.5.1  The Equality Principle The civil society diamond starts with the premise that people should be free to give and civil society organizations should be free to ask for donations, as they see fit. The regulation of giving, and asking, may be appropriate, but, if there is to be regulation, it should be applied equally to all sectors unless there is justification for difference between sectors or within a sector. These are fundamental expressions of the rule of law. The application of the principle of equality from the civil society diamond to fundraising law then involves consideration of the extent to which fundraising is to be regulated generally. This begins with the consideration of fundraising in the business and family sectors and the extent to which government control is appropriate. If there is no satisfactory reason for regulating civil society fundraising separately from other fundraising, then it should be regulated in the same manner. It is sometimes argued that the tax subsidy of a donation is the justification for regulation as the government has the responsibility to ensure that the forgone tax revenue is appropriately used for charitable purposes. There are many difficulties with this view. One is that most jurisdictions exempt noncharitable income tax up to a certain threshold, but this exemption is not used as a basis for regulation of those taxpayers. Risk and other factors that usually inform regulatory decisions (not

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access to tax concessions) would seem to be, as we suggest, the appropriate factors to inform this decision. Second, application of the Equality Principle means that all civil society organizations should be treated equally just as other civil society organizations unless there is justification for treating some of them differently. 9.5.1.1  C  ases that Illustrate the Need for Reform Based on the Equality Principle A consideration of fundraising across the sectors identifies highly significant anomalies in Australia. Set out here are cases where civil society organizations are treated less favorably, without apparent justification, than are organizations in other sectors. Charities in particular, and civil society organizations in general, are at a disadvantage in the area of crowdfunding as they are usually subjected to a fundraising regulator that is state-based, now largely irrelevant, out-of-date, inconsistent, and compliance-costly. Private individuals are not subjected to that regime. A research conducted in 2018 found 42% of Australians stating that they have given to “crowdfunding campaigns that benefit individuals.” Of those, 10% say that this means “they give less” to other organizations because of this response to private crowdfunding options (Nonprofit Tech for Good, 2018). The business community is similarly at an advantage, although for different reasons. Concerned that there was no adequately enabling environment for commercial crowdfunding, in 2017, the Commonwealth Parliament enacted legislation to reduce the regulatory requirements for commercial crowdfunding.9 9.5.1.2  A  pplications of the Equality Principle to Fundraising Law Reform in Australia The examples mentioned above suggest ways in which the Equality Principle could be applied to fundraising law reform. 1. As a general principle, the law should apply equally across all sectors. Crowdfunding is an example of such an area where fairer cross-sectional regulation might facilitate more giving. 2. Where there are to be exceptions, they should be justified. All subsectors of civil society should be similarly enabled and regulated unless there are reasons justifying exemption.

 The Corporations Amendment (Crowd-sourced Funding) Act 2017 (Cth) amends the Corporations Act 2001 (Corporations Act), which makes minor amendments to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 (Cth).

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9.5.2  The Enabling Principle 9.5.2.1  T  he Enabling Principle Draws from the Ideas Embedded in Association Law As Association Law defines a space for civil society to function and also defines the regulation applicable to that space, the second aspect of fundraising reform is to consider the extent to which fundraising by civil society organizations should be regulated and how. This is an exploration of fundraising as a dimension of Association Law. Fundraising has been an enduring feature of civil society organizations over time, for money, in-kind resources, or labor. Civil society organizations do not possess the coercive instruments of the government nor the access to capital markets of the business sector, so they rely upon altruism, and this source of resources is critical. Fundraising law generally constrains both giving and asking. A threshold question should be whether that is the intention of the law. A recent US research suggests that more regulation may decrease rather than increase donations (Dietz et al., 2017, pp. 183, 185). There is at least one compelling reason for taking a more enabling view. As Alan Ware (1989, p. 142) succinctly summarized: “Charities are an excellent instrument for making government cheaper.” Governments outsource to civil society organizations, usually charities, for a range of reasons, but it is often perceived as more convenient for the government and cheaper, given charities’ ability to harness volunteers and donations. For charities to step into this greater role, there needs to be significant voluntary and donor engagement. That is, the legislative environment needs to enable, not constrain, philanthropic giving and volunteering. There are also reasons for restraining certain types of fundraising, and those reasons are based on risks. The risks warranting regulation can be divided into three classes (although there could be many others): • Risk of intrusion or offence. • Risk of deception or unconscionability. • Risk of misapplication of funds once raised. The risk of intrusion or offence is an intrusion from the public space into the private space and affects where the boundary is to be drawn between civil society and private spaces. This could be a dynamic boundary. If funds are not raised from the public, but instead from say members of a civil society organization (e.g., religious giving), then there is less justification for regulation. There is an argument that can be made that the greater the contribution to the public benefit of the purpose, the greater is the right to intrude that can be justified. For example, fundraisers for ambulance services that might need to be used by anyone might be allowed to call telephone numbers on the do-not-call register, whereas fundraisers for a sailing club might not. Face-to-face fundraising, sometimes

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pejoratively called “chugging,”10 might be permitted in busy malls for cancer research but not for choral concerts. Risk of deception or unconscionability and risk of misapplication of funds once raised are two sides of the altruism coin. Fundraising that is deceptive or unconscionable is not altruistic to the requisite extent and warrants redrawing boundaries against freedoms. The starting point would seem to be why the law in relation to civil society fundraising should not be the same as that for businesses or private individuals. In other sectors, the law has navigated the balance between fundraiser and contributor rights, including in complex areas such as: • The extent to which the contributors themselves should take primary responsibility for management of the risk of misapplication of funds. • Whether because of the vulnerability of the ultimate beneficiaries or for some other reason they are unable to hold fundraisers accountable. • The extent to which, if at all, funds are raised from the general public. 9.5.2.2  A  pplications of the Enabling Principle to Fundraising Law Reform in Australia From the above discussion, it is possible to set out five applications of the Enabling Principle to fundraising law reform in Australia. 1. As a general principle, there should be removal of barriers to asking for donations, and giving should be a priority. Removing these barriers could include the repeal of the now largely irrelevant, unenforced, out-of-date, inconsistent, and compliance-costly fundraising laws that are specifically targeted at civil society organizations such as charities. 2. The Enabling Principle, interpreted within the Equality Principle, should also be applied beyond the sector to all sectors. The general law regarding misleading and deceptive conduct and unconscionability could be applied beyond the commercial and private spheres to civil society fundraising. The altruism boundary could be reset to exclude from the space where there is freedom to fundraise, conduct which is misleading, deceptive or unconscionable, in a way similar to the laws applying to business. 3. There is a need for consistency of law for all civil society organizations irrespective of the state of Australia in which they may be located; this is a w ­ hole-of-­sector approach. This is also the Enabling Principle interpreted within the Equality Principle applied to the sector. 4. There is a need to find balance between freedom and responsibility in fundraising. Anomalies should also be resolved. In finding this balance, the distinction between funds raised from the public and funds not raised from the public may be important.

10

 “Charity mugging” is a popular term for street solicitation.

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5. The privacy boundary could be elastic according to purposes. This is discussed more in the next section on the Encouraging Principle.

9.5.3  The Encouraging Principle 9.5.3.1  T  he Encouraging Principle Draws from the Ideas Embedded in Benefit Law As Benefit Law has as its purpose the encouragement of philanthropy in a targeted manner, this section sets out to determine how that might be more effectively achieved by fundraising law reform in Australia. As the Jurisprudence has argued, there is no reason, in theory at least, that different social goals should not be ranked differently; this section explores that possibility. The starting point is a concept of public benefit. The greater the contribution to public benefit, the greater is the justification for preferences. In the context of the Jurisprudence, public benefit is a dynamic, scalable concept. The Jurisprudence explains that it is possible to either rank organizations or rank purposes according to the extent to which they contribute to public benefit. For two reasons, we suggest that only purposes, not organizations, be ranked in fundraising reform in Australia. First, the common law focuses on purposes, and it has shaped the present law. To move from that will be difficult in a short-to-medium term in Australia. Second, fundraising is a subject that is readily divisible into categories. Civil society organizations raise funds for a purpose. As noted earlier in this chapter, the Jurisprudence segments civil society organizations into three classes based on purposes, and, within the Jurisprudence, favor is afforded to civil society organizations that voluntarily provide public goods that advance equality, fraternity, or liberty. The good of the polis is the basis for favoring civil society organizations with purposes that facilitate freedom. These groups are essentially civil society organizations that enable people to gather in a community and upon which “rest the superstructure of social order.”11 Historically associated with religious organizations, but now much more widely identified, these groups are usually entitled only to income tax exemption in Australia but not to DGR status. By contrast, both exemption and DGR status are almost invariably extended to organizations that address disadvantage. It will be recalled that the purposes of these organizations are almost always to provide direct, visible, tangible assistance or to prevent or mitigate the need for such assistance. The basis for preferencing a civil society organization is usually this direct, visible, tangible assistance or prevention of the need for such assistance. In these cases, it is enough that the public benefit manifests in the supply of a good to a person who is at a disadvantage. Between these two cases lies a middle ground. That middle ground is where the purpose of benefiting people is pursued via the supply of quasi-public goods. This 11

 Holland v Peck (1842) 37 NC 255, 258.

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is the class comprising schools, museums, art galleries, and public-benefiting community groups. In the Jurisprudence, it is called encouraging edification. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the organizations within this class fall under something of a tax hodgepodge in Australia. All such organizations enjoy tax exemption, but not all enjoy DGR status. 9.5.3.2  A  pplications of the Encouraging Principle to Fundraising Law Reform in Australia Benefit Law preferences can be applied in a more sophisticated manner so that there can be greater discrimination between fundraising purposes and tax status. This would lead to an amendment to the taxation legislation so that there would be: 1. At least three different classes of purposes referable to the clear principles of categorization. 2. Different forms or rates of tax concessions available to each. That could mean that applying the Encouraging Principle to fundraising in the context of income tax arrangements in Australia—or for that matter elsewhere— would be a two-step process. First, there would need to be a classification of purposes into classes. We suggest that all purposes are divisible into one of three classes: (1) those that deal with a disadvantage to facilitate equality; (2) those that encourage edification to facilitate fraternity; and (3) those that facilitate freedom to facilitate liberty. The fact that there may be overlap is acknowledged. The second step is to allocate an income tax status to contributions made to these organizations according to purpose. We suggest, for the purposes of discussion, that donations: • For dealing with disadvantage be entitled to tax deductibility at the same level as deductibility for research and development in a business context, namely, 125%. • For enabling edification be at 100%. • For facilitating freedom remain nondeductible (although it could be granted say 50% deductibility). There is no reason, in principle, why DGR status needs to be always set at either 0 or 100% as is the case under the Australian income tax laws. Singapore has demonstrated that deductibility from taxable income for donations to civil society organizations can be offered at 350 or 250% (Singapore Government, 2019).

9.6  Conclusions This chapter has shown that it is possible to develop a coherent principled jurisprudence based on Anheier’s civil society diamond (Anheier 2001). The Jurisprudence develops from concepts fundamental to the rule of law and has two dimensions, namely, Association Law and Benefit Law. Three principles emerge for application

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within these two dimensions of the Jurisprudence: the Equality Principle, the Enabling Principle, and the Encouraging Principle. This chapter has set out how those principles could be applied to the regulation of fundraising in a practical manner. It has done so by taking Australian law as an example to demonstrate in a highly specific manner what reform could encompass. The application of the principles might find extremely different expressions in other jurisdictions with a different constitutional and regulatory environment. That this could be so, even in a jurisprudential context, is testament to the enduring flexibility drawn from Helmut Anheier’s seminal contribution of the civil society diamond.

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purposes, discussion document. Retrieved June 16, 2021, from https://www.mbie.govt.nz/ assets/69a13c2016/information-­disclosure-­regulations-­discussion-­document.pdf Nonprofit Tech for Good. (2018). 2018 Global Trends in Giving Report. Retrieved June 16, 2021, from https://assets-­global.website-­files.com/5da60733afec9db1fb998273/5de6d4688ad 4f942828cd561_2018-­Giving-­Report-­English.pdf Nygh, P. E., & Butt, P. (1998). Butterworths concise Australian legal dictionary (2nd ed.). Lexis Nexis Butterworths. Piliavin, J. A., & Charng, H. (1990). Altruism: A review of recent theory and research. Annual Review of Sociology, 16, 27–65. Productivity Commission. (2010). Contribution of the not-for-profit sector, research report. Retrieved June 16, 2021, from https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/not-­for-­profit/ report/not-­for-­profit-­report.pdf Salamon, L., & Anheier, H. K. (1996). The emerging nonprofit sector: An overview. Manchester University Press. Salamon, L., Sokolowski, W., & Haddock, M. (2017). Explaining civil society development. A social origins approach. Johns Hopkins University Press. Senate Economics References Committee, Parliament of Australia. (2008). Disclosure regimes for charities and not-for-profit organisations. Senate Select Committee, Parliament of Australia. (2019). Select Committee on Charity Fundraising in the 21st Century Report. Retrieved June 16, 2021, from https://www.aph.gov.au/ Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Charity_Fundraising/CharityFundraising/Report Senator the Hon Seselja, Z. (2019, 2 August). Address to the Annual ACNC Regulatory Conference. In: Annual ACNC Regulatory Conference. Retrieved June 16, 2021 from https://www.financeminister.gov.au/assistant/speech/2019/08/02/address-­annual-­acnc-­regulatory-­conference Singapore Government. (2019). Deductions for Individuals (Reliefs, Expenses, Donations). Retrieved June 16, 2021, from Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore https://www.iras.gov. sg/irashome/Individuals/Locals/Working-­Out-­Your-­Taxes/Deductions-­for-­Individuals%2D%2 DReliefs%2D%2DExpenses%2D%2DDonations-­/#title4 Steinberg, R. (1991). “Unfair” competition by nonprofits and tax policy. National Tax Journal, 44(3). Steinberg, R. (2006). Economic theories of nonprofit organizations. In W.  W. Powell & R. Steinberg (Eds.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (2nd ed., pp. 117–139). Yale University Press. Ting, J., & Piliavin, J. A. (2001). Altruism in comparative international perspective. In J. Phillips, B. Chapman, & D. Stevens (Eds.), Between state and market: Essays on charity law and policy in Canada (pp. 51–85). McGill-Queen’s University Press. Turnour, M. (2009). Beyond charity: Outlines of a jurisprudence for civil society. PhD Thesis, Queensland University of Technology. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2018). Satellite account on nonprofit and related institutions and volunteer work, UN Doc ST/ESA/STAT/SER.F/91/Rev.1. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs Statistics Division. (2003). Handbook on non-profit institutions in the system of national accounts. United Nations Publication. Ware, A. J. (1989). Between profit and state: Intermediate organisations in Britain and the United States (1st ed.). Polity Press. Weisbrod, B. A. (1977). Toward a theory of the voluntary nonprofit sector in a three-sector economy. In B. A. Weisbrod (Ed.), The voluntary nonprofit sector (pp. 51–76). Lexington Books. Zuo, M. (2018, January 20). How a struggling Chinese student ‘sold himself’ to attend dream US school. South China Morning Post (online). Retrieved June 16, 2021 from https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2128573/ how-­cash-­strapped-­chinese-­student-­crowdfunded-­his-­way-­elite-­us Holland v Peck (1842) 37 NC 255, 258. Re Delany, Conoley v Quick [1902] 2 Ch 642.

Chapter 10

Legitimizing Foundations: Roles, Expectations, and Regulation Stefan Toepler Abstract  This chapter presents a framework for understanding legitimacy issues faced by philanthropic foundations. It argues that foundations derive legitimacy by conforming to environmental expectations. External expectations, however, are vague and ill-specified. The framework therefore conceptualizes expectations in the form of special roles or functions that are commonly ascribed to foundations. To the degree that foundations are perceived as conforming to these roles and functions, their legitimacy is taken for granted. Nonconformity, by contrast, will result in heightened public and political attention, criticism, and scrutiny. Growing criticism, based on perceived role performance failure, will result in regulatory intervention in the absence of other forms of external control. This chapter discusses the regulatory picture for foundations in the context of the recent waves of criticism and resulting foundation strategies in the case of the United States. Keywords  Philanthropic foundations · Legitimacy · Regulation · Foundation strategies · Political scrutiny

10.1  Introduction Significant developments in the field of philanthropic foundations tend to draw public interest, often followed by political scrutiny, under which foundations do not always fare well. Specifically, the growth spurts of foundation philanthropy—meaning significant growth in foundation assets – are often followed by growing criticism of foundations and their work. This suggests a deep uneasiness and persistent political tension about the operation of these organizations that are obligated to pursue some public purpose because of the tax benefits they and their donors receive, while maintaining high levels of autonomy with few significant accountability mechanisms in place (Heydemann & Toepler, 2006). For many, the problem derives from issues of effectiveness and accountability, and there have been efforts to change foundation practices by developing S. Toepler (*) Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_10

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effectiveness measures, performance matrices, and accountability mechanisms. In a sense, much of this work treats specific problems that foundation critics identify not as causes but as symptoms: once methods are devised for foundations to measure their own effectiveness, thereby putting them in a position to demonstrate it to stakeholders (such as regulators), any specific issues with foundations may be less of a problem. However, while foundation efforts at evaluation may suffer from not employing sufficiently rigorous tools (Barbetta, Chap. 12 in this volume), high levels of ambiguity often prevent clear-cut assessments of success and failure in the work of foundations (Anheier & Leat, 2018). Arguably though, the “root cause” of the uneasiness with foundations lies less in their actual performance than in their very nature as autocratic institutions that—as Waldemar Nielsen (1972) pointedly remarked a half century ago—really should not exist in an otherwise egalitarian and democratic society. In the United States, this bias or ambivalence is written into the tax code, which brands foundations as private organizations within a nonprofit sector that otherwise comprises public organizations, i.e., public charities. These private institutions are allowed to exist to serve public purposes, but they merit lesser (tax) benefits and higher levels of regulatory control. If their very raison d’etre in democratic society is questioned, then showing that foundations are effective at what they are doing is at best a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition. If the underlying question rather is whether it is appropriate for foundations to be doing things like meddling in public policy in the first place, then the quest for effectiveness and performance measures falls somewhat short. The latest batch of (academic) critiques (e.g., Barkan, 2013; Goss, 2016; Reich, 2018) aims at this latter, deeper level. This suggests the need to begin to address the root cause from the top by situating foundations in a societal framework first and then working down to the organizational level, rather than starting and staying at the organizational level as performance measurement advocates tend to do. One potentially useful conceptual avenue to develop such a framework is neoinstitutionalism, which suggests that organizational fields, such as the foundation community, react to environmental threats and pressures through isomorphic trends. Central to this context is the concept of legitimacy as a key organizational resource (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). To obtain or maintain legitimacy (and organizational survival), organizations (and the organizational field as a whole) need to conform to external, environmental expectations. Commonly, foundations are thought of as practically the only kind of institution that is fully resource-independent, and this is part of the institutional form’s appeal. Able to generate their own economic resources, there are no obvious external actors that can exert control, power, or influence over foundations in the way that Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) have conceptualized. Although this does enable foundations to act flexibly, with impunity, taking risks, and without fear of stakeholder retribution if things go wrong, it still does not make them fully impervious to outside criticisms or sanctions. To the extent that foundations can be subjected to sanctions, a neoinstitutionalist perspective would suggest that the core problem for foundations is the difficulty to maintain legitimacy as a key resource (Prewitt et al., 2006). Sanctions

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will predominantly be legal regulatory measures to restrict and redirect foundation activity in cases in which their legitimacy is questioned. Taking this view suggests a somewhat different way of looking at, and understanding, foundations. How then can we conceptualize the issues? How do environmental pressures help shape the foundation field as well as the behavior of foundations individually? Figure 10.1 presents the elements of a framework that takes the legitimacy issue as a starting point. The first argument is that foundations (like other forms of organizations) derive legitimacy by conforming to environmental expectations. Unfortunately, it is all but clear what the external expectations might be and, moreover, there may be disagreement over them. To deal with this dilemma, the framework conceptualizes expectations in the form of special roles or functions that are commonly ascribed to foundations, agreeing with Heydemann and Toepler (2006: 21) that “the performance and effectiveness of foundations in pursuing their social roles and functions is a powerful determinant of foundation legitimacy.” Accordingly, to the degree that foundations are perceived as conforming to these roles and functions, their legitimacy is taken for granted. Nonconformity, by contrast, will result in heightened (public) attention, criticism, and scrutiny. Growing criticism, based on perceived role performance failure, will result in regulatory intervention in the absence of other forms of external control. The nature of the regulatory regime, in turn, has ramifications for the organizational behavior of foundations, in that it sets structural parameters and shapes incentives for foundation trustees and managers. The manner in which foundations perceive strategic constraints and organize their work within the institutional framework of the law will affect choices over which roles and functions to pursue, which, in the end, affects perceptions of the legitimacy of foundations. In the following, I provide an overview of the roles and functions typically associated with foundations and summarize the key strands of foundation criticism and regulation over the past century in the US context.

Fig. 10.1  The foundation legitimacy framework

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10.2  Expectations, Roles, and Functions Compiling lists of the special characteristics or abilities that help differentiate nonprofit institutions from both the government and the market and providing a justification for their existence and preferential treatment have been popular pastimes at least since the Filer Commission in the early 1970s. Ralph Kramer (1981) drew these arguments together conceptually by suggesting that nonprofits perform four distinct roles as service providers, advocates, value guardians, and vanguards. Likewise, there have been similar attempts to ascribe distinctive roles and functions to foundations (pars pro toto: Anheier, 2018; Anheier & Daly, 2006; Anheier & Hammack, 2010; Anheier & Toepler, 1999a, 1999b; Leat, 2016; Nielsen, 1972; Prewitt, 1999, 2006; Shaw et al., 2021; Toepler, 2018a, 2018b; Toepler & Abramson, 2021). The explicit intent is to distill the essence of a justification for foundations in modern society. These functions thus provide a significant parameter for gauging what the social or societal expectations are vis-à-vis the performance of foundations and the foundation field. Anheier and Daly (2007) derived seven more or less distinct roles of foundations from the literature, to which an eighth was added by Hammack and Anheier (2013): • Complementarity or supplementarity: In this role, foundations primarily serve social needs that are outside the scope of government action. • Substitution: Foundations provide collective goods and services in lieu of the government. • Redistribution: A primary function of foundations is to redistribute wealth from the upper to the lowest socioeconomic strata of society. • Innovation: Foundations foster and promote new solutions to social problems and alternatives to the existing practices. • Social and policy change: Foundations pursue structural changes in society, particularly on behalf of groups without a voice in the political process. • Preservation of traditions and cultures: In contrast, foundations seek to preserve and maintain the status quo in the light of broader societal changes. • Promotion of pluralism: Foundations support the competition of ideas and concepts in either social or political and policy terms. • Building out: As another role, foundations often engage in creating new institutions or enhancing existing ones, bringing new capacities and opportunities to areas that lacked those before. Not all of these roles have equal salience, however (Hammack & Anheier, 2013; Shaw et al., 2021; Toepler, 2018a). The most quintessential and widely discussed function ascribed to foundations is the societal change agent, innovation, or venture capital role. The idea that foundations should serve as social “venture” or “risk” capital can be traced back to at least the 1920s in the US literature (Kiger, 1954) and has, in one variation or the other, continued to play an important role in legitimizing foundations. Although evidence is scant that foundations do actually produce innovation or foster social change, their ability in principle to take risks and be flexible continues to animate the strategic and venture philanthropy literatures that see foundations as acting as social change agents.

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In addition to change agency, other roles tie foundations closer to their financing function particularly vis-à-vis the government, as foundation grants—within limits—can be an alternative to government funding. As such, they can perform several different roles: supplement, complement, or substitute for the government. Supplementarity has been of considerable consequence overall. In the early years of the US foundation field, the Rockefeller and Carnegie philanthropies relied heavily on working with public institutions, which contributed to the success of their work in the first half of the twentieth century. The complementary nature of foundations was also a staple in the arguments in favor of foundations in the policy debates of the 1960s. The 1965 Treasury Department’s assessment of the foundation field accordingly allowed for a “vital role” in “providing for areas into which government cannot or should not advance,” and the Petersen Commission found tax exemption “strongly justified when private philanthropic money is used, not as a substitute for tax dollars, but as a supplement of a special kind that serves the public interest in ways in which the government itself is under various operational constraints” (cit. in Toepler, 2018a: 660). Although the substitution role has traditionally not had much resonance in the US context at all (Toepler, 2007), calls on foundations to step in and help fill public budget gaps increased in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 (Abramson et al., 2014; Toepler & Abramson, 2021). Taken together, supplementarity, complementarity, and substitution can be subsumed under a broad umbrella of funding intermediation.

10.3  Waves of Foundation Criticism and Regulation Historically, the relationship between the state and foundations was difficult beginning with the Ancien Regime and then the French Revolution, which legally abolished foundations in France for nearly 200 years as they were seen as reactionary forces ruled by the dead hand (mortmain) of their founders (Archambault et  al., 1999; Chap. 25 in this volume). Although allowed to exist in Germany, the postwar foundation community perceived state bureaucracy and regulation as a major roadblock to its development (Toepler, 1998). Government attitudes toward foundations began to change across Europe only in the late twentieth century, as incentivizing the dedication of private wealth to public purposes became politically attractive in light of diminishing state budgets (Anheier & Toepler, 1999a, 1999b; Toepler, 2018b).

10.3.1  Twentieth-Century Scrutiny of US Foundations In the United States, foundations had not been subjected to special supervision and regulation until public and congressional interest and criticism intensified in the 1950s and 1960s. The first modern, philanthropic foundations in the United States emerged during the Progressive Era, which was marked by broad populist and

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political rejection of the unfettered capitalism of the late nineteenth century. That some of the worst “robber barons” started to create new philanthropic institutions was met with great suspicion by the public as well as by the US Congress (Barkan, 2013). John D. Rockefeller’s original intention was to have his new foundation federally chartered in Washington, DC, but it was denied by Congress, which feared that the foundation would use its wealth to exert undue influence over politics (Frumkin, 2008). This was followed by a congressional investigation of these new entities in 1915, which did not yield any further action. The Congress targeted foundations again during the McCarthy Era in the 1950s in the aftermath of the Ford Foundation’s decision in 1949 to set an international programmatic agenda, with its significant, newly obtained assets, which drew suspicion that it was leftist. A populist Congressman from Texas, Wright Patman, then launched an almost decade-long investigation of perceived economic and financial misuses of foundations during the 1960s on the suspicion that foundations were largely tax dodges not working toward public purposes (Smith, 2019). The political backlash culminated in the Tax Reform Act (TRA) of 1969, in which the Congress finally imposed specific regulations on private foundations that foundation leaders and observers perceived as draconian, with significant economic consequences for the field over the following decade (Simon, 1995, 1999; Troyer, 1999). One of the key provisions of the TRA was the imposition of an annual payout requirement for grantmaking foundations of either all income or the equivalent of 6% of the asset value, whichever was greater. In essence, this prohibited foundations from retaining parts of their investment income to maintain the real value of their capital and forced them to draw on their assets for spending when investment yields remained below the 6% mark. In combination with the stagflation of the 1970s, this is widely seen as the main reason for the decline of the US foundation sector in the 1970s. In the early 1980s, the payout requirement was changed to a flat 5% of the asset value, allowing foundations to retain excess income and to keep giving below the asset growth. The growth of the foundation field then began to pick up again. Beyond the payout requirement, a number of other restrictions were imposed on foundations that are generally not applicable to other charities: • The TRA of 1969 introduced an excise tax, which is a levy on income, which was to be used to fund government oversight of foundations. • Self-dealing (e.g., business transactions) between the foundation and donors, board members, managers, and certain other persons are generally prohibited, even if they are to the advantage of the foundation. • Foundations may not own privately held businesses or control public corporations. • Foundations are prohibited from engaging in any kind of political activity, including lobbying. • Expenditure responsibility rules require foundations to closely monitor the use of funds by grantees (including individuals), other than recognized charitable institutions.

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• In addition, donations to foundations have generally lower deductibility limits than do donations to other charities. For example, a donor may deduct up to half of her income for gifts to charities but only 30% for endowing a foundation.

10.3.2  First Modern Wave of Criticism (1990s–2000s) The late 1990s reshaped the face of the foundation sector, at least at the top. Foundations created out of postindustrial wealth began to take their place next to— and ahead of—the traditional philanthropies created out of industrial wealth. Significant philanthropic commitments and the activist stance of some of the prominent new philanthropists, particularly Bill Gates, George Soros, and Ted Turner, in conjunction with generally soaring asset bases in the stock market boom of the late 1990s, sparked a level of public and media attention that jolted the foundation sector out of the relative obscurity that it had enjoyed in the prior two decades. Although this provided new opportunities for foundations, it also provided an opening for more critical views to be aired in a broader public forum. Specifically, there were five lines of criticism that received new or renewed attention. Foundation Payout: Although foundation assets increased significantly in the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, so did current needs. However, the largest foundations in particular did not adapt their spending policies in a meaningful manner. Indeed, for the most part, they continued to strictly observe the 5% payout requirement rather than increasing payouts to make additional resources available for current uses. Their inaction resulted in a reopening of the payout debate. One study—commissioned by the progressive National Network of Grantmakers in 1999—argued that foundations could easily afford to voluntarily increase their payout to 6% without endangering their future spending. By contrast, another study— commissioned by the Council on Foundations—bolstered the traditional argument that by maintaining the 5% payout level, society benefits the most over the long run because the resources available to foundations in the future will increase disproportionately if the conservative spending policies are kept in place (see Toepler, 2004). A more recent neutral analysis has suggested that short-term increases in payout have no negative effect but that permanent increases will reduce endowment assets over time (Rooney et al., 2018). In the aftermath of the 2001 recession, the threat of regulatory intervention returned to the congressional agenda once again in the form of Sect. 105 of H.R. 7 of 2003, the Charitable Giving Act, which proposed to prohibit foundations from counting administrative expenses as qualifying distributions. As a de facto increase of required payouts, advocates of this regulatory change expected a resulting increase in grant volumes by billions of dollars (see Toepler, 2004). Professionalization: A second strand of criticism charged foundations with over-­ professionalization and, as one observer puts it, “administrative self-absorption” (Frumkin, 1998). Patman (1970: 200) had already recognized the problem, arguing that “foundations develop a highly-structured and well-paid bureaucracy of their

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own. Because of the existence of this desk army, sizable foundation funds go into ‘expenses’.” The argument was that over the last 30 years of the twentieth century, foundations substantially increased their staff and thus their administrative costs at the expense of their grantmaking budgets. Moreover, with the emergence of a “program officer profession,” foundations have become more risk-averse and less innovative because professional foundation managers prefer to fund smaller and safer programs so as not to have to take personal responsibility if larger and riskier projects fail (Nielsen, 1972; Frumkin, 1998). Lack of Diversity: In addition, the emerging profession remained largely white and mostly male, much like foundation boards, raising questions of representation and the ability of foundations to relate to and connect with wide swaths of society, thereby potentially replicating and fostering oppressive systems whose excesses philanthropy is supposed to address (Villanueva, 2018). To address the issue, Assembly Bill 624 was introduced in the California State Assembly in 2008, which would have forced foundations to publicize ethnoracial, gender, and sexual orientation data relating to their governance, operations, and grantmaking. The regulation was averted through a $30 million pledge by a coalition of foundations to provide additional grant dollars to support minority-led and minority-serving local nonprofits and devote funds to capacity building and leadership training for minority-led organizations. Lack of Impact: Buttressing the above criticism, risk taking, innovation, and the willingness to experiment with new ideas had, for some observers, not been clearly in evidence, as there have been few recent successes that the foundation field could point to. The foundation community had indeed a hard time to point to far-reaching social, medical, cultural, or other societal breakthroughs that were equal to those of the early part of the twentieth century and that could be attributed to early foundation funding. Indicative of the problem was a “Great Grants” section that the Council on Foundations maintained on its website for a while, which was intended to highlight significant foundation contributions to societal change and innovation. The list covered a gamut of significant achievements, ranging from the development of rocket science to the invention of polio and yellow fever vaccines and the creation of the public library system and public television. However, the most recent of the 10 highlighted foundation successes dated back to the early 1970s—rather underscoring the critique that foundations had little to show since and may have lost their innovative touch. Overall, the perception was that foundations had failed to make major dents in any persistent social problem (Freund, 1996). Short-Term Focus: Many observers also bemoaned an apparent short-term focus in foundations, which likewise stands in the way of significant breakthroughs. The trend in the field has been toward funding short-term projects and specific programs rather than committing to long-term general support of potentially highly innovative organizations (Anheier & Hammack, 2010). The proposal that foundations should act within the nonprofit sector like venture capitalists do in the business sector (Letts et  al., 1997) thus sparked broad debate and considerable soul-searching among foundations leaders.

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10.3.3  R  eaction to Criticisms: The Rise and Fall of Strategic Philanthropy Just as foundations were experiencing justification pressures, a new strategic philanthropy concept was launched following on the heels of venture philanthropy. Strategic philanthropy promised a way to counteract some of the prevailing critiques and was eagerly adopted by some major foundations. Based on a concept paper by business strategist Michael Porter (Porter & Kramer, 1999) and then adopted by the Hewlett Foundation under Paul Brest (Brest, 2020; Brest & Harvey, 2020), the approach called on foundations to set strategic goals and then pursue a consistent implementation plan by supporting programs and organizations capable of attaining those goals through measurable results of their work. In practice, however, the approach met with growing resistance and led to an amplification rather than a reduction of foundation criticisms. The concept was perceived as too linear and simplistic, downplaying social complexity and interdependencies. It was also said to superimpose foundation program officer notions over the expertise of their grantees. Moreover, in the long run, it was criticized for hampering grantees more than increasing their capacity and effectively harming the nonprofit sector by shifting long-term support away from worthy and important institutions that just happen not to fit the current strategy priorities (Eisenberg, 2013; Harvey, 2016; Schambra, 2013). The basic problem, according to Pablo Eisenberg (2013), was that control and power shifted to the funders, and creativity and innovativeness were not able to cut through strategy notions to attract foundation funding. Ultimately, the agenda of the entire nonprofit sector would be dictated only by a few foundations and major philanthropists, which would, in turn, lead to a fundamental undermining of democratic institutions. A particularly alarming example of the “philanthropic arrogance” resulting from strategic philanthropy is, according to Eisenberg, the efforts of various foundations to make lasting changes to public education policy.

10.3.4  P  hilanthropic Hegemony: The Second Modern Wave of Criticism (2010s) The criticism of the concept of strategic philanthropy reflects to a considerable extent the continued concern about the influence of elites on public affairs, which often sees foundations as central mediators of elite interests in the public policymaking process (e.g., Dye, 2001). One policy field where the resulting tensions have come sharply into focus is education, especially with regard to school reform and the role foundations have played in it. Although school reform had long been a local concern, a growing number of large foundations, notably the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, have turned school reform efforts into a national policy issue in recent years (see

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Tompkins-­Stange, 2016), devoting significant resources to results-oriented measurement approaches. After initially supporting experiments in individual schools or local school systems, these foundations started to fundamentally disrupt education policy by pushing increased market orientation through a focus on competition, choice, economic incentives, and deregulation. This commitment led to the historically most significant expansion of philanthropic activities in the public education sector. The Gates Foundation, for example, funded efforts to persuade states to recognize national “common core” standards in mathematics and language education, developed by the governors’ association and an advisory panel of school representatives, an effort that remained highly controversial. The Carnegie Corporation later supported a similar effort to develop guidelines for science education. In addition, the Gates Foundation installed foundation-funded data specialists in school districts, which, as entrepreneurial change agents, were to improve practices through quantitative analysis. Advocacy groups and think tanks were funded to aid in the dissemination of reform proposals and media coverage. Others, like the Walton Family Foundation, dedicated themselves to pushing the charter schools movement. The education policy agenda of these foundations heavily influenced the Obama administration, whose Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, as director of the Chicago School District, had been a Gates Foundation grantee and had arguably internalized the foundation’s reform philosophy. The appointment of Duncan was therefore largely welcomed by foundations who claimed credit for their decade-­ long investment in charter schools, performance-based teacher salaries, school accountability, and the like. The resulting quasi-instrumentalization of the federal government for foundation-­ defined reform efforts and a general perception that foundations had gained an inappropriate influence on an entire policy field led to a substantial debate within the school reform and education policy field that was exceedingly critical of foundations. The historian and former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch declared it as “fundamentally undemocratic” to leave the control of public education policies to private foundations run by the richest people in society, which escape the accountability they require of teachers and cannot be unelected by voters who disagree with their reform proposals (Ravitch, 2010, p. 211). Particularly problematic is that foundation interventions in public education can cause long-term damage if experiments go wrong. Failed experiments have affected hundreds of thousands of students and to some symbolized the “arrogance of power” that eludes public justification and accountability (Barkan 2011). As was the case with Carnegie and Rockefeller at the beginning, and Ford in the mid-twentieth century, it is the emergence of mega-foundations that crystalizes public and political discomfort. The Gates Foundation, with its endowment assets of approximately US $50 billion in 2020, in particular, has been drawing concern and criticism in education as well as other funding priorities, especially global health. Here, the Foundation is frequently accused of distorting international development priorities, exerting undue influence on the World Health Organization, and promoting neoliberal preferences for market mechanisms and the indirect promotion of

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global economic interests (Levich, 2015; Mitchell & Spark, 2016). Even beyond the Gates Foundation, the phenomenon of mega-philanthropy is becoming increasingly seen as problematic, as a result of growing inequality and potential threats to democracy (Callahan, 2017; Goss, 2016; Reich, 2018; Schmitz & McCollim, 2021). David Callahan (2017), for example, predicted that the concentrated philanthropic resources in a few decades could well begin to equal the discretionary spending part of the US federal budget.

10.4  Broadening the Roles’ Framework Having charted the push and pull of foundation criticisms, foundation reactions, and regulatory responses, one can detect a fairly cohesive pattern of the emergence of large-scale new foundation resources, followed by public and political concern and legislative scrutiny, resulting in regulation (TRA of 1969) or the threat of regulation (e.g., HR 7 of 2003; Cal. AB 624 of 2008). Foundation role claims, as traced by Leat in Chap. 11 in this volume, can also be associated with periods of growing public scrutiny. In the early twentieth century, the societal venture capital claim, which corresponds to the innovation or change agent role, emerged as the first line of defense. In the mid-twentieth century, foundations leaned on funding intermediation, i.e., their roles in supplementing and complementing the government, as a central justification, before returning to a new formulation of the societal venture capital role at the turn of the millennium and then adopting a more activist venture/strategic philanthropy approach. With the main elements of the legitimacy framework in place, I conclude with a brief exploration of the question of whether the nature of criticisms leveled at foundations may be tied to specific, legitimizing role discourses. Table 10.1 relates the five major streams of recent criticisms to the two broad roles identified earlier, the funding intermediation and change agency roles. The payout discussion is largely focused on the issue of increasing foundation grants to the nonprofit sector. Section 105 of H.R.7 of 2003 was explicitly designed to increase resources for the financially ailing sector at the time. Advocacy for an increased payout requirement followed the same reasoning. The professionalization critique cuts across both functions. On the one hand, large grantmaking staffs and administrative buildup absorb foundation resources that could otherwise be used for grantmaking programs. On the other hand, professional capacity within the foundation ensures a level of internal expertise that in principle is necessary to make informed judgments about the innovation or change potential of grantees. Whimsical, amateurish decision-making driven by donors and part-time trustees is sufficient to meet funding distribution goals but is less suited to sustain efforts to identify innovation or affect systemic change. The short-term focus and lack of lasting impact that many observers have noted address interrelated issues germane to the change agency function. Neither significant innovations nor broader social change are readily achievable through 1- or

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Table 10.1  Linking criticisms to roles Criticisms Foundation payout Professionalization Short-term focus Lack of impact Philanthropic hegemony

Functions Funding intermediation Funding intermediation/change agency Change agency Change agency Funding intermediation/change agency

2-year grants, as concerns over grant renewals and follow-up funding distract grantees from pursuing innovative approaches, which are per definitionem characterized by high levels of uncertainty and ambiguous progress benchmarks (Anheier & Leat, 2018). The current concerns about philanthropic hegemony, that is, undue influence of large funders on policies and public priorities, affect both sets of roles. In the financial intermediation lane, large philanthropic funders have begun to substitute for the government in policy development, almost to a state of crowding public institutions out of the process. On the change agency side, foundations adapted the venture philanthropy playbook, focused on experimentation and pushing change through new outcomes-focused approaches with strategic, longer-term involvement of foundation staff with grantees. In summary, foundation criticisms can be linked to key foundation roles and how well role expectations are met when the public’s attention and that of its political representatives are trained on the foundation field. Behavioral change may attempt to realign foundation practices with expectations, as the adoption of the strategic philanthropy concept in reaction to the perceived lack of impact and long-term, big picture orientation suggests. If expectations remain unmet though, foundations face the possibility of regulatory sanctions to bring their behavior, that is, their pursuit of given roles, back in line with expectations. However, is the regulatory framework suited to ensuring conformity between foundation conduct and role expectations? Arguably, regulation is too blunt a tool to affect positive behavioral change and achieve much more than pushing foundations along some aspects of the funding intermediation role. Innovative behavior, by contrast, cannot be regulated. What is more, regulation can set incentives to undermine other role pursuits, as was the case with the TRA of 1969. Patman’s (1970) agenda and the anti-foundation sentiment of the 1960s were exclusively focused on the funding intermediation role. Restrictions on the ownership of private businesses and public corporations and the payout requirement were intended to prevent misuse of foundations as mere tax shelters and enforce minimum funding levels. Self-dealing rules precluded benefits flowing to private interests. Lobbying prohibitions countered the use of foundations as “propaganda forces” (ibid. 201) for business interests. In addition, the excise tax was instituted to monitor compliance with the limitations placed on the private interests embodied in foundations, not to ensure a positive and meaningful pursuit of public interests.

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In essence, regulation has largely succeeded in its intention to eliminate the private functions of foundations, but it has failed in setting positive incentives guiding foundations in their pursuit of public roles. To the contrary, the regulation of the private economic aspects of foundations has nevertheless produced a number of unintended consequences that continue to affect their overall role performance: • Although the payout requirement was meant to force foundations to increase their spending by setting a minimum amount as a floor, it has in the minds of some foundation managers become a ceiling (Frumkin, 2004). Adhering to the 5% benchmark—even when available economic resources would allow and the financial needs of the nonprofit sector would require higher payouts—impedes the full pursuit of the funding intermediation role. • The shift away from funding individuals in response to the expenditure responsibility rules has led to more funding for established and secure organizations at the expense of support for change agents working outside formal organizational structures and networks. • Finally, in keeping with neoinstitutionalist predictions, the foundation field reacted to the threats of 1969 through increased staffing and greater professionalization among the larger foundations, on one side, and increased collaboration and coordination among foundations (through grantmaker associations and affinity groups), on the other (Frumkin 1998, 2004). These institutional reactions, in turn, gave way to greater risk aversion and short-term output orientation. As a result, foundations are finding themselves in an uncomfortable position, in which mere compliance with legal rules is an insufficient source of legitimization, but the unintentional effects of the existing regulations have set parameters on organizational behavior that impede a full pursuit of broader societal functions. This may, in turn, help explain the surge in interest during the Obama years in the United States, but elsewhere as well, in developing public–philanthropic partnerships between the government and foundations (Abramson et al., 2014; Toepler, 2018a). Working collaboratively with foundations allows the government to use carrots to steer foundation behavior rather than the stick of regulation. However, as a recent work has suggested (Toepler & Abramson, 2021), the role expectations of government representatives may not necessarily align very closely with how foundations would like to define them.

References Abramson, A., Soskis, B., & Toepler, S. (2014). Public-philanthropic partnerships: A review of recent trends. The Foundation Review, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.9707/1944-­5660.1201 Anheier, H., & Daly, S. (Eds.). (2006). The politics of foundations: A comparative analysis. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203028186 Anheier, H. & S. Daly (Eds.), (2007). The politics of foundations: A comparative analysis. Routledge.

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Anheier, H., & Toepler, S. (1999a). Philanthropic foundations: An international perspective. In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), Private funds, public purpose: Philanthropic foundations in international perspective (pp. 3–23). Academic/Plenum. Anheier, H.  K. (2018). Philanthropic foundations in cross-national perspective: A comparative approach. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(12), 1591–1602. Anheier, H.  K., & Hammack, D.  C. (2010). American foundations: Roles and contributions. Brookings Institution Press. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2018). Performance measurement in philanthropic foundations: The ambiguity of success and failure. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (Eds.). (1999b). Private funds, public purpose: Philanthropic foundations in international perspective. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­1-­4615-­4893-­5 Archambault, E., Boumendil, J., & Tsyboula, S. (1999). Foundations in France. In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), Private funds, public purpose: Philanthropic foundations in international perspective (pp. 185–198). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­1-­4615-­4893-­5_9 Barkan, J. (2011). Got dough? How billionaires rule our schools. Dissent, 58(1). Winter. Barkan, J. (2013). Plutocrats at work: How big philanthropy undermines democracy. Social Research, 80(2), 635–652. Brest, P. (2020). The outcomes movement in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. In W. Powell & P. Bromley (Eds.), The nonprofit sector (Vol. 16, pp. 381–408). Stanford University Press. Brest, P., & Harvey, H. (2020). Money well spent. Stanford University Press. Callahan, D. (2017). The givers: Wealth, power, and philanthropy in a new gilded age. Knopf Doubleday. Dye, T. (2001). Top down policymaking. CG Press. Eisenberg, P. (2013, August 20). ‘Strategic philanthropy’ shifts too much power to donors. Retrieved from https://www.philanthropy.com/article/strategic-philanthropy-shifts-too-­muchpower-­to-­donors/ Freund, G. (1996). Narcissism & philanthropy: Ideas and talent denied. Viking. Frumkin, P. (1998). The long recoil from regulation: Private philanthropic foundations and the tax reform act of 1969. The American Review of Public Administration, 28(3), 266–286. https:// doi.org/10.1177/027507409802800303 Frumkin, P. (2004). Trouble in foundationland: Looking back, looking ahead. Hudson Institute— Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. Frumkin, P. (2008). Strategic giving: The art and science of philanthropy. University of Chicago Press. Goss, K. (2016). Policy plutocrats: How America’s wealthy seek to influence governance. PS: Political Science & Politic, 49(3), 442–448. Hammack, D. C., & Anheier, H. K. (2013). A versatile American institution: The changing ideals and realities of philanthropic foundations. Brookings Institution Press. Harvey, H. (2016, April 4). Why i regret pushing strategic philanthropy. Retrieved from https:// www.philanthropy.com/article/why-­i-­regret-­pushing-­strategic-­philanthropy/ Heydemann, S., & Toepler, S. (2006). Foundations and the challenge of legitimacy in comparative perspective (pp. 3–26). Russell Sage. Kiger, J. (1954). Operating principles of the larger foundations. Russell Sage. Kramer, R. M. (1981). Voluntary agencies in the welfare state (First printing edition). University of California Press. Leat, D. (2016). Philanthropic foundations, public good and public policy. Springer. Letts, C. W., Ryan, W., & Grossman, A. (1997). Virtuous capital: What foundations can learn from venture capitalists. Harvard Business Review, 75(2), 36–44. Levich, J. (2015). The Gates Foundation, Ebola, and global health imperialism. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 74(4), 704–742. Mitchell, K., & Spark, M. (2016). The new Washington consensus: Millennial philanthropy and the making of global market subjects. Antipode, 48(3), 724–749. Nielsen, W. (1972). The big foundations. Columbia University Press.

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Patman, W. (1970). The free-wheeling foundations. In T.  Reeves (Ed.), Foundations under fire (pp. 195–209). Cornell University Press. Pfeffer, J., & Salancik, G. (1978). The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective. Harper & Row. Porter, M.  E., & Kramer, M.  R. (1999). Philanthropy’s new agenda: Creating value. Harvard Business Review, 77(6), 121–130, 216. Powell, W.  W., & DiMaggio, P.  J. (1991). The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. University of Chicago Press. Prewitt, K. (1999). The importance of foundations in an open society. In Bertelsmann Foundation (Ed.), The future of foundations in an open society (pp. 17–29). Bertelsmann Foundation. Prewitt, K. (2006). American foundations: What justifies their unique privileges and powers. In K. Prewitt, M. Dogan, S. Heydemann, & S. Toepler (Eds.), Legitimacy of philanthropic foundations: United States and European perspectives (pp. 27–48). Russell Sage. Prewitt, K., Dogan, M., Heydemann, S., & Toepler, S. (2006). Legitimacy of philanthropic foundations: United States and European perspectives. Russell Sage. Reich, R. (2018). Just giving: Why philanthropy is failing democracy and how it can do better. Princeton University Press. Retrieved from https://press.princeton.edu/books/ hardcover/9780691183497/just-­giving Ravitch, D. (2010). The Death and Life of the Great American School System. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Rooney, P., Sansing, R., & Bergdoll, J. (2018). Public policies and private foundations: Payout rates and the (dreaded) excise tax. In B. A. Seaman & D. R. Young (Eds.), Handbook of research on nonprofit economics and management (pp. 409–427). Edward Elgar. Retrieved from https:// www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781785363511/9781785363511.00029.xml Schambra, W. (2013). The problem of strategic philanthropy (according to bill Schambra). Nonprofit Quarterly. Retrieved from https://nonprofitquarterly.org/ the-­problem-­of-­strategic-­philanthropy/ Schmitz, H. P., & McCollim, E. M. (2021). Billionaires in global philanthropy: A decade of the giving pledge. Society, 58(2), 120–130. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-­021-­00580-­0 Shaw, A., Canavan, J., & Dolan, P. (2021). Strategic philanthropy’s investment in public systems: A framework for intervention. International Journal of Management Reviews. https://doi. org/10.1111/ijmr.12269 Simon, J. G. (1995). The regulation of American foundations: Looking backward at the tax reform act of 1969. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 6(3), 243–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02354015 Simon, J. G. (1999). Private foundations as a federally regulated industry: Time for a fresh look. Paper presented at the National Center on Philanthropy and Law Conference “Private foundations reconsidered: policies and alternatives, old and new,” New York. Smith, J. (2019, December 20). From populist crusade to comprehensive regulation: The tax reform act of 1969. REsource. Retrieved from https://resource.rockarch.org/story/ from-­populist-­crusade-­to-­comprehensive-­regulation-­the-­tax-­reform-­act-­of-­1969/ Toepler, S. (1998). Foundations and their institutional context: Cross-evaluating evidence from Germany and the United States. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9(2), 153–170. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022000621032 Toepler, S. (2004). Ending payout as we know it: A conceptual and comparative perspective on the payout requirement for foundations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 33(4), 729–738. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764004269318 Toepler, S. (2007). Foundation roles and visions in the USA: Comparative note. In H. K. Anheier & S. Daly (Eds.), The politics of foundations: A comparative analysis (pp. 324–339). Routledge. Toepler, S. (2018a). Public philanthropic partnerships: The changing nature of government/foundation relationships in the US. International Journal of Public Administration, 41(8), 657–669. https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2017.1295462

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Toepler, S. (2018b). Toward a comparative understanding of foundations. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(13), 1956–1971. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764218773504 Toepler, S., & Abramson, A. (2021). Government/foundation relations: A conceptual framework and evidence from the U.S. Federal Government’s partnership efforts. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 32(2), 220–233. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11266-­021-­00331-­z Tompkins-Stange, M. E. (2016). Policy patrons: Philanthropy, education reform, and the politics of influence. Harvard Education Press. Troyer, T. (1999). The 1969 private foundation law: Historical perspective on its origins and underpinnings. Paper presented at the National Center on philanthropy and law conference “Private foundations reconsidered: Policies and alternatives, old and new,” New York. Villanueva, E. (2018). Decolonizing wealth: Indigenous wisdom to heal divides and restore balance. Berrett-Koehler. Retrieved from https://www.abebooks.com/ Decolonizing-­Wealth-­Indigenous-­Wisdom-­Heal-­Divides/30958117201/bd

Chapter 11

Foundations and Democracy: The Changing Case for the Defense Diana Leat Abstract  The legitimacy of philanthropic foundations in a democracy is not a new question. Foundations have been questioned and criticized by others throughout the twentieth century, but less attention has been paid to foundations’ own internal debates. This chapter explores the ways in which foundations have presented their own perceptions of their roles and legitimacy vis-à-vis government and democracy. It is suggested that just as external critiques change, so too foundations’ own legitimations change over time in both content and “style.” Sometimes the focus is on what foundations should or can do; at other times, it appears to be on what they should not or cannot do. Sometimes the style is almost subservient; other times foundations are robustly assertive. Awareness—or at least open acknowledgment— of tensions and discomforts in the relationship also appear to wax and wane. This raises the question of whether it is possible to discern changing “spirits of philanthropy” akin to Boltanski and Chiapello’s “spirits of capitalism.” Without access to foundation archives, this contribution is able only to suggest some avenues for future exploration. Keywords  Philanthropic foundations · Democracy · Foundation roles · Legitimacy · Spirits of capitalism

11.1  Introduction Critiques of foundations, as Toepler notes in Chap. 10 of this volume, have changed over time. In John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s day, the original fear was of concentrations of wealth subverting the will of the American people through their representatives (Karl & Karl, 1999). The most recent critiques (Barkan, 2013; Callahan, 2017; Giridharadas, 2017; LaMarche, 2014; McGoey, 2014; Reich, 2005) seem to take us back to that initial concern with the very existence of foundations in a democratic society. But in the intervening hundred or so years, there have been other more specific and, in many respects, less challenging criticisms.

D. Leat (*) Bayes Business School, City University of London, London, UK © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_11

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Ylvisaker (1999) neatly sums up the three major probes into foundation activity in the United States in the twentieth century. First, a commission in the early 1950s (known as Cox and/or Reece) asked, “Is something unAmerican going on?”; are foundations purveyors of communism and supporting efforts to overthrow government and undermine the American way of life? The activities of foundations, Cox and later Reece argued, urgently required investigation in order to reveal the story of how communism and socialism are financed in the United States and where they get their money (Cox/Reece 1954; on Cox and Reece committees, see also Reeves, 1970; Samson, 1980; Wormser, 2014). Patman (in Ylvisaker, 1999) asked whether something illegal was going on; are foundations concealing for-profit activities and self-dealing beneath their simple, worthy skirts? Filer (1975) asked: what’s in the black box? Is what goes on inside and is coming out of the foundation worth the price? Following Toepler’s chapter (Chap. 10 in this volume), this contribution begins to explore two distinct but related questions. First, discussions of foundation legitimacy tend to come from outside foundations, but how do foundations present and defend themselves and, in particular, how do foundations see their roles and legitimacy vis-à-vis government? Second, are there discernible “spirits” of philanthropy akin to the spirits of capitalism outlined by Boltanski and Chiapello (2005)?

11.2  A Work in Progress Categorizations of foundation roles are well rehearsed: complement, supplement, innovator, bridge builder, and so on (see, e.g., Anheier & Daly, 2006; Anheier & Leat, 2006; Prewitt, 2001, 2006). These categorizations tend to have been created and ascribed to foundations by external observers. So how do foundations themselves describe their roles and, in particular, how do they define their roles in relation to government and democracy? This, as Karl and Karl (1999) note, is the most complex of historical issues in American philanthropy. The Walsh Commission established in 1915 to investigate the state of industrial relations in the United States ended up addressing wider issues of democracy and the power of big business and the very wealthy. Walsh was especially troubled by the power of general purpose foundations with enormous resources, which he described as “so grave a menace … It would be desirable to recommend their abolition” (quoted in Roelofs, 2003, p.  9). Arnove suggested that foundations like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford “have a corrosive influence on a democratic society; they represent relatively unregulated and unaccountable concentrations of power and wealth which buy talent, promote causes, and, in effect, establish an agenda of what merits society’s attention. They serve as ‘cooling out’ agencies, delaying and preventing more radical, structural change” (Arnove, 1980, p. 1).

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Mavity and Ylvisaker (1977) in more measured tones saw government and foundations as working “in tension and in tandem.” The suggestion was that foundations may serve as a countervailing force to government and other private influences: (a) by counterbalancing patterns of resource allocation. If government is concentrating on or neglecting one set of social concerns and corporate and individual givers another, foundations can shift in contrary directions and attend to other constituencies; (b) by providing complementary support that helps non-profit agencies fend off or cure distortions of their priorities, terms of reference, or operating modes caused by over dependence on other funding sources; (c) by offsetting or neutralising the political and special interests that often accompany governmental, corporate or personal giving; (d) by taking a longer and broader view than other funding sources can or will adopt. (Mavity & Ylvisaker, 1977, p. 373)

Any attempt to write about foundations’ own perceptions of their roles vis-à-vis government and democracy is hampered by the perennial occupational hazard of over-generalization: “when you have seen one foundation, you have seen one foundation.” A second constraint at the time of writing (during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic) is lack of access to foundation archive collections and thus having to make do with materials to hand. With those provisos in mind, this chapter offers merely some exploratory snapshots of foundations’ thoughts on their relationships with government and their place in democracy. The materials used are from a small number of the largest foundations: Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller over a period of about 40 years in the twentieth century. These very large foundations are, of course, not representative of the sector; indeed, it is probably fair to say that the vast majority of foundations never lose a moment’s sleep over their roles in democracy—they are doing good; what more needs to be said? Arguably too, foundations are systemically ill-prepared to respond to their critics: “[d]espite the fears voiced about the imperial foundations … the foundations are ill prepared to defend themselves under attack. Unlike operating charities, they have no ready made constituencies—no alumni … no parishioners … no outpatients … Their constituency is in a sense an abstraction called ‘the public interest’” (The Peterson Report 1970 quoted in Brilliant, 2000, p. 87). The material presented here is not in any way representative and is very much a work in progress pending the reopening of archives. The purpose in presenting these snapshots is to highlight the fact that foundations’ perceptions of their roles and relationships to government and democracy change in both content and “style” (Smith, 2002). Sometimes the focus is on what foundations should or can do; at other times, it appears to be on what they should not or cannot do. Sometimes the style is almost subservient; other times foundations are robustly assertive. Awareness—or at least open acknowledgment—of tensions and discomforts in the relationship also appears to wax and wane; and running through the whole are explicit and implicit distinctions between “political” and “nonpolitical,” “governmental” and “public,” and “public” and “private.”

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11.3  Finding a Role In 1947 the Gaither Report considered the future of the hugely wealthy Ford Foundation, including its role vis-à-vis government. Establishment of peace and promotion of democracy were high on the agenda. More specifically, activities to be supported must: [h]ave. a prompt impact upon the policies of national governments or the United Nations’ either directly through officials or through the effect of an informed public opinion. This may be achieved by aiding in formulation of policies, by helping to improve processes by which they are planned and carried out or helping to develop public understanding of the issues. (Gaither, 1949, p. 53).

But the report goes on: Since the Ford Foundation does not have sufficient resources to undertake the solution or alleviation of all problems, it should concentrate strategically upon areas showing maximum promise of progress, including the relief or elimination of significant factors which tend to block it. The less risky, though often more expensive, task of following up any breakthrough would be left to others. (Gaither, 1949, p. 49).

The Ford Foundation, Gaither argues, should not shy away from criticism of current policy if necessary. Gaither sees foundations as working along “democracy’s frontier,” that is, where there are conflicts of interest. This may take a foundation into controversial areas but: “A foundation may enter controversial areas boldly and with courage as long as it maintains a nonpartisan and nonpolitical attitude and aids only those persons and agencies motivated by unselfish concern for the common good” (Gaither, 1949, p. 67). In addition, foundations have a special role to play in making up for the fact that government does not always have time to analyze the long range and does not have the hiring flexibility to provide experts for temporary purposes. So it seems that foundations are apolitical, nonpartisan policy formulators, influencers, and critics if necessary, with the additional advantage of being able to take a long view and provide flexible expertise. By 1962 the emphasis has changed somewhat: “The Ford Foundation gives its funds for activities that it considers of particular importance to the American people, that are not likely to be supported by others, and that lend themselves to significant contributions from the Foundation” (Ford Foundation, 1962, p. 3). Similarly in 1964, the Rockefeller Foundation is emphasizing the need for contemporary relevance and flexibility: “[i]t is clear that in our time of rapid social change, philanthropies must be prepared to meet the changing requirements of society. There must be constant sensitivity … to the problems of contemporary society” (Rockefeller Foundation, 1964, p. 5). But there is also another new consideration in the choice of work: “[f]oundation grants must be entrepreneurial in the sense that they should help initiate and develop projects which can realistically be expected to become self-supporting, or to receive public support by reason of demonstrated merit” (Rockefeller Foundation, 1964, p. 9). So by the 1960s, it seems that these two large

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foundations see their roles less in terms of policy formulation and more as gap fillers and entrepreneurs. The emphasis on “taking a stand” against government if necessary continues and may also include challenging corporate, “private” interests. For example, in 1966 the Ford Foundation notes that when the Federal Communications Commission called for advice on the future of domestic communication satellites, Ford saw this as a major national decision and a subject on which the Foundation was very knowledgeable: “Our right to speak was plain in law; our duty was clear in the record of what we had learned … we decided that to keep silent in such a situation would be irresponsible” (Ford Foundation, 1966, p. 1). The Foundation recognized that this took it into an arena of great commercial interest. The Foundation worried that it could be charged with interfering in other people’s business, but “no one has objected.” The Foundation concludes that the wider principle is that “[n]o public interest is served by any convention under which one part of our society remains silent whenever someone else is thought to have a special interest” (Ford Foundation, 1966, p. 1). Churches, foundations, unions, and so on should all be open to fair comment: “We should not confuse the critically important right of personal privacy with the much more limited right of corporate privacy” (Ford Foundation, 1966, pp. 1–2). So foundations now have not simply the right to speak out but also a duty to do so. This theme of the right and the duty to speak out continues through the 1960s despite the Internal Revenue Service’s anti-lobbying restrictions. “We see a distinction between responsible discussion of public issues and anything that can be fairly called lobbying. As we engage in the first we scrupulously avoid the second” (Ford Foundation, 1968, p. xxii). While the gap filler role seems to have overtaken the “policy help mate” role, it too has to be qualified. Foundations, however wealthy, cannot take the place of government: “[h]ere, as elsewhere, it is only those who do not count the zeros who confuse the Ford Foundation with the Federal Government. Still when the Government does not act … its inaction becomes part of our reality” (Ford Foundation, 1967, p. 8). Government is a crucial part of the foundation context, and the relationship is complex. At times the relationship may be confrontational, but at other times, “we encounter government both as a partner and as an economic giant,” and in other spheres, foundations may act as “path breakers for public agencies who don’t yet have the resources they need” (Ford Foundation, 1967, p. 9). By the 1970s—after the 1969 Tax Reform Act—the relationship between foundations and government (and to a lesser extent the corporate sector) becomes ever more closely considered and the terminology more complex. The meanings of the old public–private dichotomy are no longer clear (if indeed they ever really were). Alan Pifer uses his president’s introduction to the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s annual reports throughout the 1970s to ponder the distinction between public and governmental purposes (Pifer, 1982). He suggests that “public purposes” are not solely defined by government: the nation’s public purposes are considerably more extensive than its governmental purposes, and this is why the state has enabled a wide variety of private institutions, including foundations, to be chartered to pursue certain public, but nongovernmental, purposes.

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Pondering the legitimate role of foundations in defining the common good, Pifer asks: By what right does a private organization not directly answerable to the people at large undertake to improve the lot of some people within the society at the possible expense of others? Is this a social objective consonant with charitable status, or is it really a political objective and hence not proper for a foundation? On the other hand, is it a responsible stance for a foundation not to be concerned about social equity? Does charitable status somehow imply such an obligation? (Pifer, 1982, p. 99).

While Pifer at Carnegie is considering the line between politics and charity, the Ford Foundation identifies three ways in which it relates to public policy: first, where foundation and government are engaged jointly in funding an activity of accepted importance to both; second, research and analysis relating to public policy; and, third, support for programs aimed at strengthening the democratic process itself (Ford Foundation, 1973). Once again it seems that the help mate role is dominant at Ford. By the 1980s, the roles of foundations as upholders of democracy are being emphasized. Pifer, for example, is already arguing that the best way for foundations to remain relevant, necessary institutions is to be constantly in touch with public policy issues in the fields in which they operate and not to be afraid to initiate or support activities that relate to these issues. The greatest justification for foundations’ tax-exempt status lies, he argues, in their making the maximum contribution they can to the development of “enlightened public policy for the nation” (Pifer, 1982, 2005). Pifer (1982) roots this argument for foundations in the nature of the American social and political system in which citizen participation in democratic self-­ government goes beyond the ballot box, important though that is. Participation in government has to include the right of citizens to advance what they conceive to be the common good through their own initiatives carried out by private organizations and associations. Furthermore, he goes on, this second string to the bow of American democracy is a good deal older than the first, since it was well established long before the nation achieved its independence. Integral to this concept of democratic self-government has been the notion that the private side of American life not only should be permitted to contribute to the process of public policy formation but should be actively encouraged to do so. The charitable sector is an indispensable participant in the debate because the myriad institutions which comprise it constitute a rich storehouse of important knowledge and experience it would be foolish to overlook. Foundations, as part of this sector, have special responsibilities, sometimes as sources of expertise in themselves but more often as the funders of other charitable organizations capable of making a contribution. Were they to be debarred from engaging in the process of public policy formation, the role of the charitable sector at large would be seriously undermined. The end result could be not only an impoverishment of the debate on public policy but a weakening of the capacity of private citizens to challenge entrenched public authority (Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1974, p. 6). By the 1980s, foundations are presented not merely as policy assistants and gap fillers but as assertively integral to the very notion of democracy. This

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proposition had previously been expressed by John W. Gardner (also at Carnegie) in the 1970s: [T]ax exemption is a means of preserving the strength of the private sector and insuring that our cultural and educational life is not wholly subject to the monolithic dictates of government … The policy is based on the wise conviction that we will be better off if these activities so crucial to the core of our national life are participated in by individuals and groups with a wide range of points of view. We don’t believe that Big Government has all the answers; we want a lot of people in on the act. (Gardner, 1970, p. 215).

Interestingly, however, there are distinctions between foundations’ roles as leaders versus helpers along the path of change. Drawing on Pifer again, writing in 1974, the suggestion is that a foundation’s chief value to society lies in its capacity to anticipate the need for institutional transformations and help bring these about by speedy deployment of its funds to critical points of leverage and potential breakthrough. In this view, foundations have a restricted ability to lead change but an unusual capacity to help it along. Again there is the notion that foundations have a special role to play in standing above any special interest and in being able to take the long view. But Pifer (1982, p. 140) also emphasizes that foundations need to be aware of their limitations: they are only one voice, small in the “market place” of policy influence. After the Filer Commission issued its report (1975) and Mavity and Ylvisaker’s “tension and tandem” depiction, the 1980s seem to mark the beginning of a slow decline in foundation presidents’ explicit musings on their relationships with government and democracy. Throughout the 1990s and onward, foundation annual reports have little to say on the topic. As Karl and Karl (1999) note, the post-1980 approach when foundations were urged to “take up the slack” was “in effect an effort to return philanthropy to what might even be the pre-foundation era.” But “the ultimate inability of the foundation world to acknowledge the impossibility of the assignment—replacing government supported welfare with private philanthropy— did not become part of a clearly articulated opposition” (Karl & Karl, 1999, p. 64). In 2004 there was a demand from the Hudson Institute that in return for tax exemptions, foundations ought to commit to supporting the “American regime” and a call for another inquiry (Fonte, 2004). And then in 2019, from within the foundation walls, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker significantly reframed the issue. Walker suggests not only that philanthropy cannot stand in for government but also that it needs good government to be able to work at all: For starters, let’s agree that contemptible government, and contempt for government, are antithetical to the objectives of any philanthropist who cares about positive change in the world. Regardless of differences among philanthropic givers about the relative size and function of government, all philanthropic effort relies on the rule of law and functioning, effective government systems for scaling impact. No matter how independent we think our efforts are, our resources pale in comparison to public resources and the impact they have on daily life and the course of human dignity. I believe good works require good government. (Walker, 2019).

The dependence of foundations on government is hardly a new issue. But interestingly it is one of the issues most conspicuously missing from foundations’ own musings on their relationships to government and democracy.

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11.4  Spirits of Philanthropy? As noted earlier, criticisms of foundations wax and wane, in part reflecting the anxieties of the time. These criticisms are much wider than the role of foundations in democracy, including as Toepler notes in Chap. 10 of this volume, some more administrative, less fundamental objections. Of course, foundations are not passive recipients of criticism. They have responded and changed—sometimes voluntarily and sometimes through coercion. But the continued existence of criticisms suggests that foundation responses have not been “enough” or of the “right sort.” Suppose, however, that the issue is even more complicated. Suppose, for example, that foundations’ very responses have sown the seeds of the next round of criticism? As Toepler notes (Chap. 10 in this volume), regulation has largely succeeded in its intentions to eliminate the private functions of foundations but in the process has produced a number of unintended consequences including turning the 5% payout benchmark from a floor to a ceiling, as well as greater professionalization, greater risk adversity, and greater emphasis on short-term outputs. Suppose instead of looking at critiques of foundations from a neo-institutionalist perspective, we look through the lens of pragmatic sociology. Suppose we analyze the unfolding of foundation critiques adopting Boltanski and Chiapello’s (2005) approach to the development of capitalism. Boltanski and Chiapello argue that ordinary people’s changing moral ideals and the critiques they express have had an influence on the development of capitalism. Capitalism accommodates critique by changing the way it justifies itself, but this then also changes capitalism by constraining its negative effects as it becomes possible to test it in accordance with its own justification, its “spirit,” or the values by which it justifies itself. Does the history of foundation legitimacy display similar changing “spirits,” and is it possible to trace a link between these as foundations themselves respond to challenges and, in the process, provide the basis for the next round of criticism? This is one of the many questions awaiting attention when, at last, archives reopen.

References Anheier, H. K., & Daly, S. (2006). The politics of foundations: A comparative analysis. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2006). Creative philanthropy. Routledge. Arnove, R. (Ed.). (1980). Philanthropy and cultural imperialism. GK Hall. Barkan, J. (2013, Fall) Big philanthropy vs. democracy: The plutocrats go to school, Dissent 47–54. Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (2005). The new spirit of capitalism. Verso. Brilliant, E.  L. (2000). Private charity and public inquiry a history of the Filer and Peterson Commissions. Indiana University Press. Callahan, D. (2017). The givers; wealth and power in a new gilded age. Knopf. Carnegie Corporation of New  York. (1974). Annual report 1974. Carnegie Corporation of New York. Filer Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs. (1975). Giving in America: Toward a stronger voluntary sector. Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs.

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Fonte, J. (2004, November). J. Philanthropy and the American regime: Is it time for another congressional investigation of tax-exempt foundations? Working Paper for the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. Hudson Institute. Ford Foundation. (1962). Annual report 1962. Ford Foundation. (1966). Annual report 1966. Ford Foundation. (1967). Annual report 1967. Ford Foundation. (1968). Annual report 1968. Ford Foundation. (1973). Annual report 1973. Gaither Report. (1949). Report of the study for the Ford Foundation on Program and Policy. Ford Foundation. Gardner, J. W. (1970). Taxing foundations is dangerous. In T. C. Reeves (Ed.), Foundations under fire (pp. 214–218). Cornell University Press. Giridharadas, A. (2017). Winners take all, the elite charade of changing the world. Knopf. Karl, B.  D., & Karl, A.  W. (1999). Foundations and the government. In C.  T. Clotfelder & T. Ehrlich (Eds.), Philanthropy and the nonprofit sector in a changing America. Bloomington University Press. LaMarche, G. (2014, October 30), Is philanthropy bad for democracy?The Atlantic Mavity, J.  H., & Ylvisaker, P. (1977). ‘Private philanthropy and public affairs’ in the commission on private philanthropy and public needs, research papers Part 1 (Vol. 2, pp. 795–836). Department of Treasury. McGoey, L. (2014). The philanthropic state: Market state hybrids in the philanthrocapitalist turn. Third World Quarterly, 35(1), 109–125. Peterson, P. G. (1970). Foundations, private giving and public policy. University of Chicago Press. Pifer, A. J. (1982). Annual report essays 1966–1982. Carnegie Corporation of New York. Pifer, A.  J. (2005). Speaking out: Reflections on 30 years of foundation work. Council on Foundations. Prewitt, K. (2001). The foundation mission: purpose, practice, public pressures. In A.  Schluter et al. (Eds.), Foundations in Europe (pp. 340–371). The Directory of Social Change. Prewitt, K. (2006). Foundations. In W. W. Powell & R. Steinberg (Eds.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (2nd ed., pp. 355–377). Yale University Press. Reeves, T. C. (1970). Foundations under fire. Cornell University Press. Reich, R. (2005). A failure of philanthropy (pp. 26–30). Stanford Social Innovation Review. Rockefeller Foundation. (1964). Annual Report 1964 Roelofs, J. (2003). Foundations and public policy: The mask of pluralism. State University of New York Press. Samson, S. A. (1980). Charity for all: B. Carroll Reece and the tax-exempt foundations. Faculty Publications and Presentations, 285. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/ gov_fac_pubs/285 Smith, J. A. (2002). Foundations and public policy making: A historical perspective. In J. M. Ferris (Ed.), Foundations and public policy: Leveraging philanthropic dollars, knowledge, and networks for greater impact. Foundation Center. Walker, D. (2019, January 9), The coming of hope: A vision for philanthropy in the new year. Retrieved from June 16, 2021, https://www.fordfoundation.org/just-­matters/just-­matters/posts/ the-­coming-­of-­hope-­a-­vision-­for-­philanthropy-­in-­the-­new-­year/ Wormser, R. A. (2014). Foundations: Their power and influence. Dauphin. Ylvisaker, P. (1999). In V. Esposito (Ed.), Conscience and community, the legacy of Paul Ylvisaker. Peter Lang.

Chapter 12

Foundations: Is Measurement the Enemy of Creativity? Gian Paolo Barbetta

Abstract  Foundations have traditionally played two different roles in society: charitable, aimed at fighting emergencies, and developmental, aimed at increasing the scope and effectiveness of welfare systems. The modern crisis of these systems induced many foundations to move toward the new role of supporting creativity and social innovation or at least to pretend to do so. Supporting creativity and social innovation does not mean venturing into extravagant and imaginative projects but rather experimenting with specific interventions that fill the gaps and the ineffectiveness of modern welfare systems. Therefore, innovation means nothing without a rigorous assessment of the impact of interventions. Nonetheless, foundations are very shy in evaluating the effect of their activities, probably due to the fear of revealing possible failures. This happens even though foundations’ structural characteristics give them a comparative advantage over other social institutions in producing knowledge on “what works” in social, educational, and welfare interventions. If foundations perceive themselves as knowledge developers, knowledge about their failure to solve a problem (without indulging in rhetoric) is a very useful social result because it allows other institutions to avoid repeating the same mistake. Failures could be excellent indicators of genuine innovation in addressing problems. Keywords  Foundations · Social innovations · Impact evaluation · Randomized controlled trial · Failure The creative foundation of the 21st century represents the next evolutionary step in the continuing development of philanthropy from the charitable foundation of the 19th century through the philanthropic foundation of the 20th century. (Anheier and Leat, 2002, p. 14)

G. P. Barbetta (*) Department of Economics and Finance, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy CRC—Centro Ricerche sulla Cooperazione e sul Nonprofit, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_12

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G. P. Barbetta In an effort to demonstrate their usefulness, foundations are also in danger of becoming hostage to the politics of impact and performance measurement that will lead to technocratic control of their operations and spending. (Anheier and Leat, 2002, pp. 11–12)

The first quote, in which Anheier and Leat (2002) outline the role of grant-making philanthropic foundations in the twenty-first century, illustrates quite well the issue that I address in this chapter. In the last hundred years, the evolution of Western welfare systems (their creation, development, crisis, and “recalibration”) (Hemerijck, 2013; Saraceno, 2019) has forced foundations to redefine themselves and their social function. What are philanthropic foundations for? What is their role? These are some of the questions that I will discuss and that legislators, civil society organizations, scholars, as well as foundations have periodically asked themselves. The various answers have generated, over time and countries, different rules and public incentives, have changed relationships between foundations and other civil society organizations, and have determined the adoption of different operational strategies by the foundations themselves. Questioning the role of grant-making philanthropic foundations as “social institutions” is crucial even today, and the advice of Anheier and Leat is still very stimulating. According to the authors, “[F]oundations should provide a space for alternative thinking, voices and practices. In a society in which government, business and the mainstream voluntary sector increasingly resemble each other. . .foundations have a unique role to play in questioning the conventional wisdom, making new connections, thinking and working ‘outside the box’” (Anheier and Leat, 2002, p. 10). In one of their more recent publications, the authors further elaborate their view of the role of foundations: “Their very constitution … is the source of a profound political and financial independence that allows them to take risks and embrace uncertainties, to take the longer view, to accommodate unanticipated developments, and to embrace contestation” (Anheier and Leat, 2019, p. 6). In order to play a creative role and develop social innovations aimed at increasing the effectiveness of Western welfare systems as well as their ability to respond to new social needs, philanthropic foundations must rigorously evaluate the effect of the projects that are carried out due to their intellectual, material, and economic resources. Grant-making foundations must therefore conduct rigorous “impact measurement of their projects”—the very activity criticized by Anheier and Leat in the second quote. Creativity and social innovation are useless without evaluating the effects of the projects and policies they generate. Moreover, the lack of evaluation of the effects of interventions is one of the reasons for the crisis of Western welfare systems in recent years. Evaluation is crucial for reforming the welfare systems. But evaluating the effects of social projects and activities is not at all easy, and foundations are not exempt from these difficulties. In fact, Anheier and Leat (2019) argue that foundations are subject to the “benign fallibility syndrome.” According to the authors, some structural characteristics of foundations—such as the presence of information asymmetries between various stakeholders (trustees, managers, and

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grantees) and the lack of adequate incentive structures—almost inevitably lead to the “performance enigma …: many foundation projects achieve ambiguous results even though they may have been well-intentioned, carefully planned and executed and assessed against agreed-upon performance standards” (Anheier and Leat, 2019, p.  3). According to the authors, the abovementioned structural characteristics “impl[y] that it is in the interests of both grantor and grantees to be economical with admissions of less-than-desired outcomes” (p. 16). My argument goes in the opposite direction. In my view, because of their structural characteristics (independence from owners, markets, and the ballot box), foundations enjoy a “comparative advantage”—compared to other social institutions such as public administrations, market companies, and nonprofit and civil society organizations—in measuring the effectiveness of their projects and in producing and disseminating knowledge on the effects of activities aimed at tackling old and new social problems. This advantage is particularly strong when some “innovative interventions” do not deliver as promised or, even worse, prove harmful. In this situation, while politicians would risk their reelection, public officials their position, and nonprofit and market entities their income, foundations risk nothing. Given their comparative advantage, foundations should play this role more diligently and extensively, generating and supplying a public good: knowledge about “what works” in social policies. The fact that only a few foundations play this role depends more on strategic choices, a constant search for consensus, or a mere lack of skills rather than on some intrinsic characteristics of these institutions.

12.1  The Social Role of Philanthropy Philanthropy, the individual donation of time or money aimed at improving the condition of other human beings, is as old as humanity itself. Institutional philanthropy—donations made by an organization (not a person) to benefit a person—has a long tradition too. This is particularly evident in foundations with religious origins, up to the beginning of the twentieth century, but charity donations to individuals represented the main action tool even for philanthropic foundations that had lay (not religious) origins in the few countries where they were active, such as Great Britain, the United States (Bulmer, 1999), and Germany (Strachwitz, 1999). The main task of these foundations was to support individuals in need, an activity fully justified by the limits of the public welfare institutions of the time. At the beginning of the twentieth century, philanthropic grant-making institutions created by magnates that accumulated their wealth during the second industrial revolution changed the action style of the philanthropic sector. In fact, the progressive spread of modern welfare institutions made old style charitable activities unsuitable and out-of-date. While many foundations carried on (and still continue today) their traditional activities, supporting individuals in need, the most enlightened ones decided to focus their efforts on understanding and fighting the causes of poverty and marginalization rather than trying to repair their immediate consequences. As a result, some philanthropic foundations moved away from

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charity to individuals and focused on supporting organizations (mainly those of civil society) that were trying to address the causes of social problems. This new function (named “development and extension of welfare activities”) mostly impacted the areas that had not yet entered the public agenda, such as the so-called “orphan” problems. It also promoted the use of innovative public intervention tools that reduced stigma and affirmed new social rights. Consequently, philanthropic foundations became policy actors that contributed, alongside public administrations and other civil society organizations, to creating and extending the institutional network aimed at supporting people’s living conditions (see Toepler, Chap. 10 in this volume, for more on foundation functions and roles). Even today, the two roles—charitable, aimed at fighting emergencies, and developmental, aimed at increasing the scope and effectiveness of welfare systems—represent the main options chosen by many philanthropic foundations. However, today philanthropic grant-making foundations must face new challenges brought to the Western welfare systems by economic and social changes initiated with the globalization of product and labor markets. When tax competition between states is increasingly important and when entire economic sectors experience more frequent crises, welfare systems must be reorganized to provide effective answers to the new needs of citizens. But reorganization is slow and cumbersome because new needs are often at odds with settled interests, making the paradigm shift difficult. In this new context, philanthropic foundations must change: both the charitable and the developmental role are insufficient today. New roles must be considered and implemented.

12.2  Foundations, Creativity, and Social Innovation Philanthropic foundations, thanks to their structural characteristics, could play a useful social role in this new period characterized by the need to redefine the overall structure and operational tools of Western social protection systems. This new role could be oriented toward supporting creativity and social innovation, with the aim of recalibrating (or radically redesigning) welfare systems and identifying new operational tools capable of answering new social needs (deriving from discontinuous working careers and a significant increase in individuals’ uncertainty about their futures), as well as responding to new emergencies (such as migration or demographic decline). Supporting creativity and social innovation does not mean venturing into extravagant and imaginative projects but rather experimenting with specific interventions that promote environmentally and economically sustainable economic growth, equal opportunities, and pluralism of institutions (see Then and Mildenberger, Chap. 6 in this volume, for more on social innovation and civil society more broadly). In the words of Anheier and Leat (2002, p. 14), “[c]reative foundations are interstitial institutions, located at the crossroads of society rather than in its centre; they are factories of ideas that bring about and facilitate innovation in the broadest sense. The creative foundation is a private problem-solving institution for public problems.”

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Grant-making philanthropic foundations have the structural features necessary to support social innovation aimed at solving the problems of Western welfare systems. Their nonprofit nature allows foundations to work for the common good, supporting activities even if they do not produce income or if they generate social benefits deferred over time. Their endowments allow foundations to start innovative activities regardless of support they get from the markets, as they do not need to raise capital. Their private nature allows for experimental innovative projects that only involve small shares of the population without facing problems of equity of the interventions. These organizational characteristics allow foundations to start innovative experimental initiatives that are potentially useful for renewing social protection systems. However, every innovation risks failure. In fact, some innovations do not produce the desired results. Foundations’ attitude to bear the risk of failures is perhaps the main advantage of foundations over public administrations, businesses, and the rest of the nonprofit sector. For public administrators, the failure of a project or a policy can jeopardize reelection; for businesses and nonprofit organizations, institutional survival can be at risk if a project fails. In foundations, failures represent unwelcome events, but they can be withstood because board members are not elected, and resources come from the management of endowments and not from market operations. By bearing the weight of failures and producing information on the effects of social innovation (including negative ones), philanthropic foundations could play an extremely important social function by saving precious societal resources that are increasingly difficult to obtain. To the contrary, grant-making foundations generally show a comparative disadvantage (with respect to public administrations and for-profit and nonprofit organizations) in the dissemination of successful initiatives to the entire population. In fact, foundations generally do not have the economic resources necessary to scale up successful initiatives, and they must limit their actions to symbolic and demonstrative interventions. Considering these elements, foundations, public bodies, and private organizations could act more effectively by integrating their activities and creating a “shared policy-making cycle.” At the beginning of this cycle, foundations could play an exploratory and experimental role, rigorously testing new welfare instruments designed with the contribution of public administrations and civil society organizations. Foundations could learn “what works” in the field of social innovation and increase collective social innovation skills. At the end of the cycle, public administrations, markets, and civil society organizations would scale up those innovations that proved effective. Although the relationships between foundations and governments are in flux in several countries, actual collaborations apparently fail to recognize the comparative advantages of each institution. Consequently, governments tend to see foundations more as an additional source of funding than as institutions well equipped to cope with possible policy failures (Toepler, 2018; Toepler and Abramson, 2021). Recognizing this feature of foundations, and making them play a role different from governments in the policy cycle, could improve the overall quality of the policy-­ making process.

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12.3  Rigorous Evaluation The evaluation of social projects and policies can generate information for policy-­ makers only when performed with methodological rigor. First, a foundation should clarify the problem it wants to address and the specific change it intends to pursue. Providing a quantitative measure of the problem, describing the baseline situation, and identifying the indicators that measure the phenomenon would be useful. This would allow for measurement of changes occurring coincidentally with the deployment of the project or the policy (even if not necessarily generated by the intervention). Second, a foundation should develop knowledge about the causes of the problem, distinguishing between those that can be countered with specific actions and those that are outside a policy-maker’s control. In addition, a foundation (together with its partners in the shared policy-making cycle) should define which interventions it intends to implement to solve the problem. It would also be appropriate to focus on the reasons that the interventions could lead to success, thereby connecting the causes of the problem and possible recipes for its solution. But the most difficult task when developing knowledge about the effectiveness of projects and policies is to determine a causal link between the deployed interventions and the changes observed when measuring the addressed problem. This is what Anheier and Leat (2019) call a problem of “attribution” (a topic Sokolowski covers in Chap. 8 of this volume with regard to social economy organizations more broadly). In fact, measuring an improvement in the indicator after having carried out an intervention does not necessarily imply that the intervention has been successful. Similarly, a possible deterioration in the indicator is not necessarily a sign of failure. That would be true only if the various (and often many) factors that can influence the problem have remained unchanged, which is a difficult condition to hypothesize. Likewise, observing an improvement in the condition of the subjects who were affected by the intervention (compared to those who were not involved) is not necessarily a sign of success. That would be true only if the subjects involved in the intervention and those not involved were identical at the start. This condition is rarely true, if only because we are often unable to measure the “unobservable” characteristics of the subjects (such as character traits), many of which greatly influence the success of educational, social, and health interventions. Therefore, the effect (the impact) of an intervention cannot be measured as the difference between “before and after the intervention” or between “those who decided to benefit and those who refused (or simply did not know about) an intervention.” Both measurements can be biased. The only unbiased measure of the effect of an intervention is the one based on the counterfactual logic proposed by Donald Rubin (Holland, 1986): the difference between what happens to the subjects participating in an intervention (the factual) and what would have happened to them if they had not participated (the counterfactual). The main problem with this unexceptionable definition is that, in real life, it is impossible to observe both conditions simultaneously. In fact, the recipients of the

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interventions cannot simultaneously be non-recipients, which would allow us to measure the difference in the indicators. Therefore, to rigorously estimate the effects of an intervention, one must produce unbiased estimates of what would have happened to the beneficiaries of an intervention if they had not received it. The best method (but certainly not the only one) to produce this estimate is the randomized controlled trial (RCT) (Gerber and Green, 2012; Haynes et al., 2012). To start an RCT, a population of potential beneficiaries of an intervention is divided into two groups by applying a random selection mechanism. If the population is large enough, the law of large numbers guarantees that, on average, the two groups will be identical, whatever feature we observe. One of the two groups will then take part in the intervention (intervention group), while the other will act as a control group. The control group represents the best possible estimate of the average condition in which the beneficiaries would have been had they not participated in the intervention. Therefore, the difference in the value of the indicators for the intervention group and for the control group, after carrying out the intervention, represents an unbiased estimate of its effect. Sometimes RCT cannot be undertaken, but other nonexperimental counterfactual tools are available to produce unbiased estimates of the effect of interventions and policies (Gertler et  al., 2016). Under these circumstances, the “attribution” problem could be solved, and foundations are perfectly situated to produce knowledge that could benefit society, preventing the waste of resources that pursue ineffective interventions. Of course, not every intervention or policy can be evaluated adopting a counterfactual approach. In some circumstances, it is not possible to estimate a counterfactual situation, and therefore, no effect can be measured rigorously. However, in the field of welfare, many more interventions and policies could be evaluated using this approach that is normally done.

12.4  When Innovation Fails The scientific literature has developed rigorous methods for estimating the effects of interventions, including social ones, over the last several years. However, the practice of assessing the effects of social interventions has not spread to Western welfare systems. Anglo-Saxon countries have been characterized by a greater aptitude for evaluation, and foundations have played a crucial role in the field, as demonstrated by the creation of some entities that specialize in the field of rigorous policy evaluation, such as the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in the UK or Arnold Ventures in the United States. These institutions play a crucial role in assessing the effectiveness of interventions and policies in the fields of education, health, and criminal justice by funding and undertaking RCTs that help spread knowledge about “what works” in these fields. The experience of MDRC (until 2003 known as the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation), which is a joint venture between public

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bodies and US foundations, has been similar. MDRC has played a key role in assessing the effectiveness of social policies, especially in the field of poverty reduction. Evaluation of social policies is not as widespread in continental Europe, even in countries that have been instrumental in developing the rhetoric and experience of social innovation. In some cases, rigorous evaluations of the impact of interventions are replaced by rhetoric stating that the pure and simple provision of a greater quantity of economic resources (typically by public bodies) is a guarantee of success. Moreover, in countries and areas boasting a longer tradition of rigorous evaluation, it is often observed that innovation can “fail,” meaning it does not generate any benefit to the intervention recipients or even cause damage. In a recent example, the meta-analysis of over 140 RCTs in the educational field in the UK and the United States conducted by Lortie-Forgues and Inglis (2019) shows that the effect of the interventions is, on average, extremely modest (0.06 standard deviations, with large confidence intervals), so as not to be significantly different from zero. I do not see a priori reasons to believe that, in fields other than education, there would be a different result. Producing effective innovations is extremely difficult in contexts of social interaction. In fact, creativity and innovation can produce ineffective solutions, as one could often recognize when the effects of new interventions are estimated with rigor. Nonetheless, failures are as important as successes in tackling social problems, because they develop knowledge and induce better understanding of problems, solutions, and individual and collective behavior. But failures are hard for politicians, as well as for-profit and nonprofit managers, to bear because they put their careers in jeopardy. On the contrary, foundations are better equipped to withstand failures so far as they perceive themselves as knowledge developers, rather than problem solvers. If foundations perceive themselves as problem solvers, any failure to solve a problem is a failure to pursue the mission. This is where the benign fallibility syndrome arises. If, on the other hand, foundations perceive themselves as knowledge developers, knowledge about their failure to solve a problem (without indulging in rhetoric) is a very useful social result because it allows other institutions to avoid repeating the same mistake. Failures could be excellent indicators of genuine innovation in addressing problems, so that the benign fallibility syndrome could vanish. Creativity and social innovation, to be useful, need more (and not less) rigorous evaluation. This may be the next mission of philanthropic foundations.

References Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2002). From charity to creativity. Comedia. Anheier, H.  K., & Leat, D. (2019). Performance measurement in philanthropic foundations. Routledge. Bulmer, M. (1999). The history of foundations in the United Kingdom and the United States: Philanthropic foundations in industrial society. In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), Private funds, public purpose (p. 264). Kluwer Academic.

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Gerber, A.  S., & Green, D.  P. (2012). Field experiments: Design, analysis, and interpretation. W. W. Norton. Gertler, P. J., Martinez, S., Premand, P., Rawlings, L. B., & Vermeersch, C. M. J. (2016). Impact evaluation in practice. Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank. https://doi. org/10.1596/978-­1-­4648-­0779-­4. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO. Haynes, L., Service, O., Goldacre, B., & Torgerson, D. (2012). Test, learn, adapt: Developing public policy with randomised controlled trials. Cabinet Office—Behavioural Insights Team. Retrieved from SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2131581 Hemerijck, A. (2013). Changing welfare states. Oxford University Press. Holland, P.  W. (1986). Statistics and causal inference. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 81(396), 945–960. Lortie-Forgues, H., & Inglis, M. (2019). Rigorous large-scale educational RCTs are often uninformative: Should we be concerned? Educational Researcher, 48(3), 158–166. https://doi.org/1 0.3102/0013189X19832850 Saraceno, C. (2019). Retrenching, recalibrating, pre-distributing. The welfare state facing old and new inequalities. Structural Change an Economic Dynamics, 51, 35–41. Strachwitz, R. (1999). Foundations in Germany and their revival in East Germany after 1989. In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), Private funds, public purpose (pp. 219–233). Kluwer Academic. Toepler, S. (2018). Public philanthropic partnerships: The changing nature of government/foundation relationships in the US. International Journal of Public Administration, 41(8), 657–669. Toepler, S., & Abramson, A. (2021). Government/foundation relations: A conceptual framework and evidence from the U.S. Federal Government’s partnership efforts. Voluntas, 32, 220–233.

Part II

Charting Global Challenges

Chapter 13

Planetary Politics: Reviving the Spirit of the Concept “Global Civil Society” Mary Kaldor and Sabine Selchow Abstract  In this chapter, we engage with the concept “global civil society.” The concept played an important role in the symbolic construction of social reality after the end of the Cold War. It represented a critique of conventional state-centric perceptions of politics by focusing on the significance of nonparty politics and activism across borders; the study of global civil society was viewed as a way to supplant the study of international relations that refers to relations between states. It intervened into the discussion of the relationship between the state, society, individual, and market, and it represented a contribution to the globalization discourse by arguing that globalization is more than economic integration and also more than a structural process that has come over us. Despite all its discursive achievements, we argue that the concept failed in one respect: it did not manage to push knowledge production beyond methodological nationalism. What used to constitute the concept’s disruptive potential, namely, its conceptual enmeshment with the idea globalization, captured in the adjective global, eventually tamed it. Our chapter aims to revive the spirit of the concept “global civil society” by introducing a concept that takes up and pushes forward this unachieved goal: “planetary politics.” Keywords  Global civil society · Methodological nationalism · Globalization · Planetary politics

13.1  Introduction Almost 20 years ago, a 10-year research program, based at the London School of Economics, set out to establish the concept “global civil society.” It invited scholars and activists to discuss the contours of this concept and to explore its material realities and their variations across the globe. The concept was designed to provoke a M. Kaldor Conflict Research Programme, London School of Economics, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] S. Selchow (*) European University Institute, Florence, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_13

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new way of seeing and thinking about how, where, and through whom politics—the negotiation of norms and rules—takes place. It had three main purposes: to make visible a new reality of political activism, social relations, and social organization as part of and a reaction to “globalization”; to put forward for debate and promote a distinct, “activist” idea of “civil society,” holding and promoting the principle of deliberation, as opposed to coercion, at its core; and to trigger a shift away from the deeply embedded assumption of methodological nationalism, that is to say, the assumption that society equals national society and how this “natural” and invisible inscription is used to symbolically order the world. The adjective global captured and expressed the first and the latter purpose. Overall, the concept “global civil society” was introduced to serve as a platform for the construction of and debate about the realities and normative parameters of a different kind of politics, namely, “global politics from below.” The outlet of the research program’s endeavor was an annual publication, the Global Civil Society Yearbook. The Global Civil Society Yearbook was envisaged as a complement to other annual publications, such as the United Nations’ Human Development Report or the World Development Report. The launch of the first Yearbook (Anheier et al., 2001) was planned to take place on September 17, 2001, in New York City. For an academic publication, there was a remarkable public interest in the run-up to this launch. The social realities that the concept “global civil society” captured mattered, and it was a historical moment in which there was an openness for reimaginations of world politics. In the end, the New York launch did not take place as planned. A few days before the event, the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 (9/11), happened. 9/11 not only altered short-term media interest in “global civil society” and the Yearbook but also triggered a broader shift in how the state of the world and world politics were understood. The dominant post-9/11 political discourse combined two streams: reactions to the terrorist attack were framed by the conventional terminology of national security and notions of warfare; at the same time, the discourse was shaped by the perception that 9/11 changed everything, that there was suddenly an unknown and “new world” (Bush, 2002) out there that required and justified unconventional measures (Selchow, 2013). The result was the rise of a distinct, dominating global security discourse, favoring practices of prevention and preemption (Selchow, 2016), and a narrowing of the space for rethinking the world, in which the concept “global civil society” was born and was about to flourish. Of course, the realities that the concept “global civil society” captured did not disappear after 9/11, though since then we have seen a constant shrinking of civic spaces,1 and nor was the concept “global civil society” abandoned. On the contrary, 10 Yearbooks followed, produced by an expanding circle of international contributors. In this chapter, we reflect on the concept “global civil society” as a child of its time. We recall the normative, empirical, and epistemological purposes of the

1  For more perspectives on shrinking of civic space, see in this volume Kuti and Marschall (Chap. 14), Glasius and de Lange (Chap. 15), and Katz and Gidron (Chap. 21), among others.

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concept and its birth in the context of debates about globalization in the 1990s. We argue that the concept “global civil society” played an important role in the symbolic and scholarly construction of social reality after the end of the Cold War. It represented a critique of conventional state-centric perceptions of politics by focusing on the significance of nonparty politics and activism across borders; the study of global civil society was viewed as a way to supplant the study of international relations that refers to relations between states. It intervened into the discussion of the relationship between the state, society, individual, and market by promoting an “activist” notion of civil society based on deliberation, in contrast to “neoliberal,” “third sector” thinking (Kaldor, 2003). And it represented a contribution to the globalization discourse by arguing that globalization is more than economic integration and also more than a structural process that has come over us. What the concept did not achieve, however, was its third purpose, namely, to push knowledge production beyond methodological nationalism. What used to constitute the concept’s disruptive potential, namely, its conceptual enmeshment with the idea globalization, captured in the adjective global, eventually tamed it. Building on this discussion, our chapter aims to revive the spirit of the concept “global civil society” by introducing a concept that takes up and pushes forward this unachieved goal. It aims to open pathways for an unconventional approach to the social world, one beyond methodological nationalism. We call it “planetary politics.”

13.2  T  he Concept “Global Civil Society”: Historical Context and Purpose Concepts are abstractions of reality. They make the world meaningful in a distinct way. In the realm of the social and political sciences, concepts are historical; they interweave theories, presumptions, and assumptions about the world. They are powerful ingredients in the development of theories and the generation of empirical evidence. When communicated, they sharpen the audience’s view to selected aspects of a phenomenon and, in so doing, open horizons to see the world anew. In this sense, concepts produce the phenomenon they capture and are reproduced in each exploration of this phenomenon; they have a performative dimension. But like every act of symbolically constructing the world, concepts are disciplined by discourses. Not everything is sayable and thinkable, not everything is “in the true” (Foucault, 1981, p. 60) at any historical moment. Of course, the very purpose of new concepts is to challenge disciplinary policing and push disciplinary boundaries, yet this does not happen in a vacuum. In order for a concept to be successful, in the sense of being taken up in debates, there needs to be some discursive opening—the time needs to be right. For the birth of the concept “global civil society,” the time was right in the 1990s. The coming together of three factors made it possible for “global civil society” to enter the discursive stage.

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First, the 1990s saw “the emergence of a supranational sphere of social and political participation in which citizens groups, social movements, and individuals engage in dialogue, debate, confrontation, and negotiation with each other and with various governmental actors—international, national, and local—as well as the business world” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 4). It was the moment when transnational activism was legitimized. The 1980s had been a period of mobilization across borders against authoritarianism in several continents—Latin America, South Africa, India, and Eastern Europe. The overthrow of Latin American dictatorships, the end of apartheid, and the fall of communism ushered in newly democratic, internationally minded governments, a new wave of multilateralism and strengthening of multilateral institutions, and the institutionalization of the social movements of the 1980s as international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Both the number of international NGOs (INGOs) acting in transnational realms and the number of individuals engaged in them were never higher: in 1874 there were 32 INGOs, in 1914 1083, and in 2003 around 18,000 (Anheier et al., 2004, p. 302). At the same time, there was a widening of the range and type of fields in which these actors operated: “from UN conferences about social welfare or the environment to conflict situations in Kosovo, from globalized resistance to the Mutual Agreement on Investments to local human rights activism in Mexico, Burma, or Timor, and from media corporations spanning the globe to indigenous peoples’ campaigns over the Internet” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 4). Three aspects underlay, fostered, and shaped these developments. First, supported by new digital communication technologies, an increasing interconnectedness between INGOs and other forms of activist organizations, grassroots groups, loose coalitions, and campaigns, as well as between these organizations and international institutions like the United Nations (UN) or the World Bank, brought out a network of increasingly dense social relations across the world. Second, the 1990s saw a significant increase in monetary resources for INGOs, both from public and private sides, consolidating the increasing economic importance of the nonprofit sector, which is also evident in their role as employers (Anheier et al., 2001). Third, the 1990s saw an increasing “global consciousness” coming to the fore, positioning “global” issues firmly on the agenda of public concern. In other words, the 1990s was a period that greatly expanded the possibilities for activists to engage in politics, that is to say dialogue and discussions with a range of institutions. Yet, it was a period of engagement and consolidation rather than mobilization. It was only toward the end of the period that a new wave of activism concerned with social justice issues began with the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999. So, the first factor that made the establishment of the concept “global civil society” possible at the end of the 1990s was a changing sociopolitical reality of increasing, globally interconnected nonparty political activism that became part of global governance structures to an extent hitherto unknown. The second factor that accounts for the successful establishment of the concept “global civil society” in the 1990s was the great popularity that the concept “civil society” enjoyed in public and scholarly efforts to give meaning to the world. The concept “civil society” was not a new tool in the conceptual toolbox of political

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thinking but a rediscovered one. It was utilized in different historical contexts— prominently, in the context of the emergence of the European nation-state to frame and discuss aspects of the relationship between state, market, individual, and society (Cohen and Arato, 1992; Anheier et al., 2001, pp. 10–14). In the first decades of the twentieth century, Antonio Gramsci used “civil society” in order to highlight and critically discuss the non-state and noneconomic area of social interaction and shaped the concept in a lasting way. Yet, in the decades to follow, the concept did not appeal and, as Cohen and Arato (1992, pp. 159–74) found, “nearly died out in west European and American political thought” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 12). It was in the 1970s and 1980s that dissidents in Latin America and Central Europe rediscovered “civil society” and utilized it in their respective projections of alternatives to the authoritarian regimes and societies they struggled in and against. Since the 1990s, political and scholarly discourses cannot be imagined without the concept “civil society,” which has also long become a political keyword. It is used to capture and promote very different ideals of the relationship between the state, or political authority, society, the individual, and the market—reaching from neoliberal ideals of the third sector as a central aspect of the organization of this relationship to “activist notions” of a public sphere as its necessary essence (Kaldor, 2003). Hence, as a second factor, this enormous popularity of “civil society” made the concept “global civil society” adaptable to the discourse of the time and an acceptable concept. The third factor that made it possible for the concept “global civil society” to enter the discursive stage at the time of the first Global Civil Society Yearbook was the rise of a post-Cold War discourse in which the increasing interconnectedness of social and economic relations, including “the emergence of a supranational sphere of social and political participation” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 4), was conceptualized with the help of the neologism globalization. Of course, the 1990s were far from being the only historic moment of worldwide interconnectedness. As Amartya Sen (2001) observed, “[o]ver thousands of years, globalization has progressed through travel, trade, migration, spread of cultural influences and dissemination of knowledge (including of science and technology).” Nor were the 1990s necessarily times of an unprecedented awareness of the shrinking of the world. For instance, in 1858 The Times in London celebrated the first transatlantic telegraph cable in strikingly similar words as we read them today about technologies such as the Internet: Distance as a ground of uncertainty will [now] be eliminated from the calculation of the statesman and the merchant … The distance between Canada and England is annihilated [and] the Atlantic is dried up … we become in reality as well as in wish one country … To the ties of a common blood, language, and religion, to the intimate association in business and a complete sympathy on so many subjects, is now added the faculty of instantaneous communication, which must give to all these, tendencies to unity and intensity which they never before could possess. (The Times quoted in Herod, 2009, p. 68)

And already in 1969, John McHale (1969, p. 12) observed, [i]n the second half of the twentieth century, there is a perceptible shift in human consciousness and conceptuality which begins to alter man’s overall relations both to his fellow men

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and to his planetary habitat. . .Such awareness is due, in no small measure, to the swift and myriad diffusion of images and messages in the global communications network.

McHale (1969, pp. 13–14) went on arguing, there are no local problems any more, such as may be left to the exigencies and dangerous predilections of local economic or political convenience … The self-sufficiency and “manifest destiny” of the nation-state was a social invention, which may have been of value in the past but is of doubtful utility in the present … The scale of our global systems of material production and distribution, and of communication and transportation, has now gone beyond the capacities of any single national or regional group to sustain or operate wholly.

McHale saw the emergence of a “planetary society,” threatened by “the geopolitics of the past [as] the most dangerously constraining myths of our present” (McHale, 1969, p. 12). And yet, although, as these two examples from 1858 and 1969 suggest, there was awareness of similar integrating developments in the past, it was only in the 1990s that a neologism, namely, “globalization,” was introduced to capture the “shrinking” of the world.2 This was because there was a curious conceptual vacuum at the end of the 1980s as the breakdown of the bipolar bloc system left “observers without any paradigms or theories that adequately explain the course of events,” as international relations theorist James N. Rosenau (1990, p. 5) put it. It was this vacuum that the neologism globalization filled, constituting the core around which a discourse unfolded, at the heart of which was the idea that there was something “new,” unknown, and even inexplicable about the world (Selchow, 2017). Like a burning glass, the term globalization focused perspectives and perceptions on the realities and possibilities of the thickening of not only economic but also sociopolitical relations beyond national societies. Meaning a lot of different things to a lot of different people, “globalization” became a household name to capture the state of the world post-1989 and triggered the practice of applying the adjective global in all sorts of contexts, such as in the concept “global civil society” (see Selchow, 2017). It was the coming together of these three factors—the social reality of increasing nonparty politics and activism concerned with transborder issues, the rediscovery of the concept “civil society,” and a discourse that captured the post-1989 world as being shaped by “globalization”—that made possible the birth of the concept “global civil society.” The Global Civil Society Yearbooks aimed to construct the social scientific content of the concept of global civil society, as much as to legitimize the concept through academic study. On the one hand, the yearbook contained a conceptual part which developed alternative ways of elaborating the concept—as communicative power (Albrow et al., 2007), as a medium for the construction of risk, as civility (Glasius et al., 2006), or as an idea of substantive justice (Albrow and Seckinelgin, 2011). This conceptual discussion was an invitation for debate and critical augmentation. On the other hand, the Yearbook also contained an issues section, where different positions on global issues (e.g., anti-capitalism, humanitarian intervention,  For sporadic uses of the word globalization before the 1990s, see Bach (2013).

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or climate change) were analyzed as well as a section on infrastructure (a more empirical description of movements, NGOs, and methods). Finally, each edition also included a data section, compiled by Helmut Anheier, based on the assumption that measurement is critical to establish social scientific concepts. For empirical purposes then, “global civil society” was broadly defined as “the sphere of ideas, values, institutions, organisations, networks, and individuals located between the family, the state, and the market and operating beyond the confines of national societies, polities, and economies” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 17). A foundational aspect of the concept was the proposition that the sociopolitical realities captured by “global civil society” “both feed … on and react … to globalisation” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 7). Globalization was understood in a broad sense as encompassing a “growing interconnectedness in political, social and cultural spheres, as well as the economy” and growing “sense of a common community of mankind” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 7). It was this essential relationship between the realities of global civil society and globalization that was captured in the adjective global and that positioned the Global Civil Society Yearbook firmly in the “globalization” discourse of the time. Indeed, in the spirit of this discourse, the Global Civil Society Yearbooks were motivated by the perception that “something new and important was happening” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 11). In this sense, the adjective global was not so much used to point to a particular scale, e.g., a scale different, let alone “above,” the “national” and “local,” but to a political reality of “globalization” with a distinct and new quality, to “globalization from below” (Falk, 1997). With that, the concept “global civil society” served as an intervention into conventional state-centric perceptions of politics by focusing on the significance of nonparty politics and activism; it intervened into the discussion of the relationship between the state, society, individual, and market by stressing and promoting an “activist” notion of civil society based on deliberation, in contrast to “neoliberal,” “third sector” thinking (Kaldor, 2003), and into the globalization discourse by arguing that globalization is more than economic integration, as well as more than a structural process coming over the world. Hence, rather than being a description of social reality, the concept “global civil society” was designed as a provocation to conventional knowledge production. In sum, it had three main purposes: to sharpen the view for distinct non-state world political actors as part of and a reaction to “globalization”; to put forward for debate and promote a distinct, “activist” idea of “civil society”; and to trigger a shift away from a conviction that has shaped and keeps shaping much of social scientific knowledge production and public data collection, i.e., methodological nationalism, in short, the conviction that society equals national society and this conviction’s “natural” and invisible inscription in how we symbolically order the world. All three purposes reveal that “global civil society” was designed as a highly normative concept, which, as manifest in its third purpose, included a critique of nothing less but a guiding modern premise of social knowledge production.

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13.3  The Taming of the Concept “Global Civil Society” Being interventions into established knowledge production, new concepts are inevitably subject to critical responses and to “taming” by hegemonic discourses. As we have seen above, the concept “global civil society” was tamed already at its birth through the post-9/11 global security discourse, which fostered national security conventions and (re)naturalized top-down politics. But the disruptive potential of the concept “global civil society” was also tamed by the fact that, after the end of the Cold War, the term “civil society” became overwhelmingly occupied with meanings based on “third sector” thinking. The neoliberal meaning of civil society (Kaldor, 2003) became the dominant meaning of the term, equating civil society with (I)NGOs. This meaning became reproduced in national and global democracy promotion programs and an array of other policy fields, which made it hard for the activist meanings (Kaldor, 2003) to gain ground and counter the hegemonic and naturalized idea. In short, wherever the concept “global civil society” appeared, a “third sector” approach or at least a discourse on INGOs was presumed. Of course, none of these “tamings” are problematic, let alone a shortcoming of the concept “global civil society.” On the contrary, it is the nature of social and political scientific concepts that they are “essentially contestable” (and at times contested) (Mason, 2008, p. 59). As outlined above, it was the explicit purpose of the concept “global civil society” to intervene and open new perspectives on where and by whom (international) politics was made and what globalization was about, indeed, to challenge modern knowledge production and its reliance on methodological nationalism. Hence, the challenging of some of its disruptive potential by hegemonic discourses, notably by diverting ideas of “civil society,” was a productive part of its life. It did not preclude that the concept achieved two of its three main purposes: to sharpen the view for distinct non-state world political actors as part of and a reaction to globalization and to put forward for debate and promote a distinct, “activist” idea of civil society. It is its third purpose that the concept “global civil society” did not fully achieve: to trigger a fundamental epistemological shift away from methodological nationalism. Two interrelated factors account for this. First, the “globalization” discourse, in which the concept “global civil society” was explicitly embedded, simply turned out to be not radical enough to think beyond methodological nationalism. The adjective global, one of the constitutive components of the concept “global civil society,” was too much occupied by the idea of “scale” as to provoke a profound shift in the perception of and approach to the social world. As mentioned above, the adjective global originally played two roles in the concept: to indicate the new reality of transborder activism and to indicate that the conceptualized social reality was a reaction to and product of “globalization.” It was about what was new in political arrangements and involved both scale and fragmentation (Anheier et al., 2001; also Kaldor, 2003). Global civil society did not mean just those INGOs that operated in relation to international institutions and treaties; it referred to civil society at all levels in these “global” or “new” times. Hence, it was its conceptual commitment to

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“globalization,” captured and expressed through the adjective global, that eventually tamed “global civil society” in an unproductive way. The link with “globalization” was radical at the time and held a lot of potential. But it did not work out in the long run.

13.4  P  lanetary Politics: Reviving the Spirit of the Concept “Global Civil Society” At the end of August 2019, demonstrations were held all over Britain to protest the way that the new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had decided to prorogue Parliament so as to avoid any further debate about Brexit, due to happen on October 31. The demonstrators brought together “leavers” and “remainers” under the slogan “Defend Democracy” and “Stop the Coup.” In Nottingham, protestors held a 2-minute silence in solidarity with the protests in Hong Kong; in a powerful gesture, they held their hands over one eye in solidarity with the woman professor who lost an eye in the Hong Kong protests. In Bristol, protests were jointly organized with Extinction Rebellion—the direct action climate change group. And in London, a bloc of protestors led by Another Europe Is Possible (the anti-Brexit group) and School Strikes for Climate occupied Waterloo Bridge. Everywhere, protestors were shouting, “No borders, no nations.” As in the 1990s, we are again at a moment that offers a discursive space for conceptual innovation regarding the reimagination of social relations and world politics. We are at a historical moment in which institutional shortcomings are more blatant than ever and in which scientific evidence of the threat to life-supporting ecosystems is increasingly hard to dismiss. Again using Foucault’s words (1981, p. 60), the fact that the planet is in a devastating human-induced state, manifest, for instance, in climate change, is not only “the truth,” as it had been already when the earlier cited McHale (1969) saw urgency in acknowledging this fact in the context of the “one world” discourse of the 1960s and 1970s, but has eventually and finally come to be “in the true,” i.e., has become a discursive reality, manifest, for instance, in the beliefs driving recent movements, such as the Fridays for Future movement. More generally, we are at a historical moment in which it has come to be discursively acceptable to question and deconstruct profound guiding premises that have informed the organization of modern (national) societies, such as evident in the mushrooming literature questioning the usefulness of the monetary measure GDP and the role it plays as a guidance to politics and policies (e.g., Fioramonti, 2013; Jackson, 2016; Raworth, 2017). Even more salient is the new preoccupation with what the Spanish indignados called “real democracy.” The rise of new right-wing populist and authoritarian movements that include climate deniers as well as exclusionary socially conservative tropes has drawn attention to the way in which the global spread of democratic procedures has failed to enhance meaningful democratic possibilities. Again, what might have been “the truth” already 50 years ago when McHale (1969, p. 11) argued,

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[t]he models of human society, of our institutions, and of our social capabilities and relatedness, with which we still operate, restrict much of our futures thinking within obsolete historical conditions. We can produce material goods far beyond immediate necessity and have elaborated our organizational capacities beyond those necessary for mere group survival and security, but our outdated models still generate the same stereotyped “dilemma” responses to most of our social problems. The constraining myths that bind us to obsolete forms, old fears, and insecurities may be our most dangerous deterrents. Our traditional attitudes and ideologies are inadequate guides to the future, serving mainly to perpetuate old inequities and insecurities,

has now come to be an established discourse. Hence, this is a moment which opens possibilities to revive the spirit of the concept “global civil society” by pushing for what was its third and unachieved purpose, to challenge epistemologies by overcoming methodological nationalism. The concept “global civil society” made the demand to avoid methodological nationalism; what is needed now is a concept that helps take this demand a step forward and into practice. We suggest such a concept under the name “planetary politics.” The meaning of a word is not inscribed in this word and cannot be easily assumed—let alone simply looked up in a dictionary (Selchow, 2017). Hence, in order to outline what we capture with the concept “planetary politics,” it is worth making clear what we mean by “planetary” and why we use this particular adjective. In a way, as in the case of the use of global in the concept “global civil society,” it is a historical particularity that has brought the adjective planetary to our attention. This particularity is a recent trend in which social scientists in different disciplinary contexts acknowledge the shortcomings of the adjective global (and what they respectively understand its meaning is) and use planetary as an alternative to and as a statement against it. For instance, urban sociologists Lees et  al. (2016, p. 18) write, “we prefer the term ‘planetary’ as it suggests something more vivid and growing than the moribund global.” Susan S. Friedman (2015, p. 7) makes clear, “[a]lthough I continue to use the more common transnational and global, I privilege planetary because it bypasses the overdetermined associations of the other terms: transnational suggests the ongoing tension between nation-states and globalized postnational political formations; global invokes the endlessly debated pros and cons of contemporary globalization.” Also the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health is explicit in replacing “global health” with “planetary health” (Whitmee et al., 2015). By using planetary, we connect to this scholarly practice of metalinguistic reflection and its critique of global (see also Selchow, 2021). We, too, want to make an explicit move away from the adjective global, acknowledging the previously sketched historical nature of global as a product of the 1990s globalization discourse and its now unproductive implications. Yet, we are explicit that by bringing in a new adjective, planetary, to replace what would be a (more) conventional one, global, we keep the replaced one in the symbolic loop. We consciously position our adjective planetary in line with the adjective global and, with that, also with the adjective that global once itself “replaced,” namely, international. In this sense, our use of the adjective planetary is not meant to allude to a scale or scope, e.g., to something bigger than or above “global,” nor do we narrowly and solely refer to the

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material entity of the planet earth. Like global and international, we use the adjective planetary in order to reimagine social and political relations—and in a way that is explicitly different from these other two adjectives. But there is something else about the adjective planetary that has made it attractive to us. First, it allows us to take advantage of what seems to be a common understanding in public discourses of what planetary means. This is that, in one way or other, it alludes to the Earth as a (material) planet. This common association with the adjective planetary seems not least to be due to the rise of the term “planetary boundaries,” which has entered global public discourses. Although it is a mere impression that this is a common understanding of planetary these days, which begs systematic linguistic analyses, it is motivation enough for us to use the adjective as a way of “activating” in the reader the association of the planet Earth. It helps us to bring into our concept “planetary politics” the reality of the finiteness of natural resources, the essential interrelation between humans and life-supporting ecosystems, as well as the profound impact of past and future human developments on these systems. We believe that this is a truth that needs to be weaved into contemporary thinking about the organization of social life. Even more important for our purposes, though, is that due to its linguistic similarity, the adjective planetary is particularly well suited to insinuate a more complex perspective on the world or ethos of being and helps us to bring this perspective into our concept “planetary politics” and the reimagination of social and political relations this concept implies. The “complex perspective” we mean is the one expressed in Gayatri Spivak’s idea “planetarity” (Spivak, 2015). Spivak introduces “planetarity” as an untranslatable word. Its untranslatability implies that “planetarity” cannot be referred back to an object that symbolically tames it; hence, it remains “ungraspable.” She writes, “[i]f we think critically—via Kant again—only in reference to our cognitive faculties and consequently bound to the subjective conditions of envisioning planetarity, without undertaking to decide anything about its object, we discover that planetarity is not susceptible to the subject’s grasp” (Spivak, 2015, p. 290). For Spivak, this means that “planetarity” opens the possibility for the imagination of a new kind of subject, the “planetary subject,” in the context of which: alterity remains underived from us; it is not our dialectical negation, it contains us as much as it flings us away—and thus to think of it is already to transgress, for, in spite of our forays into what we render through metaphor, differently, as outer and inner space, it remains that what is above and beyond our own reach is not continuous with us as it is not, indeed, specifically discontinuous. (Spivak, 2015, p. 292)

For us, using the adjective planetary in a way that brings into our concept “planetary politics,” this radical dissolution of dichotomies and conventional (global) grounds that is implied in Spivak’s notion “planetarity” is a strategy that helps us to open epistemological horizons and trigger a shift beyond the guiding principle of methodological nationalism, the third, unachieved purpose of the concept “global civil society” that our concept “planetary politics” aims to achieve. It inscribes into our concept “planetary politics” the demand to “persistently educate ourselves into the peculiar mindset of accepting the untranslatable, even as we are programmed to

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transgress that mindset by ‘translating’ it into the mode of ‘acceptance’” (Spivak, 2015, p. 292); it brings into our concept “planetary politics” a sense of inevitable, though probably, uncomfortable openness. So, for us, planetary speaks to a recent trend in the literature of using this adjective as a replacement for (and, with that, critically engage with) global and also makes it particularly easy to trigger in the reader two ideas that we would like to have associated with our concept “planetary politics”: the problematic relationship between past and future human developments and the state of the planet Earth and, importantly, the arguably more abstract idea of “planetarity.” Having reflected on our linguistic choice of planetary, we turn to our concept “planetary politics.” In addition to the above two aspects that we intend the adjective planetary to bring into our concept “planetary politics,” we fill it with an understanding of the world that was, indeed, already implied in McHale’s earlier cited comments and of course also in the concept “global civil society” but was exactly what got “tamed” there. It is an understanding of the world that is most explicitly expressed by Ulrich Beck under the labels “cosmopolitization” and reflexive modernization. Central to this understanding of the world is the acknowledgement that many of the global collective action problems we face are less to do with a new external reality requiring institutional adjustment but are the result of a nationally organized world with modern foundations. Problems such as human-induced climate change are to be seen as (1) the success, the triumph (Beck, 2012) of modernization and not its dark side, and (2) the result of past “industrial, that is, techno-economic decisions and considerations of utility” (Beck, 1992, p. 98), which were grounded in what Beck (2006, p.  48) calls the “national outlook” in general and the modern technology of “risk” in particular. The latter is because in the application of risk, the possibility of problems like climate change (or an imagined unintended consequence of climate change) could not have featured as an action-guiding factor simply because such problems counter the very national-modern premises on which the risk assessments of “techno-economic decisions and considerations of utility” were or are based, such as the ideas of “inside” and “outside” and, more generally, the notion of spatial boundedness. In this sense, the reality of problems like climate change is an example of the “reflexive backfiring of modernization,” as Beck calls it, in which the very success of modernization undermines its own institutions and premises. It is the national outlook that brings out the reality with which we see ourselves increasingly helplessly confronted. The national outlook is a perspective that equates society with national society (Beck, 2006, p. 48) and gains its position as the natural way of looking at the world from the fact that it “adopts categories of practice as categories of analysis” (Beck and Sznaider, 2006, p. 4)—this is what the Global Civil Society Yearbook criticized as methodological nationalism. Enforced through the unnatural-natural notion of national sovereignty, the national outlook enables and then reproduces the existence of a world in which it is not only clear where the boundaries of sovereign nation-state policies and actions are but also, and importantly, where the unnatural-natural boundaries of responsibilities lie; it brings out a world of “organized irresponsibility” (Beck, 1988). More

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broadly, it is the national outlook that makes possible the very idea of the externalization of the “bads” of national lifestyles to other national societies, such as life-­ threatening working conditions and child labor in the garment and shrimp industries, the export of electronic and plastic waste, or, in fact, the externalization of agrarian production to another part of the world, with all its ecological and economic consequences. Lessenich (2016) unveils and critically assesses all of this and more under the label “externalization society.” While these externalizations are perfectly reasonable and natural in a world of the national outlook, at the end of the day, there is, of course, never a true externalization. Contemporary information and communication technologies make it hard to escape the mediated reality of the lives of “global others”; the destruction of ecosystems in the name of agrarian productivity abroad strikes back at home in the shape of the consequences of climate change; and the plastic waste that is externalized into the world’s oceans “over there” finds its way back into bodily existences at its origin through the seafood that is consumed “over here.” The rise of new political phenomena that take the national outlook to extremes, like Trumpism or Brexitism, draws attention to the contradictions of the term—and the problematic character of externalization. Parts of the above resemble the globalization story talking about an increasing global interconnectedness. Yet, there is a slight but crucial twist and consequence of the above. Following this understanding of the world requires us to see that facing contemporary challenges is not so much about finding the right institutional adjustment to a changing environment, namely, tweaking what is there to make it fit through ever more and extended governance settings and experiments, but about the realization that the very “grammar” (Beck, 2004, p. 133) of the national outlook fails reality and that this brings out the institutional environment and premises on which it is built. It fails reality because, in Beck’s story, this reality is not really a national reality to begin with; it is a reality shaped by the “cosmopolitan condition” (Beck and Sznaider, 2006, pp. 6–9). The cosmopolitan condition is the product of “cosmopolitization,” a structural process of global enmeshment that unfolds as an unintended side effect of all sorts of actions and brings the “global other” (e.g., from a climate change induced drowning small island state) into the midst of other “global others” whether or not social actors realize this. For this, Beck uses the word cosmopolitanization, not globalization, because he sees the national outlook reproduced in the concept globalization, suggesting that it is widely conceptualized as “something taking place ‘out there’, [while] cosmopolitanization happens ‘from within’ ” (Beck and Sznaider, 2006, p. 9).

13.5  Conclusion Concepts are abstractions; they guide and sharpen the view to selected aspects of social reality. The concept “global civil society,” as it was introduced in the Global Civil Society Yearbook 2001, engaged with the relationship between political authority, society, the individual, and the market and sharpened our view to “the

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emergence of a supranational sphere of social and political participation” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 4). What was highlighted about this “supranational sphere” and its social and political participants was its essential enmeshment with globalization; the adjective global indicated that it is a product of and a reaction to globalization. The concept “global civil society” served important purposes in post-Cold War knowledge production. It intervened into conventional state-centric perceptions of politics by focusing on the significance of nonparty politics and activism; it intervened into the discussion of the relationship between the state, society, individual, and market by stressing and promoting an “activist” notion of civil society based on deliberation, in contrast to “neoliberal,” “third sector” thinking (Kaldor, 2003), and into the globalization discourse by arguing that globalization is more than economic integration and also more than a structural process that has come over us but is human-made. Like the concept “global civil society,” our concept “planetary politics” is meant to intervene into contemporary knowledge production. Its aim is to revive and push forward a purpose that the concept “global civil society” did not fully achieve, namely, to open pathways for an unconventional approach to the social world, one beyond methodological nationalism. Bringing together our elaborations on the adjective planetary and Beck, our concept “planetary politics” encompasses an understanding of contemporary social reality in which human development is essentially enmeshed with the state of the planet Earth and is shaped by the “reflexive backfiring” of modernization in which established institutions undermine their own purposefulness due to underlying premises and principles, importantly for us, guided by the idea that consequences of social action could be externalized. Both aspects are interrelated. Externalization, for us, is a practice that prominently includes but encompasses more than the externalization beyond national borders, which Beck and also the abovementioned Lessenich are concerned about. The idea that consequences could be externalized shapes (everyday) practices on all kinds of levels; it includes not only spatial externalizations but also, for instance, intergenerational, inter-racial, and inter-gender externalizations. Given this understanding of the world, our concept “planetary politics” is designed to sharpen our view for practices of externalization, which can no longer be overlooked as a natural way of doing things but are political practices that reproduce a social world and an institutional landscape that is the engine of many of contemporary essential problems rather than a not yet properly adjusted reality. Turning this around, “planetary politics” captures practices and social formations that engage with and challenge the diverse realities and practices of externalization and/or (try to) live a “non-externalizing” reality. In this sense, “planetary politics” is not a description of a particular aspect of reality; like “global civil society,” the concept is meant to trigger a research agenda that explores the existence and nuances of “planetary politics.” The concept “global civil society” demanded a turn away from methodological nationalism; the concept “planetary politics” goes a step further. It brings into view an object of research, “planetary politics,” that is only visible from a conceptual perspective beyond methodological nationalism to begin with. Hence, it positions the researcher in a different, “non-methodological nationalist” world

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altogether and, with that, opens the perspective on an overlooked reality of political practices and formations.

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Selchow, S. (2021). Planetary disasters: Moving the UN disaster risk reduction framework into cosmopolitised reality. Environmental Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1868819 Selchow, S. (2013). An interplay of traditions: The ‘return of uncertainty’ and its taming in post-9/11 US security thinking. In M. Bevir, O. Daddow, & I. Hall (Eds.), Interpreting global security (pp. 35–52). Routledge. Selchow, S. (2016). The paths not (yet) taken: Ulrich Beck, the ‘Cosmopolitized world’ and security studies. Security Dialogue, 47(5), 369–385. Selchow, S. (2017). Negotiations of the ‘New World’: The omnipresence of global as a political phenomenon. Transcript. Sen, A. (2001, July 17). A world of extremes: Ten theses on globalization. Los Angeles Times. Spivak, G. C. (2015). Planetarity. Paragraph, 38(2), 290–292. Whitmee, S., et al. (2015). Safeguarding human health in the anthropocene epoch: Report of the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. The Lancet, 386, 1973–2028.

Chapter 14

Global Civil Society in Retreat: Is It Cyclical or Existential? Éva Kuti and Miklós Marschall

Abstract  This chapter tries to answer the question whether the recent “shrinking” of global civil society is an existential or a cyclical phenomenon. It examines the external threats, namely, the impacts of new authoritarianism, neo-nationalism, and anti-globalism, and analyzes the reactions of transnational civil society organizations and their cooperation with other stakeholders facing the same challenges. It also gives an overview of internal challenges (governance, legitimacy, and accountability) resulting from the lifecyle of global civil society organizations born or reinvigorated in the 1990s. The authors argue that the current retreat of civil society is mainly explained by a mutually reinforcing interference of two cycles in the last decade: on the one hand, the “natural” lifecycle of transnational civil society organizations and, on the other hand, an economic and political cycle whose present phase can be described as a decline of democracy and rise of authoritarianism. They conclude that the shrinking of global civil society is mainly cyclical and not existential, but the pace and extent of its recovery will depend on its organizations’ ability to cope with internal challenges and to speak up against new authoritarianism. Keywords  Shrinking civic space · New authoritarianism · Global civil society organizations · Lifecycle · Accountability “‘Neither Prince nor Merchant: Citizen.’ Written seven years ago by Marc Nerfin, these words capture the emergence of an unprecedented worldwide phenomenon—men and women, groups and individuals, getting together to do things by themselves in order to change the societies they live in. In the last two decades, people of all classes, creeds, and ethnic backgrounds have organized themselves to defend democracy and human rights, to fight for more equitable development and a safer environment, or, more simply, just to help those in need or improve the quality of daily life in their neighborhoods and communities.” (Darcy de Oliveira & Tandon, 1994, p. 1) É. Kuti Budapest College of Management, Budapest, Hungary M. Marschall (*) Transparency International, Berlin, Germany © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_14

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É. Kuti and M. Marschall “A new and increasingly connected generation of women and men activists across the globe question how much of our energy is trapped in the internal bureaucracy and the comfort of our brands and organisations. They move quickly, often without the kinds of structures that slow us down. In doing so, they challenge how much time we – you and I – spend in elite conferences and tracking policy cycles that have little or no outcomes for the poor. They criticise how much we look up to those in power rather than see the world through the eyes of our own people. Many of them, sometimes rightfully, feel we have become just another layer of the system and development industry that perpetuates injustice.” (CIVICUS, 2014)

These two quotes from CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation well illustrate the changes and challenges we would like to address in this chapter. The first quote is from 1994; the second one is from 2014.1 The celebratory tone of the first quote shows the high hopes attributed to the rise of civil society organizations (CSOs). The sentiments back then for global civil society (GCS) were that of a start of a triumphant road from the margins to influence.2 The “rise of the third sector” apart from government and business was perceived by many as the ultimate panacea for most of the shortcomings of our world.3 Twenty years later, the second quote shows a clear sense of sobering, which reflects the changing climate around and within CSOs. What has changed in two decades and beyond? Quite a number of things, as we will argue briefly in the following pages. Our chapter gives an overview of the external attacks—new authoritarianism, neo-nationalism, and anti-globalism—as well as internal challenges, governance, legitimacy, and accountability, having resulted in the decline of global civil society since the 2010s. It also tries to answer the question whether the recent “shrinking” of GCS is an existential or a cyclical phenomenon. Our approach relies on the revised definition of global civil society which makes the concept of civility explicit as formulated by Anheier (2007, pp. 10–11): “Global civil society is the sphere of ideas, values, institutions, organizations, networks, and individuals that are based on civility, located between the family, the state, and the market and operating beyond the confines of national societies, polities and economies.” Transnational terrorist networks, hate groups, criminal organizations, and fundamentalist and separatist movements are regarded as part of the external threat and not as part of global civil society.

1  One of the authors of this piece, Miklós Marschall, was the founding executive director of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation in 1994–1998. 2  See Kaldor and Glasius, Chap. 13 in this volume, for more on the origins and evolution of the global civil society concept. 3  A good example for such optimism is the brilliant book of Benjamin R. Barber entitled Jihad vs. McWorld published in 1996, in which he convincingly argues that civil society is the solution to overcome the extremes of tribalism and commercialism.

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14.1  External Threats The open attacks on global civil society organizations (GCSOs) are only the most spectacular elements of a worldwide trend. A growing number of countries have restricted the space for civil society in several different ways (from financial and tax measures and restrictive legislation up to harassment or even physical threat) since the 2010s. The “crackdown” on civil society organizations can be detected not only in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian developing countries (Amnesty International, 2019) and in the post-Soviet region (Gerő & Kerényi, 2017; Krasztev & Van Til, 2015); the space for civil society is slowly eroding in “flawed democracies” as well (Anheier, 2017; Anheier et al., 2019). Moreover, the attacks may have a negative impact not only on their actual target groups (mainly the CSOs involved in human rights, advocacy, and international aid activities) but on the third sector as a whole, including its service-providing segment. Though recent research results indicate that existential threats (so far) mostly affect the third sector organizations outside the welfare domain (Pape et al., 2019) and national restrictions do not necessarily hinder nonprofit-government cooperation in service delivery at a subnational level (Toepler et al., 2019), their destructive potential is still significant. As another comparative study pointed out, the government-created divisions are harmful for CSOs not only “in the fields of policy work and advocacy, but also increasingly in other fields. With more and more organizations being labeled (or self-categorized) along ideological lines, these divisions are likely to spread to other parts of civil society, causing tensions and reducing public trust in civil society” (Vandor et  al., 2017, p. 32). The “shrinking space” phenomenon is complex and multifaceted, just like the trends—new authoritarianism, neo-nationalism, and anti-globalism—that underlie it. These trends are also undoubtedly interrelated. If we still discuss them separately, this is for two reasons. First, though populist parties and governments often tend to be authoritarian, nationalist, and anti-globalist at the same time, other combinations are also possible and actually present in different parts of the world. (For example, clearly authoritarian and even nationalist governments are on very good terms with multinational companies and build their economic policy on the inflow of global capital; nationalism and anti-globalism—as the Brexit story reveals—can prevail in well-established, nonauthoritarian democracies.) Second, the impacts of these different trends on the global civil society are varied; consequently the responses of GCSOs and their supporters should also be manifold and based on a proper knowledge of the specific challenges. Unexpected as it was, the new wave of authoritarianism did not emerge from nowhere. Several authors (e.g., Eatwell & Goodwin, 2018; Norris & Inglehart, 2019) claim that long-term structural changes and growing cultural diversity slowly and almost imperceptibly eroded liberal principles and resulted in a cultural backlash from a part of society anchored to traditional values. The authoritarian reflex arising from this cultural backlash was only strengthened and deepened by the 2008 economic crisis, which, in its turn, increased the fears of economic insecurity and

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the feeling that a large number of people and their communities were left behind without any chance to improve their position in a more and more competitive economic and social environment. These “economic and cultural anxieties” reinforced each other (Mounk, 2018) and undermined the legitimacy of liberal democracy, thus clearing the way for an authoritarian turn in numerous countries. The new type of authoritarianism combines the elements of old totalitarianism with some (mainly technical) elements of democracy. This is why political scientists speak about hybridization, and there is a heated debate about the actual character of and the proper label for the regimes using pseudo-democratic language and hiding their basic authoritarianism behind the democratic façade of (usually manipulated) elections. In order to go beyond this debate, Glasius (2018, p. 517) shifts the focus to practice and defines “authoritarian practices as patterns of action that sabotage accountability to people over whom a political actor exerts control, or their representatives, by means of secrecy, disinformation and disabling voice.” To inhibit the civic virtues of those to whom accountability is owed and to discourage, intimidate, and prosecute civil society organizations are crucial elements of this pattern. Both national and international CSOs are regarded as actors that may challenge the legitimacy and omnipotence of the autocratic government. Authoritarian regimes feel threatened by the independence of civil society. This explains that they tend to attack not only global and regional CSO networks but also regional and global resource mobilization (Szabó, 2016), anything that is beyond their control. According to Carothers and Brechenmacher (2014, p. 61), “more than 50 countries have engaged in some form of pushback against external democracy and rights support.” Some of them (e.g., Russia, Israel, Hungary) have taken extremely strict measures: special registration and reporting requirements have been introduced for domestic organizations receiving foreign funds (see Katz and Gidron in this volume for more on Israel; see Glasius and de Lange in this volume for more on legal restrictions). This naturally leads to a decline of this segment of civil society at the national level and might result in some decrease of international funding as a whole. While authoritarianism and civil society are adversaries by definition, neo-­ nationalism is more selective when developing its relationships with CSOs. Nationalist politicians, who traditionally tend to mobilize along ethno-national cleavages, do not hesitate to involve voluntary organizations in their plans. This is especially easy for them when global economic and environmental problems become salient in the form of immigration. In sharp contrast with GCSOs, lots of national CSOs share the nostalgia for the strong, independent, relatively homogeneous nation-state. They can be very helpful for the nationalists in spreading and popularizing their ideas through social media and personal networks among people who “want their nation to be able to make its own decisions, unencumbered by the constraints of the global economy” (Mounk, 2018, p. 235). Neo-nationalism partly neglects the growing global interdependence and border-­ transgressing nature of contemporary challenges such as climate change and partly pretends that some of the problems (e.g., the flow of refugees) can be kept outside the national borders. The advocates of nation-states cling to the illusion of

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sovereignty. They are so eager to reassert the primacy of the nation and the cherished national identities that they either do not see or do not want to accept that “some of the most fundamental forces and processes which determine the nature of life-chances within and across political communities are now beyond the reach of nation-states” (Held, 2003, p. 521). When expressing their preference for national solutions and their animosity toward GCSOs, nationalists seem to forget that “the decreased ability of nationally based political systems to manage the world’s problems on a global scale has induced the rise of a global civil society” (Castells, 2008, p. 83). The existence and actions of global CSOs are irritating for the representatives of neo-nationalism not only because they remind them the gap between their ideology and real-life opportunities but also because they are potential partners and supporters of their domestic opposition and critics. However, this irritation can be translated into really harmful actions only if nationalist parties come to power. Ironically enough, genuine anti-globalism is probably less dangerous for global civil society than either authoritarianism or neo-nationalism. Though globalization is blamed for most consequences of the recent technological and economic changes, several of these developments are at least partly independent and surely irreversible processes. As Rodrik (2018, p. 23) pointed out, “automation and new digital technologies played a quantitatively greater role in de-industrialization and in spatial and income inequalities. But globalization became tainted with a stigma of unfairness that technology evaded.” This irreversibility can hardly be neglected even by the bitterest enemies of globalization. They might not be aware that the rise of winner-take-all markets, erosion of labor market protections, and decline of norms restricting income inequalities both fostered globalization and were reinforced by it but cannot be reduced to it. Nevertheless, they probably realize that business-led globalization has resulted in an extremely uneven distribution of benefits mainly because none of the other potential (transnational, governmental, or civil) actors had a significant influence on setting the rules and developing global regulations. Despite their basic disappointment and distrust, anti-globalists are likely to discover that global civil society organizations can be useful allies whenever they decide to shift from total negation to a more positive attitude.

14.2  Internal Challenges A fundamental inherent challenge GCSOs are facing has much to do with their “lifecycle”: the way they “travel” from the margin to prominence, influence, and power. Building upon Anheier’s (2017) and Young and Casey’s (2017) triangle model describing CSO/government relations, we can describe the lifecycle of many GCSOs along three typical developments they go through as they grow. As we all know, most of the global civil society organizations were born to start addressing a very concrete problem or issue. Amnesty International to ban torture of war

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prisoners, Save the Children to help starving children after World War I, Red Cross to give medical treatment to wounded soldiers in the battle of Solferino, and so on (Gnaerig, 2015, p. 104). However, as they grow, their mission gets broader and more general. They go almost inevitably beyond the direct response to a humanitarian crisis and start dealing with the root causes of the problems. As they dig deeper, they realize the complexity of the issue and the need to go beyond the symptoms, which requires political advocacy and much more human and financial resources. At the outset, the work of a GCSO seems marginal; as it grows, it will become more and more influential, often challenging the political and social status quo. This growth model describes the way GCSOs are transforming from “a small fish in a big pond to a big fish in a small pond” (Gnaerig, 2015, p. 135). While a “small fish” is marginal and always complementary to the government, a “big fish” can be competitive and adversarial. In sum, these are the typical patterns in the lifecycle of GCSOs: They move from • Particular to general (mission creep). • Addressing the symptoms to addressing the cause. • Being complementary to the government toward being competitive and adversarial. These changes (and not only the new wave of authoritarianism) are also responsible for the deteriorating political environment: the political class’s view of GCSOs has shifted from a friendly but sometimes contemptuous view to often jealous and hostile reactions. A related internal trend of GCSOs’ development is the shift of balance from activism to professionalism. Overall, this is a positive development, which reflects not only the organizational maturation (Milner & Verity, 2013) but also the growing role and importance of GCSOs. Their increasing presence and influence at the global level would hardly be possible without some professionalization. Nevertheless, it makes them less different from governments and businesses by which some of their comparative advantages (trust, ethical drive, and the like) are gone or at least diminished. This raises the issue of accountability (Bendell, 2006), as well. However, there is a well-known trade-off between accountability (reporting and such) and freedom of action. As Heins (2005, p. 165) stated, “bypassing broader constituencies in favour of staff-driven, agile ‘helicopter organizations’ … has obvious strategic advantages in terms of flexibility and networking capacity.” GCSOs have been successful because they were less bound by internal bureaucracy, standard operating procedures, and hierarchies, and these factors have contributed greatly to their ability to act swiftly, freely, and efficiently, which were considered as the key comparative advantages of civil society organizations (Florini, 2000). In today’s world, accountability requirements eat up much of the swiftness and freedoms for which GCSOs were well known. With less freedom of action, some of the important leadership potential of GCSOs is also gone. In such an environment, civil society organizations will think twice before taking new risky initiatives, and that is also a loss not only for the organizations but also for the beneficiaries they are supposed to serve.

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The growth in size, budget, staff, and responsibilities has not been followed and matched with befitting governance. The transnational or even global nature of the leading international CSOs has made governance by definition complicated and difficult. In federated structures, there are built-in conflicts and tensions: headquarters vs. regions, decentralization vs. deconcentration, and management vs. board, just to name a few. Over time, the need for internal democracy grows, and beyond a certain size, internal power politics will creep in. None of the GCSOs the authors are familiar with has been prepared to smoothly and effectively manage internal power struggles among the various constituencies. As the organization matures, the charismatic leadership usually goes, and as a result of internal democracy, “coalition politicians” will take over. Their main ambition being internal balancing between the various power centers, the organization can hardly remain on the cutting edge of its original mission. This conflict between internal democracy, on the one hand, and competence and efficiency expected by the external world, on the other, is inevitable, and it constitutes one of the biggest governance challenges for today’s GCSOs. One of the most critical existential threats GCSOs are facing is the diminishing need for the intermediary role many of them had played between the donors in the North and the beneficiaries in the South (Gnaerig, 2015). Modern technology enables Southern stakeholders to directly access Northern donors, which makes this role of GCSOs increasingly redundant. Pluralization trends such as the emergence of multi-stakeholder initiatives, the development of complex multi-partner relationships, and the expansion of sources and actors of financing through corporate and Internet-mediated giving (Fowler, 2016) have a similar effect. Becoming redundant is a permanent “threat” to any mission-oriented advocacy CSOs. Theoretically, success—mission accomplished—can make any of them redundant (Van Rooy, 2004). Consequently, there is no need to deny that CSOs have an inherent self-interest to sustain themselves, which can occasionally be in conflict with the original mandate: hence the interest and skills of some GCSOs in maintaining the “crisis narrative.” In the era of globalized media, GCSOs were pioneers with the ability of “translating complex issues into simple messages” to reach out and mobilize bigger audiences. Ironically, with this kind of “populist message-making,” they might have “inspired” some of the current populist politicians as well. The phrase that “to a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail,” whether we like it or not, has relevance to GCSOs as well. The “tunnel vision” and “project myopia” (Van Rooy, 2004) of some GCSOs have been well-known features for the critics. Putting an issue on the global agenda and keeping it there are part and parcel of every GCSO’s work. Yet, this intense concentration can turn into counterintuitive dogmatism leading to misguided judgments and ill-conceived decisions. Finally, as we all know, success can create arrogance as well. It is not by accident that the enemies of civil society can portray GCSOs as “elitists.” The “Davos folks” label and the “jet set” image refer to the fact that a number of successful global advocacy organizations have become part of or been co-opted by the international governance elite such as the World Bank, OECD, and the United Nations system. Travelling from conference to conference and making lofty statements have created an image that weakens the original ethics-based mission of GCSOs.

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14.3  From an English to a French Garden? Our hypothesis is that we have been witnessing a combination or a mutually reinforcing interference of two cycles in the last decade or so: on the one hand, the “natural” lifecycle of GCSOs—we described it as a series of “internal challenges”— and, on the other hand, an economic and political cycle described as “external threats.” The 1980s and 1990s were the decades of civil society marking the end of the Cold War and collapse of a number of authoritarian regimes. The logic and the rules of a bipolar world with strict political allegiances, borders, and ideological, political, and often physical control were all of a sudden replaced by an unprecedented freedom of action for non-state actors including civil society organizations. Existing and new CSOs—free and agile new actors on the world stage—swiftly took advantage of the new space opened up by the post-Cold War era (Mathews, 1997). As Anheier et al. (2001, pp. 16–17) pointed out, the last decade of the twentieth century was also the period when a global civil society that “can be posed as a counterweight to ‘globalisation’” emerged. Since a large number of GCSOs whose ambition is “taming,” “humanizing,” “calling to account,” or “civilizing” globalization were established at about the same time, their organizational lifecycles have been also similar. Twenty plus years later, they are likely to have reached the “mature” phase of their development. This happens when the very same space left “free” by governments—mostly voluntarily, out of liberal enlightenment—is being reclaimed by a new generation of governments. Using Mathews’ (1997) term, we now see a reverse “power shift”: back from civil society to the state.4 We believe it is this rare combination of the current state in the organizational lifecycles of GCSOs born or reinvigorated in the 1990s5 and the reverse power shift—with unacceptable excesses by a number of authoritarian regimes—that explains the current retreat of civil society including GCSOs. That is why we suggest that the retreat is mainly cyclical and not existential. This might seem a relatively optimistic conclusion because the cyclical character of any development implies that the periods of decline are followed by phases of recovery. Indeed, the evolution of democracy has been marked by repeated democratic waves, many of them vertical ones6 stemming from major disruptions of the international order, “from top-down geopolitical shifts produced by changes in the hierarchy of great powers” (Gunitsky, 2018, p. 640). A comparison of these democratic waves against evidence on how the transnational civil society “has risen and fallen in waves over

 Among the reasons, we can list counterterrorism, anti-money laundering, GDPR, etc.  With a somewhat frivolous comparison, we could call them the “baby boom” generation of CSOs and GCSOs. 6  The horizontal waves “are unmoored from any broader transformations of the international order. Instead, they unfold through shared horizontal networks and regional effects” (Gunitsky, 2018, p. 640). 4 5

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the course of the last two centuries” (Davies, 2008, p. 16) indicates7 that global civil society as a whole is able to survive not only massive attacks against democracy but even global-scale political cataclysms. However, this does not mean that global civil society may remain unchanged and all of its major organizations and networks will automatically survive the present crisis. GCSOs obviously need to cope with the internal challenges related to their organizational lifecycle and with the political and financial constraints linked to the external threats. Moreover, they should remain vigilant and speak up against attempts to degrade or close down civil society. A series of survey results as well as academic and policy papers (e.g., Amnesty International, 2019; Carothers, 2015; Galasso et  al., 2017; Schmitz et  al., 2012) indicate that GCSO leaders and staff members are well aware of these challenges. A growing number of GCSOs and international funders carry out internal review processes and organize meetings in order to examine the problems, discuss the possible responses, and think through opportunities for coordinated efforts. The broad, collective actions against the authoritarian surge are very rare, mainly because “developmentalists worry that their work will suffer by direct association with more political actors” (Carothers, 2015, p. 26), but there are promising developments in cooperation in some less delicate fields like the exchange of information and experiences, the provision of professional assistance (e.g., the “Defending Civil Society Toolkit”8), and the development of accountability standards and techniques. There seems to be a broad agreement that GCSOs have to “work together and build on their collective strength, in alliance with their publics and other constituencies sympathetic to their mission” (Galasso et al., 2017, p. 55). It is widely known that “downward accountability” is crucial in building strong relationships with constituents who are regarded as potential allies. For obvious reasons, the funders also have to be kept informed about GCSOs’ activities. Accountability is a basic condition for any cooperation with transnational organizations, as well, because these latter are worried that their GCSO partners “may undermine, rather than bolster, the legitimacy of global regulation” (Brakman-Reiser & Kelly, 2011, p. 1012) if they are not sufficiently accountable themselves. To summarize, several changes point in the same direction. While facing the “urgent need to cut through the cacophony of policies regulating CSOs” (Anheier, 2017, p. 9), the GCSOs and their networks realize that they cannot protect themselves from political attacks and strengthen their position without becoming more transparent. As a response to the “shrinking space problem,” they tend to voluntarily

7  In the first edition of Global Civil Society, Anheier et  al. (2001) highlighted the differences between the relatively new global civil society and the transnational civil society having been in existence for at least 200 years. Though their arguments are rather convincing, we still think that Davies’ (2008, 2013) research findings can be relevant while exploring the cyclical character of the development of global civil society. 8  An online manual providing tips, tools, and strategies that organizations and activists around the world can consider while planning their efforts to reform legal frameworks for civil society http:// www.defendingcivilsociety.org/en/index.php/chapter_main/main/introduction

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accept a new set of accountability and control mechanisms and even to take part in its development. Metaphorically speaking, the beautiful organic English garden of global civil society with lots of freedom and spontaneity is being cut back into a French garden with a much more controlled and regulated landscape.

References Amnesty International. (2019). Laws designed to silence: The global crackdown on civil society organizations. Amnesty International. Anheier, H.  K. (2007). Reflections on the concept and measurement of global civil society. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 18(1), 1–15. Anheier, H.  K. (2017). Civil society challenged: Towards an enabling policy environment. Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 11(2017–29), 1–19. https://doi. org/10.5018/economics-­ejournal.ja.2017-­29 Anheier, H., Glasius, M., & Kaldor, M. (2001). Introducing global civil society. In H. Anheier, M. Glasius, & M. Kaldor (Eds.), Global civil society 2001 (pp. 3–22). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K., Lang, M., & Toepler, S. (2019). Civil society in times of change: Shrinking, changing and expanding spaces and the need for new regulatory approaches. Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 13(2019–8), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.5018/ economics-­ejournal.ja.2019-­8 Barber, R. B. (1996). Jihad vs. McWorld. Terrorism’s challenge to democracy. Ballantine Books. Bendell, J. (2006). Debating NGO accountability. United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison. Brakman-Reiser, D., & Kelly, C. R. (2011). Linking NGO accountability and the legitimacy of global governance. Brooklyn Journal of International Law, 36(3), 1011–1073. Carothers, T. (2015). The closing space challenge. How are funders responding? Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Carothers, T., & Brechenmacher, S. (2014). Closing space. Democracy and human rights support under fire. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Castells, M. (2008). The new public sphere: Global civil society, communication networks, and global governance. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616(1), 78–93. CIVICUS. (2014, August 6). An open letter to our fellow activists across the globe: Building from below and beyond borders. Retrieved June 15, 2021, from https://www.civicus.org/index. php/media-­resources/news/blog/2353-­an-­open-­letter-­to-­our-­fellow-­activists-­across-­the-­globe-­ building-­from-­below-­and-­beyond-­borders Darcy de Oliveira, M., & Tandon, R. (1994). An emerging global civil society. In M. Darcy de Oliveira & R. Tandon (Eds.), Citizens: Strengthening global civil society (pp. 1–17). CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Davies, T. R. (2008). The rise and fall of transnational civil society: The evolution of transnational non-governmental organisations since 1839. In Working papers on transnational politics. City University, Centre for International Politics. Davies, T. R. (2013). NGOs: A new history of transnational civil society. Hurst and Company. Eatwell, R., & Goodwin, M. (2018). National populism: The revolt against liberal democracy. Pelican Books. Florini, A.  M. (Ed.). (2000). The third force. The rise of transnational civil society. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Fowler, A. (2016). Non-governmental organisations’ sustainability, partnership, and resourcing: Futuristic reflections on a problematic trialogue. Development in Practice, 26(5), 569–579.

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Galasso, V.  N., Feroci, G.  N., Pfeifer, K., & Walsh, M. (2017). The rise of populism and its implications for development NGOs. Oxfam research backgrounder series. Retrieved from https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-­publications/ the-­rise-­of-­populism-­and-­its-­implications-­for-­development-­ngos/ Gerő, M., & Kerényi, S.  Z. (2017). Anti-Soros rallies and blazing EU-flags. Civil society and social movements between populism and democracy in Central Eastern Europe. socio.hu. Social Science Review, E-Journal, 7(5 Special issue), 1–6. Retrieved from https://socio.hu/en/ civil-­societies-­and-­social-­movements Glasius, M. (2018). What authoritarianism is and is not…: A practice perspective. International Affairs, 94(3), 515–533. Gnaerig, B. (2015). The hedgehog and the beetle. Disruption and innovation in the civil society sector. International Civil Society Centre. Gunitsky, S. (2018). Democratic waves in historical perspective. Perspectives on Politics, 16(3), 634–651. Heins, V. (2005). Global civil society as politics of faith. In G. Baker & D. Chandler (Eds.), Global civil society. Contested futures (pp. 159–172). Routledge. Held, D. (2003). The transformation of political community: Rethinking democracy in the context of globalization. In R. Dahl, I. Shapiro, & J. A. Cheibub (Eds.), The democracy sourcebook (pp. 516–526). MIT Press. Krasztev, P., & Van Til, J. (Eds.). (2015). The Hungarian patient. Social opposition to an illiberal democracy. Central European University Press. Mathews, J. T. (1997). Power shift. Foreign Affairs, 76(1), 50–66. Milner, M.  E., & Verity, A. (2013). Collaborative innovation in humanitarian affairs. United Nations. Mounk, Y. (2018). The people vs. democracy: Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Harvard University Press. Nerfin, M. (1987). Neither prince nor merchant: Citizen—An introduction to the third system. Development Dialogue, 14(1), 170–195. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, brexit and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. Pape, U., Brandsen, T., Pahl, J. B., et al. (2019). Changing policy environments in Europe and the resilience of the third sector. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 31, 234–249. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-­018-­00087-­z Rodrik, D. (2018). Populism and the economics of globalization. Journal of International Business Policy, 1(1), 12–33. Schmitz, H.  P., Raggo, P., & Vijfeijken, T.  B. (2012). Accountability of transnational NGOs: Aspirations vs. practice. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 41(6), 1175–1194. Szabó, M. (2016). Transition to democracy, its hybridization and its aftermath. Protest and movement mobilization against the Orbán-regime in Hungary 2010–2015. Central European Political Science Review, 17(64), 178–212. Toepler, S., Pape, U., & Benevolenski, V. (2019). Subnational variations in government-nonprofit relations: A comparative analysis of regional differences within Russia. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2019.158444 6 Van Rooy, A. (2004). Good news! You may be out of job: Reflections on the past and future 50 years of northern NGOs. In D. Eade & E. Ligteringen (Eds.), Debating development. NGOs and the future (pp. 19–43). OXFAM. Vandor, P., Traxler, N., Millner, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2017). Civil society in central and Eastern Europe: Challenges and opportunities. Erste Stiftung. Young, D.  R., & Casey, J. (2017). Supplementary, complementary, or adversarial?: Nonprofitgovernment relations. In E.  T. Boris & C.  E. Steuerle (Eds.), Nonprofits and government: Collaboration and conflict (pp. 37–70). Rowman & Littlefield.

Chapter 15

The Offensive Against Global Civil Society: Diffusion of NGO Restrictions Marlies Glasius and Meta de Lange

Abstract  Recent decades have witnessed a global cascade of restrictive and repressive measures against formally organized civil society organizations. This chapter sheds light on what explains the rapid diffusion of legislative restrictions against nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). As we will show, it is witnessed in so-­ called hybrid regimes or defective democracies as much as in fully authoritarian regimes and to a lesser extent also in full democracies. The rise in NGO restrictions is not just a belated response to NGO growth since the 1990s; it is associated with a broader trend of worldwide deterioration in the quality of democracy. Contrary to debates in international relations focusing on the influence of authoritarian “rising powers,” we present descriptive data and qualitative evidence suggesting that we need to look beyond the actions and intentions of China or Russia to understand the illiberal transformation that is underway. Instead, the diffusion of NGO restrictions is due to a more immanent and horizontal process we call “learning from examples.” Through close textual comparisons, we provide “smoking gun” evidence of learning from examples, tracing the intraregional migration of specific legal formulations from one state’s law to another. Keywords  Nongovernment organizations (NGOs) · Restrictions · Illiberal · Diffusion

M. Glasius (*) University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] M. de Lange Amsterdam University of Applied Science, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_15

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15.1  The NGO Restriction Cascade1 In the decade-long Global Civil Society Yearbook series, initiators Helmut Anheier, Mary Kaldor, and Marlies Glasius and contributors aimed to put “global civil society” on the map, to demonstrate that the “spread of the term ‘global civil society’ reflects an underlying reality” (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 4). Governments around the world took note of this emerging reality. As the series documented, the spread of global civil society was enabled in part by the advantages governments saw in outsourcing services, aid, and even values-based advocacy to civil society. But governments learned that the individuals and organizations of civil society could not be fully steered and controlled and were wont to criticize, publicize, and politicize sensitive issues in ways that can cause governments embarrassment or worse. Nearly 20 years later, the tide has turned against global civil society to an extent that Anheier could not have imagined when he embarked on his ambitious mapping and measuring projects, first at Johns Hopkins University and later at the London School of Economics. The titles of reports by think tanks and civil society watchdogs since the mid-2010s speak volumes. In 2016, the global civil society alliance CIVICUS, for whom Anheier helped to develop the Civil Society Diamond (Anheier, 2004; List & Dörner, 2012), launched a report headlined Core Civil Society Rights Violated in 109 Countries. A year earlier, the president of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law Douglas Rutzen published an ominously titled article “Civil Society Under Assault” (Rutzen, 2015). And the year before that, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published its comprehensive report Closing Space: Democracy and Human Rights Support Under Fire (Carothers & Brechenmacher, 2014). As we show below, these reports were not needlessly alarmist. Legislative restrictions against nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been on the rise globally since 1999, at an ever steeper pace. While physical attacks on civil society practitioners may also have increased, this contribution focuses on legal restrictions against NGOs, which have become normalized and embedded in policy to a much greater extent. This rise in NGO restrictions is not just a belated response to NGO growth since the 1990s. As we will show, the increase in restrictions on NGOs has been associated with so-called hybrid regimes or defective democracies (Collier & Levitsky, 1997; Diamond, 2002; Merkel, 2004) as much as with fully authoritarian regimes and to a lesser extent also with full democracies (see Katz and Gidron, Chap. 21 in this volume regarding Israel). It is associated with a broader trend of worldwide deterioration in the quality of democracy, found in recent comparative research (see, e.g., Luhrmann et  al., 2018; Abramowitz & Repucci, 2018; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). These studies all discuss restrictions on civil society alongside curtailments of freedom of speech and of the media, erosion of the independence of the judiciary, 1  Parts of this chapter were previously published in Marlies Glasius, Jelmer Schalk, and Meta De Lange (2020). “Illiberal Norm Diffusion: How Do Governments Learn to  Restrict Non-­ governmental Organizations?” International Studies Quarterly, 64(2), 453–468.

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and manipulation of electoral laws as elements of “democratic backsliding.” But while comparative, this literature is domestically oriented in its diagnosis. We suggest, instead, that NGO restrictions should be studied from the perspective of norm diffusion. We will show how governments may look to each other for guidance on whether or how to restrict civil society. The NGO restrictions cascade also relates to debates in international relations on the putative transformation away from a liberal world order: such restrictions not only constitute violations of freedom of association in and of themselves; they may signify a weakening of global civil society, which may have knock-on effects for other liberal norms. Stephen (2014, p. 914) has argued that it is precisely the current global governance system’s “most liberal principles” that are being challenged by emerging powers. Focusing on China, Kupchan (2014, p.  255) has argued that “revision to the normative foundations of Pax Americana may be needed” to accommodate its rise, particularly on norms relating to “human rights, the rule of law, and representative government.” Jacob et  al. (2017) have suggested that the rise of China, Russia, and India is already negatively affecting gender parity norms. By contrast, others such as Ikenberry (2011), Goh (2013), and Tansey (2016) have contested the idea that rising powers are even interested in or capable of undermining liberal institutions and norms. But what these studies have in common is the assumption that whether or not the world is moving toward a more illiberal dispensation is determined by the dispositions and policies of a few great powers. We present descriptive data and qualitative evidence suggesting that there may indeed be an “illiberal” transformation underway but that we should look well beyond the actions and intentions of China or Russia to understand it. We understand this to be a more immanent and horizontal process we call “learning from examples.” In our next section, we will explain our theoretical understanding of this phenomenon. The dataset we present in our third section is an amended and updated version of Christensen and Weinstein’s (2013) database of legislative restrictions on NGOs. The database focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on restrictions on foreign-­ funded NGOs. As we will show below, our evidence suggests that these types of restrictions are among the most common. We have turned the original cross-­sectional data into a time series, added 4 additional years (2013–2016), and raised the bar for what is considered as a “restriction” rather than just a regulative measure. Given the steep rise in restrictions already noted, updating these data and modifying their structure have intrinsic merit apart from our theory of diffusion, as it will enable further analyses by others. We corroborate and elaborate on our findings regarding the “learning from examples” hypothesis with qualitative evidence from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa in section four. Elsewhere, we also tested this hypothesis by means of survival analyses, using spatially weighted techniques (Glasius et al., 2020). Through close textual comparisons, we provide “smoking gun” evidence of learning from examples, tracing the migration of specific legal formulations of restrictions from one state’s law to another in consecutive years. Lastly, we contextualize our findings in relation to research on the quality of democracy and

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the international relations debate on the transformation of the liberal world order and spell out implications for policymakers and civil society practitioners.

15.2  Illiberal Norm Diffusion: Learning from Examples The trend in NGO restrictions we demonstrate is a form of diffusion: the “prior adoption of a trait or practice in a population alters the probability of adoption for remaining non-adopters” (Strang, 1991, p. 325). The mechanism of diffusion in this case is not coercion or competition but learning: “the process whereby policy makers use the experience of other countries to estimate the likely consequences of policy change” (Gilardi, 2012). Two existing studies on the relationship between NGO restrictions and foreign aid (Christensen & Weinstein, 2013; Dupuy et al., 2016) provide valuable clues as to the trade-off governments may make in relation to NGO restrictions: it is a balancing act between the domestic desirability of curtailing potentially oppositional civil society voices and the international reputational and economic costs of such restrictions. On the desirability side of the equation, a government would not necessarily need strong proof that NGOs in general are associated with protest movements or disruptive political activity to take restrictive measures. The measures might be intended to target just a few NGOs, perhaps with an explicit human rights or democratization agenda, or concerned with explosive issues such as corruption or pollution while leaving others unaffected. As we will describe below, a panoply of possible measures ostensibly “regulating” either all NGOs or more specifically foreign-­funded NGOs lends itself to such selective application. On the reputational risk side of the equation, the abovementioned studies assume that the reputational costs of restricting NGOs are given. The literature on liberal norm diffusion teaches us instead that governmental perceptions of the reputational risks and benefits of particular policies are not constant. Studies in the field of human rights have mostly concluded that states ratify human rights treaties primarily for reputational benefit (Hathaway, 2002; Hafner-Burton & Tsutsui, 2007; Vreeland, 2008; see Greenhill, 2010 for a rare exception). Regardless of the exact mix between strategic learning and deep learning, there is much evidence for norm diffusion through learning from previous adoptions. So far, this literature has almost universally focused on the—rather heterogeneous—bundle of norms commonly referred to as “liberal,” including trade liberalization, democratization, and human rights norms. But the theory can also lend itself to explaining diffusion of illiberal norms. When it comes to illiberal norm adoption, a purely reputational advantage such as that gained from ratifying human rights treaties does not make much sense: major powers such as China or Russia do not promote and reward illiberal norm adoption in the same way that the West was promoting liberal norms in the 1990s. But it does make sense that governments would find comfort in the adoption of NGO restrictions by other states, and as they

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see others adopt restrictions, they come increasingly to believe that it is now legitimate to do so. We adopt Simmons’ assumption that for reasons that are bound up with shared history, linguistic or cultural similarities, ease of travel, and personal ties, “the region in which a country is situated” constitutes the “crucial reference group” (Simmons, 2009, p. 90), not just to decide whether to restrict NGOs but also for inspiration as to what legislative measures to take.

15.3  Data and Patterns of Adoption We present our amended and expanded version of the database reported on in Christensen and Weinstein (2013), which documented legislative restrictions on NGOs up until 2012. Since early data are sparse, we begin our database in 1992 but have added 4 more years: 2013–2016. We have coded adoption as one for the year in which the restriction was enacted and all years afterward that it was in effect for the period 1992–2016 and zero otherwise. In case the adoption year was unspecified, we have either found it through other sources or chosen to code it zero in order to consistently under- rather than overestimate our dependent variable. We have dropped some of the legislative measures discerned by Christensen and Weinstein: constitutional provisions because they rarely change and have limited practical impact (measures 1a and 1b in the original data); the obligation to register an NGO and the obligation to disclose funding sources because they certainly regulate but in our view do not necessarily restrict the operation of NGOs (measures 2a and 3a, respectively); and instances of intimidation because they are not legislative measures and may not be consistently reported by our sources (measure 4b). We have turned all remaining measures into binary variables, as shown in Table 15.1.

Table 15.1  Coding of NGO restriction measures, adapted from Christensen and Weinstein (2013) Category 2 barriers to entry

3 barriers to resources

4 barriers to advocacy

Code 2b 2c 2d 3b 3c 3d 3e 3f 4a 4c 4d

Type of measure Burdensome registration No appeal against denied registration Special restrictions on registration of foreign-funded NGOs Prior government approval required for foreign funding Foreign funding must be channeled through government Restrictions on foreign support other than funding Prohibition on all foreign funding Prohibition on foreign funding for certain type(s) of NGOs Restrictions on NGOs engaging in political activities Special restrictions on foreign-funded NGOs engaging in political activities Prohibition on NGOs engaging in political activities

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Following the definitions of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (2008), the database distinguishes between three broad categories of restrictions. Barriers to entry refer to “the use of law to discourage, burden, or prevent the formation of organizations,” including obstructions to the formation of existing international organizations as a recognized domestic legal entity. Barriers to resources refer to “the use of law to restrict the ability of organizations to secure the financial resources necessary to carry out their work.” Barriers to advocacy use law to “restrict NGOs from engaging in the full range of…public policy engagement” by regulating or prohibiting what are deemed to be “political” activities. The data are based on reports from four sources: the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), the US Agency for International Development’s NGO Sustainability Index, the World Movement for Democracy (WMD), and Global Integrity reports. The database covers 96 states. Since our sources are mostly advocacy reports, it is likely biased toward states that have indeed enacted restrictive legislation. Hence, the database does not lend itself to making pronouncements about absolute levels of diffusion worldwide. But it does help us to better understand what drives adoption of NGO restrictions. A few further caveats are in order. First, we have counted specific legislative measures, not laws. The Civil Society Organizations Act of Bhutan (2007), for instance, was coded as incorporating four different restrictions: placing undue burdens on NGO registration in general (2b); placing specific restrictions on registration of foreign-funded NGOs (2d); making channeling of foreign funding through a government agency mandatory (3c); and placing further restrictions on foreign support (3d) by prohibiting the merger of domestic and foreign organizations. Also, we have only counted restrictions when we have definitive evidence that they were not just proposed by government, or discussed in parliament, but actually adopted. Draft laws may sometimes already affect adoption by other states, a dynamic our database does not capture, but which we encountered in our qualitative analysis. Our data matches the more limited dataset by Dupuy et al. (2016), which counts 39 restrictive laws, in terms of the nature of the restrictions, but the time of adoption sometimes diverged by 1 year. As can be discerned from Fig. 15.1, restrictions against NGOs were relatively rare and rose only slightly, for most of the 1990s. From 1997 onward, the number begins to rise considerably every year and continues to rise during the 2000s as the total growth in the number of NGOs begins to level off. In order to get a better sense of what kinds of states restrict NGOs, we divided them into democracies, autocracies, and “anocracies” or hybrid regimes, following the Polity IV categorization (Marshall & Gurr, 2014). Figure 15.2 shows that there has been at least a fourfold increase in NGO restrictions in states that are not fully democratic between 1992 and 2016. Differences in growth rates between autocracies and hybrid regimes are small, in line with our argument that restriction of NGOs is not only or even primarily an authoritarian phenomenon. Adoptions of restrictions by democracies in our database have also increased, from an average of 0.47 to 1.47 restrictions per country. Bolivia and more recently India have adopted a number of restrictions against NGOs; Mexico and South Africa

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Fig. 15.2  Average number of restrictions per country, by regime type, 1992–2016

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made registration burdensome; and the USA—though a being major provider of aid to foreign NGOs itself—places special restrictions on the registration of NGOs based in the USA that receive foreign funding. As mentioned above, democratic states that never adopted any restrictions on NGOs are not picked up in our source material and hence not included in our data. Figure 15.3 shows that states have adopted a wide array of different types of NGO restriction legislation. The most common type of restriction is making registration burdensome (2b) by making the requirements for becoming registered vague and/or onerous. Azerbaijan’s NGO Law of 2009, for example, requires NGOs to register with the Ministry of Justice within 30 days after their formation but does not specify a time limit by which the Ministry must process the registration, giving it leeway for de facto refusal of registration by means of inaction (Ramazanova and Others vs. Azerbaijan, ECtHR, as described in ICNL 2009, pp. 13–14). Similar measures were adopted by 61% of the states in our dataset. This fits with our intuition that reputational cost is the main barrier to adoption of restrictions: burdensome registration requirements are a flexible way of making it difficult for NGOs to operate under cover of bureaucratic procedure, rather than openly exerting political repression. Special restrictions on the registration of NGOs that receive foreign funding (2d) are also quite prevalent. They have been adopted by half of the states covered. Thus, foreign-funded NGOs can be prevented from functioning at all. We will describe exactly what some of these provisions look like in our qualitative analysis below. Another frequent measure directed against foreign funding is the requirement of prior government approval (3b). This even more targeted measure allows a government to make a case-by-case assessment of whether foreign funding is on the whole beneficial or threatening to it. Additional restrictions (3d), rather like burdensome registration, cover a range of seemingly bureaucratic requirements that can make foreign funding difficult without prohibiting it outright. Another measure that gives a government full control over foreign funding without seemingly being overtly repressive is the requirement that the money be channeled through a government institution or state-owned bank (3c). Still relatively rare, this kind of measure has gained traction in recent years. A much smaller group of states has taken measures more explicitly to restrict (4a) or even prohibit (4d) political activities by NGOs. This measure has been resorted to more frequently in the Arab world after 2011, covering all NGOs, whereas African states have been more prone to restricting political activities by international NGOs only. Overall, it is clear that foreign-­ funded NGOs are considerably more restricted in their political activities than all NGOs (24% of states having adopted such restrictions vs. 17%). Finally, it is worth considering the regional spread of NGO restriction legislation. Figure 15.4 suggests, first of all, that unlike “liberal norms,” NGO restrictions have not originated in one region and diffused from there. In each region, there are a few early adopters of NGO restrictions, followed by a rather gradual increase over time. The pioneers include Bangladesh and Nepal in Asia, Bolivia in Latin America, and, somewhat later, Belarus and Turkmenistan in the post-Soviet region (which in our dataset comprises the Central Asian states and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine). The BRIC powers (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are

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Fig. 15.4  Average number of restrictions per country, by region, 1992–2016

notably later adopters. Although the different regions follow a similar increasing pattern of restrictions, the curve is steepest for Asian (n = 19) and Middle East and North African (MENA, n = 19) countries. The European countries in our dataset (n = 11, not including the “post-Soviet states” listed above) hardly show any increase on average. As shown, the descriptive data tell us that there clearly is diffusion, that it does not appear to be a direct response to NGO growth, that it is not only or even mostly an autocratic regime phenomenon, and that it is not driven by major powers, discarding a number of alternative explanations to our proposition of “learning from examples.”

15.4  L  earning from Examples: Findings from Text Comparisons The descriptive data presented above show clear patterns of diffusion in most world regions, and the way in which this diffusion unfolds suggests that this is not a simple “China effect” or major powers story. But in order to be confident that the patterns we see are indeed a matter of causation, it is necessary to have a closer look at the actual legal provisions through which NGOs are restricted. A powerful way of validating our hypothesis of learning from examples would be to see whether we see similarly or identically worded stipulations travel from one legal jurisdiction to another.

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The most prominent source of information for our data, the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), maintains an online library of laws that are relevant to civil society, but many are in local languages only. For two regions, we could access most of the relevant laws in English, either as official documents or in unofficial translations: the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa (see List of Laws for our sources). Given space constraints, we focus on two “chains of diffusion” within these laws, which we describe chronologically. In both cases, we discuss the similarities between the laws of the first dyad in detail, making close textual comparisons, following up with very brief discussions of subsequent instances of diffusion. These textual comparisons provide “smoking gun” evidence of learning from examples: the close resemblance in language and details demonstrates that the cascade of NGO restrictions cannot simply be attributed to similar states facing similar challenges and opportunities and reaching for similar solutions in isolation. Our analyses do not trace precisely where, when, and how policymakers came to know of and decide to adopt elements of previous legislation. That would be best left to studies devoted to one particular instance of diffusion of NGO restrictions between two states.

15.4.1  E  gypt to Middle East and East Africa: Double Permissions for In-Country Activities The Middle East has a long tradition of restrictions on domestic organizing. But from the early 2000s, we see evidence of diffusion of new types of restrictions in the Middle East, later also moving into East Africa, focusing on restricting the activities of foreign NGOs in particular. These restrictions are a typical example of bureaucratic obstacles rather than overt repression: multiple government institutions must give clearance and therefore have leeway to obstruct or withhold it, before a foreign NGO can carry out a project. The laws adopted by Yemen (Law No.1 and its Executive Bylaw, 2001a, b) and Egypt (Law No.84 and its Executive Statute, 2002a, b) both describe the exact same steps that need to be taken for a foreign organization to get permission to undertake in-country activities, in five consecutive articles. First, the organization needs to seek permission from the Foreign Ministry (Egypt) or the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (Yemen), indicating the legal basis for their activity, the type of activity, and the budget (art.3, Egyptian Executive Statute; art. 51, Yemeni Executive Bylaw). Then, that Ministry sends a description of the proposed activities to the Ministry of Social Affairs, which is to respond within 15 days (art.4, Egyptian Executive Statute; art. 52, Yemeni Executive Bylaw). If the first Ministry approves of the application, it enters into an agreement with the foreign organization within 60  days (art.5, Egyptian Executive Statute; art. 53, Yemeni Executive Bylaw). The first Ministry or the foreign organization itself forwards the agreement to the Ministry of Social Affairs (art.6, Egyptian Executive Statute; art. 54, Yemeni Executive Bylaw). Finally, the Ministry of Social Affairs gives authorization for the activity within

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15  days of receiving the agreement (art.7, Egyptian Executive Statute; art. 55, Yemeni Executive Bylaw). These fine-grained similarities indisputably show that one state has been learning, indeed copying, from the legislation by the other. The chronology seems to indicate that Egypt, adopting in 2002, learned from Yemen’s 2001 law. But common sense would suggest that it is more likely that poorer, smaller Yemen imitated Egypt instead. Indeed, it turns out that the Egyptian law was first approved by parliament in 1999 but “declared unconstitutional by the Egyptian Court of Cassation because of procedural irregularities, but an almost identical version was enacted as Law 84 of 2002” (ICNL, 2010, p. 3). Egypt can therefore be considered as the originator of these provisions. In the years afterward, similar but less elaborate restrictions for foreign NGOs were adopted in the same region, by Turkey in 2004 (Law No. 5253, art.5), by Eritrea in 2005 (Proclamation 145/2005, arts.7.4 and 6.1), by Ethiopia in 2005 (New Procedure), and by Sudan in 2006 (Voluntary and Humanitarian Work (Organization) Act, art.9.3). Each of these provisions conflates registration of foreign NGOs per se with advance permission for intended activities from multiple government entities, typically the Foreign Ministry or its embassies as well as a domestic ministry in charge of NGOs. A final, less certain case of diffusion of the “double permission for in-country activities” may be Iran, which in a law adopted in 2006 mandates the Ministry of the Interior and the Foreign Ministry to jointly prepare an executive bylaw specifying permission procedures within 3 months. It remains unclear whether such a bylaw was adopted (Iran, Law on Establishment and Activities of Non-Government Organisations, 2006, art.26).

15.4.2  A  n African Cycle: Monitoring NGOs Through a Regulatory Board The Ugandan Non-Governmental Organisation Registration Regulations, promulgated in 2008 (but coming into force in 2009), set off a cycle of African adoptions of NGO restrictions focused this time on domestic (but often foreign-funded) NGOs. This law and its successors are all characterized by the broad powers given to a national regulatory body, consisting of representatives from various government ministries. While Uganda already had a National Board for Non-Governmental Organizations, the new regulation expanded its powers. Just a few months later, in February 2009, Ethiopia adopted a law establishing a Charities and Societies Agency and describing its powers (Proclamation 621, art.4), which run parallel to those of the Ugandan Board in a number of ways. First, under both laws, NGOs have to apply for registration with the Board or Agency (Ugandan Law No.19, art.5, 6; Ethiopian Proclamation 621, art.68). Second, both institutions have broad powers to reject applications: the Ugandan Board only has to “give reasons” for the rejection; the Ethiopian law allows rejection based on the likelihood that the NGO will have “purposes prejudicial to public peace, welfare or good order in Ethiopia” (Ugandan Law No.19, art.9; Ethiopian Proclamation 621, art.69.2). Third,

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registration only entitles NGOs to temporary, renewable permits (Ugandan Law No.19, art.7; Ethiopian Proclamation 621, art.76.1). Fourth, both institutions can also revoke these permits once given (Ugandan Law No.19, art.11; Ethiopian Proclamation 621, art.92.2.b). Fifth, under both laws, NGOs have to submit annual reports of their activities and annual accounts to the Board or Agency (Ugandan Law No.19, art. 16a and 16b; Ethiopian Proclamation 621, art.80.1 and 80.3). Finally, the Board or Agency can dissolve an NGO for a number of reasons, including for Uganda “any other reason the Board considers necessary in the public interest” and for Ethiopia because the organization’s purposes are deemed “prejudicial to public peace, welfare or security” (Ugandan Law No.19, art. 17.3.e; Ethiopian Proclamation 621, art.93.1.b; 92.2.b). Laws establishing government-controlled NGO oversight bodies were also adopted by Zambia (2009), Rwanda (2011; 2012), and Kenya (2013). Each of these bodies was given broad powers to reject NGO registration (Zambia, Law No.16, art.15a; Rwanda Law No.4, art.20; Kenya, Law No.18, art.16), for instance, because its activities are “not in the public interest” (Zambia, Law No.16, art.15a) or the NGO “intends to jeopardise security, public order, public health, morals or human rights” (Rwanda Law No.4, art.20.2). They can also suspend or revoke NGO licenses for such reasons (Zambia, Law No.16, art.17; Rwanda Law No.4, art.32; 33; Kenya, Law No.18 art.18).

15.4.3  Implications By tracing specific legal provisions and institutions from one law to another, these qualitative analyses clearly confirm that states are studying the laws of previous adopters and actually copying useful elements. At the same time, we did not find any instances of a wholesale copy-paste of all or even most of a law. Instead, the laws often appear to be a bricolage of provisions representing local legal traditions combined with articles from one or more foreign exemplars. This is perhaps not surprising, since these laws do serve domestic purposes, so even if examples play an important role, the laws are always tailored to domestic circumstances. Second, diffusion processes are heavily geographically determined, moving between countries that either share a border or are in close proximity to each other. But while linguistic and historical factors play a role, they are less constraining than one might expect: Egypt’s law influenced not only that of Arabic Yemen but also East African Ethiopia and Eritrea, and perhaps even Iran. Ethiopia in fact looked both to Egyptian and to Ugandan legislation. The Ugandan law further inspired not only Kenya and Zambia but also former French colony Rwanda.

15.5  Conclusions The adoption of legislation that restricts and hinders NGOs in carrying out their work turns out to be much more a matter of opportunity than a response to acute threats. We appear to be witnessing a gradual shifting of the goalposts regarding the

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extent to which states believe they can legitimately restrict freedom of association, driven by learning from examples. The large number of restrictions we found in 2015 and 2016, as well as many draft laws yet to be adopted, suggests, moreover, that the diffusion of legislative restrictions against NGOs is ongoing and has far from run its course. As suggested by recent literature on the quality of democracy (Luhrmann et al., 2018; Abramowitz & Repucci, 2018), the growing restrictions on freedom of association are part of a broader trend, not of states “flipping” from democracy to authoritarianism, but of a gradual erosion of the quality of democracy even in long-established democratic systems. However, this comparative politics literature has not considered the role played by diffusion, and more specifically “learning from examples,” in explaining the rise in illiberal policies. While international relation scholars debate whether the BRIC powers have the capacity or the desire to challenge the liberal world order, our findings suggest a more immanent and horizontal process of illiberal transformation. It may not be the rise of “illiberal” BRIC powers as such that sparked an illiberal norm cascade, but rather a gradual change in perceptions regarding what constitutes legitimate government interference with freedom of association, and a decrease in associated reputational risks, based on learning from the regional environment. While the rise of illiberal powers or the deteriorating quality of democracy even in Western states may exert some latent influence, processes of norm diffusion are importantly also self-reinforcing: perceptions of legitimacy and reputational risk alter with each adoption. At the level of civil society practitioners and policymakers, our findings have various implications. First of all, if governments are copying from each other’s laws, and then civil society should also look at legislation beyond borders, anticipating examples their governments may consider following. They can identify and perhaps preempt adoption of restrictive provisions but also uphold and promote best practice laws in the region. Second, painstaking legal analysis, experienced as impartial, is required to combat the gradual shift in governmental perceptions of acceptable restrictions on freedom of association. From a policymaker’s and more specifically a donor’s perspective, supporting the work of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law or the cash-strapped United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Association may be avenues for doing so. If governments have been implicitly taught in recent years that restricting NGOs by legislative means is acceptable, it may yet be possible for global civil society to teach them otherwise.

References Abramowitz, M. J., & Repucci, S. (2018). Democracy beleaguered. Journal of Democracy, 29(2), 128–142. Anheier, H. (Ed.). (2004). Civil society: Measurement, evaluation, policy. Earthscan. Anheier, H., Glasius, M., & Kaldor, M. (2001). Introducing global civil society. In H. Anheier, M. Glasius, & M. Kaldor (Eds.), Global civil society 2001 (pp. 3–22). Oxford University Press.

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Carothers, T., & Brechenmacher, S. (2014). Closing space: Democracy and human rights support under fire. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Christensen, D., & Weinstein, J. (2013). Defunding dissent: Restrictions on aid to NGOs. Journal of Democracy, 24(2), 77–91. CIVICUS. (2016). Core Civil Society rights violated in 109 countries: Civil Society Watch Report 2016. Retrieved from https://www.civicus.org/images/CSW_Report.pdf Collier, D., & Levitsky, S. (1997). Democracy with adjectives: Conceptual innovation in comparative research. World Politics, 49, 430–451. Diamond, L. J. (2002). Thinking about hybrid regimes. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 21–35. Dupuy, K., Ron, J., & Prakash, A. (2016). Hands off my regime! Governments’ restrictions on foreign aid to non-governmental organizations in poor and middle-income countries. World Development, 84, 299–311. Gilardi, F. (2012). Transnational diffusion: Norms, ideas, and policies. In W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse, & B. Simmons (Eds.), Handbook of international relations (pp. 453–477). SAGE. Glasius, M., Schalk, J., & De Lange, M. (2020). Illiberal norm diffusion: How do governments learn to restrict non-governmental organizations? International Studies Quarterly, 64(2), 453–468. Goh, E. (2013). The struggle for order: Hegemony, hierarchy, and transition in post-cold war East Asia. Oxford University Press. Greenhill, B. (2010). The company you keep: International socialization and the diffusion of human rights norms. International Studies Quarterly, 54(1), 127–145. Hafner-Burton, E., & Tsutsui, K. (2007). Justice lost! The failure of international human rights law to matter where needed Most. Journal of Peace Research, 44(4), 407–425. Hathaway, O. (2002). Do human rights treaties make a difference? The Yale Law Journal, 111, 1935–2042. International Center for Not-for-Profit Law and World Movement for Democracy Secretariat at the National Endowment for Democracy. (2008). Defending Civil Society. The International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, 10(2) Retrieved from https://www.icnl.org/resources/research/ ijnl/defending-­civil-­society ICNL. (2009). Assessment of the Legal Framework for Non-Governmental Organizations in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/research/library/files/Azerbaijan/ Assessment%20final.pdf ICNL. (2010). Survey of Arab NGO Laws. Global Trends in NGO Law, 1(4) Retrieved from http:// www.icnl.org/research/trends/trends1-­4.pdf?pdf=trends1-­4 Ikenberry, G. J. (2011). Liberal leviathan: The origins, crisis, and transformation of the American world order. Princeton University Press. Jacob, S., Scherpereel, J. A., & Adams, M. (2017). Will rising powers undermine global norms? The case of gender-balanced decision-making. European Journal of International Relations, 23(4), 780–808. Kupchan, C. (2014). The normative foundations of hegemony and the coming challenge to Pax Americana. Security Studies, 23(2), 21–57. Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown. List, R., & Dörner, W. (Eds.). (2012). Civil society, conflict and violence. CIVICUS Global Study of Civil Society Series. Bloomsbury. Luhrmann, A., Mechkova, V., Dahlum, S., Maxwell, L., Olin, M., Sanhueza Petrarca, C., Sigman, R., Wilson, M. C., & Lindberg, S. I. (2018). State of the world 2017: Autocratization and exclusion? Democratization, 25(8), 1321–1340. Marshall, M., & Gurr, T. R. (2014). Polity IV Project: Political regime characteristics and transitions, 1800–2013. Retrieved from http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm Merkel, W. (2004). Embedded and defective democracies. Democratization, 11(4), 33–58. Rutzen, D. (2015). Civil society under assault. Journal of Democracy, 26(4), 28–39. Simmons, B. (2009). Mobilizing for human rights: International law in domestic politics. Cambridge University Press.

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Stephen, M. D. (2014). Rising powers, global capitalism and Liberal global governance: A historical materialist account of the BRICs challenge. European Journal of International Relations, 20(4), 912–938. Strang, D. (1991). Adding social structure to diffusion models: An event history framework. In Sociological methods & research (pp. 324–353). Tansey, O. (2016). The problem with autocracy promotion. Democratization, 23(1), 141–163. Union of International Associations (UIA). (2016/2017). Yearbook of international organizations (Vol. 1–4). Brill. Vreeland, J. (2008). Political institutions and human rights: Why dictatorships enter into the United Nations convention against torture. International Organization, 62(1), 65–101.

List of Laws with Full Titles and Sources Bhutan. (2007). Civil Society Organization Act of Bhutan. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/ research/library/files/Bhutan/CivilSocietyOrgAct.pdf Egypt. (2002a). Law no. 84 on non-governmental organizations and its executive statute 2002. Online. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/research/library/files/Egypt/law84-­2002-­En.pdf Egypt. (2002b). Executive Statute of the Law on Non-Governmental Societies and Organizations Online. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/research/library/files/Egypt/law178-­2002-­En.pdf Eritrea. (2005). Proclamation 145/2005 Proclamation to Determine the Administration of Non-­ Governmental Organisations. Ethiopia. (2005). New procedure pertaining to non-profit making foreign organizations that require to be registered and carry out activities in Ethiopia. Online. Retrieved from http://www.icnl. org/research/library/files/Ethiopia/procedure.pdf Ethiopia. (2009). Charities and Societies Proclamation No. 621. Online. Retrieved from http:// www.refworld.org/docid/4ba7a0cb2.html Iran. (2006). Law on establishment & activities of non-government organisations. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/research/library/files/Iran/ngo.pdf Kenya. (2013). No. 18, The public benefit organizations act. Online. Retrieved from http://www. icnl.org/research/library/files/Kenya/pbo2013.pdf Rwanda. (2011). Law no. 41/2011 establishing the Rwanda governance board and determining its Mission, organization and functioning. Online. Retrieved from http://www.rlrc.gov.rw/fileadmin/user_upload/Laws/Laws/RWA%20LAWS%20PUBLISHED%20IN%202011/RWA%20 2011%20%20%20LAW%20NO%2041-­2011%20%20LAW%20ESTABL%20RWANDA%20 GOVERNANCE%20BOARD%20MISSION%20ORGANIZATION%20FUNCTION-­%20 %20OG%20N0%2046%20OF%2014%20NOV.%202011.pdf Rwanda. (2012). Law no. 04, governing the organization and functioning of national non-­ governmental-­organizations. Online. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/research/library/ files/Rwanda/Rwanda%201.pdf Sudan. (2006). Voluntary and humanitarian work (organization) act. Online. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/research/library/files/Sudan/ngonorth.pdf Turkey. (2004). Law no. 5253, associations law. Online. Retrieved from https://www.microfinancegateway.org/sites/default/files/mfg-­en-­paper-­republic-­of-­turkey-­associations-­law-­ nov-­2004.pdf Uganda. (2009). Law no. 19, non-governmental organization registration. Online. Retrieved from https://ulii.org/ug/legislation/statutoryinstrument/19/si-­19.pdf Yemen. (2001a). Law no. 1, the law on associations and foundations. Online. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/research/library/files/Yemen/1-­2001-­En.pdf Yemen. (2001b). The executive byelaw of law no. 1, the law on associations and foundations. Online. Retrieved from http://www.icnl.org/research/library/files/Yemen/Reg-­1-­2001-­En.pdf Zambia. (2009). Law no. 16, the non-governmental organizations act. Online. Retrieved from http://www.parliament.gov.zm/sites/default/files/documents/acts/Non-­Governmental%20 Organisations%27%20Act.PDF

Chapter 16

Civil Society Actors in International Cultural Diplomacy Yudhishthir Raj Isar Abstract  This chapter seeks to deepen our understanding of processes of cultural relations, often today labeled “cultural diplomacy,” from at least two perspectives. First, it highlights the role civil society actors play in international cultural exchange and draws attention to their motivations, values, and efforts. These are influenced, often unnoticed by the actors themselves, by structural inequalities, for example, funding sources or the “resourcing model,” which could lead, again often unintended, to paternalistic relations. Second, the potential of Bourdieu’s field theory is sounded out to gain a deeper understanding of these processes. It becomes obvious how the definition of diversity, for example, is deeply dependent upon the cultural and social capital, tastes, dispositions, beliefs, and perceptions of key cultural intermediaries. The contribution therefore helps to reflect on and thereby get a more balanced understanding of the assets and drawbacks of both value-driven and interest-driven international cultural relations. Keywords  International relations · Cultural relations · Cultural diplomacy · Arts and culture · Bourdieu · Field theory

16.1  Introduction In 2018–2019, my work as a Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI) centered on international cultural relations and diplomacy.1 This was not a domain that Helmut Anheier and I attended to specifically in any of the five volumes of the Cultures and Globalization Series that we conceived together and

1  I gratefully acknowledge the support extended to me by the faculty, notably Prof. Anna Triandafyllidou, and fellows of the EUI’s Global Governance Programme, where this text was principally drafted.

Y. R. Isar (*) The American University of Paris, Paris, France Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_16

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co-edited between 2002 and 2012—a decade of close collaboration that greatly enriched me personally, in both human and intellectual terms. The topic of international cultural relations became a focus of my own work only some years later and—unbeknownst to me until early 2019—was also one that Helmut took up as well. Imagine my pleasure at discovering at the EUI in April 2019 the report of an applied research project entitled The Cultural Value Project: Cultural Relations in Countries in Transition (referred to henceforth as CVP) of which he was a co-­driver and co-author (Open University and Hertie School, 2018). The research report stemming from this project corroborates or strengthens several of the hypotheses that had emerged in my mind over the course of several decades of activity in international cultural cooperation2 and later in academia. Cultural diplomacy as discourse and practice looms large today in the academic disciplines of cultural policy studies and international relations. The term is so widely used nowadays that it has become a floating signifier, deployed in many different understandings across foreign policy establishments as well as by individuals and organizations in the arts and culture sector (e.g., Ang et  al., 2015). Many of these understandings go well beyond the original meaning of the notion, namely, the processes that occur when formally designated diplomats, operating at the service of governments, use cultural resources to help advance national interests. Earlier, analysts tended to distinguish between such governmentally driven cultural practice and the essentially noninstrumental processes of international cultural relations, which are based on flows of cultural exchange that take place naturally and organically, without government intervention. In recent times, however, the distinction has become blurred. Today, many non-state actors, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), artists, and arts organizations profess to practice cultural diplomacy, even though their professional and artistic relations with counterparts in other countries are driven far more by the desire for peer-to-peer collaboration and exchange rather than being consciously designed to serve the “national interest.” Yet there are also some such actors that wittingly lend themselves to serving that particular interest. As a result, the domain has become a truly fuzzy area. As ever-increasing numbers of scholars research this fuzzy area, their attention remains stubbornly focused upon phenomena and processes occurring at the governmental level and between and among nation-states. This form of methodological nationalism has led to two major lacunae. The first is the absence of analysis of the motivations, values, and efforts of civil society actors in the field. The second is the paucity of research on how cities practice international cultural relations and diplomacy (and often do so mainly via the agency of civil society actors). My own interest in the latter having been honed and sharpened through my erstwhile cooperation with Helmut Anheier, it is the first lacuna—the lack of research on the role of civil

2  Initially as an official in UNESCO’s culture department and subsequently as a consultant to the European Commission; as president of the European platform organization “Culture Action Europe”; and lastly as the Scientific Coordinator in 2013–2014 for an EU Preparatory Action on “Culture in EU External Relations”.

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society actors in international cultural relations and diplomacy—that became the focus of my reflection and research while I was at the EUI in 2018–2019.

16.2  Civil Society Actors in Cultural Diplomacy The talismanic deployment of the term “cultural diplomacy” by and in relation to civil society actors in the cultural sector raises questions such as the following: • What motivates civil society actors to carry out cultural diplomacy/cultural relations? • What new connections and crossings are they forging? • Are transnational communities of commitment and expertise emerging? • What are the power relationships in this universe? • What asymmetries persist? • Are actually existing cultural relations marked by meaningful collaboration between state and non-state actors? • How much autonomy do governmental agencies afford civil society actors in shaping the pathways of international cultural relations? • In a time of massive migratory flows, how are the cultural referents of civil society efforts affected? • Civil society cultural actors being mainly city-based, what sorts of new patterns of cooperation are emerging as city authorities operate autonomously from nation-states? Despite the increasing use of the cultural diplomacy framing, cultural operators still prefer the term cultural relations, which connotes a dialogical rather than a monological approach—the one to which they all profess to aspire. Recent informants have variously indicated how the pursuit of cultural relations affords them the benefits—or forms of value—that I had already hypothesized in the course of my own trajectory and which has been largely dealt with in the Open University/Hertie School study alluded to above. One of Helmut Anheier’s greatest strengths, as I observed when we worked together, was his eclectic capacity to combine his conceptual grounding in Weberian sociology with a range of other theoretical framings. I for my part, by virtue of my sociological training in France, have found Bourdieu’s field theory to be a promising theoretical lens. It addresses questions that the study of cultural processes often ignores, e.g., the interests at stake for individual and institutional agents and “the mechanisms and stratagems by means of which these interests assert themselves, and the ultimate role that such cultural assertions of interest play in maintaining or altering the social distribution of power” (English, 2005, pp. 8–9). A Bourdieusian field is a “space of play,” but it is also “a space of conflict and competition” (original emphasis) (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 17; see also Kloot, 2009). Agents struggle for the forms of capital that are at stake, the possession of which determines the power they are able to wield, i.e., the influence they are able to exert. The outcome

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of a struggle between agents depends on the capital each one holds, as well as the skill with which they play the game. While a field may be a “space of play,” the structure of the field itself depends on the “relations of force between players” and the distances, gaps, and asymmetries between positions in the field. The positions that agents occupy in the field are determined by the capital that each holds and the relations of power between them. The outcomes also depend on the structure of the field, the “lie of the land” at that particular moment in time. Agents who dominate are better able to impose their own forms of belief in the game and its stakes and are therefore better able to reap its rewards. Within the European Union (EU), the international cultural relations “field” consists of an assemblage of triangular relationships between and among cultural operators, the European national cultural institutes, and EU institutions. Among and between them, competition exists, and at several levels. These relationships can be said to constitute a field in more than just a metaphorical sense. I shall return to these thoughts in the concluding section of this contribution.

16.2.1  I nternational Cultural Relations: Upsides and Downsides As the CVP report (Open University and Hertie School, 2018) confirmed, cultural relations activities create different forms of value such as the following: • Mutual learning, together with space for joint reflection, debate, research, and experimentation, often leads to active co-creation of new work. As a leading cultural activist has pointed out: Most artists today assume that international exposure, contacts and collaborative opportunities constitute essential aspects of their careers, reinforce their economic position, provide additional security and bring precious artistic stimuli … Even the very best cultural organisation has sufficient reason to work internationally, not only in order to sustain its exemplary role and confirm it again and again, but as a matter of professional solidarity as well: by sharing some of its experiences and offering its own ingredients of excellence to other … organisations and … professionals, thus contributing to the professional development of the field on an international scale. (Klaic, 2007, pp. 39–40)

• Acquiring new skills was mentioned as a key benefit by some two-thirds of organizations engaged in cultural relations that responded to the Hertie School’s survey for the CVP, even though skills development per se was rarely the main focus. However, the suitability of the skills thus acquired is often called into question, for example, as it was with regard to the Goethe-Institut’s Kulturakademie—the training was deemed to be based on European models of cultural entrepreneurship and unsuited to the Egyptian context. • Cultural relations augment organizational capacity. The greater public interest and improved outreach that accrue through cultural relations projects were among the key benefits perceived. Extending audiences and increasing visibility

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transnationally can contribute to longer-term organizational capacities and the sustainability thereof. Cultural organizations also value the greater connectivity afforded through transnational networking. • Increased funding is obviously among the most important benefits, but it is perceived differently by different stakeholders. Clearly, the funding provided through cooperation with European organizations—or even with European partner cultural operators—boosts local partner organizations. Yet, the type of funding available is often short-term because European funders are wary of unwittingly encouraging dependency. The downside to this of course is precarious sustainability.3 • The trope of “intercultural dialogue” has acquired the status of a higher end in itself, and many cultural organizations search for ways to place intercultural dialogue as a collateral benefit of their cultural relations activities. While collaboration between organizations is highly valued for such reasons, and yet others could be adduced, international cultural relations can also have negative dimensions such as: • The misalignment of goals and organizational cultures between users, organizations, and funders often creates tensions and causes disappointment. • Unclear rules of engagement often bring about misalignments of expectations and goals between foreign actors, delivery teams, and local participants. For example, partner organizations and users involved in the CVP case studies did not always understand funding constraints that their European partners took for granted. Often there was considerable disappointment at expectations not being met—sometimes on both sides. • For many, international cultural cooperation is far from being a “level playing field.” The report mentions how local participants in some projects sensed a lack of reciprocity or mutuality, which was associated with feeling undervalued by the foreign partner organization. • A recurring complaint, particularly in large countries such as India, is that of exclusivity in terms of location, partners, and types of beneficiaries. Capital cities take it all. Participants in the workshops devoted to British Council and Goethe-­ Institut activities not only underlined the big city bias but also the skew in terms of income, educational level, and organizational profile. As the CVP report puts it: In a country like Egypt, for example, where access to cultural goods and services beyond television is quite limited for most people, reaching broader audiences (in terms of location, socio-economic status, educational and cultural capital, gender, and so on) with activities geared toward reducing social or political tensions and enhancing understanding requires

3  The CVP findings also remind us that individuals and groups that do succeed in gaining funding (and sometimes repeated funding) usually possess knowledge of funding concepts and processes (grantsmanship) or are able to find an intermediary to do so on their behalf. They are the “happy few” who have learned how to talk the talk and flatter the self-regard of otherwise well-intentioned “donors.”

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either significant resources or capacious ingenuity and remarkable creativity. (Open University and Hertie School, 2018, p. 121)

• Delivery teams and users bemoaned the lack of follow-up support. Clearly, EU organizations have a difficult trade-off to manage between offering financial support and generating dependency. The most successful projects were deemed to be those that are sustainable either through opportunities to apply for further funding or through some form of continued support. • Organizational hierarchies can seriously hamper the quality of cultural relations, notably when they relegate local professionals and brokers to the lower echelons while their European peers tend to take lead roles and receive higher salaries. • When mutuality is a core goal (and it is not always), it may not be attained if either of the partners detects the presence of instrumentality. In the CVP study, differences emerged between policy and strategic teams about what they aspire to, what delivery teams do, and what users expect. Certain Egyptian participants, for example, resented being treated as passive recipients of British culture while in fact having very limited access to it—either through opportunities to travel to the United Kingdom, to communicate with British people, or to consume British artistic products. • Far greater benefits may accrue to cultural actors in the Global North than to their counterparts in the Global South—a point that has been debated extensively in the cultural management literature. • Related to this is the question of expediency, since cultural practitioners are often asked to become contributors to extra-cultural causes. To these causes they may readily hitch their star, often idealistically, sometimes opportunistically. Over the years, these causes have included “culture and development,” “culture and social cohesion,” “intercultural dialogue,” the “creative industries,” “cultural diversity,” and, needless to say, “cultural diplomacy.” As mentioned earlier, the role of civil society cultural organizations is an underresearched area, as confirmed by a literature review conducted at the EUI. By a happy coincidence, however, while at the EUI I was asked to provide an endorsement for a (then) forthcoming publication entitled Managing Culture: Reflecting on Exchange in Global Times (Durrer & Henze, 2020). The challenges of arts and cultural management can obviously be challenges of cultural relations tout court.4 One of the chapters, entitled “Challenging Assumptions in Intercultural Collaborations: Perspectives from India and the UK,” by Jhunjhunwala and Walker (2020), elucidates how, instead of enabling dialogue, many collaboration and exchange programs perpetuate mistaken assumptions and create or maintain inequitable relationships. The authors also look at how cultural diplomacy and international development funding, while crucial to the sector, can reinforce practices that affect structural elements (the allocation of resources, leadership, and delivery) as well as creative content. Can cultural managers and practitioners work within, 4  The co-editors identify the domain as “arts and cultural management,” conflating the labels of two vocationally oriented university disciplines—arts management and cultural management.

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navigate, and benefit from initiatives and opportunities while challenging international power dynamics and postcolonial or neocolonial hierarchies, they ask? Citing the notion of “fair cooperation,” they also ask how the practice of cultural relations can actually produce challenging and experimental artistic work. International development efforts are often characterized as being inherently paternalistic. Even the most well-intentioned agencies are often charged with determining what their partners need, rather than “listening” to them, letting them articulate those needs themselves. Flows of resources are inescapably one way, creating imbalances that are perceived to be enacting hegemonic or imperialistic motivations, fostering dependency instead of empowerment. As a cultural manager from Nigeria asserts, “Countries with bigger resources for promotion of their culture and methodology control the global discourse on culture” (cited in Jhunjhunwala & Walker, 2020, p. 160). Frequently, as Jhunjhunwala and Walker (2020) point out, assumptions about who has authority determine the process—and these assumptions are generally based on the source of funds. In the case they highlight, it is assumed that since the UK partner is bringing in the cash, they also need to control the project and are accountable for it both artistically and managerially, while the Indian partner is held responsible primarily for logistical support to realize the project. Attitudes linked to the erstwhile colonial relationship contribute to making the Indian partner reluctant to be seen as a mere “service provider,” and the UK partner, in turn, can struggle with the burden of colonial guilt. Even when there is no overt display of power, it is easy for the recipient to slip into forms of “anticipatory obedience,” by which the less powerful player complies with what it assumes the more powerful one expects: in framing the issues, in the language and terminology used, in the statement of goals, etc. Add to this the inevitable discrepancies in working styles, methodology, and sense of time. In any intercultural collaboration, the acknowledgement of difference is part and parcel of the process. But often stereotypical representations that mobilize only the most easily recognizable images are actually deployed. In India-UK artistic collaborations, a handful of tried-and-tested themes, art forms, or companies and artists have become the go-to choices for collaborations, often establishing a limited canon, consisting of traditional high culture revisited, together with Bollywood. While work from the United Kingdom is often promoted as “contemporary and cutting-edge,” with the Edinburgh Festival, Sadler’s Wells, and Tate Modern promoted extensively, the Indian counterparts fall back on the invented tradition of the age-old motifs and imagery of an exotic and vibrant “Incredible India.” In the chapter’s Indian author Jhunjhunwala’s experience, innumerable projects claimed to “reimagine” India but in fact incorporated the most obvious elements like Bollywood and/or Indian classical dance instead of innovative contemporary forms: Bharatanatyam and Kathakali dancers along with the gypsies of Rajasthan have become the leading cultural representatives. This was evident in the 2017 India-UK Year of Culture, when the Indian High Commission in London organized the “India@UK 2017” cultural festival. While some experimental contemporary work was also shown, the big events showcased traditional dance and

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Bollywood musicals. Indian handicrafts were also displayed, and evenings celebrating “sacred music” were organized. As the authors observe, this approach is not limited to the performing arts. For instance, the announcement for the visit of INS Tarkash to the United Kingdom in May 2017 described the Indian warship as follows: While INS Tarkash is a state-of-the-art stealth frigate, her crew vividly represents every part of India and her rich cultural diversity. Her name is depicted by her insignia - “Tarkash” - a quiver full of arrows, which was an integral part of the battle armour donned by the valiant traditional Indian warriors, who fought the epic battles of Ramayana and Mahabharata. (Jhunjhunwala & Walker, 2020, p. 163)

Following a similar logic, the British Council announced special grants in 2014 to mark the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and in 2016 under the Shakespeare Lives project for the 400th anniversary of his death; the year 2013 also marked 100 years of Bollywood in India, and so both Shakespeare and Bollywood were commonplace in the collaborative projects. Also, many of these projects were conceived and produced by a UK partner, who raised funds for them as well, with the Indian partner involved only in the final phase, bereft of the capacity to change or influence the scope. The chapter’s British author Amy Walker worked for 8 years as Deputy Director of Triangle Network in the United Kingdom, an international network of artists and arts organizations that focuses on cultural exchange and professional development. When she started in 2008, most of the funding for activities taking place abroad came from the overseas development or cultural diplomacy areas of government. Significant amounts were earmarked for regional subnetworks. One of these was the South Asian Network for the Arts (SANA) with partners in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka and a hub at Khoj International, an arts organization in New Delhi. But the money came from the US-based Ford Foundation, while Triangle, an organization based in the United Kingdom, was responsible for distributing them in tandem with a regional hub in India. This resourcing model obviously impacted on the relationship it created between cultural actors in the two countries. Many Triangle Network members were informal groups of artists or collectives, based in countries with limited cultural infrastructure and funding options, making it difficult to raise significant funds for international activities themselves. It was vital for them to be part of something larger that could take on the responsibility of raising and managing resources, which Triangle was able to do as a charity registered in the United Kingdom. The Ford Foundation was obviously not looking to support UK-based organizations as such but understood that in order to reach independent civil society groups in South Asia, it needed to go through such a network. Furthermore, in the case of SANA, Indian foreign exchange regulations made it next to impossible for an Indian organization to distribute funds overseas, making the UK connection indispensable. While SANA was launched specifically with a view to building regional exchanges and challenging the cultural dominance of Europe and North America, in reality, the paternalistic model was reinforced: American funds were given to a UK organization for dissemination in the region, while the process was overseen by a hub in India. The

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location of the hub also meant operating at another scale of hegemony—that of India and Indian organizations at the regional level. Yet, for many involved, there was little knowledge of, or interest in, the funding structure. And for those doing the reporting, commitment to the goals of the network and the belief in the value of peer-to-peer exchange and experimentation meant that the situation was viewed pragmatically, as a means to an end rather than as a form of control. Both the structure and its mechanisms greatly benefited many artists and arts organizations for over a decade. The authors conclude, citing Jonathan Vickery, that greater flexibility could lead to the recognition and subsequent empowerment of cultural operators as an “informal economy of international deliberations, advocacy and interventionist approaches to culture” ultimately engaging “in their own international cultural politics of diplomacy” (Jhunjhunwala & Walker, 2020, p. 167). I shall return to some of the implications of this notion of an “international cultural politics of diplomacy,” underpinned by unequal power relations, if not of domination, in the final section of this chapter, for they relate directly to the use of Bourdieu’s field theory.

16.2.2  Some European Responsibilities Clearly, for EU institutions, both cultural relations and cultural diplomacy are expedient (see Yudice, 2003). This expediency drove the 2013–2014 European Parliament-driven inquiry (Preparatory Action) entitled “Culture in EU External Relations.” The inquiry was entrusted to a consortium of national cultural institutes and research bodies led by the Goethe-Institut, and its report, Engaging the World: Towards Global Cultural Citizenship (Isar, 2014), represents an attempt by the consortium to influence both deontology and practice in this domain. The report’s recommendations were addressed to several sets of stakeholders—cultural operators, EU member states, and the EU institutions. While the inquiry targeted the EU’s 23 “strategic partner” countries, it had a developmentalist emphasis, in favor of “countries in transition” and in the Global South. Given that both the spirit and substance of these recommendations have been taken up by the EU institutions since then and endorsed by key cultural sector actors, some of the ideas expressed in the report are worth revisiting here. While Europeans have no doubt succeeded in projecting an image of the EU as a shared space of cultural creativity and diversity, the report’s key thesis was that they need to go beyond representation and/or interest and engage with the rest of the world through stances of mutual learning and sharing—precisely those stances that cultural operators today claim as the bedrock benefits of international cultural cooperation. To adopt such stances would be to act in a spirit of global cultural citizenship that recognizes shared cultural rights as well as shared responsibilities, in a framework of cosmopolitan solidarity. The report recognized the ways in which artistic processes and values played a key role in nurturing civil societies in the “transition countries” before and after the

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demise of the Communist regimes in the 1990s (cf. the important contribution at that time of the Open Society Institute). It is now Europe’s turn, the report argued, to share this experience with civil society cultural actors in other latitudes, those positioned at the forefront of popular mobilization in regions where major economic, social, and political transformations are occurring. Alternative modes of transnational peer-to-peer learning and “eye-to-eye” forms of collaboration would result in greater “cultural fair trade.” In this spirit already since 2011, the “Tandem cultural managers exchange programs,” created and hosted by the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam) and the Berlin-based NGO MitOst, have benefited cultural managers with proven professional experience from both inside and outside the EU.  Local partner organizations in Turkey, Lebanon, Ukraine, and Southern Europe deliver the program’s various cross-border collaboration activities to participants in the field. A decisive feature of its success is the equality of power relations in terms of who has the money, the knowledge, or the capacity to deliver. Participants work on the same footing and under the same conditions to co-create and co-­ produce. Each “tandem” is completely free to define the project it wants to develop, and each of its members is equally responsible for the outcomes (see also Isar, 2017). Transnational cultural relations also have the potential to promote democratization processes, by harnessing cultural expression in ways that inform, inspire, and energize aspirations to democracy (Isar, 2011). Realizing this potential is easier said than done, particularly today, when the number of authoritarian regimes has increased everywhere. In the Global South, artists and their organizations often struggle against censorship and oppression practiced by both governmental and non-state actors. These struggles have contributed to building recognition that certain transnational obligations ought to accompany transnational connections and refreshing the meaning of notions such as “Euro-Mediterranean cultural cooperation” or “culture and human rights in the EU’s external policies.” Artistic and cultural expressions are constitutive of a free, democratic society—of its diversity, of its liberties, of its openness, and of its flexibility. In the living memory of many Europeans as well, artistic expression has frequently provided paths of dissent or revolt in totalitarian societies, and today, artists are once again at the forefront as authoritarian trends advance globally. Cultural actors—artists as well as arts-­ producing or arts-delivering organizations and networks—have generated ideas, works, projects, and spaces that have engaged the challenges in various ways. Beyond Europe, such understandings also exist. They have emerged more recently; many are still fragile. The affirmation of autonomous cultural voice is still a work in progress; it can be and has often been manipulated by political forces— and by certain civil society actors themselves. Yet clearly also, cultural practitioners are among the citizen actors who are acting independently to bring about positive changes to their lives and to the condition of their societies. So how might such European actors contribute to strengthening democratic discourse elsewhere? As I argued a decade ago (Isar, 2011) and reiterate here, the ways and means could include the following:

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• Increased direct support. More resources need to be channeled directly into the hands of cultural practitioners. Even small amounts can go a long way, thanks to the volunteering ethos of the sector. Support needs to be as multifaceted and broadly based as the pluralism it professes to nourish. It should not seek to set priorities, envisage strategies, or supervise their implementation. Many well-­ intentioned exercises in cultural relations end up primarily benefiting outsiders, including commercial and political interests, academics, or the funders themselves, ironically reinforcing the paternalism and dependency mentioned already above. The most “enabling” approaches stay out of the way, leaving cultural projects the social space and the time they need to be effective. • Organizational and other forms of support. Revolutions can be triggered by a single spark, “but they can only be sustained and help effectively to transform societies through organization,” observed the South African playwright and activist Mike van Graan when he was running Africa’s Arterial Network, an organization created with a view to forging a collective voice for the African arts sector. Cultural activists in the Global South often find it difficult to form and sustain informal networks and formal associations at the local, national, and international levels. So how best could European cultural organizations draw upon their own experience and contribute to such partnership-building processes? • Provision of information and research. Like any category of citizen, cultural actors are disempowered when they are misinformed or underinformed or do not have the critical perspectives and tools to process information overkill. Several monthly newsletters, regular news alerts, website updates, and the like are now being produced in different regions. Such clearinghouse functions can promote improved networking among cultural action groups, counteracting geographic and sociocultural isolation. Often, just being aware that a similar organization exists elsewhere gives a group heart and renewed energy to face its own challenges. European players ought to focus on developing these sorts of functions in “third countries” as well. • Monitoring freedom of expression. Key to creativity is the human right to freedom of expression. While this right is advocated in many international and national policy pronouncements, in practice it is often compromised. Artists are routinely arrested, their works are banned, and they are denied access to public funds and opportunities and are intimidated by extremist, religion-inspired civil society activists rather than the organs of a repressive state (although often governments collude with the extremist forces). Arterial Network, to cite it once again, provided a response to such threats several years ago by establishing Artwatch Africa, which was designed to map the state of freedom of expression in every African country. European actors can contribute to the process, not only as funders but also to provide international resonance to the politics of naming and shaming that is involved. • Supporting advocacy campaigns. Arts organizations everywhere have been active in identifying issues such as the above and launching campaigns to tackle them. In 2012, Arterial Network was behind the circulation of a petition to stop the Ugandan government from demolishing the Ugandan Museum in Kampala in

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favor of a multistory office block; it helped buttress the efforts of four national arts organizations who successfully sued the authorities. Alliance-building too is needed for advocacy purposes, since the cultural sector cannot effect social change on its own and needs to collaborate with, and be part of, broader struggles. European cultural actors need to be parties to these alliances as well. • Encouraging “voice.” Artists require the freedom to express their views and be encouraged to do so, as the Arterial Network has done through competitions in playwriting, filmmaking (with cell phones), and poetry to encourage artists to find their individual and collective voices that reflect the contexts in which they work and to bring their insights to bear through their creative work. European arts organizations have helped give them international exposure. While ideas such as these are probably honored still mostly in the breach, they have nevertheless influenced the ways in which “culture in EU external relations” is talked about and have begun to reshape the rules of the game in this domain.

16.3  T  oward International Cultural Relations as a Bourdieusian “Field” Some readers will have recognized issues and themes in the preceding pages that resonate with the thrust of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. A Bourdieusian “field” is an asymmetrically constituted space of power relations, hence of unspoken competition and conflict in a “game” that agents play, as they struggle to increase their stock of economic, social, and cultural capital. Possession of these forms of capital is forms of power whose possession commands access to specific profits that are at stake in the field as well as actors’ relation to other positions (domination, subordination, homologies, etc.). Empirical evidence culled from actually existing cultural civil society practice, although limited, warrants the deployment of the theory as a conceptual, analytical, and explanatory tool. On the European side, the field could be seen to consist of several assemblages of players: arts organizations engaged in cultural relations, together with the national cultural institutes, all of which in turn are overseen and funded, sometimes also driven, by governments, mainly ministries of culture, but also, increasingly, by municipalities, as well as private sector sponsors, but to a limited extent. There are the EU institutions themselves, notably the European Commission and the European Parliament. On the “third country” side, the landscape is different in the details but structurally similar—often minus the cities, however, notably in South Asia, which lack the agency enjoyed by their counterparts in Europe (or East Asia for that matter). On both sides of this divide, all three forms of Bourdieusian capital are constantly being deployed and transmuted between and among the different forms. Cultural capital, and to some extent social capital as well, resides within the cultural field, both valued in terms of cultural criteria. They are largely “autonomous” in Bourdieu’s sense, whereas economic capital is

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“heteronomous” in the sense that it deploys itself essentially beyond the space of the arts and artistic exchange yet bears heavily upon the cultural and social axes and is also often transmuted into cultural and social capital. Further scrutiny, then, should enable us to go beneath the surface of the cultural relations “system.”5 Bourdieu often used the analogy of a playing field for a team sport. This analogy connotes boundaries. And within that bounded space, a range of position-takings where the cultural operators concerned affirm or shape their identities and hierarchical positions—always in relation to other actors—notably those from whom various forms of support, mainly financial, are expected. And within which players are guided by certain conventions or rules (that are often implicit) as to what sorts of stances or “moves” are allowable.6 While the term “struggle” might appear too strong to characterize the relationships between and among cultural operators, the European national cultural institutes, and EU institutions, it is no secret that competition does exist in this arena and at several levels. In this analytical perspective, the CVP report (Open University and Hertie School, 2018) almost gives the game away through the very terms in which its authors set out a range of precautions. Endowed henceforth with expert power, as well as authority, the researchers embody the notion of “linguistic exchange as situated encounters between agents endowed with socially structured resources and competencies” (Thompson, 2003, p. 2). The language of their precautionary statements is charged with connotations and subtexts, as they list out various requirements for optimizing the potential value generated by cultural relations. These precautionary warnings were at least in part triggered by a recognition that power differentials, accompanied by competition and friction, are always already in play in international cultural relations. In order to head off at least some of the potentially toxic effects of these power differentials, the report’s authors (Open University and Hertie School, 2018, p. 12) set out a series of desiderata such as: • A strong emphasis on locally-initiated, user-centred projects that involve and take into account local or regional actors at every stage of development—at conception, creation, design, implementation and assessment stages—as well as reciprocity, mutuality and/or cultural exchange • Post-programme support in some form, howsoever limited, to ensure that, when seed corn funding is used, it works as it should and actually leads to some degree of local independence and autonomy • A cascading of skills via local, peer-to-peer support as, for example, when trainees later become trainers and transfer skills locally and regionally

5  Since Europe is the locus, a North-South focus is appropriate. But would the shape of the field and the forces at play within it change significantly if a South-South axis is foregrounded instead? See Isar (2012). 6  A few words on Bourdieu’s characterization of the “field”: by likening social activity to a game, he did not mean that there is a formal agreement by which agents enter into the game, or a set of codified rules by which all agree to play. Almost unconsciously, agents play the game by virtue of their doxa, their beliefs in the game, and its stakes. Because of their investment in the game, what Bourdieu called illusio, they compete with one another, but always according to the implicit, unspoken rules of the game.

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These sorts of issues are also tackled frontally in a study commissioned by three European bodies that are authoritative actors in this field. The author was Mike van Graan, the South African playwright and cultural activist already cited earlier, who commented on the international cultural relations landscape in the following terms: Cultural or artistic collaborations and exchanges do not take place in vacuums. Particularly in contexts characterized by inequality between partners, collaborations are impacted upon in terms of skills, resources, infrastructure, working conditions, networks, experience, etc. … Overt or unspoken power relations have the capacity to derail the artistic collaboration or to influence its aesthetic outcomes. In Global North countries, culture is used by some institutions officially to promote certain “values”, but implicitly to defend precise interests … [and] determine the wording used by organisations in less-resourced countries in order to access funding opportunities, aligning their priorities to fit guidelines that do not actually correspond to their own reality. (van Graan, 2018, p. 8)

Finance is not the only realm where asymmetrical relationships and inequalities of cultural capital operate; such imbalances are also present in the realms of aesthetic judgment, artistic strategy, and relationships with artists and audiences, as regards reciprocity of benefits, shared responsibility, and ownership, and in styles and rules of management, inter alia. Also relevant, in the context of a field theory framing, are insights from another chapter in the volume referred to earlier (Durrer & Henze, 2020). In her text entitled “The ‘West’ versus ‘the Rest’? Festival Curators as Gatekeepers for Socio-Cultural Diversity,” Lisa Gaupp (2020) examines how different concepts of diversity reign in the curation of performing arts festivals and how this curatorial practice is influenced by power relations, conventions, network structures, and network processes. When Western festival curators deal with “non-European” or non-“Western” performances, she asks, how do they define and normalize diversity and the way it is programmed? Unsurprisingly, Gaupp finds that, on the one hand, there is a strongly Eurocentric or “Western”-centric canon with regard to what kinds of aesthetic forms are curated. On the other, on the level of formal organization, she observes both normative definitions of diversity and conventions based on the global circulation of financial capital. How diversity is defined is also deeply dependent upon the cultural and social capital, tastes, dispositions, beliefs, and perceptions of individual curators, who are the key cultural intermediaries in Bourdieu’s sense. It is not curators alone, however, who define diversity but also the processes and structures surrounding curatorial practice that ultimately decide what is appropriate to program and what is not. Any cultural intermediary often strives to legitimate the “not-yet-­ legitimate,” as her work as a tastemaker reconfirms her own cultural capital and thus her position.7

 The expression is to be found in Bourdieu (1987).

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The conventions that establish how diversity is to be read and staged seem to posit that national origin is irrelevant. Yet, Gaupp finds, when it comes to valuing differences, curators tend to opt for productions that are “different enough” to fulfill the demand for the unfamiliar, but are “not too different,” citing one who thought that showing “African” artists would be “boring” for her European audiences who would be too unfamiliar with the requisite “African” aesthetic language to be able to understand its conventions. She added the caveat that other cultural organizations in Europe that have established a “tradition” of educating their audiences about such art forms could show such artists. This analysis, itself largely inspired by field theory, illustrates the kind of terrain that could be covered by deploying the theory systematically. The research process could involve questions such as the following: How do the field and the subfields that constitute it actually operate? How are social relations structured within them? What cultural and social rewards do they offer to participants? What are the rules of the game that need to be followed if such rewards are to be attained? Which actors are trying to change these rules? Which actors hold what kind of authority? What new position-takings are appearing within the field to possibly renovate it? How do these possibly alter the shape of the field and create new possibilities (Gibson & Moore, 2018)? What forms of censorship (understood as the obligation to produce discourse that respects the forms and formalities of the field) are to be detected in the way cultural relations actors talk and write about what they do (Bourdieu, 1992)? Carrying such a line of inquiry further could uncover changing configurations and fault lines with regard to both the doxa and the illusio as perceived, lived, and represented by European cultural actors and their “third country” interlocutors. In so doing, one ventures to hope, it would honor the excellence in scholarship that Helmut Anheier’s work exemplifies.

References Ang, I., Isar, Y. R., & Mar, P. (2015). Cultural diplomacy: Beyond the national interest? International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21, 365–381. Bourdieu, P. (1987). Distinction. Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1992). Language and symbolic power. Polity Press. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L.  J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. University of Chicago Press. Durrer, V., & Henze, R. (Eds.). (2020). Managing culture: Reflecting on exchange in global times. Palgrave MacMillan. English, J. F. (2005). The economy of prestige. Prizes, awards and the circulation of cultural value (pp. 8–9). Harvard University Press. Gaupp, L. (2020). The ‘west’ versus ‘the rest’? Festival curators as gatekeepers for socio-cultural diversity. In V. Durrer & R. Henze (Eds.), Managing culture: Reflecting on exchange in global times (pp. 127–154). Palgrave MacMillan. Gibson, M., & Moore, T. (2018). Cultural innovations on the fringe – The fields of ‘limited’ and ‘extensive production’. In J. Albright, D. Hartmann, & J. Widin (Eds.), Bourdieu’s field theory and the social sciences (pp. 149–163). Palgrave Macmillan.

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van Graan, M. (2018). Beyond curiosity and desire. Towards fairer international collaborations in the arts. IETM. Isar, Y.  R. (2011). Civil society empowerment in third countries: Are culture actors providing powerful voices in support of democratization processes? EENC Paper for European Culture Forum. European Expert Network on Culture. Retrieved from https://www.interarts.net/descargas/interarts2581.pdf Isar, Y. R. (2012). Shifting economic power: New horizons for cultural exchange in our multi-polar world. In Salzburg Global Seminar (Vol 8, White Paper Theme 2), Session 490. Isar, Y. R. (2014). Engaging the world: Towards global cultural citizenship. Publications Office of the European Union. Isar, Y.  R. (2017). Transnational activism through the arts: More a potential than a reality. In P. Dietachmair & P. Gielen (Eds.), The art of civil action: Political space and cultural dissent (pp. 98–112). Valiz. Jhunjhunwala, R., & Walker, A. (2020). Challenging assumptions in intercultural collaborations: Perspectives from India and the UK.  In V.  Durrer & R.  Henze (Eds.), Managing culture: Reflecting on exchange in global times (pp. 155–170). Palgrave MacMillan. Klaic, D. (2007). Mobility of imagination. Centre for Arts and Culture, Central European University. Kloot, B. (2009). Exploring the value of Bourdieu’s framework in the context of institutional change. Studies in Higher Education, 34(4), 469–481. Open University and Hertie School. (2018). Cultural relations in countries in transition. Open University and Hertie School. Thompson, J. B. (2003). Editor’s introduction. In J. B. Thompson (Ed.), Pierre Bourdieu, Language and symbolic power (pp. 1–31). Polity Press. Yudice, G. (2003). The expediency of culture. Duke University Press.

Chapter 17

Arts, Cultural Participation, and Democracy: Analyzing the Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy Michael Hoelscher and Regina A. List

Abstract  The chapter introduces the idea behind and the actual concept of the Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy (IFCD), which was designed to assemble indicators on culture and democracy. The IFCD is meant to provide a stronger evidence base for policy-making and to enable and encourage further research on possible relationships between the two within and across countries. To illustrate some of its potential uses, a cluster analysis identifies three country groups along the four dimensions covered by the IFCD (civic, policy, economic, and freedom/equality). The chapter also discusses the IFCD’s strengths and weaknesses as well as a way forward. Keywords  International comparison · Indicators · Culture · Democracy · Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy One of Helmut Anheier’s scientific strengths is his ambition to approach “soft” concepts empirically and especially in a comparative way. This is true for civil society (see, e.g., his work on the Civil Society Index, Anheier, 2004; List & Dorner, 2012; Hoelscher, 2011; or for the Global Civil Society Yearbooks, Kaldor et al., 2007) as well as for democracy (e.g., Anheier et  al., 2018 on governance indicators) and culture (e.g., Anheier et al., 2012). While many researchers shy away from these complex concepts and either address only small, specific aspects empirically or stick to theory right from the start, Anheier was and is still interested in the big picture, without losing scientific rigor. Within this part of his research, besides other things he was involved in the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (Anheier & Salamon, 1998), redesigned the already mentioned Civil Society Index (Heinrich, 2005) with CIVICUS, and established the innovative idea of the indicator suites for comparing cultures globally in the Cultures and Globalization book M. Hoelscher (*) German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Speyer, Germany e-mail: [email protected] R. A. List Hamburg, Germany © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_17

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series (Anheier, 2008). This specific interest in measuring complex concepts such as “culture” is also shared by colleagues of Anheier from his time at University of Cologne (e.g., Gerhards, 2007), which might hint at early imprints. One of Anheier’s most ambitious projects in recent years was probably the Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy (IFCD),1 which he developed for the Council of Europe (CoE), spanning the fields of culture, civil society, and democracy. In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, many governments started to cut budgets for culture. Therefore, the CoE became interested in the influence that culture and cultural funding might have in relation to democracy. While l’art pour l’art is definitely something quite reasonable, the conviction was that culture was also contributing to the prospering of democracy and could use some additional support in a time of pressure. In this chapter, we will first outline the idea behind the measurement approach for the two domains of culture and democracy, as well as a bit of history. Second, as some reports for the CoE already addressed important relationships between different dimensions within culture and democracy (List et al., 2016), this chapter concentrates mainly on an analysis of subgroups of countries (cluster analysis). It closes with a short assessment of strengths and weaknesses of the current IFCD and some propositions on how to improve it.

17.1  Developing the IFCD During the global financial crisis in the years 2007 onward, the cultural sector experienced above-average state budget cuts in many countries (Srakar et al., 2017, especially p.  97). As a reaction to this, as well as to other developments such as digitization, the Council of Europe Conference of Ministers of Culture initiated a process “Governance of Culture: Promoting Access to Culture” in 2013 and decided to “launch a medium-term working process that should include work on indicators of the impact of cultural activities on democracy as well as the economic efficiency of financing culture in order to improve the effectiveness of cultural policies, to map related trends and developments at a pan-European level with special regard to access to and participation in culture and help generate harmonised national and European surveys” (Council of Europe, 2013, p. 3). The aim was to improve the effectiveness of cultural policies through new tools in times of financial restrictions. Anheier was asked by the Council first to provide an indicator mapping study and then to develop a draft indicator framework. Through a multistep process, a conceptual framework evolved, and the availability of data was assessed with a small team at Heidelberg University and the Hertie School in Germany. Different stakeholders from the Council (especially Kathrin Merkle) and other European

 Information on the IFCD can be found on these websites: https://culturalindicators.org/; https:// www.coe.int/en/web/culture-and-heritage/indicators-culture-and-democracy.

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institutions in the field of culture (Peter Inkei, Budapest Observatory; Philippe Kern, KEA; Pier Luigi Sacco, IULM University; Kimmo Aulake, Ministry of Education and Culture Finland; Lara Fleisher, OECD; and many others) commented and contributed their expertise. A draft version was also discussed during country visits with experts from Poland, France, Croatia, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Serbia, and Sweden, before it was officially presented to the Council in 2016. Since then the IFCD data have been updated and the framework consolidated at irregular intervals as resources have allowed. The main purposes of the IFCD have been: • To assemble indicators on culture and democracy and the economic efficiency of financing culture that provide a stronger evidence base for policy-making • To enable policy-makers to examine their own position in terms of culture and democracy and in comparison with other countries • To enable and encourage examination of relationships between culture and democracy and between components and indicators within these domains • To contribute information to Council of Europe reports and projects and to relevant initiatives by other international and national bodies It thereby complements, inter alia, the “Compendium” tool (https://www.culturalpolicies.net/), which is primarily based on qualitative assessments of culture and cultural policies. With regard to the conceptual framework, the idea at the start was quite ambitious. As the IFCD should provide data on culture and democracy as well as their interrelations, both domains were structured in similar ways internally along three perspectives: • With regard to timing and causation, the four analytical dimensions of input, throughput, output, and outcome were distinguished. • With regard to level of analysis, the IFCD differentiated between institutions (macro-level, e.g., rules and regulations, social and cultural patterns), organizations (meso-level, e.g., formal structures and tools to enact institutions), and individuals (micro-level). • With regard to content, three joint dimensions were identified as policy, civic, and freedom and equality for both, as well as economic (for culture) and rule of law (for democracy) as domain-specific dimensions. In addition to the realms of democracy and culture (in a narrow understanding, referring to cultural activities, including cultural action, products, services, and intellectual property), the first versions of the IFCD also contained values (being part of a broader understanding of culture) as a linchpin between the other two. While it was clear from the beginning that it would be difficult to fill such a complex structure with appropriate comparative data for the whole of Europe, the aim was to come up with a comprehensive approach that would also indicate existing gaps in available data and to develop ideas about how they might be filled in the future.

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17.2  The Setup of the Final IFCD In several rounds of reviews, the framework was then progressively adjusted to data availability as well as to the perceived and expressed needs of both policy-makers and researchers. In this process (and in light of resource constraints), some innovative features of the original concept had to be abandoned. These included the idea of different levels of analysis (micro, meso, and macro) and a time series approach allowing for the analysis of trends. Another problem was missing data. While different imputation techniques were considered, the current IFCD follows a conservative approach of simply dropping variables and countries with low coverage. Table 17.1 outlines the final setup of dimensions, components, and indicators. Many indicators are measured by combining different variables. Overall, the resulting framework as of December 2017 contains 17 components comprising 37 indicators built upon 144 variables. Data stem from a wide range of data sources, including inter alia Eurostat, Global Innovation Index, World Values Survey, V-Dem, Compendium, Rule of Law Index, and Gallup World Poll. It covers 43 Council of Europe member states for which at least 45% of the variables are available, all but Andorra (96% missing), Monaco (95%), San Marino (91%), and Liechtenstein (89%). More than 80% of the variables are dated 2015 and later, more than two-­ thirds since 2016. The last data update was performed in December 2020. The IFCD is available at https://culturalindicators.org/. In addition to the data, the website also contains full documentation as well as an interactive visualization tool. The latter allows for displaying country profiles (in the form of spider or radar charts) as well as for analyses of component relationships. While this tool gives easy access and a first inspection into potentially relevant fields for policy engagement, the full data can also be downloaded for more fine-grained analyses and research purposes.2 The IFCD team produced two thematic reports, one on “Online Participation in Culture and Politics: Towards More Democratic Societies?” (List et al., 2018) and one on “Cultural Participation and Inclusive Societies” (List et al., 2016). Results from these and from additional analyses were featured also in selected Reports of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe (2018, 2021), demonstrating how the IFCD could be used to inform policy-making.

2   For those interested in statistical issues: The underlying data are transformed using a z-­standardization, meaning that each variable has a mean of zero and a variance of 1. This is a standard approach to allow easier combination of variables into indicators and components. However, the disadvantage is that different years of the IFCD are not comparable, as due to additional or missing countries, the original means and variances may have changed.

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Table 17.1  IFCD dimensions, components, and indicators (December 2017) Culture Dimension Civic

Policy

Economic

Freedom and equality

Components/indicators Cultural participation • Artistic expression and creation • Interest in foreign cultures • Non-partisan involvement • Online creativity • Online cultural participation • Passive cultural participation • Students in the arts Cultural funding • Cultural expenditures and incentives Cultural openness • Support and promotion of cultural diversity Cultural education • Arts education • Intercultural education

Democracy Dimension Components/indicators Civic Political participation • Institutionalized participation • Non-institutionalized participation

Policy

Government capability •C  onfidence in political institutions • Political independence Political competition • Political competitiveness •R  ules for contestation and competition Safeguards and checks and balances •C  onstraints on government powers • Judicial review Transparency • Absence of corruption • Informational openness Rule of law Equality before the law Cultural industries • Judicial impartiality • Cultural industry outputs • Judicial independence • Intangible assets Quality of the legal system • Size of the cultural • Confidence in the justice industry system Cultural infrastructure • Judicial efficiency and • Size of the cultural professionalism infrastructure Freedom Individual freedoms Cultural access and and equality • Freedom and neutrality of representation the press • Access to cultural sites • Freedom of association and events • Freedom of expression • Public measures for Individual liberties equality • Free conduct of life • Security and physical integrity Political representation • Equality of participation • Equality of representation

Source: IFCD policy-makers’ guidebook (2016), updated with information from the revised Appendix (2017)

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17.3  Comparing Countries with the IFCD The IFCD was designed to allow for different kinds of analyses. One important aim is to inform countries and their political decision-makers about strengths and weaknesses in their cultural realm and potential fields of action. Compared to other countries in Europe, where do they stand with regard to, for example, the extent of cultural participation, the size of their cultural industries, or equality in access to culture? A second perspective is the interrelation between different dimensions, either within culture or across culture and democracy.3 Within culture, for example, it might be interesting to see how cultural funding may be related to the size of the cultural industry or cultural participation. Across domains, correlations between cultural participation and confidence in political institutions can hint at mutual influences of the two. Looking at the most aggregated level in both domains, the IFCD data reveal a quite strong correlation between culture and democracy with a coefficient of determination (R2) of nearly 0.5 (see Fig.  17.1). Countries falling into the lower left quadrant of Fig. 17.1 exhibit low values for both the culture index and the democracy index. Accordingly, those countries in the upper right quadrant have high values for democracy and culture alike. Only few countries populate the other two quadrants. However, if we take a closer look at the distribution of countries along the two dimensions, it becomes clear that there is quite a bit of heterogeneity within the quadrants, with some countries performing comparatively much better in either the culture or democracy domain and that the correlation is by no means perfect. Additionally, country positions should be interpreted carefully, as there are many different influencing factors. Further analyses of this relationship are therefore needed, and the IFCD allows for this. One way to bring in more detail is the closer examination of the cultural domain. How are countries distributed with regard to specific components or even indicators? Can we identify groups of similar countries in certain respects? On the basis of a cluster analysis, we can indeed identify relatively clear subgroups within our sample with regard to culture.4 Independent of whether we use the overarching four dimensions (civic, freedom/equality, economic, policy) or the 17 indicators (see Table 17.1), three clusters appear. A first group contains mainly Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia, and Serbia but also, for example, Greece. A second cluster consists of mainly North-Western countries, e.g., the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands but also Germany and

3  In principle, one can also compare different dimensions or components within Democracy, but there are more potent databases for this purpose available, some of which are mentioned in the chapter. 4  A more expansive analysis of cultural homogeneity and heterogeneity within the EU, based on a broader concept of culture, can be found, for example, in Gerhards (2007) and Gerhards and Hoelscher (2003).

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Democracy

R² = 0.47

Culture

Fig. 17.1  IFCD culture index and democracy index

Switzerland. Third, there is a group of South European countries, such as Portugal, Italy, and France, mixed with some Eastern European ones such as Slovenia and the Czech Republic but also, somewhat unexpectedly, Ireland. The full overview of countries, including also minor shifts in assignments due to different techniques and data, can be found in Table 17.2 in the Appendix. Figures 17.2 and 17.3 display the distribution of the three clusters with regard to the four dimensions (using the Ward method; see Appendix). Cluster means are added and named. With regard to the civic and economic dimensions, Fig. 17.2 shows a correlation between the two, which is what one would expect. The clusters can be distinguished relatively well, although there is some overlap especially between clusters 1 and 3. Looking at the second two dimensions, freedom and equality and policy (Fig. 17.3), the overlap is now a bit stronger between clusters 2 and 3. What also becomes obvious is that the policy dimension does not contribute a lot to the differentiation of the clusters. We find countries with high and low values in each of them. Three countries are outliers (one with especially high values, two with especially low values). Dropping the policy dimension from the analyses actually leads to a shift of the cluster centers “toward the West”: Germany and Austria would move from the North Western cluster 2 into the South Eastern cluster 3, and Hungary, Latvia, Moldova, and Poland would move from the South European cluster 3 into the Eastern European cluster 1. Overall, we can observe two distinct groups of countries (clusters 1 and 2) that differ in the three dimensions pretty clearly and a third group sharing similarities with both of these groups. Obviously, the economic situation of the countries plays an important role here, but other factors should be considered as well. Additionally, these results lead to the question of why the policy dimension has such weak discriminatory power. This is especially important against the background of the Council of Europe’s aim to offer policy guidance. One reason might be that policy is much less influential with regard to the reality of the cultural sector.

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high

Economic

Cluster2

low

Cluster3

high

Cluster1

low Civic Fig. 17.2  Clusters by civic and economic dimensions

Neoinstitutionalist argumentation would interpret cultural policies in many countries as “myth and ceremony” and as decoupled from actual culture, trying to gain legitimacy by following outside demands rather than by actually steering the cultural field (Meyer et al., 1997). Another explanation could be that we do not yet have good indicators to measure it in a comparative way. Further analyses are needed here as well. What these preliminary analyses demonstrate, though, is the potential that the IFCD has for many different research and policy questions, including descriptive country comparisons as well as correlations between indices on different levels of abstraction. Even though the data should be expanded by including further (contextual) data, the current state of the IFCD already has the capacity to flag up interesting questions and examine potential answers.

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high

Policy

Cluster 2

low Cluster 3

high

Cluster 1

low Freedom & Equality Fig. 17.3  Clusters by freedom and equality and policy dimensions

17.4  Future Paths The IFCD is a policy-induced, but scientifically based project to explore the complex relationships between culture and democracy. As Wright (2011, p. 50) puts it: Art and culture are among the most participative dynamics and social forms of human behaviour. Because of their potential to generate empathy, disrupt reality and create dialogue, they can be powerful vehicles in communicating and shaping our cultural values. There is evidence that cultural values have a profound shaping influence on our motivation to engage with bigger-than-self problems.

In this respect, the IFCD fits well with Anheier’s research on civil society, which is also concerned with “bigger-than-self problems,” a concern that is desperately needed in these times. For the IFCD in its current state, some caveats about its use have to be mentioned. First of all, as with many indices, it is tempting to just have a look at the most aggregated figure, as we have done in Fig. 17.1. However, building a good index is

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quite demanding (e.g., Babbie, 2007, p.  156; Hoelscher & Schubert, 2015; more below). We therefore consider the IFCD more as a “framework,” following a dashboard approach, instead of a single index used to rank countries. For this reason, we are planning to add additional variables. With regard to the above-sketched comparisons, for example, it would be reasonable to add more contexts. For example, many of our variables are highly correlated with the GDP of a country. Controlling for this in more advanced analyses, where appropriate, would probably yield new insights. Caution must also be taken in interpreting the correlations; they do not represent “causality.” Determining causality—as in a higher culture index necessarily leads to more democracy or vice versa—requires much more advanced models as well as at least a sequential structure of the data (see Muller & Seligson, 1994 on civic culture and democracy). It is therefore important to keep in mind that the IFCD is a work in progress. Although it has come quite a long way from its first ideas about a complex, some might even say complicated, concept into a useful tool, further improvements are indicated. Deutsch (1963) and Anheier (2007) mention some key aspects that a good index should fulfill: parsimony, significance, combinatorial richness, organizing power, theoretical fruitfulness, and policy relevance, and it should be the aim to further develop the IFCD along these lines. If we think, for example, about theoretical fruitfulness, we argued already that the IFCD can highlight interesting relationships that then have to be examined in more detail. However, the IFCD should help researchers with this by adding some references and materials on specific topics, thereby adding context to the interesting data. Another shortcoming, owed to parsimony and limited resources, is the missing time series data for trend analyses and for any level other than the country level. Especially the heterogeneous European culture is often not bound to nation-states but is either arching across borders or smaller than whole states. With regard to certain issues, such as cultural infrastructure, it would also be especially interesting to compare rural and urban areas. A more dynamic database would allow the inclusion of the rich data that are available, but this would require, first, a clear commitment with regard to resources and, second, the readiness to accept that not all data are available for all Council of Europe member countries. A third way to increase the scientific rigor of the IFCD would be to use more demanding techniques to combine single variables into indicators, components, and dimensions. Currently, all variables are z-standardized and combined by simple mean value formation. This approach is used often, but confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) (Byrne, 2010; Thompson, 2004), building of scales (Babbie, 2007, p. 176), weighting, or other approaches might be more useful and might also help with data imputation for missing data. All this said, the IFCD was probably for years the most comprehensive comparable dataset on culture available and might now only be topped by the new UNESCO “Culture 2030 Indicators” (2019). It could help to raise awareness about the important role culture plays also for the functioning of our democracies and

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societies in general (e.g., on cultural diplomacy, see British Council, 2018; also Isar, Chap. 16 in this volume). Attempts to update and add data can serve to identify gaps in international data on culture. While we saw some promising initiatives in the field of international cultural statistics (UIS Framework for Cultural Statistics; EU Culture Statistics), a comprehensive approach to measuring cultural issues in a comparative manner is still missing. For this, the IFCD should be used more widely by scientists and policy-makers alike, thereby also justifying its further development into an even stronger tool.

17.4  Appendix: Cluster Assignment of Countries Depending on the chosen kind of cluster algorithm and the underlying data (dimensions or indicators), countries can shift their cluster assignment. Different analyses showed a three-cluster solution as the most appropriate. Table 17.2 shows the assignments for this solution for three different approaches: • Column 2: Hierarchical clustering (Ward method) on the basis of the four dimensions • Column 3: K-Means clustering with shifting cluster centers on the basis of the four dimensions • Column 4: K-Means clustering with shifting cluster centers on the basis of the 17 indicators Table 17.2  Cluster assignment of countries

Albania Austria Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Georgia Germany Greece Hungary

Ward (hierarchical clustering) 1 2 3 1 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 1 2 1 1

K-means (4 dimensions) 1 2 3 1 1 3 3 3 2 2 2 3 1 2 1 3

K-means (17 indicators) 1 2 3 1 1 3 3 3 2 3 2 3 1 2 1 1 (continued)

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Table 17.2 (continued)

Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Moldova Netherlands North Macedonia Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Serbia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom

Ward (hierarchical clustering) 2 3 3 1 1 2 2 3 2 1 2 3 3 1 1 1 3 3 3 2 2 1 2

K-means (4 dimensions) 2 3 3 3 1 2 2 3 2 1 2 3 3 1 1 1 3 3 3 2 2 1 1 2

K-means (17 indicators) 2 3 3 1 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 3 3 2 2 1 1 2

As can be observed, the different methods as well as the different levels of aggregation of the data come to quite similar results, supporting the reliability of the results. The (very few) shifts are marked as bold. Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Turkey have missing data for one of the dimensions (as some indicators are missing), so they cannot be included in the hierarchical clustering, and results in the other solutions should be interpreted carefully.

References Anheier, H. K. (2004). Civil society: Measurement, evaluation, policy. Earthscan. Anheier, H. K. (2007). Introducing ‘cultural indicator’ suites. In H. K. Anheier & Y. R. Isar (Eds.), Conflicts and tension (pp. 335–347). Sage. Anheier, H. K. (2008). Cultural indicator suites? In H. K. Anheier & Y. R. Isar (Eds.), The cultural economy. The culture and globalization series 2 (pp. 327–332). Sage Publications. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (Eds.). (1998). The nonprofit sector in the developing world. A comparative analysis. Manchester University Press.

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Anheier, H. K., Isar, Y. R., & Hoelscher, M. (Eds.). (2012). Cities, cultural policy and governance. Sage Publications. Anheier, H. K., Haber, M., & Kayser, M. A. (Eds.). (2018). Governance indicators. Approaches, progress, promise. Oxford University Press. Babbie, E. (2007). The practice of social research (11th ed.). Thomson Wadsworth. British Council, Goethe Institute. (2018). Cultural value. Cultural relations in societies in transition: A literature review. British Council. Byrne, B. M. (2010). Structural equation modeling with AMOS: basic concepts, applications, and programming (2. ed. ed.). New York, NY [u.a.]: Routledge. Council of Europe. (2013). Final statement. In 10th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers of Culture MinConfCult (2013), 7–16 April 2013. Retrieved from https:// rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentI d=09000016806a2de6 Council of Europe. (2018). Secretary general 2018 report: Role of institutions, threats to institutions. Council of Europe Publications. Council of Europe. (2021). Secretary general 2021 report: State of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. A democratic renewal for Europe. Council of Europe Publications. Deutsch, K. W. (1963). The nerves of government. The Free Press. Gerhards, J. (2007). Cultural overstretch. Differences between old and new member states of the EU and Turkey. Routledge. Gerhards, J., & Hoelscher, M. (2003). Kulturelle Unterschiede zwischen Mitglieds- und Beitrittsländern der EU.  Das Beispiel Familien- und Gleichberechtigungsvorstellungen. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 32(3), 206–225. Heinrich, V. F. (2005). Studying civil society across the world: Exploring the thorny issues of conceptualization and measurement. Journal of Civil Society, 1(3), 211–228. Hoelscher, M. (2011). The CIVICUS civil society index. In M. Kaldor, H. L. Moore, & S. Selchow (Eds.), Global civil society 2012: Ten years of critical reflection. Palgrave Macmillan. Hoelscher, M., & Schubert, J. (2015). Potential and Problems of Existing Creativity and Innovation Indices. Creativity Research Journal, 27(1), 1–15. IFCD (2016). Policy Makers’ Guidebook. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Kaldor, M., Albrow, M., Anheier, H. K., & Glasius, M. (Eds.). (2007). Global civil society 2006/7. Sage Publications. List, R., & Dorner, W. (Eds.). (2012). Civil society, conflict and violence. Bloomsbury Academics. List, R. A., Hadeed, M., Schmuziger Goldzweig, R. & Cohen, J. L.. with contributions by Kaufmann, S., Kononykhina, O., & Haber, M. (2018). Online participation in culture and politics: Towards more democratic societies? Council of Europe. List, R., Kononykhina, O., Cohen, J.  L., with contributions by M.  Haber, Berneau-Kötz, M., Kaufmann, S., & Mejia, L. (2016). Cultural participation and inclusive societies. Council of Europe. Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M., & Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World society and the nation-state. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144–181. https://doi.org/10.1086/231174 Muller, E. N., & Seligson, M. A. (1994). Civic culture and democracy: The question of causal relationships. The American Political Science Review, 88(3), 635–652. Srakar, A., Vecco, M., & Tóth, Á. (2017). The tale of the cuts and raises: Public budgets for culture in the European countries during the financial crisis. Review of Public Economics, 221(2), 83–109. Thompson, B. (2004). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis: understanding concepts and applications. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. UNESCO (2019). Culture | 2030 Indicators. Paris: UNESCO. Wright, S. (2011). Not finding new lands but seeing with new eyes Re.think and Re.volution. In CultureWatchEurope Conference 2011 Reader.

Chapter 18

Global Civil Religion Mark Juergensmeyer

Abstract  Religious organizations and adherents are ambivalent about civil society, as Helmut Anheier has pointed out. On the one hand, new tribalistic movements of religious nationalism are hostile to secular civic culture; but on the other hand, many religious groups and leaders embrace multicultural values and are compatible with the idea of inclusive citizenship. The foremost sociologist of religion, Robert Bellah, has shown in a recent paper that this moral vision of social order, which is the basis of his idea of civil religion, also can be applied to global society. The most positive outcome would be a merger between the progressive values of liberal religion and the newly developing spiritual and moral consensus around the world of the “nones”—people who do not identify with any religion but regard themselves as moral and spiritual. It is this alliance that holds the promise of creating a global civil religion. Keywords  Global religion · Civil society · Civil religion · Helmut Anheier · Robert Bellah · Jürgen Habermas Research on global civil society often skirts around the issue of religion. The works that Helmut Anheier has written and edited, for instance, as impressive as they may be in providing a framework for thinking about civil society in global terms and the institutional structure that it will require, devote relatively little space to religion (Anheier, 2004; Anheier & Toepler, 2010; Anheier et  al., 2011; Anheier & Juergensmeyer, 2012). This is for a good reason. Religion is notoriously ambivalent about civil society. Much of the publicity about activist religious movements in the twenty-first century is decidedly negative. Religious traditions and communities often are linked to a strident tribalism that at its worst is narrowly nationalistic in ways that privilege M. Juergensmeyer (*) Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_18

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dominant religious and ethnic communities. The “new world order” of globalization is often overtly pronounced as its foe. Yet this is not the entire story. As the Islamic legal scholar, Abdullahi An-Na’im, has put it, the issue is what kind of role religion can play in civil society—whether it can enter into a kind of “tactical cooperation” or “reluctant partnership” or whether it will resist civil society and persist in standing outside it, providing its own alternative communities (An-Na’im, 2008). In an increasingly multicultural world, religion’s role could go either way, depending on the religion and on the perceived character of the social context around it. Religion could foster shared values or become an agent of schism. In some cases, civil society will have to mediate between warring religious camps and determine which, if either, it will allow to play a dominant social role. Helmut Anheier and David Hammack, in their co-authored study on American philanthropy for the Brookings Institution, have demonstrated how religion can promote civic virtues on the one hand and undermine them on the other (Anheier & Hammack, 2013). Throughout the book, there are examples of how small religious communities, in seeking foundation support for their activities, are encouraged to adopt a multicultural and tolerant stance that is consistent with civil society. At the same time, the book also indicates that foundation financial support has allowed religious communities to expand their influence within American society. Often this influence is designed to promote the values and mores of those particular religious groups. This tension between the parochialism of religion and its potentially civic reach is at the heart of religion’s social ambivalence. It is therefore not possible to provide a simple yes-or-no answer to the question of whether religion is good for civil society. Though fundamentalist Christians or militant Islamists may not allow for social change, tolerance, and democratic ideals, there are abundant examples where other Christian and Muslim leaders are at the forefront of acceptance and social change. This raises an even larger question: whether it is possible to profile any religion. Do the histories and cultures of religious traditions define religions in predictable ways, or do the diversity of religious strands, the changing interpretations of religious tenets, and the various social settings in which religious communities exist make religions so malleable as to be nigh near unpredictable? Social scientists like to deal with known sets of values, but often religious stances are not so easy to predict.

18.1  T  he Moral and Spiritual Dimension of Global Civil Society Religion interacts with the forces of civil society in various ways and plays a role in both national cultures and an emerging global civil society. It is fair to conclude that when religion is seen primarily in limited organizational terms, and when civil society is viewed primarily as voluntary associations for public service, the two

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may be on different tracks. In the narrow view of religion, the values of particular communities of religion may indeed clash with the wider social milieu. But when religion is conceived in its widest sense, as a stratum of spiritual sensibility and shared moral responsibility, it is congenial with the notion of civil society in its broadest sense—the idea of civic citizenship. The notion that civic citizenship requires a certain moral dimension, a value consensus, has been a part of the scholarly writing about global civil order. In recent years, there has been a wide and growing discussion about the possibilities of a global civil society focused around the concept of “cosmopolitanism”—the notion of a shared sense of global citizenship. The pronouncement that at this moment at the dawn of the twenty-first century and in the era of globalization we are entering into a cosmopolitan age was forcefully made by Kwame Anthony Appiah in his book, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Appiah, 2006). It is a theme that has been elaborated by Ulrich Beck in Cosmopolitan Vision (Beck, 2006) and Giles Gunn in Ideas to Die For: The Cosmopolitan Challenge (2013). The conversations about cosmopolitanism do not talk much about the role of religion, however, but a few scholars have discussed this dimension of global society. Richard Falk, in his book, On Humane Governance: Towards a New Global Politics (updated under the title (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance), stated that religion is “an antidote to the homogenizing impacts of the false universalism and runaway consumerism associated with a new post-Marxist economism” (Falk, 1995/2014). Though Falk is hardly a pious fundamentalist, he sees the value of religious culture in building the moral basis for an enduring world order. A project in which I was involved explored these issues from the perspective of a number of scholars, leading to a volume on Religion in Global Civil Society that explored the relationship between the concepts of religion and global civil society (Juergensmeyer, 2005). The book begins with a thoughtful essay by the sociologist, Peter Berger, on the notion of global civil society (Berger, 2002), and ends with a remarkably futuristic essay by the political scientist, Susanne Rudolph, on the possibilities of a transnational religion (Rudolph, 2005). Rudolph’s essay picks up themes that she first enunciated in the introduction to her co-edited book on Transnational Religion and Fading States (Rudolph & Piscatori, 1997). In this essay, she speculates about the future of religion in the global age. She presents a prophetic vision that someday the emergence of a global civic society will lead to new forms of shared morality, spirituality, and social values. In Rudolph’s vision, a future generation of global citizens will look back on such widely venerated figures of today such as Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Bishop Tutu, and the Dalai Lama and see them as civic saints. They may be viewed in the future as the harbingers of a civic spirituality in a new global civil society. What Rudolph was reflecting was the increasingly popular religiosity of many of her students at the University of Chicago and around the world who deny any allegiance to organized religion. Nonetheless, they proclaim themselves as “spiritual.” They register themselves as “none” when presented with a menu of religious options from Christianity and Judaism to Atheism and Agnosticism. They are not any of these, including atheist or agnostic. They are “none.”

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But the “nones” do have a morality and a sense of spirituality that often has global dimensions. The present situation of globalization, with its corporate exploitation and media homogenization, is an assault on the moral and spiritual underpinnings of the public community that has elicited a moral response. It was almost as if these “nones,” whether Catholic, Jewish, or secular in their backgrounds, share a common new religion that supports a culture of civic concern. We don’t quite know what to call this common religio-secular morality, though one sees examples of it all around us, especially in urban settings around the world. And the communities about which they are concerned are not just within their own nationalist boundaries; they are also concerned about their region and ultimately the world. They are active in promoting issues of human rights and social justice, the equal inclusion of all in public life regardless of ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation; and they are passionate about environmental protection. In a global era, increasingly these activist moral communities span continents and oceans. The network of concern regarding environmental issues, for example, is truly worldwide. This global moral consciousness constitutes one of the most interesting aspects of religion in the global era. It may be the sign of a new global religiosity and morality that has emerged in the cosmopolitan cultures of the globalized world. Though the traditional religions often support many of these common values, the expression of it seems to be distinctly something else, an emerging culture of a global civil society.

18.2  Is Global Civil Religion Possible? The emergence of this global morality and spirituality raises the question of whether there can be a religious dimension to global civil society. Or to put it another way, can there be a global civil religion? The term “civil religion” is often credited to the Berkeley sociologist, Robert Bellah. In 1967 he published an article on “Civil Religion in America,” in which he analyzed the inaugural speeches of US presidents and determined that their invocation of religious metaphors and concepts was done not just to appeal to religious voters but also to chart out a kind of religion of Americanism, to state that American society was itself a moral and spiritual community (Bellah, 1967). The essay had an enormous impact on sociological thinking about America’s political culture when it was first published and continues to do so. The notion of civil religion did not just come out of thin air, however; it had some solid intellectual foundations. The term that he used, “civil religion,” was first employed by the European Enlightenment thinker, Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the eighteenth century to describe the moral and spiritual character of what we otherwise think of as “secular” political society (Rousseau, 1762). But Bellah is more indebted to the concepts of French sociologist Émile Durkheim than Rousseau. Durkheim regarded all collectivities of having a religious element, the glue that holds societies together around a common set of totemic symbols and shared values (Durkheim, 1912/1955). In the Durkheimian sense, it was natural that a country

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would have its own “religion,” a shared set of values, and symbols that gave it the emotional integrity to cohere. This is what Bellah called “civil religion” in America. So in questioning whether the notion of civil religion can be applied to global civil society, perhaps the best person to turn to would be Robert Bellah. I had just such an opportunity in 2012 when I directed a project on religion in global civil society and invited Bellah to come to Santa Barbara from Berkeley to discuss our project. I had worked with Bellah for years when I was the coordinator of the religious studies program at Berkeley, and Bellah was the chair of my advisory council. Now I needed his help in conceptualizing the cultural aspect of global civil society, and whether Bellah thought there could be such a thing as a global civil religion. Characteristically, in thinking about these questions, Bellah shaped his answer in the form of a written paper and a formal presentation. Part of the reason he was interested enough in the topic to write an essay on the question, I believe, stemmed from the fact that Bellah was already thinking ahead to his next book, the sequel to magisterial Religion in Human Evolution (Bellah, 2011). The new book would deal with the evolution of religion in the last several millennia and especially with the emergence of individualism and rationality in the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, concepts that are the bulwark of the rationalism and secularism of today. His paper for us was an opportunity to think beyond the secular-religion dichotomy from the Enlightenment and to think of the possibilities of a global religion. His unpublished paper, “Is Global Civil Society Possible?”, was presented at Santa Barbara on February 2, 2012 (Bellah, 2012). His Santa Barbara paper is about the possibilities of global civil society and more particularly about the role of religion within it. He begins where his essay, “Civil Religion in America,” ends, with the possibility of what Bellah calls “a world civil religion.” Bellah, quoting his own words in “Civil Religion in America,” says that the time has come to consider global society as containing the elements of “a viable and coherent world order.” Moreover, the cultural dimension of such a world order requires “a major new set of symbolic forms.” This sounds like he is anticipating a global religion, though in the earlier essay he did not go into any detail about what these “symbolic forms” might be and how they would relate to traditional religion. His 2012 reflections in Santa Barbara began to elaborate on these two cryptic statements. How could a global civil religion be constructed? As we interpret Bellah’s essay, he argued that there are at least three possibilities. One would be a kind of synthesis of some of the moral and spiritual elements of all the religious traditions of humankind such as Christianity, Islam, and the like or if not a synthesis at least a repository of their shared values. The second would be as an extension of the civil religions of America, Russia, and other national societies. The third would be an expression of an emerging new global culture. While Bellah focuses on the third—the embryonic cultural aspects of a new global society—he does speak about the possibility of traditional religion and nationalist civil religions participating in this emerging culture. One example of this latter possibility came to Bellah when he discovered how interested Chinese scholars were in the idea of civil religion—not just for America but also for China.

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The Chinese scholars could see the Confucian stratum of morality and shared spiritual values becoming a basis for a civil religion for Chinese society. But beyond that, Bellah reports, they were interested in a Chinese civil religion that would be “open to the rest of the world and perhaps participate in a global civil religion” (Bellah, 2012). All of this sounds optimistic, but Bellah was not by nature an optimist. For one thing, he saw the difficulties in getting parochially minded people to look beyond their local and national interests to the profound economic, environmental, and social problems that confront humanity on this planet and which might unite them morally into a global civil society. For another, he saw the possibility that the notion of common global identity and purpose could be formed around functional and utilitarian economic interests rather than moral and social concerns. This was the dismal observation made by the Harvard theologian Harvey Cox in an interesting paper included in a Festschrift for Bellah. Cox wondered whether there is not already a global religion in the form of worshipping economic greed. He suggested that for many people around the world, the economic market is seen as more than a human creation; it is a “power beyond human control” that is “omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent” (Cox, 2001). Bellah speculated that Cox may be right, that the worship of this deity of the global market is something of a global religion. But it is not based on global civil society—quite the opposite, it fosters divisive ideologies and grave economic inequalities that undermine a sense of global common purpose and collective concern (Bellah, 2001). So Cox’s idea of a global “market religion” is not, from Bellah’s point of view, true global religion. Bellah looks instead at another kind of enduring global religiosity, the shared elements of interacting religious traditions over the centuries. Bellah regards this common history of the varied religions in the world to comprise one history, and in that sense, it is a global religion, though ultimately this kind of global religiosity is also insufficient without a sense of global civil society. But it is significant, this sharing of religious culture over the centuries. Planetary trade and other forms of commerce have existed since the days of early explorers from Europe and China, and as people interacted so have their cultures. Buddhism swept up from South Asian and spread throughout the Asian continent. Christianity took elements from Middle Eastern religion and transformed European culture. As these religious cultures spread, they absorbed local cultural elements and interacted with other traditions. Hence Christians have observed the day of Jesus’ birth with the evergreen tree revered by pagan Europeans during Winter solstice and the day of his resurrection with fertility symbols of the rabbit and eggs that were part of pre-­ Christian European festivals of the Spring equinox. As the Harvard historian of religion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, has demonstrated, there has been a remarkable interaction of religious traditions over history. The story that Smith was fond of telling is the one about the Catholic rosary—the string of beads that is used by the faithful to count prayers. Smith traced the historical background of this practice and deduced that the Catholics got the idea from Muslims, among whom prayer beads are also a common artifact (Smith, 1981, pp.  11–14). But then the Muslims most likely received the idea from Buddhists,

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who use prayer beads as well; and the Buddhists, in turn, learned about them from Indian Brahmans, whose 108 beads count the requisite number of Hindu prayers. If prayer beads can travel from religion to religion, from culture to culture, surely ideas also can—and likely have done so. For these reasons, Bellah argues, the history of religion has been a single story. His Religion in Human Evolution charts the development of religiosity across the centuries as a single evolving planetary phenomenon, albeit one that is expressed in particular cultural identities such as Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam (Bellah, 2011). But the singularity of the world’s religious culture is not the same thing as global civil religion, Bellah argues, since this new kind of global religion is the expression of the new phenomenon of global civil society, the idea of a shared sense of citizenship. This is a recent notion, and the possibilities of a global religion in this sense, as an expression of global civil society, are just now emerging. Thus the two ideas, global civil society and global religion, are linked. The latter is the cultural expression of the former. In his paper, Bellah traced the development of the idea of civil society from its inception in eighteenth-century Europe, when it was a part of the complex of ideas related to the European Enlightenment. “Civil society” in the Enlightenment context described what Bellah calls “the public sphere, a realm of thought, argument, and association independent of the state, but leading to the formation of what came to be called public opinion.” It is this notion of citizenship that is explored by Jürgen Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas, 1989; see also Strachwitz, Chap. 3 in this volume). The concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression are essential to the sense of citizenship in the public sphere, and they were enshrined in all of the leading Enlightenment documents, including those of the American Declaration of Independence and its Constitution. The idea of universal human rights also became a part of the shared values of the civil society of the public sphere. Civil society was initially thought to be something that was the province only of national societies. Increasingly in recent years, however, the notion of civil society has gone global, and the phrase, global civil society, has gained acceptance by scholars such as Helmut Anheier and by social activists around the world (Anheier et  al., 2011; see also Kaldor and Selchow, Chap. 13 in this volume). One of the reasons for this is the presumed universality of human rights. Another has been the pervasive growth of international NGOs, especially since the 1990s. Yet another has been the rise of transnational social movements around issues such as economic equality, women’s rights, and environmental protection. At the same time, the advent of instantaneous mass communication through cell phones and the Internet has brought individuals together in an unparalleled way on a global plane. In the twenty-first century, there are a global economy, global legal norms, global communications, and even global festivals such as the Olympics and the World Cup. Though these sporting events have had a long history prior to the global age, the electronic media of the present allow them to be experienced immediately and personally around the world in what is truly a global stadium of participation. All of these developments have led toward networks of interaction not just among national elites but also among ordinary citizens—a global civil society.

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Increasingly nation-state borders do not restrict whom or what we may contact, nor do they define our sense of community. At the same time, economic interaction on a global scale is creating another kind of global community, one that is very much focused on the transnational elites that control and profit from these flows of capital. This elite form of global economic activity is conducive neither to global civil society nor global religion, from Bellah’s point of view. The question is whether the decentralized form of global citizenry can grow despite the attempts of a global elite to control it. This is where Habermas’ speculation about transnational governance comes into play. The emergence of a global civil society is a challenge to nationalist power and to global elite power and requires its own forms of power creation in response. Mass movements and international NGOs provide one kind of counterweight. Global public opinion as voiced over the Internet is by far the most democratic of new communications media, for good or for ill. And other challenges to national and elite power come from newly developed transnational agencies in dealing with problems of the environment, global communications, and the worldwide diasporas of peoples and cultures. Some of these agencies are supported by the United Nations; others have been formed on their own with support from interstate or transnational social movements. Habermas is buoyed by these developments and about regional entities such as the European Union, which he regards as the first step to moving beyond narrow nationalism. Bellah, however, is less sanguine about the efficacy of these developments in creating a sense of global citizenship on their own and returns to the idea of building a moral consensus that can provide the basis for transnational institutions of accountability. Though he appreciates Habermas’ attempts to think about a sense of citizenship beyond narrow nationalism, Bellah thinks that Habermas’ notion of an “abstract constitutional patriotism” is an insufficient base for creating a global civil society. For that you need moral commitment. And this is where religion comes in. Bellah admits that the passions of religious commitment do not always run toward a spirit of open tolerance and interfaith harmony. Quite the opposite is often the case. As the rise of strident nationalist religious movements around the world has demonstrated, religious fervor, as Bellah puts it, has “often been used for evil as well as good purposes.” Still, Bellah believes that the potency of religious passions can be harnessed for good—by which he means a more inclusive sense of religiosity. Moreover, global society needs this kind of religious zeal. “Only such powerful motivation could make human rights genuinely practical” on a global scale, Bellah insists (Bellah, 2012). And he goes on to point out that every religious tradition contains within it the reverence for life and the appreciation for human dignity that is at the basis of universal human rights—not only Christianity but also Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese religion. The Analects of Confucius, Bellah reminds us, states that “all within the four seas are brothers.” Buddhism regards all human life (and for that matter all animate life) as having within it the Buddha nature. A major research poll in 2021 indicated that adherents of each of India’s religious traditions—Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, and

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Christian—expressed toleration and respect for the others (Pew Research Center, 2021). Thus religious traditions are the likely sources for a worldwide appreciation of the universality of the principles underlying human rights. But how can religious leaders be encouraged to turn the message of religious traditions more clearly in the direction of global humanity and away from narrow xenophobia and self-interest? Early in the paper, Bellah made the observation that people are never as united as they are in a situation of war, when they bind together in opposition to a common enemy. At this later point in the paper, he returns to the theme of war—or at least great social turmoil—and speculates that it will take an awareness of social, economic, and environmental catastrophes so severe that people will turn to religious insights for condemnation of the selfish policies that led these situations and unite in what William James once called “the moral equivalence of war” (James, 1906). Bellah warns, however, that “anxiety and fear have often fueled extremely regressive movements” and even in a time of catastrophic economic inequality and massively irresponsible inaction in the face of environmental disaster, “there is no certainty” that these crises will “move people in the right direction.” Still, Bellah would have been impressed by statements of Pope Francis, in November 2013, that “trickle-down economics” has led to grave economic injustice and was therefore morally sinful (Pope Francis, 2013). Whether statements such as the Pope’s are the beginning of a common front among religious leaders against the economic and environmental crises of our day is an interesting question, but the very fact of the Pope’s statement—and the enormous support for his outreach toward the poor and marginalized elements of global society—does give some credibility to the possibility of Bellah’s assertion that religious traditions can be a basis for a sense of transnational stewardship and the moral commitment to a global civil society. Bellah concludes his paper by saying that he is convinced that “religious motivation is a necessary factor” in transforming the growing global moral consensus into effective forms of civil society. He envisions the possibility of world law and global governance that will be created in response to an “actually existing global civil society” that has “a spiritual dimension drawing from all the great religions of the world” (Bellah, 2012). This brings us back to the insights of Helmut Anheier that religious organizations could support civic values as well as undermine them (Anheier & Hammack, 2013). This ambivalent relationship of religion to civil society exists on a global as well as a national level, as this essay has tried to demonstrate. Moreover it underscores the possibility of a new kind of religiosity in sync with the moral values of global citizenship, one that would merge the impulse toward tolerance and generosity of liberal religion with the ethical attitude of the religious “nones” to global issues such as human rights and environmental protection. This is the promise of a spiritual and moral dimension to civil society on a transnational scale. It is also the vision of a truly global civil religion.

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References Anheier, H. K. (2004). Civil society: Measurement and policy dialogue. Earthscan. Anheier, H. K., & Hammack, D. C. (2013). A versatile American institution: The changing ideals and realities of philanthropic foundations. Brookings Institution Press. Anheier, H. K., & Juergensmeyer, M. (Eds.). (2012). Global studies encyclopedia (5 Vols.). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (Eds.). (2010). International encyclopedia of civil society (3 Vols.). Springer. Anheier, H. K., et al. (Eds.). (2011). Global civil society 2011: Global justice. Palgrave. An-Na’im, A. A. (2008). Islam and the secular state: Negotiating the future of Shari’a. Harvard University Press. Appiah, K. A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers. W.W. Norton. Beck, U. (2006). The cosmopolitan vision. (C. Cronin Trans.). Polity. Bellah, R.  N. (1967). Civil religion in America. Daedalus, 96(1 (Winter)), 1–21. (Reprinted in The Robert Bellah reader, pp. 225–245, by R. N. Bellah, & S. M. Tipton, Eds., 2006, Duke University Press). Bellah, R. (2001). Epilogue. Meaning and modernity: America and the world. In R.  Madsen et al. (Eds.), Meaning and modernity: Religion, polity and self (pp. 255–276). University of California Press. Bellah, R. N. (2011) Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Harvard University Press. Bellah, R.  N. (2012). Is global civil society possible?. Retrieved from http://www.global.ucsb. edu/luceproject/papers/pdf/RobertBellah.pdf. The video presentation of his paper is posted at http://vimeo.com/40404248. (3 parts). Cox, H. (2001). Mammon and the culture of the market: A socio-theological critique, in R. Madsen, et al., (eds.), Meaning and modernity: Religion, polity, and self, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 124–135. Berger, P. L., & Huntington, S. P. (Eds.). (2002). Many globalizations: Cultural diversity in the contemporary world. Oxford University Press. Durkheim, É. (1955). Elementary forms of religious life (K. E. Fields Trans.). Free Press. (Original work published 1912). Falk, R. (1995). On humane governance: Toward a new global politics. Pennsylvania State University Press. (Revised version, (Re)Imagining a humane global governance, 2014, Routledge Press). Gunn, G. (2013). Ideas to die for: The cosmopolitan challenge. Routledge. Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. MIT Press. James, W. (1906). Moral equivalent of war. (Reprinted in The best American essays of the century, by J. C. Oates, Ed., 2000, Houghton Mifflin). Juergensmeyer, M. (Ed.). (2005). Religion in global civil society. Oxford University Press. Pew Research Center. (2021). Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation. In Pew Forum. Retrieved from https://www.pewforum.org/2021/06/29/religion-­in-­india-­tolerance-­and-­segregation/ Pope Francis (2013). Evagelii Gaudium. Retrieved June 28, 2014, from http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-­francesco_esortazione-­ap_20131124_ evangelii-­gaudium.html Rousseau, J.-J. (1762). The social contract (4 Vols.). Rudolph, S. (2005). Religious transnationalism. In M.  Juergensmeyer (Ed.), Religion in global civil society (pp. 189–200). Oxford University Press. Rudolph, S.  H., & Piscatori, J. (Eds.). (1997). Transnational religion and fading states. Westview Press. Smith, W. C. (1981). Towards a world theology: Faith and the comparative history of religion. Westminster Press.

Chapter 19

Civil Society and the Problem of Knowledge Markus Lang Abstract  Information excess is recognized as an important source of civil society’s “shrinking space.” But the focus on information excess has not yet led to debates about civil society’s strategies to build and rebuild feedback infrastructures. This chapter discusses both adaptive strategies that promise citizens to stay politically informed within existing feedback infrastructures and creative strategies that seek to facilitate the discovery of alternative feedback infrastructures. Without such strategies, it is to be feared that fact-checking initiatives or library equivalents only emerge once trust in journalists and public authorities has already been lost. Keywords  Civil society · Feedback infrastructure · Information excess

19.1  Introduction We are currently observing a gradual shrinkage of civil society space in countries with autocratic and hybrid regimes, as well as in “flawed democracies” (Anheier et al., 2019). This gradual shrinkage takes place despite citizens’ greater access to politically relevant information, which raises the question whether autocratic regimes perceive the availability of political information as a threat. The answer the political science literature gives to this question is rather nuanced. For instance, while political scientists observe that the Chinese government decisively censors calls for collective action, it appears to tolerate criticism of the government to a surprising degree (King et al., 2013). Apparently, you are allowed to criticize the government when you do so in relative isolation. By contrast, the Chinese government’s key strategy against critics is the production of vast amounts of “alternative facts” that make most government critics sound like voices in the wilderness (King et al., 2017). Strategies like these silently worsen the situation of civil society actors, such as human rights organizations, that struggle against ignorance and partisanship. Even

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in “full democracies,” civil society actors are on the way to being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of potentially incorrect information. Modern and classic authors agree that ignorance and partisanship are akin to simple strategies of individuals in dealing with “information excess,” Lacking the time and interest to verify the truth of every newspaper article or TV show, individuals resort to time-saving strategies: if you believe one side has all the answers, you need to read only one newspaper or watch only one TV channel. Moreover, new data points can be more easily interpreted if you are comfortable with judging everything from a single vantage point. You might even appear more trustworthy to other people by being able to deliver interpretations quickly. The gradual erosion of civil society as a space for systematic doubt is a direct consequence. It is not too difficult to imagine an alternative reality in which civil society actors take on a “vanguard role” (Anheier et al., 2018) in developing adaptive and creative strategies to cope with information excess (cf. Abbott, 2014). For instance, civil society actors could attempt to retranslate newspaper articles and videos that amplify differences between social groups into a common language. They could also supply tools to citizens that help them to discover fake news or disinformation online. The question then becomes why civil society actors have thus far not invested more time and resources in the development of such adaptive and creative strategies. In principle, civil society actors would be ideally positioned between market and state in order to come up with techniques and tools that are more broadly trusted. Projects like Media Cloud, developed and run jointly by researchers from Harvard, University of Massachusetts Amherst (previously MIT), and Northeastern University, news organizations including Associated Press, and foundations such as the Ford Foundation provide a glimpse of what future civil society projects could look like (mediacloud.org, 2021). My argument in this chapter is that citizens in many countries fail to attribute responsibility for solving information problems to civil society actors. This apparent lack of responsibility is probably also one reason why citizens themselves are not particularly engaged in the solution of information problems. Instead, most citizens seem to believe that journalists or news organizations should come up with solutions for problems such as information excess. Support for this argument comes from a recent Eurobarometer survey on the issue of fake news and disinformation (European Union, 2018). In this survey, 45% of respondents saw journalists as responsible for stopping the dissemination of fake news and disinformation online. The second place was taken by national authorities which 39% considered responsible for stopping fake news. In contrast, only 15% of all respondents saw any responsibility lying with nongovernmental organizations, and only 32% were convinced that they as citizens had a role to play. Interestingly, however, the share of respondents that did attribute responsibility for stopping fake news to nongovernmental organizations and the citizenry itself was highest in countries with newly elected populist governments, such as Poland and Austria. This result suggests that citizens attribute responsibility for solving information problems to civil society actors and the citizenry when journalists and national authorities suffer visible losses in public trust. The challenge for civil

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society actors in the coming years could be to claim more responsibility for information problems on the basis of “imagined consequences” before processes of civil society shrinkage are in full swing. I begin this chapter by describing the Lippmann-Dewey debate, which is arguably the longest-running and most profound social scientific debate on the consequences of information excess for democracy. Afterward, I discuss potential strategies for dealing with information excess in light of this debate. Finally, I discuss why civil society actors have not yet embraced such strategies to a greater degree.

19.2  The Lippmann-Dewey Debate The feeling of being overwhelmed by the mass of political information is not exactly new. In 1927, Walter Lippmann (1927/1993, p. 68) wrote in his book The Phantom Public: “The environment is complex. Man’s political capacity is simple.” Lippmann’s goal in that book was to explore possible bridges between the seemingly limited political capacity of citizens and the growing complexity of their environment. His debating partner, John Dewey (1922/1976), largely agreed with the diagnosis that information excess posed a severe problem for the postwar public. Dewey, however, had a different treatment in mind and did not see political capacities as limited as Lippmann. Instead, he was convinced that citizens could learn to form intelligent, democratic publics with respect to important issues (Dewey, 1927). The best available response to the democratic crisis was not an unquestioning belief in experts. According to Dewey, the main reason why citizens struggled with too much information was the acquisition of habits and customs within a largely passive, representative democracy. Dewey was worried that citizens were not used to actively participating in the political process and remained overly reliant on journalists and state authorities. Though the arena for the debate was the United States in the 1920s, the Lippmann-­ Dewey debate is still a good starting point for discussing information excess in the present because it marks the beginning of a long-lasting social scientific debate on information excess; it also takes place in a time in which the media landscape went through ruptures similar to those being currently experienced (Wu, 2011, 2016). Then as now, political parties and business corporations compete to control public perception in newly emergent media channels and aim to communicate with potential voters and customers as directly as possible. Unlike in the 1920s, however, this competition to control public perception has become relevant worldwide.

19.2.1  Lippmann’s Structural Barriers If you read the beginning of Lippmann’s (1922/1965) book Public Opinion, you can easily get the impression that he wrote about the present and not about the time immediately after World War I.  Lippmann wrote about “structural barriers” that

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prevent citizens from engaging with public affairs in a way that sounds all too familiar. The main structural barriers mentioned by Lippmann are as follows: “artificial censorships, the limitations of social contact, the comparatively meager time available in each day for paying attention to public affairs, the distortion arising because events have to be compressed into very short messages, [and] the difficulty of making a small vocabulary express a complicated world” (1922/1965, p. 18). Lippmann’s first structural barrier, “artificial censorship,” lies in the withholding of information from the public not because the release of this information would somehow harm the public but because “it is believed to be none of the public’s business” (1922/1965, p.  28). A contemporary example of artificial censorship is the routine classification of government documents into levels such as confidential, secret, and top secret. This frequently happens without consideration of whether the public has a legitimate right to be informed about government actions. To illustrate this point, consider that the number of US government documents classified into levels like confidential, secret, and top secret has roughly doubled between 1995 and 2015; there have also been more than 148 times as many derivate classifications of government documents in 2015 than in 1995 (Bruce et al., 2018, p. 14). Yet, the Moynihan Commission’s report on government secrecy had already warned in 1995 that the public was “uninformed of decisions of great consequence” and “[a]s a result, there may be a heightened degree of cynicism and distrust of government” (Moynihan, 1997, p. 8). Lippmann’s second structural barrier, “limitations of social contact,” lies in the importance of social positioning and contact frequency for the way in which individuals inform themselves about politics (cf. 1922/1965, Chap. 3). If we believe Lippmann, individuals acquire political information from the social circles in which they are active, and these social circles are also the sources of individuals’ moral judgments. Lippmann early on formulates an argument that has become a sociological commonplace: mental structures and positions in social structures are connected to each other. More recent research only qualifies this argument insofar as it emphasizes that not every person occupies a “clearly located position”: there seem to be plenty of people who do not know where they stand but plenty of other people who have a clear “sense of place” and even a good understanding of their position in relation to others. This is particularly true for politically interested people who believe “to know the world” even if their actual knowledge can be shown to be inaccurate (Martin & Desmond, 2010). Lippmann’s third structural barrier, “meager time,” lies in the time citizens spend reading about politics (cf. 1922/1965, Chap. 4). Such time, according to Lippmann, is insufficient to grant citizens a more extended role in the formulation of policies. Then as now, it can be difficult to measure the amount of time citizens spend reading. When asked, citizens regularly inflate their answers because they feel the need to conform to social expectations. Our best chance to minimize the so-called social desirability bias is to rely on the American Time Use Survey, which “forces” respondents to place their reading within an ordinary work day; it thus makes it somewhat more difficult to invent reading sessions. According to the American Time Use Survey (2019), the time respondents read out of personal interest has decreased

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from 0.36 h/day in 2003 to 0.29 h/day in 2016. The fact that this decrease can be observed across genders and ethnicities suggests that there is no single factor, such as more women entering the labor market, that accounts for the overall decline in reading time. Apparently, Americans really read less than they did a decade ago. Of course, we cannot rule out that political reading as a subset of personal interest reading has remained constant throughout these years. Yet, the fact that even the time spent watching TV news is on a downward spiral suggests that Americans generally spend less time informing themselves about public affairs (Matsa, 2018). It is possible but unlikely that new sources of political information, such as comedy shows or social media feeds, fully compensate for declines in reading time. Lippmann’s fourth and final barrier, “short messages and small vocabulary,” lies in the simplified perception of facts. It seems as if many citizens replace facts with fictions they would like to believe (cf. 1922/1965, Chap. 5). With respect to the replacement of facts with fictions, Lippmann paints an extremely negative picture of the democratic public in the United States during the 1920s: “The mass of absolutely illiterate, of feeble-minded, grossly neurotic, undernourished and frustrated individuals, is very considerable, much more considerable there is reason to think than we generally suppose” (1922/1965, p. 48). Whether the picture Lippmann paints is even remotely accurate is something I will discuss later when I introduce Dewey’s response. Here I will give you an example of the importance of short messages in our own time, which is of course President Donald Trump’s tweeting behavior. Given that lawyers from the US Department of Justice have defined President Trump’s tweets as official presidential statements, his tweets were the main way in which the president communicated with the American public. In his first 2 years in the White House, President Trump released no less than 6000 posts on the social media platform Twitter to an audience of almost 62 million followers (The Economist, 2019). When we look at how US citizens react to his tweets, we notice that the reactions vary strongly by political party affiliation. The pollster YouGov asked a sample of US citizens since the beginning of the Trump presidency to rate every tweet on a five-point scale from “terrible” (−2) to “great” (+2). The results show that Trump tweets receive an average rating of “ok,” whereby Democrats rate his tweets on average as “bad,” and Republicans rate his tweets on average as “good” (YouGov, 2019; The Economist, 2019). As suspected by Lippmann, short messages with a simple vocabulary seem to generate simple responses by readers. The resulting discussions are a far cry from the knowledge-rich expert discussions Lippmann considers necessary for a stable democracy. After time-travelling to the year 2019, Lippmann would likely reserve adjectives for the American public quite similar to the ones he had used in 1922. The existence of severe structural barriers suggests to Lippmann (1927/1993) that democracies are destined to fail without the establishment of an expert committee as intelligent center of society. The task of this intelligent center, which can be likened to modern think tanks (cf. Ruser, 2018; Laux, 2019), would be to analyze complex problems that require a considerable amount of knowledge on behalf of political decision-makers who could rely on expert knowledge in order to come up

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with more rational decisions. The role of the public in the political process would be merely to choose between the two main political parties (Lippmann assumes a simple American style two-party system). In Lippmann’s world, citizens would only have to concern themselves with the likely performance of competing parties; they would not have to concern themselves with actual policies. The public plays a largely passive role in the political process; if it sticks to this role and trusts experts, the crisis of democracy could be overcome. The key is to rely on the analytical capacity of experts given the all too obvious weaknesses of public opinion formation and aggregation.

19.2.2  Dewey’s Reflective Intelligence Even though Dewey saw the public in an entirely different light as Lippmann, he welcomed his analysis as an analysis of pathological developments. Dewey called Lippmann’s book Public Opinion “the most effective indictment of democracy ever penned” (1922/1976, pp.  336–337); besides, Lippmann’s book offered him an opportunity to lay out his own view of democracy. For Dewey (1927), democratic publics were fully capable of building stable social orders, but they could also be much more than that; they could be the basis of citizens’ self-realization and the basis for developing a meaningful life in community. In other words, Dewey saw democratic publics mainly as ends in themselves. The social order problem was taken care of in the formation of truly democratic publics. The key to the development of democratic publics was, in Dewey’s view, citizens’ active participation in the political process. He did not see citizens as passive spectators because he expected them to evince a natural proclivity toward political activism. Recent examples for the kind of political activism Dewey likely had in mind include the Fridays for Future protests in Europe and the protests against the overreaching of the Chinese government in Hong Kong. That political activism by citizens is typically the exception and not the rule is, according to Dewey, a consequence of habits that citizens had previously acquired that were difficult to shake off. Dewey’s definition of a habit is as follows: that kind of human activity which is influenced by prior activity and in that sense acquired; which contains within itself a certain ordering or systematization of minor elements of action; which is projective, dynamic in quality, ready for overt manifestation; and which is operative in some subdued subordinate form even when not obviously dominating activity. (Dewey, 2002, p. 40)

To put it more simply: citizens have enormous difficulties leaving passive, TV-based engagement with public affairs behind and replacing it with active, time-­ consuming real-world engagement. The reason for the development of bad habits is, in Dewey’s view, disengagement and passivity of citizens in representative democracies. This passivity is, however, socially acquired and could thus be socially gotten rid of. It is no deep-seated part of the human condition.

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In getting rid of bad habits, Dewey attributed an important role to scientific knowledge about the formation of habits and about scientifically tested strategies to replace bad habits. Yet, he lamented that most of this knowledge was produced for and used not by democratically active citizens but by commercial interests (cf. Bröckling, 2007). This is arguably true for the present as well. If you look into the shelves of analog and digital booksellers, there is a nearly endless barrage of self-­ help guides that promises scientifically tested knowledge about how to lose weight, exercise more, sleep longer, and so on (cf. Duhigg, 2013; Eyal, 2014; Clear, 2018). Almost none of these guides has a chapter on how to become politically active. One is supposed to glean this knowledge from long biographies of political luminaries found in the bookshelf for the already interested. The constant questioning of bad political habits and their gradual replacement is what Dewey means by reflective intelligence. Instead of questioning only eating, exercising, and sleeping habits, citizens are supposed to question political habits as well. Once you have spotted your own bad political habits, you are on a long and windy road of replacing them with better ones. After time-travelling into the year 2019, Dewey might discover some of these attempts in the Fridays for Future Movement that aims to replace passive habits like expectations that politicians and experts will eventually handle problems for them, with active habits involving protesting, petitioning, and the like. Seeing protest movements like Fridays for Future grow gives the impression that Dewey’s participatory view of democracy is alive and well and that civil society is generally on the upswing. That this impression does not correspond well with data from a large number of countries could be explained by entrenched habits of citizens in representative systems. Yet, it could also have something to do with media and information conglomerates that are interested less in the formation of democratic publics than in selling ads to the highest bidders and are thus easily (ab)used by autocratic elites.

19.3  Dealing with Information Excess The neglect of media and information conglomerates is one of the clear weaknesses of Dewey’s writings on democracy (Whipple, 2005, pp. 164–165). One could even argue that Lippmann’s writings, who as a journalist experienced media and government manipulations during and after World War I, are more relevant for the challenges we face today than Dewey’s rather philosophical account. Lippmann’s emphasis on social circles that influence opinion formation predates contemporary discussions about “filter bubbles,” and his discussion of short messages and simple language anticipates recent criticism of social media platforms. What Lippmann’s account lacks, however, because of his unquestioning belief in experts, and what would probably be needed to make Dewey’s relentless optimism more plausible are strategies to employ “feedback infrastructure” for dealing with information excess. The notion of feedback infrastructure was introduced by Evgeny

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Morozov and refers to “the ownership and operation of the means of producing ‘feedback data’” (2019, p. 52). Unlike Dewey, Morozov recognizes that reflective intelligence depends heavily on media and information conglomerates and seeks to “challeng[e] neoliberalism with the very tools it has helped to produce” (2019, p. 54). I argue that there are two types of strategies to employ feedback infrastructure: adaptive strategies that allow citizens to stay politically informed within the existing feedback infrastructure and creative strategies that facilitate the discovery of alternative feedback infrastructures (cf. Abbott, 2014).

19.3.1  Adaptive Strategies An adaptive strategy for dealing with artificial censorship is the development of software that automatically declassifies government files, assuming there is no tangible reason for keeping them secret. Both in the development of such software and in the monitoring of its implementation, nongovernmental organizations could play an important role as brokers between governments and software suppliers. More transparent classification decisions have the potential to increase trust in government information management (cf. Bruce et al., 2018). To deal with the limitations of social contact, one adaptive strategy is to double-­ check political claims with the help of fact-checking services (cf factcheck.org, 2021; politifact.com, 2019). While social media platforms are likely to amplify the spread of falsehoods, fact-checking services offer an opportunity to confront individuals with the established scientific consensus. This is, obviously, how some tech giants, such as Facebook and Google, have attempted to address the spread of falsehoods on their platforms. Unfortunately, the real-world success of fact-checking campaigns has been limited given that fact-checking services themselves are easily questioned and discredited within closed social circles. An adaptive strategy for dealing with a lack of time to inform oneself is the use of abstracts that summarize long articles, books, and reports on public affairs without distorting their contents. The use of abstracts is common in science and industry (Chemical Abstract Service, 2021), and there are even a number of abstract services that sum up dreary management books (Blinkist, 2021; getAbstract, 2021). Yet there are, to my knowledge, no specialized abstract services dedicated to political content that have a high likelihood of being misrepresented. If civil society actors could help get such services off the ground, they would probably help not only citizens to make sense of the news but also legislators with a limited research support staff. How does one deal with short messages and simple language? One adaptive strategy is digital minimalism, i.e., to turn off notifications and delete social media apps. This partial withdrawal from the news cycle makes it more difficult for attention merchants to capture the attention of citizens with trivialities. There is already a small group of activists around former Google employee Tristan Harris that advises people on how to use electronic devices in a way that combats information excess (Center for Humane Technology, 2021).

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19.3.2  Creative Strategies The adaptive strategies mentioned thus far can help citizens with limited social contacts and reading time to avoid drowning in problematic information. Beyond being nudged toward better political information, however, it is also imaginable that citizens become engaged in efforts to develop alternative feedback infrastructures. Arguably, neither the limited time to learn about public affairs nor the structure of social contacts is unchangeable. A creative strategy for dealing with artificial censorship is the establishment of government databases that contain not just masses of raw information but also translated, summarized, and interconnected information. Unlike in the past, today it is often not possible for interested citizens to get access to high-quality government information via public libraries. Instead, there are online data dumps that are difficult to use for even academics. I suspect that the disparity between publicly available government information and commercially processed government information is an underestimated source of information excess. To put it differently: there is plenty that information-oriented civil society organizations can do to help process the information and make it useful to the average citizen. Digital platforms that foster contacts across boundaries established by everyday life are the basis of one creative strategy for dealing with the limitations of social contact. This is, of course, what existing digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram incidentally do while they maximize advertising revenue. If commonalities between citizens were not identified to increase “user engagement,” but to explicitly support reflective intelligence, digital platforms might be able to overcome some limitations of social contact. Precarious workers, members of minorities, and other isolated collectives may find unexpected common ground while experimenting with platforms that look for structural equivalences unrelated to consumption. A rather obvious way to increase the time people have available for reading and keeping up to speed on political news is an increase in leisure time in the form of public holidays. While increases in leisure time might not be used by every citizen to “cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself” (Keynes, 1930/2010, p. 328), they still offer opportunities for political information. It is hardly fair to scold citizens with insufficient time and resources for a failure to develop “good” political habits. To build an alternative feedback infrastructure requires engagement by a critical mass of citizens, not by all citizens. Finally, a creative strategy for dealing with short messages and simple language is the development of feedback infrastructures that encourage longer conversations with the help of inbuilt rules. Whereas social media platforms insist on no more than 280 characters (Twitter) or 15 s (TikTok), it is possible in principle to imagine platforms that insist on highlighting points of agreement or things discussants can learn from each other, before any criticism can be posted. While such platforms might not be as attractive to citizens as Twitter or TikTok, they are likely to be much better at cultivating reflective intelligence.

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As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, it is currently not yet evident that civil society actors see themselves as vanguards in the development of either adaptive or creative strategies in dealing with information excess. I use the remaining part of this chapter to speculate about the reluctance of civil society actors to claim responsibility for managing information.

19.4  Reluctant Publics One reason why civil society actors have not more actively pursued adaptive and creative strategies in dealing with information excess could be that citizens have attributed responsibility for information problems to other actors. As noted at the outset of this chapter, this is at least what the Eurobarometer survey on Fake News and Disinformation Online suggests, given that only 32% of respondents see themselves as responsible for addressing the fake news problem and only 15% of respondents attributed responsibility to nongovernmental organizations (European Union, 2018). These numbers indicate that civil society actors need to convince citizens that they can develop and diffuse workable solutions for information problems. One possibility to do so lies in the development and diffusion of everyday tools that help citizens to adapt to information overflow. Such everyday tools might not be very impactful in themselves but demonstrate technical expertise that citizens typically associate with media organizations and government agencies. Besides demonstrating technical expertise, civil society actors can attempt to gain the trust of citizens by building credible feedback infrastructures. Some information sources are typically only interesting for journalists once there is a looming scandal or other major policy issues that sell ads and subscriptions. Civil society actors, by contrast, could systematically develop tools that structure less engaging but substantively important information. Finally, civil society actors are critical in the effort to warn about the consequences of concentrating information capabilities in media corporations and government agencies in case of political regime changes. This is an important task of comparative research on civil society activism. While there is a rich literature on the role of civil society actors in welfare provision, as demonstrated by many of the chapters in this volume (see, e.g., Kendall in Chap. 22 on the United Kingdom and Jakobson and Mersianova in Chap. 23 on Russia), there is no comparable literature on the role of civil society actors in managing information.

19.5  Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to identify reasons for the relative inactivity of civil society actors when it comes to ever more threatening information challenges. In doing so, my focus has mostly been on the situation in full democracies and not on

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the situation in autocratic and hybrid regimes as well as in flawed democracies. It seems, however, reasonable to expect that innovations in dealing with information excess increasingly also originate in countries in which young people actively seek to escape government censors and private data collection efforts. The problem with these innovations is that they are more difficult to identify and describe than innovations that are openly promoted and used in full democracies but have not yet found a larger audience. An important update or extension of this chapter would be to describe which adaptive or creative strategies might work or have worked in getting around structural barriers in autocratic and hybrid regimes as well as flawed democracies.

References Abbott, A. (2014). The problem of excess. Sociological Theory, 32(1), 1–26. American Time Use Survey (ATUS). (2019). Historical news release tables. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/tus/tustabs.htm Anheier, H. K., Krlev, G., & Mildenberger, G. (2018). Social innovation: comparative perspectives. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., Lang, M., & Toepler, S. (2019). Civil society in times of change: shrinking, changing and expanding spaces and the need for new regulatory approaches. Economics: The Open-­ Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 13, 1–27. Blinkist. (2021) About. Retrieved July 12, 2021, from https://www.blinkist.com/de/about Bröckling, U. (2007). Das unternehmerische Selbst: Soziologie einer Subjektivierungsform. Suhrkamp Verlag. Bruce, J. B., Beaghley, S., & Jameson, G. W. (2018). Secrecy in U.S. national security: Why a paradigm shift is needed. Rand Corporation. Center for Humane Technology. (2021). Who we are. Retrieved July 12, 2021, from https://www. humanetech.com/who-­we-­are Chemical Abstract Service. (2021). About. Retrieved July 12, 2021, from https://www.cas. org/about Clear, J. (2018). Atomic habits: An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. Random House. Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems: An essay in political inquiry. Henry Holt. Dewey, J. (1976). In J.  A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works, 1899-1924 (Vol. 13). Southern Illinois University Press. (Original work published 1922). Dewey, J. (2002). Human nature and conflict. Dover Publications. Duhigg, C. (2013). The power of habit: Why we do what we do, and how to change. Random House. European Union. (2018). Flash Eurobarometer 464: Fake news and disinformation online. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/ResultDoc/ download/DocumentKy/82798 Eyal, N. (2014). Hooked: How to build habit-forming products. Penguin Group. FactCheck.org. (2021). Our mission. Retrieved July 12, 2021, from https://www.factcheck.org/ about/our-­mission/ getAbstract. (2021). About us. Retrieved July 12, 2021, from https://www.getabstract.com/en/ about-­us Keynes, J.  M. (2010). Economic possibilities for our grandchildren. In Essays in persuasion (pp. 321–332). Palgrave Macmillan. King, G., Pan, J., & Roberts, M. E. (2013). How censorship in China allows government criticism but silences collective expression. American Political Science Review, 107(2), 1–18.

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King, G., Pan, J., & Roberts, M. E. (2017). How the Chinese Government fabricates social media posts for strategic distraction, not engaged argument. American Political Science Review, 111(3), 484–501. Laux, T. (2019). How do think tanks qualify their expertise? Exploring the field of scientific policy advice in France. Journal of Science Communication, 18(3), 1–20. Lippmann, W. (1965). Public opinion. The Free Press. (Original work published 1922). Lippmann, W. (1993). The phantom public. Transaction Publishers. (Original work published 1927). Martin, J.  L., & Desmond, M. (2010). Political position and social knowledge. Sociological Forum, 25(1), 1–26. Matsa, K. E. (2018, January 5). Fewer Americans rely on TV news; What type they watch varies by who they are. Pew Research Center. mediacloud.org. (2021), About. Retrieved July 12, 2021, from https://mediacloud.org/about Morozov, E. (2019). Digital socialism? The calculation debate in the age of big data. New Left Review, 116/117, 33–67. Moynihan, D.  P. (1997). Secrecy: Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. U.S. Government Printing Office. politifact.com. (2019). Our process. Retrieved July 12, 2021, from https://www.politifact.com/ truth-­o-­meter/article/2018/feb/12/principles-­truth-­o-­meter-­politifacts-­methodology-­i/ Ruser, A. (2018). What to think about think tanks: Towards a conceptual framework of strategic think tank behaviour. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 31, 179–192. The Economist. (2019, July 17). Trump’s tweet divides Americans. The Economist. Whipple, M. (2005). The Dewey-Lippmann debate today: Communication distortions, reflective agency, and participatory democracy. Sociological Theory, 23(3), 156–178. Wu, T. (2011). The master switch: The rise and fall of information empires. Random House. Wu, T. (2016). The attention merchants: The epic scramble to get inside our heads. Random House. YouGov. (2019). A daily rating of president trump’s tweets. Retrieved September 23, 2019.

Chapter 20

The Dark Side of the Nonprofit Sector: Polarization in Contemporary Society Avner Ben-Ner Abstract  The nonprofit sector is viewed as charitable. The American experience shows that this is partly true, but for the most part its activities are in-group oriented. I argue that the nonprofit sector, which arises in response to market and government failures, is active in fields that require stakeholders (consumers or their sponsors) to make voluntary donations and participate in organization governance. These are more forthcoming in groups whose members share common bonds of ethnic, religious, and other dimensions of identity. To sustain these bonds, nonprofits engage in activities that strengthen identities, in-group orientation, and sometimes enmity toward out-group members. I sketch out stages in the evolution of in-group orientation by nonprofits, stylized after the American experience: (1) splintering (pluralism), whereby diverse local groups provide for their members nonprofit cultural, religious, educational, and other services; (2) fragmentation (coalescing), whereby local nonprofits with similar service missions affiliated with similar identity groups form regional or national associations; (3) polarization, whereby nonprofits and associations in different services with related identity orientations align themselves along broader goals and worldviews, creating camps and resulting in polarization among them. The bright sides of the nonprofit sector are accompanied in the contemporary environment by its exacerbation of polarization. Keywords  Nonprofit sector · In-group orientation · Polarization · Civil society · USA · Donations

20.1  Introduction Contemporary American society is polarized (Pew Research Center, 2019). Many people adhere to opposite views on politics, abortion rights, the possession and use of firearms, the value of scientific evidence, and more. There is intolerance toward other views and antipathy toward those who hold them. There is a strong tendency A. Ben-Ner (*) Department of Work and Organizations, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_20

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for views on different issues to align and coalesce into worldviews that are frequently defined not only on their own terms but in opposition to other worldviews (Baldassarri & Gelman, 2008; Jost, 2017). Polarization is undesirable because it generates conflict, endangers cooperation necessary for effective political decisionmaking, and has overall a negative affective impact on society (McCoy et al., 2018). In this essay, I argue that the nonprofit sector is a significant contributor to polarization.1 The nonprofit sector arises from insufficient or inadequate provision by for-profit firms and government of public goods, goods and services that require large fixed costs, or goods and services about which buyers have limited information. Alternative provision of such goods and services requires voluntary contributions by consumers with large demand and oversight of the organizations to ensure appropriate provision (Weisbrod, 1974; Hansmann, 1980; Ben-Ner, 1986). The inadequacy of for-profit and government provision is particularly consequential in communities with significant cultural, economic, ethnic, political, and religious diversity, with diverse groups having demand for different variants of education, culture, and other goods and services (James, 1993). Groups that share important identities deal more effectively with incentives for free-riding because members of the same cultural, religious, ethnic, or other group tend to care about each other and to be susceptible to peer pressure and thus be more likely to make voluntary contributions of money and time, thus enabling supply of goods and services of interest. Hence diversity enhances both demand for nonprofit provision and the voluntary provision of resources necessary for the supply of nonprofit services (Ben-Ner & Van Hoomissen, 1991). The continued existence of nonprofit organizations in diverse societies requires reinforcement of the support for them through continued loyalty to the groups with which consumers are affiliated. In circumstances such as those of a society growing rapidly through immigration of diverse groups, nonprofit organizations self-provided members of these group services and a sense of identity and belonging in the splintered communities in which they lived; that is the bright side of the nonprofit sector that de Tocqueville (1862) praised.2 In contemporary society, with changed identities and complex and shifting economic, communications, and technological environments, actions that reinforce bonds and identity may bring together disparate identities and lead to opposition to others with different identities and

1  The nonprofit sector refers to organizations that are not constituted for the purpose of making profit for distribution to owners. This includes all organizations that are referred to in the US tax code as “tax exempt,” which includes charitable organizations, associations, churches and religious organizations, political organizations, and private foundations. In this short essay, I do not make distinctions among these various types of organization. 2  In the century between 1750 and 1850, the US population grew from about 1.2 million people to 23.2 million, mostly through immigration.

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contribute to social polarizations; this may represent the dark side of the nonprofit sector.3 In the next section, I provide empirical evidence that those who donate to nonprofit organizations and those who benefit from them belong to the same identity groups, in line with evolutionary and social identity theories’ prediction that altruism is predominantly in-group oriented. Next, I identify conditions that yield demand specifically for nonprofit organizations, arguing that it arises in diverse localities. Nonprofit organizations require voluntary contributions of time and money, which are vulnerable to free-riding. Free-riding is curbed when people share a common identity that induces mutual concern and trust, enabling the operation of nonprofit organizations. The main thesis of this essay is that nonprofit organizations arise under conditions of splintered diverse immigrant communities and later reproduce in-group attitudes and allegiances that sustain them. Over time, local organizations ally with other organizations that provide similar services to similar groups and create regional and national alliances that pursue economies of scale in service provision and enhancement of common identities; I term this stage “fragmentation” of society among large alliances (coalescing) to distinguish from the previous stage of “splintering” (pluralism) of small groups at the local level. As identities and services change over time, the common denominators of alliances broaden beyond specific services and specific identities and coalesce along broader distinctions that are loosely connected into worldviews that become overarching identities. This is the stage of polarization, with many nonprofit organizations that pursue varied missions aligning along the lines determined by the broad worldviews. This essay addresses a large number of ideas and phenomena that have been examined in diverse research literatures, but the connections made here that argue that the nonprofit sector has an important dark side have not been previously made, theoretically or empirically. The argument is offered as a conjecture that requires more detailed investigations, on both the theoretical and empirical fronts. More broadly, this essay calls for a critical reexamination of the place and role of the nonprofit sector and civil society and its role in society (Anheier et al., 2020).

20.2  Empirical Observations There are few contemporary societies that are homogenous in terms of culture, religion, language, class, ethnicity, and other important identity dimensions. In such societies, government tends to the needs not satisfied by the for-profit sector (James, 1989). To understand the role of the nonprofit sector in dealing with the challenge 3  There have been many accounts of undesirable acts committed by nonprofit organizations and managers of these organizations. Corruption as well as organizations with undesirable goals have been referred to specifically as the dark side of the nonprofit sector by Smith et  al. (2016). Chambers and Kopstein (2001) analyze nonprofit associations that pursue illiberal, antidemocratic, and racist goals. The present essay does not address such issues.

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Individuals Environment, Animals Interna onal Affairs Arts, Culture, Humani es Public/Society Benefit Health Founda ons Human Services Educa on Religion 0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

Fig. 20.1  Charitable donations by individuals, foundations, and corporations, by type of receiving organization, 2014. Source: Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy (2015)

of a diverse society, it is necessary to examine the diverse backgrounds of those who participate in various activities, who provides time and money for its operations, and who benefits from them. The empirical literature that bears on these issues is remarkably limited; I consider some of it in this section. Figure 20.1 illustrates the familiar big philanthropic-giving picture in the USA. The first and, so far, the only in-depth examination of where donations go and who the beneficiaries of nonprofit activities are was presented in Who Benefits from the Nonprofit Sector? (Clotfelter, 1992). The book’s chapters examined whether the beneficiaries of nonprofit organizations in various industries, including healthcare and education, are poor or otherwise. They revealed an unexpected finding: nonprofit organizations do not operate primarily for the benefit of the poor. The authors of the book’s chapters show that charity is not the central activity of the nonprofit sector in the six principal areas in which it operates: health, education, religion, social services, arts and culture, and foundations. Nonprofit organizations provide more healthcare to the poor than do for-profit firms, but the difference is insignificant. In secondary and post-secondary education, nonprofit organizations provide less charitable services than do public institutions. About 30% of nonprofit religious congregational expenditure is philanthropic, but it is still not clear how much went to the poor. In social services (where nonprofit organizations are dominant), only 27% of organizations report that over half of their clientele are poor. About 53% of the organizations have only few or no poor clients. Regarding arts and culture, there is no evidence that there is much support for consumption by low-income individuals. More recent analyses reveal a similar picture.

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In 2014, donations to charitable organizations (501(c)(3) in the US tax code) totaled $355.38 billion, 72% of which came from individuals. As shown in Fig. 20.1, the largest proportion, nearly a third, was given to religion, $114.90 billion, followed by education, human services, and gifts to foundations (faith-based organizations offering healthcare, education, social services, as well as those working internationally are included in the respective categories rather than religion). The classification does not identify separately giving to charity in the dictionary sense of the word: giving to those in need. This picture has remained stable over time. A 2007 study by The Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University (conducted on behalf of Google) attempted to uncover how much individual charitable giving is aimed at activities that benefit directly and primarily the poor. The study focuses on US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) income tax exempt individual giving, using several linked data sources. The study estimates total individual giving in 2005 at $252.55 billion, of which 30.6% of giving is “focused on needs of the poor,” whereas the rest (69.4%) is “non-poor giving.” Giving to poor is distributed across several activities, including healthcare, education, and meeting of basic needs.4 The study also examined giving by donor income. Figure 20.2 shows the distribution of giving by these four income groups to different areas of activity

Fig. 20.2  Estimated charitable giving by donors’ income range and by recipient category. Source: The Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University (2007), Figure 2 and Table 1

4  There have been other studies attempting to disentangle who gives to whom, but none with as much detail as the Center for Philanthropy study. For example, Havens et al. (2006) attempt to identify donors and recipients and ask the questions the present paper asks. “Charitable giving is often thought to be a way of redistributing wealth, but if it is true that most giving is local and supports causes that the donor or the donor’s family and friends identify with, or benefit from, what effect does the ongoing geographic segregation of the US both ethnically and socioeconomically have on both the idea and reality of philanthropy as a great equalizer?” However, they do not directly answer the question on the basis of data, these being unavailable.

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(industries). Religion is the most important target of giving for all but the wealthiest households, and particularly for the lowest earning group, which represents the huge majority of households. Figure 20.2 illustrates the fact that the great majority of donors direct most of their donations to religion, followed by activities concerned with the needs of the poor. Specifically, the bottom bar in Fig. 20.2 shows that 67% of the total amount donated by 90.4% of households that make donations goes to religiously affiliated organizations. The next bar, which represents 7.4% of households, indicates that 57% of donations go to religious organizations. The very wellto-do (2.1% of all households) give 23% to religion, whereas the 0.2% of households that made in 2004 more than $one million gave 17% to religion. Giving to religious purposes is largely an in-group giving act, such that members of religion X give to organizations affiliated with religion X.5 Generally, religious giving means not only giving to organizations affiliated with the donor’s own religious denomination but to a wider set of related identities that overlap. In the USA, religious congregations are, for the most part, segregated by race and ethnicity and socioeconomic status. For example, 43% of American churches are completely racially homogenous (Dougherty, 2003, Fig.  20.1). They are less welcoming of people from a different background than that of their members (Wright et al., 2015). This suggests that the reference groups for many individuals represent overlap of religious belief, ethno-racial identity, and social class. The in-group identification of such important identity categories makes for a strong distinction between in-group and out-group members. The data examined in this section exclude giving to family members, close and distant, and to advocacy and political organizations. Such giving is in-group giving almost in its entirety and exceeds (most likely by much) the giving analyzed above. In sum, people give up voluntarily a substantial proportion of their personal financial resources as well as of their time,6 most of it to benefit individuals and organizations that may be identified as in-group on some identity dimensions. To understand altruistic giving, economists and other behavioral and social scientists rely on an experimental procedure called the “dictator game” (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003). The first use of this procedure may be attributed to Henri Tajfel and colleagues (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979), who conducted “minimal group” experiments that explored in-group vs. out-group giving with assignment of 5  Bekkers and Wiepking (2011) find in their literature review that religiosity explains giving to religious purposes but does not predict giving to secular purposes consistently across studies. Choi and Dinitto (2012) conclude that religious identification is positively associated with religious giving but not with secular giving. Brown and Ferris (2007) find that religiosity increases giving to religious organizations but decreases giving to secular causes. They find that after controlling for many demographic variables and for measures of social capital, religiosity has a highly significant positive effect on religious giving and a smaller and a highly significant negative effect on secular giving. List (2011) comments that “religious gifts may be motivated by something different than motivations underlying gifts to other charitable organizations.” 6  The Independent Sector estimates that 77.4 million volunteers contributed 6.9 billion hours valued at $187.7 billion in the USA in 2019 (https://independentsector.org/news-post/ new-value-of-volunteer-time-2019/).

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subjects to arbitrarily define (rather than natural or organic) groups. In a dictator game, subjects in the role of “senders” or “dictators” are given an endowment, for example, $10, which they can share with another person, the “recipient.” The overwhelming conclusion of minimal-group experiments is that most people give more to in-group than to out-group. Several experimental studies have investigated some aspects of the relationship between donor and recipient, from arbitrary to actual identities (e.g., political party orientation, Kranton et al., 2020; neediness and race, Fong & Luttmer, 2011). The findings are qualitatively the same as in Tajfel’s experiments: subjects give more to in-group than to out-group (Chen & Li, 2009).78 A comprehensive exploration of the “who gives to whom” question using the dictator game as well as surveys of willingness to work with others and socialize with others is in Ben-Ner et al. (2009). They found that subjects prefer members of their in-group over members of outgroup in several categories: family, political views, sports-team loyalty, religion, musical preferences, TV viewing habits, food preferences, and more. Similar results were obtained in many other experiments (see, e.g., Kumar et al., 2021).

20.3  W  hy Are People More Generous Toward Others with Similar Identities? The empirical evidence suggests that most people direct much of their giving to ingroup members. This section offers a very brief explanation for this finding grounded in evolutionary and social identity theories.9 Genes drive the individuals who carry them to act in particular ways (traits) that promote their successful reproduction. Traits that reflect greater care for individuals with similar genes will be selected during the process of human evolution over traits that lead to behavior that is indifferent to other individuals’ gene reproduction.10 This mechanism would generate two related traits. The first and most obvious is selfishness. Generating and 7  Eckel and Grossman (2004) explored giving by religious donors and found that the greater generosity of religious individuals compared to nonreligious individuals is confined to churches and church-based institutions and does not extend to secular charities. In this experiment, religious subjects are found to give more to religious institutions than do nonreligious subjects, but the two groups give similar amounts to nonreligious institutions. 8  Experiments by social psychologists that did not use money allocations but observed behavior instead find similar in-group/out-group attitudes arise quickly and ferociously in minimal groups (e.g., Sherif, 1961). 9  For detailed discussion of these issues, see Singer (2011/1981), Ellemers et al. (2002), Ben-Ner et al. (2009), Ben-Ner and Hu (2018), Sapolsky (2019), and Shaw and Wong (2020). 10  Genes that survived over countless generations must have a proclivity to multiply – those that do not have long been displaced by those that do. The same genes reside in multiple individuals. Identical twins have identical genetic makeup, siblings share only about half of their genes, and distant relatives share less. Hamilton (1964) suggests that genes incline the individuals to care about those who carry the same genes (inclusive fitness).

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safeguarding resources enhances the reproductive capacity of an individual directly through health and longevity, which allow the individual to have more offspring. But this is not the only way to maximize the reproductive capacity of one’s genes. An individual could also share some resources with close relatives who may have a better chance of reproducing the genes that they all share in common. This is the second trait, kin altruism.11 The category of genetically related people is, of course, larger than immediate kin. We can think of them as belonging to a series of expanding rings around an individual, with diminishing genetic commonality. In the first ring is immediate family, followed by extended family, followed by people increasingly more distantly related to the individual (Singer, 2011/1981). When individuals who are in the first ring are already well resourced, members of more distant rings will receive donations. Who are these more distant kin? Biologically speaking, the answer is obvious. In practice, the answer was obvious when people lived in small groups, but as societies grew in size and became more dispersed, the natural distinction between kin and nonkin was gradually blurred. However, the drive to distinguish between them was not erased. This drive is biological and is reinforced, and at times suppressed, through upbringing and society. So people seek (mostly subconsciously) signals of genetic relatedness: language, features, skin color, religion, culture, customs, dress, views, and so on. The attributes that signify relatedness vary over time and place for various reasons and with an individual’s personal experiences and environment. Overlap among attributes such as common religion, ethnicity, language, and territory has a stronger effect on the perception of shared genes.12 In the contest for resources, giving to people who are similar, the in-group, may not suffice, and the possibility of taking others’ resources may be appealing, especially from others who are (or are thought to be) genetically less related. Symmetrically, related individuals need protection from others. This is the simple theory of the complementarity not only between selfishness and altruism but also between them and hatred directed at the “other,” the out-group (Shaw & Wong,

 A simple way of thinking about this is to imagine an individual as a young woman with limited income. She needs to invest in her health, food, shelter, and so on to ensure her ability to bear children (selfishness) and help them grow to further reproduce her genes (immediate-kin altruism). So she will keep most of her money to herself and for her children. An older individual who is past the reproductive age and has a higher income will invest more in others who are genetically related to her than does the younger and poorer person. Finally, someone who is wealthy will have an opportunity to invest in the reproductive capacity of more distant kin, going beyond children, nieces, and nephews, especially if these are already well off and can ensure their own successful reproduction. This calculus reflects maximization of reproductive capacity by equalizing the marginal returns from different investment opportunities. 12  There are many terms used to designate the different rings for people and other species, such as core, bond, clan, tribe, troupe, nation, and so on. See Singer (2011/1981) for a detailed discussion of the rings (circles) of relatedness, their origins, and implications for altruism and ethics. 11

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2020; Choi & Bowles, 2007). Belonging to a group to enjoy collective protection is a secondary response, most likely with similar biological roots and reinforcement by society. The drives described above are tempered and complemented by more refined strategies, for example, because constant war does not lead to reproductive success (Bowles, 2009). Such strategies are incorporated in norms and values of compassion toward and cooperation with groups that go beyond immediate kin, as well as in different attitudes toward actual and potential rivals and competitors. These broader categories vary with local and historical specific circumstances but tend to be focused on religion, beliefs, nationality, skin color, and such and especially on attributes that overlap (Gintis, 2011).13 In sum, there are strong biological and cultural factors that promote individual traits that reflect desire for belonging to groups, to have a favorable view of members of one’s groups and less favorable view of members of other groups. The nature of the identities that command loyalty is contextual but evokes a sense of genetic relatedness. The strength of sentiments toward in-group and out-group members varies across individuals and contexts.14 The next section relates the existence and persistence of significant segments of the nonprofit sector to diversity—the co-location and co-existence of diverse groups.

20.4  T  he Nonprofit Sector: Arising from Diversity and Deepening Differences In general nonprofit organizations are born in diversity in communities. This emerges from the conditions that generate demand for the nonprofit form of organization as well as the conditions that are required to ensure adequate financing and governance (supply of nonprofit organizations). Continued operations result in deepening of identification with initial groups, and under certain historical circumstances, diverse groups develop overlapping goals that may coalesce into worldviews that may result in social, cultural, and political polarization.

 Heterogeneity in strategies may arise from various biological and cultural mechanisms that cannot be discussed here. For evidence of factors underlying heterogeneity, see Zmigrod et al. (2021). 14  Increasing the salience of important identity dimensions enhances loyalty toward the in-group but at the same time strengthens hostility toward out-group members (Gaertner et al., 1993). 13

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20.4.1  D  emand and Supply of Nonprofit Organizations Are Grounded in Diversity The existence of nonprofit organizations in economies dominated by private enterprise has been analyzed in several related economic theories. In what follows, I provide a synthesis of these theories, emphasizing the link to diversity.15 In an economy with only private goods and services (i.e., rival and excludable) traded on competitive markets, there are no alternative organizational arrangements that can do better than the for-profit firm; the pursuit of profit and decision-making by firm owners will do as well as possible for consumers and employees (Koopmans, 1959). However, these conditions are not satisfied in many real-world circumstances, and the violations may impose significant costs on stakeholders (consumers or their sponsors). In such circumstances, some stakeholders have an incentive to seek remedies.16 There are three categories of goods and services that have been identified as principal candidates for inadequate provision by for-profit firms (market failures) as well as insufficient correction by government regulation and provision: public goods, goods and services that require large fixed costs, and goods and services about which there is asymmetric information in favor of sellers.17 1. Public goods are enjoyed by anyone who cares about the goods in question. Air quality, parks, radio signal, clean and safe streets, harmonious social relations, poverty alleviation, political messages, and healthy population are examples of public goods. Nobody can be excluded. Classic private goods and services (excludable and rival) such as food, health, and education may have public goods aspects if they are enjoyed not only by the direct consumers but indirectly or vicariously by all those who care about the direct consumers. People can enjoy the public aspects of goods without paying for their provision. Public goods, even if everybody cares about them, will be under-provided because no self-­interested rational people will pay for them.18 For the organiza Anheier (1995) provides a theoretical perspective, and Anheier and Ben-Ner (1997) take a historical perspective on the evolution of the nonprofit sector in relation to various factors, including diversity. Ben-Ner and Van Hoomissen (1991, 1992) provide theoretical discussion and some empirical evidence on the role of diversity in demand and supply of nonprofits. A large empirical literature shows the relationship between various forms of diversity and the size of the nonprofit sector: Marcuello (1998); Matsunaga and Yamauchi (2004); Grønbjerg and Paarlberg (2001); Wiepking et  al. (2014); Kim (2015); Lu and Dong (2018); Singer, 2011/1981; AbouAssi et  al. (2019); and Lecy et al. (2019). 16  The stakeholders may be the direct beneficiaries of the organization’s activities or sponsors of beneficiaries. Sponsors include, for example, parents who send their children to school or a community center, adult children of parents who receive care in a nursing home, people who care about housing the homeless or schooling children in need, or organizations such as foundations, employers, cultural and religious associations, and so on. 17  For a review of the economic theories of the nonprofit sector, see Steinberg (2003). 18  If a donor gives $x to the organization and the donation is productive such that it produces $ax of output (a>1), the donor will get back $ax/N if there are N stakeholders who benefit equally from 15

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tion to exist, some stakeholders must donate sufficient money, and for the organization to continue to operate, some stakeholders must control top management to ensure that donations are properly used. Public goods may be provided in different varieties, some aligned with diversity dimensions (religion, ethnicity, language, etc.). Stakeholders with large demand for the public goods—because of preferences and income—would be generally known in the community for their interests and be subject to group pressure to donate and participate in governance. 2. Some services require large fixed costs: museums, schools, universities, theater, and hospitals. The average cost of provision of these services is much higher than the price (tuition or ticket) that the average consumer would be willing to pay, although the marginal cost of providing the service (of teaching a child, serving a visitor at the museum, or presenting a play) may be affordable to many stakeholders. In very large markets, the fixed cost may be spread over a large number of stakeholders, making average cost pricing feasible. In smaller communities, where average cost pricing is not feasible, some high-demand stakeholders could cover much of the fixed costs by agreeing to pay higher prices than other stakeholders by making donations, while low-demand stakeholders pay just the marginal cost. Under ordinary circumstances, it is not possible to implement a multi-price scheme because high demanders will have no incentive to pay higher prices than other stakeholders (or they will self-provide, like the Medicis and Rockefellers). A multi-price scheme can work only if high demanders are willing to voluntarily pay higher prices—make charitable donations to the organization. But for them not to feel that their generosity is not exploited by other high-demand stakeholders, they need to coordinate their contributions and have ways to verify that contributions were indeed made. Furthermore, they need to know that the donations are used as promised, so they need to trust the management. Generally, trust is partially backed by governments who can legally enforce that money is not used for private financial purposes of managers but directed to the stated purposes. This is impractical and has not been historically enforced. Highdemand stakeholders need a measure of direct control in the governance of “their” nonprofit organizations to ensure that donations are used for the intended purposes. 3. Providers often know more about the quality and other aspects of the products (private goods) they sell than customers. Sellers may seek to take advantage of such situations by misrepresenting the quality of their products. This condition characterizes, to different degrees, many goods and services, with greater severity in the case of healthcare, car repair, medicinal and street drugs, organic food, and so on. There are common mechanisms that deal with the problem, from reputation in the market to government regulation. But the effectiveness of these mechanisms has been historically limited for some services. For example, nurs-

the organization’s product.

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ing homes are highly regulated because of asymmetric information between providers and customers—the residents and their families—but the residual asymmetric information is large enough to create problems of quality of care, even today, after a series of federal regulatory reforms. Nonprofit organizations provide services without trying to gain profit by exploiting the asymmetric information. To operate, nonprofit organizations in this domain do not need donations but do require stakeholder control to ensure that they do not exploit the asymmetric information to make profit for managers. The difficulty for stakeholders of goods and services of this kind is to have enough common interests in the same products in the same locality to merit the effort to self-provide a good or service. This has generally occurred in the case of local provision of goods and especially services that are important to many people in one locale and are physically concentrated so that many stakeholders use the same providers. The demand for the types of goods and services discussed above is broadly correlated with a group whose members reside in the same locality and have common interests in the same goods and services. These may be similar educational content, cultural institutions, and healthcare, alleviation of poverty, education for poor children, and provision of access to cultural amenities for those who cannot afford them. These demands are strongly correlated with group affiliation and identity. The voluntary engagement in control over nonprofit management and provision of monetary support are strongly encouraged by membership in an identity group whose members have concern for each other and are subject to their peer pressure. Hence demand for nonprofit services and the ability to support nonprofit provision coincide with affiliation with the same identity group. The effects of identity on both demand for nonprofit provision and the ability to support it are enhanced by the co-location of multiple identity groups, that is, diversity.

20.4.2  I n-Group Orientation and the Sustainability of Nonprofit Organizations The principal factor that enables the existence of nonprofit organizations of the kind described above is their ability to induce some stakeholders to donate time and money. This ability is linked to the fact that stakeholders belong to a group and identify to some degree with and care about the group’s members, so they are willing to make sacrifices of money and time instead of free-riding. In addition, stakeholders must reveal and coordinate their donations, when large, to ensure compliance with pledges and in governance of the organization. Hence nonprofit organizations depend on the maintenance of the bonds among stakeholders and their connection to the organization. There are several ways an organization may build, maintain, and strengthen its relationship with stakeholders over time. The element of time is important because there is turnover among stakeholders due to their life course, there are changes in the availability of other providers and other goods and services,

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and there are environmental changes that affect the nature and strength of various identities that individuals hold. One strategy is to reaffirm the initial bond—cultural, religious, ethnic, linguistic, or other common identity or heritage. Nonprofit organizations communicate with current and potential stakeholders in various ways. An important means of communication aimed specifically at attracting donations is fundraising appeals (Hansen, 2018). Appeals encourage identification with other donors and often seek to activate social identities and a sense of belonging to the group with which members of the organization and possibly the organization itself are affiliated (Shang et al., 2008; Aaker & Akutsu, 2009). A complementary strategy is to emphasize the special value of the organization’s mission and the goodness and righteousness of those who support it. This is to make stakeholders feel good about the mission of the organization and about being part of the group, a community of good people holding desirable values. This may be contrasted with attributes of other groups, by characterizing others as not as good or by directly denigrating them. The solicitation of donations may include appeals to ingroup identities such as religion, race, and ethnicity (Drezner, 2018). This may not only induce donations but also prime further identification with a group. The act of giving itself has the effect of reaffirming the donor’s connection to the group. Donation of money and time constitutes a sacrifice by the donor that strengthens and affirms the donor’s bond with the target cause and community (Kanter, 1972; Iannaccone, 1992; Aaker & Akutsu, 2009). The contributions are frequently public, which adds to the identification of the donors with the organization in the eyes of others. Donations are often cast or experienced as reciprocal gifts among stakeholders—past, current, and future—linking them as a community (Mauss, 1954). Various communication and fundraising campaigns are repeated over time, exposing individuals to the organization’s message time and again. Reinforcing a message through repetition is likely to harden attitudes toward in-group and outgroup, at least up to a point.19 Repeated contributions of time and money likewise cement the connection between stakeholders and their organizations and the groups to which they are linked. Nonprofit organizations may seek coalitions and alliances with other organizations that are aligned with their goals. This concerns organizations that provide similar services and organizations that affiliate with the same identity groups but provide different services. The geographic scope of such alliances may go beyond the locale in which an organization is situated. Such measures tend to reinforce stakeholders’ interest in specific organizations’ services and affinity to identity groups.  The cumulative long-term effect of repeated priming is hard to establish, although one can infer from the effects of different content of educational programs or from growing up in different cultural and religious environments. There is a large literature that supports this general point; see, for example, Algan and Cahuc (2010). A meta-analysis found that repeated exposure enhances (at a declining rate) the intended attitudes (Montoya et al., 2017).

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20.5  D  ynamics Over Time: From Splintering to Fragmentation and Polarization The discussion above suggested that, in general, the nonprofit sector arises in jurisdictions where diverse cultural, religious, ethnic, and other identity groups are colocated. In such places, the nonprofit sector tends to be relatively large. First, governments seeking to address market failures often cater to the preferences of large or dominant groups; this forces other groups to provide themselves services of interest to them. Second, such groups may be able to leverage their common bonds to encourage stakeholders to provide donations and other forms of support to sustain nonprofit organizations. In this section, I describe a stylized evolution of intergroup relations driven by the dynamics of the evolution in the nonprofit sector in conjunction with broader trends in society. I identify three stages, roughly patterned after the American historical experience. The three stages are (1) splintering, where diverse local groups provide for their members nonprofit cultural, religious, social, educational, and other services; (2) fragmentation, whereby nonprofit organizations with similar service missions in different locales linked to similar identity groups coalesce into regional or national alliances and associations to pursue common interests; and (3) polarization, whereby nonprofit organizations and associations in different services with similar identity group affiliations align themselves among broader goals and worldviews, creating camps and polarization among them. 1. Splintering (pluralism). The starting point is a society composed of locales or jurisdictions composed of diverse religious, place of origin, linguistic, culture, and other identity groups. Members of these groups are affiliated with nonprofit organizations that provide various services. Nonprofit organizations in different services have some overlap in their respective stakeholders that belong to the same groups, but the organizations are largely segregated by identity groups. This is perhaps the diversity that de Tocqueville (1862) saw and admired in the 1830s America, characterized by local and decentralized action in voluntary organizations engaged in varied social, religious, education, economic, and other activities (Hall, 2016).20 This is a relatively splintered society, in which nonprofit organizations are grounded in identity groups and operate locally. Soskis (2020, p. 37) refers to this historical stage as “prismatic splintering of the public good into a contending array of associational forms.” 2. Fragmentation (coalescing). Over time, improved means of communication and transportation enable enhanced contacts and connections among people across different places.21 This reduces the role of physical proximity in bringing people  Rosenblum (1998) suggests, along with Simmel (1955), that pluralism and democracy work best when there are few overlapping affiliations and interests. 21  In the USA, the middle of the nineteenth century, about two decades after de Tocqueville’s visit, a grand expansion of communication and transportation took off: railroads became part of a national system, the telegraph was introduced, and the US Post Office Department was institution20

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together and facilitates distant connections based on affinity. Nonprofit organizations’ leaders link with similar organizations to pursue common interests and articulate them in arenas that are increasingly on larger levels, including the national stage. They form agglomerations: associations, umbrella organizations, and national organizations with local branches. Whereas the first stage was characterized by dispersed diverse nonprofit organizations with little overlap among their stakeholders, in the second, the boundaries of their original jurisdictions are relatively blurred as organizations ally themselves with other organizations that operate in similar activities and are associated with groups that have similar identities—the identities that sustain each organization.22 The various forms of agglomeration of organizations that provide similar services emphasize common themes and interests; as supra-local entities, they appeal to issues that transcend specific local concerns. The common themes link broad identities to broad themes, such as preservation of cultural traditions (ethnic and religious) with immigration and social class. These common themes are likely to appear in fundraising appeals and other messages of local nonprofit organizations and associations.23 On matters of service, these associations may ally with associations affiliated with different identity groups. In this lattice of interests, external events may affect more than one element, and over long periods of time, the defining core of identities may remain stable, but other aspects may change. The group identity component may be a common concern to associations in different services, such as immigration from certain countries, voting rights for certain groups, social policies, and so on. Splintering turns into fragmentation. 3. Polarization. In the fragmentation stage, there is limited connection between the different concerns of associations in different services that are affiliated locally with similar identity groups. The connections between them evolve gradually, through connections among leaders of associations, leaders’ mobility across national associations, and overlapping or interlocking boards of directors and trustees of associations in different services affiliated with similar identity groups. The latter include high-demand stakeholders and their representatives who have influence and concerns that span much larger regions than the local nonprofit organizations and cement horizontal ties among associations in diverse fields of nonprofit activity. Such individuals provide alignment through their personal involvement and through their foundations, that is, contributions and

alized and professionalized. Calhoun (1988) refers to this as “extraordinary transformation in the scale of societal integration during the modem era.” 22  The period after the US Civil War was marked by evolution of national organizations, some organized along ethnic, religious, country of origin, class, and similar identities, others crossing these identities (Soskis, 2020). 23  Fundraising campaigns that went beyond the local community were introduced in the early twentieth century in higher education and YMCA. Prior to that, fundraising was done in local settings (Gordon, 1998).

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money and time devoted to governance.24 This is the transition from fragmentation of perspectives and actions to consolidation in aligned disparate associations and organizations that share common worldviews that largely oppose each other—polarization.25 The horizontal alignment of disparate interests and views into broader worldviews is not uniform across any pertinent dimension. But the general trend over the past few decades has been toward increasing polarization, the “process whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in a society increasingly align along a single dimension and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’” (McCoy et al., 2018). Identities are rarely expressed by for-profit firms, and government purports to be independent of any particular identity or group. The nonprofit sector, even without the expressly political parties and movement component, is where identities are articulated, reinforced, and organized. Polarization, if not produced in the sector, is facilitated by it. The nonprofit sector provides comfortable homes for groups that are aligned with each other—“us”—and are differentiated from others, “them;” as such, it dulls incentives to find common ground between “us” and “them.”

20.6  Conclusions People donate more to in-group than to out-group, on nearly all dimensions of identity. This is not surprising to anyone who ever heard the expression “charity begins at home” and the like. Living beings have a biological impetus to favor those who carry similar genes. They share habitat and roots (literally, for plants). Humans, when dispersed and not sharing a habitat with close relatives, as most have been doing for thousands of years, look for signals of relatedness in language,  Karl and Katz (1987) discuss overarching goals of some foundation donors, who made contributions to different areas of nonprofit activities in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, emphasizing the “robber barons’” role. Odendahl (1990) describes the role of wealthy donors who are active in multiple nonprofit organizations in different service areas. In the twenty-first century, key figures include Soros and Gates and the Mercer and Koch families. Some of the same donors, and many others, populated (personally, but often through their staff) important boards of trustees of nonprofit organizations (interlocking boards). A testable hypothesis follows: high-demand stakeholders and their representatives have participated in governance of local nonprofit organizations in the splintering stage, have increasingly participated in regional and national organizations and associations/governance in the fragmentation stage, and have increased their participation in the polarization stage. 25  Worldviews are not necessarily coherent bodies of thought or ideas. A key element of worldviews is that they give rise to identities that tend to subjugate certain ideas to others. It is possible, for example, that opposition to certain proven vaccines was the result of opposition to entities that promulgated them, which had little to do with the vaccines. Individuals may have to resolve cognitive dissonance issues that arise from holding opposing views, yet leaders may promote the conflicting views with broader objectives in mind. 24

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appearance, religion, and other attributes and seek to belong to these groups for amity and protection against other groups. Belonging to a group has also collective social benefits, by reducing incentives to free ride in the provision of various goods and services. Even the animosity toward out-groups may have benefits in cementing loyalty to the group and behaving in a cooperative manner. At the same time, strong in-group favoritism and animosity toward out-groups have significant downsides, which rise with the diversity of a society and the problems that it faces and needs to resolve collectively. When groups are limited in size and are local, they may splinter a community, but this will not have major consequences on conflict among them. The problem is when groups coalesce into few, or just two, camps. This is polarization that makes life in diverse communities, regions, and countries difficult and potentially dangerous. The nonprofit sector is a major actor in the in-group/out-group relations arena, especially in regions and countries that are diverse on important dimensions. Nonprofit organizations provide goods and services that for-profit firms provide at suboptimal levels, if at all, or of inferior quality, and when governments do not remedy the situation. In these cases, it remains up to individuals to fend for themselves. Individual self-provision is an option for extremely few. Collective action is required to enable nonprofit provision, which relies critically on donations of time and money; however, this is feasible only if individuals can organize and overcome inherent free-riding problems. The most common basis for successful nonprofit organizing is the existence of a common identity: sharing a culture, a language, a religion, and so on. Nonprofit organizations thrive on diversity in the larger society and on homogeneity among their stakeholders. They cultivate in-group favoritism and out-group weariness as a strategy for continued organizational existence. In some situations, this may contribute to pluralism—splintering of society into small groups; in other cases, this may lead to coalescing of groups with common identities, fragmentation of society; and in some social, economic, and political constellations, this may lead to the formation of camps, each held together by multiple common threads, polarization and conflict. This is a cycle that feeds on itself, raising the importance of organizations’ mission and the stakeholders’ common bonds through messaging, honoring contributors, invoking external threats, and deepening the identities they hold. Over a long period of time, the prominence of various identities fluctuates, and categories often broaden. From splintering into many disjointed groups with few overlaps to fragmentation with broader categories onto polarization, there is a gradual transformation of boundaries of identities, some coalescing with others into larger groupings that reflect worldviews and ideologies. The world, including the world of nonprofit organizations, is not dichotomous on any dimension. However, as connections are made among diverse themes, certain strands of religions, beliefs in science, opinions about effective healthcare, opinions about what is good music, beliefs about what is important in life and what is life itself, concerns about who has certain rights and who is deprived of them, what is beauty, and many other disparate matters become aligned or subjugated to “higherorder” ideas and become dichotomized. This forces various groups to choose to be

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near one pole or another on various dimensions, and when the matters become aligned (or accepted to be positively correlated) for many people, polarization among them emerges. The polarized positions may have a dominant theme, or a driving theme, which may be stated openly or obscured by other themes. The celebrated bright side of the nonprofit sector whereby individuals and organizations are benevolent and charitable toward other individuals and communities is a narrow view of the contemporary sector. The classic meaning of “charitable” (“of or relating to the assistance of those in need”—Oxford Dictionary online) applies to part of the nonprofit sector’s activities in the form of help for the homeless, assistance to earthquake survivors, aid to poor children, and support for refugees. Nonprofit organizations also provide much needed diversity that contributes to beneficial pluralism and creativity. Expression of identities and interests in safe environments, particularly by minorities, is a significant need, and nonprofit organizations are a haven for them. But the reality is that most of the money donated by the vast majority of people and most expenditures in the nonprofit sector go to in-group activities. While there is nothing wrong with this, and it follows our natural instincts, the sustained operation of large parts of the nonprofit sector in contemporary society contributes to polarization and its attending consequences. In a society where universalistic institutions are not well established, the benefits of strong in-group orientation, assertion of distinct identity and belonging, and ingroup social control may well outweigh the costs associated with negative intergroup behaviors. Encouragement of pluralism through reinforcement of group bonds and boundaries may serve broad social goals such as growth and equality. In contrast, in a society that experiences polarization along religious, ethnic, racial, political, economic, cultural, and other dimensions with strong demarcation lines between competing views, the benefits of strong in-group orientation are probably overwhelmed by the costs of intergroup strife. Polarization does not arise principally from the activities of for-profit firms and not even from the actions of governments (but they can contribute to it). Polarization arises from activities organized by the third sector, the civil society, the nonprofit sector, and that is where we should search for solutions. The purpose of this essay has not been to provide a balanced and rich view of what the nonprofit sector has done over the past two centuries and to interpret all its complexities. The essay aimed at capturing some aspects that, on my analysis, are important and are of the essence of the sector.26 I hope that this essay helps launch a research agenda that investigates some of the sources of polarization in diverse societies and helps identify remedies.27

 Picasso’s sketch of the idea or abstraction of the bull in a few strokes, to which gradually the details are added (The Bull, 1945), is a good analogy to what I attempted to accomplish here. 27  Most societies have been diverse on various dimensions for millennia, as a result of ancient migration across the globe, wars and conquests, forced movement of people, natural and social disasters, as well as a consequence of the desire of people to improve their lives. More theoretical and empirical analyses are needed to develop policy recommendations. However, seeking to 26

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Acknowledgments  I received helpful comments from Rikki Abzug, Lehn Benjamin, Ruth Hansen, Joseph Galaskiewicz, Catherine Herrold, Claire Hill, Michael Hoelscher, Bernard Levinson, Regina List, Rich Steinberg, Stefan Toepler, Dennis Young, and participants at Academy of Management Annual Conference, Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action Annual Meeting, Lilly School of Philanthropy seminar, and the Rome NGOs X symposium.

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Part III

Changing Contexts: Local and Regional Case Studies

Chapter 21

Civil Society Encroachment in Nonliberal Democracies: The Case of Israel Hagai Katz and Benjamin Gidron Abstract  In recent decades, many nations saw a major political shift, manifested in democratic regression, rising populist illiberal democracies, transgressions against democratic watchdogs, and increasing nationalism and unilateralism. This process includes government encroachment on the liberal elements in civil society, made possible by changing political opportunity structures, in resistance to the liberal world order and to external pressures that these regimes believe are imported by national nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Israel is a particular yet demonstrative example of these dynamics. We present the case of Israel and analyze the case of the New Israel Fund (NIF), which has been singled out by Israeli government as an “enemy of the state.” The encroachment on civil society by Israel’s right-­ wing governments and its NGO allies includes coordinated actions to subvert and delegitimize liberal civil society actors and their supporters and donors, using legislation, rhetorical assaults, restrictions on international funding, and differential treatment of human rights organizations. These infractions took place in overt and covert, direct and indirect ways, restricting the space available for left-wing NGOs that oppose the occupation and the stalemate in the peace process. The discussion stresses the nature of civil society and its relations with government that these processes elucidate. Keywords  Civil society · Government · Democracy · Populism · Israel

History is Philosophy teaching by examples. (Thucydides)

H. Katz (*) Department of Business Administration, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel e-mail: [email protected] B. Gidron Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel Rector’s Office, College of Management Academic Studies (COLMAN), Rishon LeTsiyon, Israel © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_21

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Recent years have seen a change for the worse in state–civil society relations in many countries, leading Anheier (2017, p. 1) to speak of a “shrinking space” for civil society nationally and internationally. Some governments see civil society organizations as service providers in a variety of corporatist arrangements and eschew their roles in the policy arena. Other governments regard them as an illegitimate interference in the policy process, attempting to influence if not dictate government’s priorities. This is expressed in increased regulation and greater bureaucratic burden on the one hand, but also restriction of civil society agents and even directed adversary actions and threats against them on the other hand (Anheier et al., 2019). We see this as an expression of a major political shift taking place in many nations, manifested in democratic regression and a shift toward populist, nonliberal democracies; resurgence of the extreme right; infringement on democratic watchdogs such as the free press and supreme courts; and increasing nationalism and unilateralism. The active encroachment by governments on civil society is a consistent element of these processes, expressed in manifold ways. We demonstrate these dynamics through the case study of Israel, which we argue is an exceptional example of the processes mentioned above. The manifestations in Israel include actions meant to weaken and delegitimize left-wing civil society actors and their funders. Among those actions, we can count legislation meant to restrict the political clout and influence of civil society in the government and in the public sphere (such as in schools); rhetorical assaults against (and even demonization of) specific civil society organizations perceived as critical of government; attempts to curb international funding of human rights organizations; and differential treatment of civil society organizations according to political views, such as limiting the funding of performing arts organizations labeled as anti-Zionist.

21.1  Democratic Regression In 1999, 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Freedom House surveys caused scholars of democracy to be optimistic (Karatnycky, 1999). There was evidence that freedom is spreading and that illiberal democracy is on the decline. More recently, though, the liberal democratic form of governance is facing a serious challenge. Democratic crises and regressions spare almost no region of the world. North Africa experienced disillusionment following the Arab Spring, the Americas saw electoral victories of populist candidates, democratization in Eastern Europe is faltering, and East Asia is seeing objections to the human rights discourse, to name a few examples (Mizrachi & Mautner, 2016). Indeed, argues Norris (2011), in many states, there is widespread public dissatisfaction with the performance of democracy. One effect of such disaffection with democracy is withdrawal of civic political participation and increased involvement of powerful interest groups in the policy process. Indeed, even in strong and veteran democracies, partisanship and interest groups disproportionately affect decision-making, causing policies, and particularly

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around more controversial issues such as abortion, law enforcement, healthcare, and education, to be incongruent with the majority’s will (Lax & Phillips, 2012). The term “democratic deficit” refers to the erosion of civil society and civic engagement, reflected in a decline in political involvement, civic tendencies and citizenship skills, trust in government, and social capital (Nabatchi, 2010). This is not a “sudden crisis,” but rather a long-term problem that, if not dealt with, will further exacerbate and likely undermine the capabilities and legitimacy of democratic governments and principles as a whole (Warren, 2009). The consequences of this democratic deficit cannot be understated: They negatively affect political activism, increase “allegiant” (Norris, 2011, p. 220) forms of political behavior, diminish the rule of law, and ultimately slow and even reverse processes of democratization. Israel is no stranger to these processes. This is manifested in the erosion of political trust and participation (Filipov, 2013; Ram & Filc, 2013); in an increase of the salience of interest groups in the political process, resulting in policies that are directly in opposition to public interest (Yishai, 2012); and in illiberal policies and even blunt antidemocratic actions by government. Recent years witnessed bills and laws that contradict democratic principles; silencing of critical voices against the government and its policies; delegitimization of political opponents, human rights organizations, minorities, and the judiciary, discrediting them as anti-Zionists and as traitors; presenting minorities as enemies of the state; and attempting to curtail the freedom of the press. These trickle down and affect public opinion, resulting in blatant incitement against political rivals, minorities, and immigrants, and even in religious and ideological violence.

21.2  D  rift to the Right and Rise of Nationalism and Populism Political scientists are almost unanimous in arguing that western democracies are witnessing a revival of nationalism. Copelovitch and Pevehouse (2019) list recent economic and political developments in the United States (the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, and the earlier ascent of the Tea Party movement), in the United Kingdom (Brexit), and in Europe, where this trend already started in the 1990s, associated with increasing support for radical-right parties. This is also evident in democratizing and transitional states, such as Turkey, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Brazil, that have also seen a rise in antiglobalization sentiments and the rise to power of parties and politicians advocating populist, nationalist, and authoritarian ideas and policies. These sentiments include hostility to elites, antagonism to foreign trade, investment, and immigration, and willingness to vote for extremist political parties, movements, and candidates within parties (Frieden, 2018). The roots of these sentiments can be found in fear from impacts of economic globalization. Colantone and Stanig (2018) found, by analyzing individual-level vote choices, that increased exposure to imports leads to a general shift to the right in the electorate and support for nationalist, isolationist, and radical-right parties.

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Other forces behind this shift to the right have to do with fears from cultural and religious change. For example, for many Americans, voting for Trump was a symbolic defense of the US’s perceived Christian identity (Whitehead et al., 2018). As a result, we have seen the rise to power of parties and politicians around the world, advocating populist, nationalist, and authoritarian ideas and policies as well as economic protectionism, and opposing multiculturalism and internationalism (Eger & Valdez, 2014). The rise of populism and a resurgence of nationalism are not necessarily synonymous (Copelovitch & Pevehouse, 2019). However, the combination of nationalism with populism is enough to expand the negative effects of nationalism at the regional or even global level. Populist nationalists tend to engage in transgressive politics that mix transformative fervor with exclusionary goals, resulting (for example) in territorial conflicts or anti-immigration actions (Jenne, 2018). Furthermore, once populists are in power, they employ the “militant democracy” rhetoric to fend off those who confront them (Taggart & Kaltwasser, 2016). In fact, they use the four strategies of democracy under attack identified by Capoccia (2005): militancy, incorporation, purge, and education. The majority is used to evade the possibility of effective opposition. So-called “judicial reform” is used to change supreme courts, “civic education” indoctrinates future voters, and media “reform” is really an attempt to gain control or ownership over the free press. The language used to communicate and justify these actions is usually managerialist and majoritarian. These leaders and their governments are contesting or totally withdrawing from their obligations to international norms and the international rule of law. Consequently, the multilateral institutions that are the foundation of the liberal international order since 1945 are being seriously challenged. In countries that experience the revival of populism and authoritarianism, leaders undermine core elements of democracy, threaten the independence and legitimacy of the judiciary, devalue the centrality of a free press, and express contempt for the legislature (Rosendorff, 2017). Pastor and Veronesi (2018) contend that financially developed countries with high inequality and current account deficits are more vulnerable to populism. Therefore, it is not surprising that Israel has been undergoing similar processes since the late 1970s. Electoral results demonstrate a rise of conservative nationalist social forces and, inevitably, a consistent decline of the liberal left in Israel. This decline takes place not only in politics, but also in civil society, culture, the press, the media, and academia (Jamal, 2018; Mizrachi & Mautner, 2016). Subsequently, Israel’s Jewish population is characterized by a deepening chasm between supporters of democracy and civil rights and universalist liberal politics, and those who favor communitarian, traditionalist, and religious values. This division highly corresponds to the unresolved tension between the democratic and the Jewish character of the state (Mizrachi & Mautner, 2016). The shift to the right in Israeli politics was hastened by the collapse of the Oslo peace process, the 5-year-long Second Intifada (2000–2005), and electoral victory of Hamas in 2006 (Feldman & Shikaki, 2016). Political skepticism and exasperation have spread in Israel’s Jewish population, even among many liberals (Navot et  al., 2017). Further contributing to the left–right chasm and conflict were the

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demobilization and moderation of a major part of the Israeli peace movement in an attempt not to antagonize the Israeli public (Hermann, 2009). Consequently, some peace and human rights groups radicalized their struggle against occupation, further radicalizing right-wing politics and organizations (Fleischmann, 2016). A fight over the narrative and over influence on the international community has become a central dimension and a pivotal contention point for unilateralists from the right. This is particularly true for any real or alleged connection with antioccupation transnational social movements, such as the International Solidarity Movement and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Material support from these movements and from various European governments served to further decrease the legitimacy of the left within Israel (Fleischmann, 2016). Recent governments are working to solidify conservative and nationalist ideas into the very core of the national psyche through politicization of the public schools’ curriculum. The curriculum and educational policies promote separation between Palestinians and Jews, ideologically color education in the Jewish education system with ethno-religious ethos and narratives, and decontextualize education for the Palestinians in Israel by excluding ideology and politics from the curriculum for their schools, under the guise of good professionalism (Agbaria, 2018).

21.3  Manifestations in the Israeli Context The Israeli society in the second decade of the twenty-first century is characterized by deep divisions. On the one hand, Israel is known as the “start-up nation” (Senor & Singer, 2011), with an advanced technological and entrepreneurial economic infrastructure, which is responsible for its economic boom. On the other hand, Israel has a large periphery, which is not part of that boom. This periphery includes an ultraorthodox Jewish population (roughly 12–15%), an Arab population (roughly 20%), and descendants of immigrants from the 1950s and 1960s, mostly from Middle Eastern countries (roughly 20–25%). These populations are unable or unwilling to integrate—or prevented from integrating—into the modern economy, which explains Israel’s first place in poverty rates among member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (https://data. oecd.org/inequality/poverty-­rate.htm#indicator-­chart). In addition to these demographic/economic divisions, Israel is also divided politically between those who believe in a solution to the Palestinian conflict through a withdrawal from occupied territories, which will also preserve a Jewish majority; and those who believe that these territories, especially the West Bank, are an integral part of Israel and should be eventually annexed without ensuring full citizenship for the Palestinian inhabitants. While polls suggest that a majority of Israelis and a majority of security experts and pundits favor the first solution (Levy, 2019; Shaver & Ziv, 2019), the political coalition structure in Israel created in the past 20-odd years a Likud-led government, which de facto favors the second. In the efforts of the Likud party to preserve its power and advance its policies of resisting a political solution to the conflict with the Palestinians (which entails

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withdrawals from occupied territories and ending the building of settlements there), it is taking steps to dismantle or severely restrict societal and public institutions and bodies that act or can potentially act as opposition to these policies. These obviously include civil society organizations, but also other gatekeepers of a democratic regime such as the court system, especially the Supreme Court in its role as guardian of the constitutionality of laws passed by the Knesset (Israeli parliament), the free press, and the freedom of artists to express themselves. These limitations, to be elaborated on below, challenge important pillars of Israel’s democratic regime and tradition, such as the division between government branches and the freedoms of expression, of the press, and of association. The strategies used to achieve these goals include legal measures, namely the enactment of formal laws, administrative ones, namely the use of rules and regulations, and informal ones through smear campaigns in the press and the social media. We focus on the restrictions put on civil society organizations and link those, whenever possible, to the other arenas. We present new laws and regulations that went already into effect, but also bills that were under consideration as of late 2019. These bills, even if they do not become laws, create a negative atmosphere against certain civil society organizations and single out those who are active or work in those organizations as “enemies of the state.” We will also focus on the smear campaign targeted at civil society organizations on the left, advocating human rights and social justice—especially the New Israel Fund—and the contexts in which they are being launched. The Israeli third sector and civil society have been a subject of substantial research since the late 1990s (Almog-Bar, 2016; Gidron et al., 2003; Katz et al., 2009). From these studies, it is clear that the sector is large in economic terms, it has a history and tradition of proximity to the public sector, and it acts, to a large extent, in the capacity of service provider in the fields of education, health, welfare, and culture. Another important and unique aspect of the Israeli third sector has to do with its philanthropic funding sources: It relies heavily on foreign, particularly Jewish sources. This has to do with a long tradition of Jews in the Diaspora to support their brethren in the Holy Land, because of its significance in the Jewish religion and tradition. In addition to nonprofit organizations (NPOs) that act as service providers, the sector entails a growing number of civil society organizations that are engaged in advocacy and promote innovation, in a variety of fields—from the protection of the environment to the care of refugees, from women’s issues to the protection of civil rights of Palestinians. This group of organizations, which is not connected to the government and does not receive funding from it, has been growing since the early 1990s, and its organizations are using more and more sophisticated strategies to achieve their goals and are relying more and more on funding from liberal Jewish donors and European governments. Paramount among those organizations is the New Israel Fund (NIF), a US–Israeli partnership, established in 1979 by a group of liberal American Jews who partnered

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with Israelis with similar ideas.1 Its vision entails “helping Israel live up to its founders’ vision of a society that ensures complete equality to all its inhabitants. (The) aim is to advance liberal democracy, including freedom of speech and minority rights, and to fight the inequality, injustice and extremism that diminish Israel” (from NIF website, https://www.nif.org/about/, accessed June 11, 2021). Since its inception, it has distributed over US$300 million to some 900 civil society organizations. Its grantees are characterized as “leading social change in Israel. (They) work on behalf of social and economic justice, advocate for the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, advance religious freedom, foster a shared society, combat racism, and promote human rights and democracy. NIF’s grantees are building a progressive movement in Israel to protect the very tenets of Israel’s democracy” (ibid.). NIF is not only providing grants to civil society organizations, it also has a consulting branch, Shatil, which provides organizational consulting and accompanies organizations, creates coalitions and partnerships, and the like. Funding issues of high contention—from civil rights of Israeli Arabs or LGBT populations, to religious freedom (in a country where religion is not separated from the state)—the NIF highlights the reality of certain populations and juxtaposes those with the ideals presented in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. As an advocacy entity, NIF did not receive support for its work from former Israeli governments; however, the Netanyahu government has placed NIF as a major “enemy of the state” since 2009, and engaged very often in depicting it as such. Mr. Netanyahu himself led this practice. In a social media post he placed on Facebook on April 2, 2018, he writes: NIF is a foreign organization that receives its funding from foreign governments and from sources that are hostile to Israel, such as the George Soros Foundation. The overall objective of NIF is to erase the Jewish character of Israel…. For dozens of years NIF funds anti-­ Zionist and pro-Palestinian organizations, among them those that are slandering Israeli soldiers (...) Therefore I asked the coalition’s chair to form a Parliamentary Inquiry Committee to look into the activities of NIF, which endangers the security and the future of the Israel as a Jewish State.

This attack is based on the fact that NIF is funding organizations such as B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, described below. B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, argues that the only way to achieve a future that ensures human rights, democracy, liberty, and equality in the region is to end Israel’s occupation. The name B’Tselem (literally: in the image of) is an allusion to Genesis 1:27: “And God created humankind in His image. In the image of God did He create them” and expresses the Jewish and universal moral edict to respect and uphold the human rights of all people. Founded in 1989, B’Tselem documents Israeli violations of Palestinians’ human rights in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, by publishing

1  The NIF and another organization mentioned herewith, Breaking the Silence, were also analyzed in a 2019 study comparing the shrinking space of the third sector in Israel and Turkey (Tepe & Rubin, 2019).

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statistics, testimonies and eyewitness accounts, video footage, and reports (B’Tselem website: https://www.btselem.org/about_btselem, accessed June 11, 2021). Breaking the Silence is a nonprofit organization made up of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military and have decided to expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the occupied territories. Their aim is to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life. The soldiers’ testimonies, each of which has gone through a rigorous verification process, are made available in various media formats, including lectures and home visits, and are meant to inform the public and enhance its awareness and understanding of the situation. According to the organization (https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/about/organization), any solution that would resolve the conflict or end the occupation will only come about once the problem is fully acknowledged and understood. The discourse used against such organizations and those who support them is one of delegitimization. Using rightist populistic language, the rhetoric portrays the supporters of human rights as “traitors” (Sprinzak, 2000). This goes beyond attacking the organizations themselves and their funders and includes the Supreme Court, which protects activities of civil society organizations on the basis of them being legal entities and not breaking any law. This reasoning leads to proposals for revisions in the way Supreme Court judges are nominated and the enactment of laws that bypass rulings by the Supreme Court. The delegitimization of the NIF is pervasive, and it is often used to delegitimize other organizations and publics that protest against the government, even on economic grounds, that are seen as relatively legitimate, as long as they do not include issues such as the occupation or treatment of refugees. Accordingly, during the 2011 social protests (dubbed “Occupy Israel” by Alimi, 2012), the tactic used to delegitimize the protests was to link them to left-­ wing civil society organizations, and particularly the NIF (Gordon, 2012; Maidhof, 2016). This campaign against the supporters of human rights includes even the use of disinformation, fake news, and lies. In one case, then Prime Minister Netanyahu accused the NIF of blocking an agreement between Israel and Rwanda regarding sending refugees (who came to Israel through the Sinai) to the African state. In response, the Rwandan president said he never heard of the NIF. The campaign also includes the use of GONGOs, government-organized nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which are set up to further government-supported policies. This is especially pronounced in the area of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where the government is prevented from acting officially because of international pressure, but is silently supporting a host of NGOs that engage in furthering the settlement activity. Furthermore, argues Jamal (2018), these NGOs engage in aggressive political and media campaigns against human rights organizations to shame and silence these organizations, in order also to deflect donations meant for them. On the formal legal front, the government has introduced several measures to limit organizations that it deems “dangerous.” Among them:

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• An amendment to the NPO Law of 2011 requires all NPOs to report on foreign funds; those who receive foreign funding are required to report not once a year but every quarter. • The Budget Foundations Law of 2011 expressly denies funding to NGOs on the basis of their political opinions. That legislation blocked funding to anyone denying the Jewish character of Israel. Furthermore, funding can be revoked from institutions who reject Israel’s character as a “Jewish state” or mark the country’s Independence Day as a day of mourning (Amnesty International, 2019, p. 20). • The Law of Labeling NPOs (2018) requires NPOs whose funding comes from foreign countries to report that fact to the Registrar of NPOs and to indicate that fact clearly in their formal documents and when they are negotiating with government ministries. That law went into effect in 2018. This law intends to single out mostly human rights organizations that are supported primarily by European governments as well as by the European Union. An attempt by the opposition to include in the same law donations from foreign private sources, which are the main supporters of the settlement activity, was not successful. • A regulation increases the minimal sum of anonymous private donations which requires full disclosure from 20,000 NIS to 100,000 NIS, which favors NPOs supporting settlements that receive funding from private sources that often would want to stay in the shadow. • An amendment to the Law of National Service regulates the service for those not drafted into the army and sends them to a wide variety of public institutions and NPOs, where they serve for up to 2 years. That law was amended to exclude organizations that are funded from foreign sources and whose target populations are non-Israelis (except refugees) from the list of NPOs receiving such volunteer workers. Thus, organizations such as B’Tselem or Doctors for Human Rights found themselves banned from receiving National Service volunteers. • Several foreign human rights activists have been refused entry to Israel or have faced deportation if their work is perceived to be in support of Palestinian rights or criticizing Israeli policies. More recently, two US congresswomen were refused entry to Israel on the same grounds, raising fierce criticism against then PM Netanyahu, even from staunch supporters. • The field of primary and secondary education experienced a process of privatization since the 1990s. This process expressed itself in the opening of schools to activities by NPOs in a variety of formats. The Law of Compulsory Education has been amended to prevent organizations such as Breaking the Silence from having access to schools. The Law calls on the Minister of Education to form ground rules to prohibit the involvement of organizations “whose activities stand in severe contrast with the goals of national education, as well as organizations that are taking active steps to indict Israeli soldiers outside of Israel for activities they engaged in in the context of their duty or against the State of Israel.” Schools and other educational organizations that still insist on giving voice to this side of Israel’s political landscape experience vehement shaming campaigns by

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g­ overnment and nongovernmental right-wing actors, formally and informally (Jamal, 2018). Among the other bills proposed and considered by the Knesset, we find the following: • Denial of tax rebates. NPOs that are declared by the registrar as “properly administered” are eligible for tax rebates. The bill proposes that this privilege should be denied to organizations that act “against Israel” or organizations that do not act in direct conjunction with Israeli citizens and/or world Jewry. • Denial of representation. The bill suggests that only those who were directly affected by a certain misconduct of a government agency could file a case in the Supreme Court. This excludes organizations that act on behalf of those affected. It relates particularly to Palestinians who are trying to protect their rights vis-à-­ vis the Israeli military government and bureaucracy in the West Bank. • Double taxation. According to this bill, a request for information, under the Freedom of Information Act, filed by an NPO supported by a foreign country should be charged double the regular fee for such service. • Denial of discount of municipal tax. The bill suggests that NPOs receiving foreign funds should be denied discounts from municipal taxes that other NPOs are entitled to. • Obligation to appear in Knesset committees. The bill calls for extending the obligation to appear before the Knesset committees beyond public officials to include representatives of civil society organizations (over which the Knesset has no jurisdiction), with the idea of exposing those organizations and shaming them. • Withdrawing from or preventing funding of theater and film productions that are considered anti-Israeli by the government and particularly the Minister of Culture. To summarize, under the pretext of “protecting the national security” and the “Jewish character of Israel,” a major campaign was launched against civil society organizations and their supporters, particularly against those organizations protecting universal human rights and the rights of minorities and “enemy” populations. Like other countries such as Hungary, Turkey, and Poland that are fighting the gatekeepers of the democratic regime in order to advance a nationalistic policy, excluding “foreign elements” (refugees, minorities), Israel too finds itself in this category since the 2010s. The campaign against civil society organizations that are supported from “undesired” foreign sources is using a host of strategies, which are targeted toward institutions and frameworks that are at the base of a viable democracy.

21.4  Conclusion This chapter builds on Anheier’s 2017 exposé of the challenges and threats faced by civil society in an era of declining liberalism in formerly liberal democracies (Anheier, 2017). This decline is rooted in a series of dramatic global destabilizing

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events (9/11 attacks, 2008 economic crisis, refugee crisis) and is facilitated by changes in the nature and technology of communications and mass media (web 2.0, social networks, fake news, media manipulation). These developments instigated a major geopolitical shift, manifested in democratic regression evident in the resurgence of populism, nonliberal democracies, fear politics, extreme right-wing parties and ideologies, as well as infringement on democratic watchdogs such as the free press and supreme courts. Part and parcel of this process is a backlash against globalization, increasing nationalism, and the ensuing restructuration of international relations, giving rise to unilateralism, protectionism, and antiterrorist and anti-­ money-­laundering measures. These forces and processes did not skip Israel. Examining this argument through the lens of state–civil society relations, we find that Israel demonstrates all of these developments. The Israeli government has taken overt and covert, direct and indirect, actions to thwart civil opposition from the left, restricting the space available for civil society organizations, particularly those that profess liberal principles of universal human rights and oppose the occupation and the stalemate in the peace process. These disconcerting processes were hastened following the 2016 election of Trump as US president, as Israeli leadership resonated with US leadership and its rhetoric. In a speech at Zurich University (September, 1946), Winston Churchill asked, “Is the only lesson of history to be that mankind is unteachable?” Georg Hegel had responded to that question already many years before in his “Lectures on the Philosophy of World History” (1914 [1837]): “… what experience and history teach is this,—that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.” However, sometimes history can play the role of an arbitrator between competing worldviews, supporting one and rejecting the other. It seems that the processes depicted in this chapter offer a revalidation of civil society theories favoring Keane over Gellner and Gramsci over de Tocqueville, as offering a more valid concept of state–civil society relations. Located between government or the state and the market, civil society is, according to Ernest Gellner (1994, p. 5), the “set of non-governmental institutions, which is strong enough to counter-balance the state, and, whilst not preventing the state from fulfilling its role of keeper of peace and arbitrator between major interests, can, nevertheless, prevent the state from dominating and atomizing the rest of society.” But for John Keane (1998, p.  6), civil society is an “ensemble of legally protected nongovernmental institutions that tend to be non-violent, self-organizing, self-reflexive, and permanently in tension with each other and with the state institutions that ‘frame’, constrict and enable their activities.” Similarly, while de Tocqueville (2003 [1835]) sees civil society as a vehicle for democracy, Gramsci describes it as the battleground over hegemony, and “against every danger of new carnage and suffering threatened by the so heroic exploits of fascism” (1978 [1921], p. 60). The theory that civil society and government are adversaries is supported not only by theory (such as, e.g., public goods theory, e.g., Boris & Steuerle, 2006, or social movement theory, e.g., Della Porta & Felicetti, 2017), but also by the disconcerting evidence of civil society encroachment, perpetrated by increasingly illiberal democracies on the ground.

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Chapter 22

Policy Controversies and Challenges for Organized Civil Society: The Case of England Before the COVID-19 Crisis Jeremy Kendall

Abstract  Civil society organizations in England have faced an increasingly turbulent policy context in recent years. This chapter situates this scenario in relation to the legacy of legal structures, shifting ideological currents and a rapidly evolving discursive environment, as governments have changed over the past two decades. Drawing on evidence from charities operating in social policy fields, it shows how a striking gap has opened up and widened between the supportive rhetorical claims emanating from governments and the reality of delivering services and supporting disadvantaged groups on the ground. An emphasis is placed on how funding inadequacies, shortfalls in volunteering capacity, and the emergence of an increasingly intolerant policy climate fueled by both government and parts of the media have placed severe limitations on the ability of these organizations to collectively reach their potential. Keywords  Social policy · Third sector · Civil society · Volunteering · Funding · Policy climate

22.1  Introduction In an overview paper for the Group of 20 (G20) on the state of civil society, Helmut K. Anheier (2017, p. 10) posited that, across the world, civil society found itself “challenged in many ways yet harbouring huge potential” in an environment “that has radically changed.” This chapter examines the extent to which this claim held in the case of a core element of the UK’s civil society and third sector: charities in social policy fields (key “human service” areas) in England at this time. It is in relation to this key sphere of voluntary action where the academic research and public policy evidence is sufficiently substantive and coherent to offer salutary lessons for J. Kendall (*) School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_22

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this review. We will suggest that Anheier’s characterization demonstrably holds, and the analysis that follows hints that the combination of challenge and change in this country may have become especially pronounced from a comparative perspective. This is because the British case has long been regarded as one in which, overall, a relatively mature policy approach has afforded this sector a reasonably stable space—politically, economically, and socially—to contribute to policy design and implementation, if not at full “potential,” then at least in a reasonably confident way. Such a sense of historically inherited self-assurance has been put under massive strain by recent policy developments and events—stretching back two decades, but especially since the Great Recession of 2007–2008—as will be shown below: It is this contrast between a legacy of stability and intense recent turbulence, threatening the workability of state–third sector relations, which was the most striking single feature of the sector’s situation in the late 2010s. We proceed as follows. First of all, we set the scene by pointing to the legacy of policy inherited from the past and point to the heightened recognition afforded to the sector in the first part of the twenty-first century. We then diagnose a rhetoric– reality gap, which brings into focus how the practical, lived experiences of organizations in this sphere have been severely out of kilter with the rosy picture that emerges if one refers to the positive narratives favored by recent governments. Pursuing this theme, we highlight and interpret how a number of factors emerging from the interplay of severe macroeconomic constraint, political decisions, and associated developments in the policy environment combined to threaten the sector’s ability to contribute with its usual energy and impact to addressing social problems in society at large. It would perhaps be sensible to characterize the situation as one of struggling to cope—that is, functioning very far short indeed of the potential fulfillment that Anheier seemed to have in mind in his framing of the situation at the time.

22.2  I nitial Characterization: Traditions, Rhetorics, and Ideologies The UK’s third sector is usually characterized as strong by international standards. This is partly because of its relatively wide-ranging economic scope, scale, and structure (Kendall, 2003; Salamon et al., 2017). But it is also because it is supported by a rich variety of public policy and practice arrangements, including the regime of charity law; elaborated tax provisions; institutions to foster “infrastructure” (representative organizations functioning within the third sector itself at national and subnational levels, but also prothird sector agencies inside the state); and the existence of supportive policy discourses, well embedded in and interwoven with national traditions of both liberalism and social democracy (Kendall, 2009). Moreover, it is tempting to see eye-catching recent government initiatives, sometimes presented as exemplars to other countries, as building constructively on this legacy. This is certainly something that political rhetoric seeks to claim. For example:

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• The “Compact” as a frame of reference for third sector–government relations developed as part of the “Third Way” under the New Labour administrations (1997–2010); these envisaged a close and productive partnership emerging between the third sector and the state, based upon explicit, shared principles of mutual recognition and respect; • The “Big Society” initiatives associated with David Cameron’s Coalition government (2010–2015), built upon an enthusiastic belief that these organizations could flourish if “Big Government” was reined in and rolled back, creating more space for independently resourced voluntary action to evolve; and, • At the end of the 2010s, allusions to a “Shared Society” agenda made by Theresa May’s Conservative administration (2016–2019). May dropped the language of the “Big Society” and arguably took a slightly less hostile position on the state’s contribution in this sphere. But the all-consuming diversion of policy effort associated with handling the aftermath of the European Union membership referendum (see below regarding “Brexit”) meant that any “shared society” agenda—in relation to the third sector, or more generally—was never seriously fleshed out, let alone systematically implemented in practice. Each of the above policy positions certainly involved “talking the talk,” claiming to endorse and celebrate the significant policy role of this sector. Such formulations were, indeed, routinely presented by power holders as providing “opportunities” to move the sector toward fuller realization of potential. This involved some shared thinking across the political spectrum—for example, a belief that under some conditions, the third sector is better positioned to deliver public services than other sectors and respond with specialist skill to vulnerable population groups. But there were important substantive differences according to ideological predilection. For example, at the center/left there was an accent on working closely with a (reforming) state and (more socially responsible) market (as with New Labour’s “partnership” approach); while with the right-oriented administrations, this sector, especially as a local actor, was promoted primarily as an alternative to, and replacement for, the state. The latter was contentiously portrayed by Cameron (and to a less extent, May) administrations as unaffordable, pathologically bureaucratic, inherently unresponsive to social needs, and incompatible with the flourishing of civil society, including its voluntary sector manifestations.

22.3  A Widening Rhetoric–Reality Gap In the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2007–2008—and the decision by the UK’s right-wing governments to respond to this with an extensive program of public budgetary cuts playing out over the pursuant decade—it is easy to look at the prerecession “partnership” past with rose-colored spectacles. In particular, prior to the Great Recession, under New Labour, public funding for the sector was systematically upscaled, a situation widely welcomed as “very positive” wherein the “key

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to progress…was significantly higher levels of [state] funding” (see Civil Society Policy Review Group, n.d., p. 2). However, to present the situation in an uncritical way would be a mistake. In particular, there were major implementation failures in relation to symbolically significant policies, most visibly embodied in the lack of demonstrable impact on third sector–state relations attributable to the Compact, as well as its narrowing of focus over time; major investments in “infrastructure” were fraught with mismatched expectations between politicians and state officials on the one hand and the third sector on the other, on how “modernization” could be put into practice (Kendall, 2014). Differences could be manifested in terms of timeframe, with the former often working to shorter-term political-cyclical imperatives and the latter more sensitized to the chronicity and complexity of the relevant problems and seeking more generous and enduring resource commitments to address them. The appropriateness of New Public Management (NPM) style policy tools (e.g., quasi-markets, consumerist models of choice, and the reliance on decontextualized metrics to gauge performance) was also often a source of ongoing and unresolved contention. The third sector was typically much more circumspect about the value of these NPM techniques than New Labour politicians: In sum, there was already a rhetoric–reality gap. The body of research evidence now available regarding the situation in the decade since the New Labour administrations confirms that the aforementioned difficulties have persisted, but that the gap between supportive rhetoric and realities on the ground has demonstrably widened. This process has been driven in part by the decision to pursue harsh austerity policies in relation to public spending, further restricting already limited state capacities to intelligently deploy public budgets when working with the third sector. But two other factors are relevant too: volunteering-­related challenges and policy climatic deterioration. We will look at these in turn in this section, before speculating in a final section on how the implications of an increasingly challenging media environment and the Brexit process are currently playing out, adding a further dimension of instability to this already fraught situation. It is well known internationally that the British Coalition (2010–2015) and Conservative (2015–present) administrations prioritized massive cuts in social spending as its favored response to the economic crisis. Although presented, neoliberal style, as a necessity (“there is no alternative”), it was, of course, a political decision to undermine social protections for the vulnerable (while using the resources of the state to protect powerful financial institutions; Blyth, 2013). It is also widely understood, especially in British social policy analytic circles, that although there has been variation in the extensity of measures taken according to subfields of policy, overall this severely circumscribed the capacity of the British state to meet social needs, eroding social policy priorities (Lupton et  al., 2016; Farnsworth, 2021). What of its third sector “partner”? At the end of the 2010s, research began to establish the effects specifically on the third sector using large-scale survey research and administrative data, with evidence available in relation to English

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charities. Again, we see significant variation by subfield and according to other organizational features, including size, age, and the extent of deprivation encountered geographically. But it also became possible to present an aggregated picture (Clifford, 2016; Kendall et al., 2018). Perceived shortfalls in local government and foundation funding were experienced overall as the most prevalent financial constraints (Kendall et al., 2016). This was consistent with a range of qualitative evidence and is no surprise, as local government is the most significant state funder for this sector in the British state and has been especially hard hit by austerity policies. (UK local government is much more financially dependent on central government than equivalent subnational units in many other developed countries, and so was not positioned to countervail restrictive national policy measures through local revenue raising.) Some organizations appeared to have been able to respond by revenue diversification, especially by turning more to commercial sources—a pattern expressed as exemplifying “innovation” by some more optimistic commentators (Crees et  al., 2016). Others warned ominously of subservience to narrow market imperatives, fueled by oppressive neoliberal ideology playing out violently in the context of austerity (Aiken, 2015). All that we can say with confidence at a macro level is that it is unclear how much of this commercialization was truly innovative, and, even if it was, whether such “innovation” was necessarily constructive or sustainable. Clearly where it involved rationing services according to ability to pay, and if previously access was according to socially sensitive needsrelated criteria, then capacities to respond to vulnerable people will have been compromised and damaged.

22.3.1  Volunteerism and Governance It is also important to conceptualize third sector capacities (and hence “potentials”) in ways which take us beyond narrow financial indicators. In terms of resources, some of the aforementioned research has sought to do this and empirically demonstrated that an inability to recruit volunteers, in general but especially in support of governance (board membership), is widely perceived by these organizations as a significant difficulty (Kendall et al., 2016, 2018; overall half of all English social policy-related charities report this as a barrier to development). The problems here can be associated with generational change in relation to preferred modes of social action, the effects of time constraints on availability, the levels of skill and expertise associated with the relevant roles, and the difficulties of putting into practice the resource-intensive activities of mobilizing, organizing, and supporting volunteers when budgets are under severe pressure. Recognition that governance issues are key to understanding the situation of this sector is now increasingly prominent in policy discussions (Lee et al., 2017), a situation recognized by those parliamentary bodies which have focused upon this sphere (see House of Lords Select Committee on Charities, 2017).

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22.3.2  Policy Climate Developments Also relevant are the ways in which the external policy climate can generally help or hinder the sector. In this context, austerity policies have been seen as problematic not only because of their effects in directly restricting third sector funding, but also because those parts of the state responsible for sustaining the sector’s profile and guaranteeing its integrity through regulation have been adversely affected. In particular, the Office for Civil Society (OCS) and the Charity Commission have been subject to swinging budget cuts, making it difficult for them to function effectively, or with the levels of visibility expected. (Furthermore, the Commission for the Compact, a state body at “arm’s length” from political control established under the New Labour administration, was simply abolished, alongside many other significant arm’s length regulatory and auditing bodies within the state.) A key further focal point for discussion in relation to policy climate concerned whether, overall, the “Big Society” approach, intended to animate policy under David Cameron and make austerity policies more palatable, was valuable. This framing of policy was critiqued because of its ideological antistate predispositions and its naïve, unevidenced assumptions about the ease with which the voluntary sector could simply replace the state in public service domains (many of these critiques have strong resonance with the phenomenon of “voluntary failure” as conceptualized in the international literature; see Salamon, 1987). It was also considered flawed because philosophically it was never clearly articulated, and its implications for developing policy were never coherently or systematically specified by the government. Furthermore, even enthusiasts who initially claimed it involved a compelling vision (Blond, 2010) later came to believe that its more radical communitarian aspects had been abandoned. This was largely because under the Coalition government, large for-profit corporations—rather than alternative organizational forms in or around the third sector—were, in practice, the major beneficiaries of state withdrawal from public service delivery. These companies acquired escalating market power and often reaped enormous profits through their ability to exploit NPM-style public sector procurement and commissioning arrangements to their own advantage (Christophers, 2020). The resultant large-scale, standardized, self-serving bureaucratic delivery arrangements were directly at odds with “Big Society” rhetorical claims. The associated opacities, distortionary and exploitative arrangements, often with little or only tokenistic third sector involvement, created a climate of suspicion, confusion, and demotivation. National survey evidence gathered in 2015 from charities themselves shows that for every one organization who agreed that they had “experienced the Big Society agenda as constructive,” five respondents disagreed (Kendall et al., 2016, 2018). A further debate revolved around whether the sector’s capacity to adopt a healthily wide-ranging role, engaging not just in service delivery commissioned by public bodies but also community development and advocacy, was compromised by the Coalition and Conservative administrations. Some government ministers’ willingness to criticize third sector organizations for challenging aspects of government

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policy has been seen by many as politically immature or illiberal, undermining policy learning possibilities. More specifically, the introduction of new national laws and regulatory/funding requirements, which temporarily or permanently involved restrictions on communicative activities, was criticized as exhibiting immaturity about, or even ignorance of, the constructive role of third sector challenge and criticism in fostering policy development. These developments link directly to concerns about the role of these agencies in healthily furthering the development of the “public sphere” dimension of civil society (Edwards, 2014). Such policy utterances and associated measures have been plausibly represented as posing serious threats to “voice” and the autonomy of voluntary action in a series of national reviews funded by independent foundations (Slocock & Davies, 2016), but these concerns were essentially ignored by the Cameron and May administrations. Empirically, it has been shown that the extent to which charities believe that the climate arising from these developments has made balancing multiple functions, as well as planning to meet needs, more difficult is related particularly to scale: In 2015, larger charities tended to experience these pressures most negatively (Kendall et al., 2018).

22.4  N  ew High Stakes Dimensions in Play: Mediatization and Brexit A further, less familiar issue became part of UK third sector policy discourse in the second half of the 2010s: intensified scrutiny from the media (especially the widest circulation national newspapers and national TV and radio networks). Media engagement here is not new (Fenton et al., 1993), but the extent of the negative and sometimes hostile coverage emerging at this time was unprecedented. A series of controversies in relation to aggressive fundraising practices, excessive executive pay, governance failures, and serious ethical scandals rooted in, but stretching beyond, British shores unfolded. The latter involve serious sexual misconduct, and may therefore be especially problematic (Thompson, 2000). These controversies have already begun to challenge the traditionally assured positioning of the sector in general public discourse, and catalyzed greater attention from policy elites (e.g., in relation to Parliament, see House of Commons Public Administration and Public Affairs Committee, 2016). It is far from clear whether the reputational damage associated with these waves of controversy has proven transitory or durable. This is not least because little is known about the extent to which relevant publics may tend to project inadequacies and failures at the level of particular groups of organizations or fields onto the sector as a whole; and in part because it is hard to anticipate the effectiveness of any of the responses and remedies which have now begun to emerge. What we can say, however, is that in seeking to understand the nature of the policy environment, it will be increasingly important to attend to the role of these and other media in defining the agenda and in shaping the policy process (see also Cook & Mason, 2021).

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Finally, since the June 2016 referendum result narrowly in favor of “Brexit,” steering the UK toward departure from the EU—finally fully signed off at the end of 2020—involved a pervasive sense of anxiety and diffuse sense of trepidation permeating many third sector policy discussions. Some of its most obvious negative impacts were identified and tended to be given more attention than any possible advantages in policy circles. They include the disruption of policy attention (it was a significant factor in public policy inertia here, as with many other sectors and policy fields); the loss of EU funding opportunities (Cooney & Ferrell-­ Schweppenstedde, 2017); and regulatory, planning, and workforce-related uncertainties (NCVO, 2018). After long delays, a little-noticed House of Lords recommendation that the OCS should conduct and publish an audit on some of these issues was summarily dismissed by the government (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 2017, p. 18). Yet while political will is currently lacking, the issue will have had wide-ranging impacts and now continue to shape the sector’s environment in profound ways. Together with adverse mediatization effects, the longer term impacts of the fractious Brexit process are in fact only just beginning to be played out. There will be more destabilization and unsettlement to come in the years ahead, to the extent that volatility and turbulence become the “new normal” in the short to medium term.

References Aiken, M. (2015). The decline and fall of independent voluntary action and advocacy? Reflections and perspectives from NCIA’s inquiry into voluntary services. Paper presented at VSSN day seminar. Retrieved from http://www.vssn.org.uk/events/ day-­conference-­london-­campaigning-­and-­advocacy-­has-­the-­voluntary-­sector-­lost-­its-­voice/ Anheier, H. K. (2017, 13 July). Civil society challenged: Towards an enabling policy environment. Economics Open-Access Open-Assessment E-journal Discussion Paper No. 2017-45. Blond, P. (2010). Red tory: How left and right have broken Britain and how we can fix it. Faber & Faber. Blyth, M. (2013). Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea. Oxford University Press. Christophers, B. (2020). Chapter 5: Outsourced. In Rentier capitalism: Who owns the economy, and who pays for it. Verso. Civil Society Policy Review Group. (n.d., circa 2011). Civil Society Policy Review: Report. Unpublished Shadow Cabinet Office team consultation with third sector representative bodies and policy experts, London. Clifford, D. (2016). Charitable organisations, the great recession and the age of austerity: Longitudinal evidence for England and Wales. Journal of Social Policy, 64(1), 1–30. Cook, S., & Mason, T. (2021). Chapter 21: Coming clean with the public. In What have charities ever done for us? The stories behind the headlines. Policy Press. Cooney, C., & Ferrell-Schweppenstedde, D. (2017). What does Brexit mean for UK charities’ European Union funding? Micro Research Series November 2017. Directory of Social Change. Crees, J., Dobbs, J., James, D., Jochum, V., Kane, D., Lloyd, G., & Ockenden, N. (2016). The UK Civil Society Almanac 2016: Members’ editon. NCVO.

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Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. (2017, December). Response to “stronger charities for a stronger society” the report of the House of Lords Committee on Charities. Retrieved from https://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-­committees/charities/Charities-­ Government-­response-­191217.pdf Edwards, M. (2014). Civil society (3rd ed.). Polity Press. Farnsworth, K. (2021). Retrenched, reconfigured and broken: The British welfare state after a decade of austerity. Social Policy & Society, 20(1), 77–96. Fenton, N., Golding, P., & Radley, A. (1993). Charities, media and public opinion: A research report. Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University of Technology. House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. (2016). The 2015 charity fundraising controversy, third report of session 2015–2016, HC 431. The Stationery Office. House of Lords Select Committee on Charities. (2017). Stronger charities for a stronger society, HL paper 133. The Stationery Office. Kendall, J. (2003). The voluntary sector:Comparative perspectives in the UK. Routledge. Kendall, J. (2009). The UK: Ingredients in a hyperactive horizontal policy environment. In J. Kendall (Ed.), Handbook on third sector policy in Europe. Edward Elgar. Kendall, J. (2014). From mainstreaming to modernisation? New labour and the third sector in England. In M. Freise & T. Hallmann (Eds.), Modernising democracy. Springer. Kendall, J., Mohan, J, & Brookes, N. (2016). The English third sector policy in 2015: An overview of perceived barriers to realising impact potential. Policy Briefing one. Retrieved from http:// thirdsectorimpact.eu/ Kendall, J., Mohan, J., Brookes, N., & Yoon, Y. (2018). The English voluntary sector: How volunteering and policy climate matter. Journal of Social Policy. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0047279418000107. (online first). Lee, S., Harris, B., Stickland, N., & Pesenti, S. (2017). Taken on trust: The awareness and effectiveness of Charity Trustees in England and Wales. Cass Business School and the Charity Commission. Lupton, R., Burchardt, T., Hills, J., Stewart, K., & Vizard, P. (Eds.). (2016). Social policy in a cold climate: Policies and their consequences since the crisis. Policy Press. NCVO. (2018). The road ahead: A review of the voluntary Sector’s operating environment. NCVO. Salamon, L. M. (1987). Partners in public service: Toward a theory of government-nonprofit relations. In W. W. Powell (Ed.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook. Yale University Press. Salamon, L. M., Sokolowski, S. W., & Haddock, M. A. (2017). Explaining civil society development: A social origins approach. Johns Hopkins University Press. Slocock, C., & Davies, R. (2016). Independence in question: The voluntary sector in 2016. Civil Exchange, supported by the Baring and Lankelly Case Foundations, London. Thompson, J. B. (2000). Political scandal: Power and visibility in the media age. Polity Press.

Chapter 23

Transformation of Civil Society Organization Functions in Modern Russia Lev Jakobson and Irina Mersianova Abstract  This chapter investigates the transformational processes in Russian civil society through the lens of the functional approach proceeding from the perception of civil society as a sphere of human activities beyond family, state, and market, which carries a number of specific functions: social engagement, mobilization, articulation, service, control, and protection. The study draws on the empirical data of the nationwide monitoring of civil society which has been conducted by the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics since 2006. The most noticeable change has occurred in the service function of the civil society in Russia. More than 15 years of observations have shown that the transformation processes in the Russian civil society put its service function to the fore. Russia’s government adopted measures promoting nonprofit organization (NPO) involvement in social service to facilitate their entry into the market of social service providers. The institutionalization of the relations between public organizations and NPOs providing services in the social sphere is currently underway in Russia, including measures such as the right of certified nonprofit providers to receive government grants (subsidies) for service provision. Keywords  Civil society · Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) · NPO service functions · Social service NPOs · Civil society functions The formation of civil society and the processes that inevitably underpin it, in Russia just as elsewhere in the world, have quite deservedly been in the limelight of intensified studies of analysts, academics, and policy-makers over the past several decades. Not only is civil society the subject of analysis inside individual countries with various political regimes, but also attempts have been made to compare the degree of its development across countries. One such example is the Civil Society Index developed by CIVICUS and led by, among others, Helmut Anheier (Anheier, 2004).

L. Jakobson · I. Mersianova (*) Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_23

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How the functions of civil society change in different countries reflects the whole of the transformational process occurring within those countries. In this chapter, we first highlight a diversity of approaches that have formed an understanding of civil society in Russia and suggest a definition of civil society with an emphasis on its functional aspect. According to this definition, civil society is understood as a sphere of activity outside of family, state, and market which is created by means of individual and collective action, norms, values, and social ties and performs a number of specific functions, such as socializing and articulating common interest, providing services as well as oversight and protection. This work provides an analysis of the functions of civil society in Russia and the circumstances in which the service function comes remarkably to the forefront.

23.1  C  ivil Society in Russia: Its Multiple Conceptions and Definition of the Notion What is the essence of civil society in Russia? Its emergence was the result of the transformation of the Soviet society into the post-Soviet one, a process accompanied by a fundamental revision of social and economic institutions and values. The state-planned economy was being replaced with the market economy. The single-­ party political system was transiting into the multiparty system. The Socialist State of the Whole People was transforming into a rule-of-law state recognizing human rights and freedoms as the highest value and their protection as the state’s duty (art. 2, Constitution of the Russian Federation, 1993) (Tumanova & Safonov, 2017, p. 106). Today, Russian social scientists offer a multitude of civil society definitions and just as many conceptions of this notion. This is partially a reflection of the state of things in social science around the world concerning the understanding of civil society. Social scientists point out the substantive blur of the concept as well as the fact that it is used “frequently, in multiple ways and in a great number of theoretical, practical and historical contexts” (Jensen, 2006, p. 39). Rather than giving a clear-cut meaning of the notion, the majority of civil society theorists offer what seems to be its intuitive, paradigmatic assessment. Hence, the critical importance of seeking the empirical verification of all of its manifestations. In Russia, this task has been addressed on a nationwide scale at the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), where the status of the civil society has been monitored since 2006. The analysis uses chiefly sociological methods which look at the participation of Russians in various civil society practices (volunteering, charity, territorial public self-governance, protection of rights, and the like) and, in terms of its institutional structure, in nongovernmental nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Theoretical definitions of civil society proposed by Russian social scientists can be systemized by splitting them into several groups based on the predominant

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meaning of their usage. These are value-based, spatial, subject-based, functional, structural, network-based, civilizational, regulation-based, and process-based definitions. Value-based definitions tend to focus on ideological and value-based contributions to society. The common formula for this approach is that civil society is a type of society possessing certain qualities, which define its socioeconomic, political, and legal nature. They offer a positive definition of the society at this specific historical stage of social development. Civil society here acts as “free,” “fair,” “democratic,” “pluralistic,” “open,” “civilized,”and so on. Thus, according to the definition given by V.S. Nersesyants, civil society is “a rule-of-law liberal-democratic, pluralistic, open society, whose principal subject is a free individual pursuing their interests within a single law and common legal order” (Nersesyants, 1999, p.  284).1 Similarly, Leushin and Perevalov define civil society as “a free, democratic, rule-of-­ law and individual-centric society ensuring the freedom of creative (entrepreneurial) activity and creating opportunities for the exercise of human and civil rights” (Leushin & Perevalov, 2000, p. 93). N.M. Motroshilova points out that definitions like this contain rather a value-based preamble, which “is possible, often desirable but which by no means can be limiting” (Motroshilova, 2009, p. 22). Spatial definitions use metaphors of sphere, space, or area. It is a large and internally differentiated group of definitions. Gadzhiyev, for instance, considers civil society from an ideal-typological standpoint as “a certain social and socio-cultural space” (Gadzhiyev, 2000). Yu. M. Reznik and T.E. Reznik look at it as “an independent area of socio-cultural space or a sphere of existence and development of contemporary society” (Reznik & Reznik, 2010, p.  16). Kozhevnikov sees it as “a self-sufficient, state-independent sphere of public relations” (Kozhevnikov, 2002, p. 38). Certain spatial definitions, like the value-based group, give qualitative attributes to the sphere they define. Most often, however, definitions of this type stress the independence of civil society from the state. On the one hand, metaphors of sphere, space, and area seem highly appropriate because civil society is relatively easy to understand by means of juxtaposition with other spheres that together form a single society. Most theorists in Russia defend the two-component model, dividing society into state and nonstate spheres, whereby the latter, being a civil society, includes economic activity. The perception of civil society as a space between the state and an individual also seems not entirely grounded, “for a space is a space but if it is social, then, by definition, it consists of individuals that enter into certain relationships among themselves” (Vityuk, 1999, p. 45). The authors of subject-based concepts define civil society through its subjects that consist of individuals or citizens (“free,” “independent,” and similar), groups (civil society as “a combination or a system of self-organizing mediatory (intermediary) groups...” (Shmitter, 1996, p. 16)), and voluntary associations of citizens, the 1  All translations of Russian texts cited in this chapter are the responsibility of the authors. In the References section, works in the Russian language are sorted by Russian alphabet, with names of authors then transliterated from the Russian alphabet to the Latin alphabet and titles translated into English.

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combination of which forms the third sector. The definition offered by Golenkova takes simultaneous account of the subject role of citizens and NPOs. She perceives civil society as “a specific combination of public communications and social bonds, institutions and values, the principal subjects of which are the citizens with their civil rights and civil (non-political and non-state) organizations: associations, social movements and civil institutions” (Golenkova, 1997, p. 26). The decade following the mid-1990s saw the emergence of works that ascribed the subject role in civil society solely to NPOs. In recent publications by Russian authors, however, this approach is becoming incrementally less common. Along with the three groups of definitions already mentioned, there are also others that use the key notions such as “institution,” “relationships,” “culture,” “networks,” and “process” (e.g., Nikitina, 2017; Kiyascheko, 2010; Mironov, 2009; Khudiakov, 2003; Papyrin, 2008; Skobelina, 2007). As can be seen, there is an abundance of approaches to comprehending the essence of civil society. However, they are very difficult to classify and systemize according to any one or even a set of clear attributes. We proceed in this chapter from the perception of civil society as a sphere of human activities beyond one’s family, state, and market, which is generated by individual and collective actions, norms, values, and social bonds, and carries a number of specific functions: social engagement, mobilization, articulation, service, control, and protection. Realization of these functions has varied throughout the decades of civil society development in Russia: Some functions have increased in importance, while others have receded into the background. This process has been influenced by both external factors and processes of internal self-organization and structuring of Russia’s civil society. Let us look into the transformation of selected functions of civil society in Russia on the basis of specific examples of their empirical manifestations.

23.2  Socializing and Mobilizing Functions Civil society is the very sphere in which the social engagement of individuals takes place, where they gain the values of solidarity, responsibility, justice, social activity, and the like, and learn to trust and unite with other people if they share common ideas and interests. At the same time, this is also the place for the development of specific social norms related to bringing these values to life, and for laying the groundwork for their institutionalization. This, in turn, fosters integration of society as a whole ensuring stability and balance of social relations both in civil society and beyond. Trust is, at the same time, a phenomenon without which no civil society is possible and an indicator of its status and, further still, the major precondition of its formation. At the same time, trust can appear as a result of collective action or interaction of individuals and their groups within a civil society. According to the civil society monitoring data of the HSE’s Centre for Studies of Civil Society and

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Nonprofit Sector, in 2019, three times fewer Russians consider that people in general can be trusted than believe that any relationship with people should be treated cautiously (23% vs. 75%, respectively).2 During the 15 years of sociological observation conducted as part of monitoring the said indicator, the share of Russians considering that other people in general can be trusted has remained in the range of 17–18%, with a gradual growth to 28% since 2014.3 2014 was the year of the Crimea integration into the Russian Federation, which sparked a growth of patriotic sentiments among Russians. It had a positive impact on trust as well as on the perception of society as solidary and united. The key demographic factors affecting the level of generalized trust are education and family welfare. Distrust is more often expressed by those with an incomplete higher education (no degree awarded), low income (not sufficient to buy food), and blue-collar jobs. A larger impact on distrust predominance comes from worldview factors such as pessimistic view of the state of things in one’s community, prospects for changes in the country, dissatisfaction with life in general, and the feeling of unhappiness. A greater degree of distrust in people is also characteristic of potential emigrants in the long-term perspective and those country residents who, by virtue of their Russian citizenship, feel sorry for the country. Conversely, pride in Russian citizenship fuels the growth of the trust level. Russians actively involved in social life (e.g., those who have participated in NPO activities or peaceful rallies are optimistic about the present and future of their community and the country, and satisfied with life) largely tend to trust people. The level of trust at close social distance (among people directly surrounding the respondent) is more than two times higher than the level of caution: 67% vs. 31%. Trust in nearby people depends very little on sociodemographic factors: neither gender nor age nor education nor income nor type of settlement or geographic residence plays a role. The financial situation of the family has some effect, and even then, only on the extreme groups: The low-income groups have a higher level of distrust, the highest-income groups (means sufficient for an apartment and a house) have a higher level of trust in their immediate circle of people. As in the case of generalized trust, the main factor affecting the level of trust in the immediate circle is the worldview. Trust is more often expressed by people who have an optimistic view of the state of things in their settlement and the country, are satisfied with life in general, feel calm, and have confidence in being Russian citizens. There are people who express readiness to unite with other people for certain collective action if their ideas and interests coincide. There are also people 2  We cite here the results of the representative all-Russia quantitative poll that covered 2000 people residing in 8 federal regions, 47 RF entities, and 132 cities and municipal districts including residents of RF rural areas. The poll was performed with observation of the quotas for the main sociodemographic parameters such as the gender, age, level of education, and type of the inhabited area. 3  The data for 2019 are compared with the results of the previous surveys as part of monitoring based on comparable methods.

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unwilling to consociate with others for collective action even if their ideas and interests coincide. To which category do Russians profess to belong? A survey revealed that three-fourths (76%) of those polled are willing to join hands with other people. Those who are not ready to do so constitute approximately one-fifth (21%) in the country. Since 2017, there has been no change in the responses, which implies that the level of readiness to consociate among Russians remains at a stable level. A greater readiness to consociate is demonstrated by youth (18- to 24-year-olds), residents of towns (of under 50,000 people), people with personal income under 6000 rubles and over 30,000 rubles, specialists, and education workers. Thus, not only high-resource groups (as was the case in our previous surveys conducted as part of civil society monitoring) are disposed toward collective action but also groups with more scarce material and social capacities. Additionally, different degrees of social activity of citizens have had their effect on the level of willingness to join up with others: Russians participating in the activity of civil society organizations, in human aid campaigns, and in organizing problem-­solving teams are more likely to declare readiness to team up with other people for certain collective action if their ideas and interests coincide. A greater disposal toward collective action is also registered among volunteers and Russians that donate money to the needy, especially among those who do so frequently. Traditionally, respondents who feel happy and are more positive about the changes and state of things in their settlement, country, and life in general are more likely to unite with other citizens of the country. Comparison with the 2017 survey data reveals that the previous 2 years have seen a remarkable setback in the levels of trust and cohesion with regard to people in general and the country. In 2017, 28% of Russians believed that people in general could be trusted; in 2019, 23% of people were of the same opinion. In 2017, 48% of survey respondents believed in the prevalence of accord and cohesion in society, in 2019, 34% of people held the same view. That being said, trust toward those in one’s immediate circle and cooperative attitude either remained unchanged or experienced insignificant changes. This means that people have become slightly more skeptical of relations among people at social distance but have preserved the same openness to interaction. As regards the mobilizing function, civil society has been motivating and mobilizing individuals and other subjects toward developing civil activity with various contents and of various forms, in particular, toward making monetary donations, volunteering, taking part in self-organization at the place of residence and in the activity of NPOs and so on. The social activity of Russians obviously carries a mobilizing nature, which was evidenced in 2010, the year of unprecedented forest fires in Russia. The country at the time registered a surge in volunteer and philanthropic activity when civil society organizations demonstrated their capabilities as champions of constructive social activity in emergencies. This phenomenon of voluntary human activity in the situations in which social and state interests coincide requires profound comprehension as it suggests possible changes in the balance of forces in the civil domain: traditional NPOs and “spontaneous community” which is yet difficult to structure and classify but which advantageously showcased its

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self-organization, dynamism, and effectiveness in aiding humans in extreme circumstances. The report “People Fighting Fires” issued by the Perm Territory Public Chamber states that the rapid growth of informal high “social quality”, and civil initiatives in view of the fire hazard situation indicated that Russia is capable not only of effective civil self-organization but also of self-regulation and, in fact, even of real civil self-governance. For the first time in many years, society and the state became complementary forces that coordinated their joint efforts as best they could. In some places, the synergy of the state and civilians generated an atmosphere of “working for common cause” as yet unique in modern Russia. (Averkiyev et al., 2010)

It is possible that, amid stability in Russia, social activity has reached the level that ensures the balanced operation of the entire social system, yet it is capable of a dramatic intensification in adverse conditions, which is evidenced by multiple cases of a rapid increase in volunteerism among Russians: floods (in the Irkutsk region, the Primorsky Territory, and the Krasnodar Territory), typhoons (in the Primorsky Territory), forest fires (in the Krasnoyarsk and the Trans-Baikal Territory, in the Irkutsk and Amur regions, and in Buryatia), aid in the aftermath of terrorist acts (on the Saint Petersburg Metro in 2017), search for the missing people, and the like. According to estimates of Minister of Emergencies Vladimir Puchkov, in 2017, volunteers helped to mitigate the consequences of every tenth emergency in Russia. In 2017 alone, volunteer assistance in fire response was sought more than 12,000 times (Volunteers take... 2019).

23.3  The Increased Role of the Service Function Civil society is the sphere where multiple needs of individuals and their groups may be satisfied through a variety of services rendered by civil society agents in education, awareness-raising, science, culture, arts, healthcare, disease prevention and public health protection, promotion of healthy lifestyle, improvement of moral and psychological condition of citizens, physical culture and sport, social security, environmental protection, disaster relief, refugees, internally displaced persons, and so on. Possibly, the most noticeable change since the late 2010s has occurred in the service function of the civil society in Russia. It was caused by the need for an effective state–NPO interaction mechanism in providing welfare services to the population, which, in turn, originated from the real needs of society. Multiple social studies indicate the low level of satisfaction with the state of their social sector among the Russian population. The National Representative Survey of the Population of Russia indicates that 55% of respondents believe that the nation’s healthcare is in a poor state, 56% complain about a poor state of social security, 40% see the problem in education, and 24% in culture (see Table 23.1). Thus, the population believes the condition of the social services to be far from satisfactory. Even culture, being the least problematic among the social domains

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Table 23.1  Distribution of answers to the question: “How do you find the current condition (good, satisfactory or poor) of education, healthcare, social security, and culture in our country?” (% of respondents) Good Satisfactory Poor Not sure

Education 10 45 40 5

Healthcare 6 36 55 2

Social security 6 32 56 6

Culture 21 47 24 8

Source: Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector, HSE. Mass Survey of the Russian Population, 2019

considered, receives negative assessments, which almost outweigh all positive feedback, while healthcare registers an almost ten-fold prevalence of negative assessments over positive ones. Most developed countries build their effective system of welfare services on the basis of interaction between public agencies and civil society institutions. The potential of NPOs is activated both to address particular social issues and to assist in implementation of the state’s social commitments in general. The effect of involving NPOs as service providers in the social domain has its theoretical grounds in the concepts of the origins of mixed systems for production of public goods, primarily in the theory of “indirect governance” (New Governance theory). These concepts convincingly argue the need for intersectoral partnership to provide quality social services to the population at the present development stage of socially oriented market economies. They also demonstrate the comparative advantages of NPOs as social service providers in comparison with state institutions or profit-making organizations performing similar functions4 (Mersianova & Benevolenski, 2017). Many countries have accumulated considerable experience with state-funded involvement of NPOs in social service provision. This observation in particular is supported by the fact that according to the data of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project cited by Mersianova and Benevolenski (2016), almost 60% of labor resources in the nonprofit sector in 38 participating countries are involved in social services. The share of public funding in the revenues of NPOs providing services in the highest priority areas of social policy (healthcare, education, and science) reaches an average of 50% in the participant countries. In a number of countries, this indicator is significantly above the average. Thus, in Germany, the share of public funds in the revenues of NPOs operating in the healthcare sector reaches 94%; in France, Austria, and Canada, the share is 75–80%. The share of public funds in the revenues of NPOs involved in the field of education and science in Austria, Germany, and France is similarly high: 72–75% (Mersianova & Benevolenski, 2016).

4  See, e.g., Salamon (1987), Salamon and Toepler (2015), Ascoli and Ranci (2002), Bode (2006), Eliadis et al. (2005), Ringling (2002), and Salamon and Anheier (1998).

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The Russian Federation also pays great attention to enhancing the role of the nonprofit sector in providing social services financed from the state budget. A number of government measures were taken to expand the state’s interaction with socially oriented nonprofit organizations (SONPOs) and to facilitate their entry into the market of social service providers. In 2010, the concept of SONPO was introduced as an amendment to the 1996 Federal Law No.7-FZ “On Nonprofit Organizations.” A separate category of nonprofit organizations was distinguished to establish the principles, forms, and areas of state support for the nonprofit sector and, above all, for that part of it engaged in addressing a wide range of social issues and developing the civil society in general. Based, inter alia, on the law enforcement practice, it can be argued that the concept of SONPO has a complex nature in Russia and includes both formal (the corresponding legal form and reference to at least one of the listed activities in the organization’s Charter) and substantive attributes, i.e., actual operation in at least one activity type set forth in the Charter. The sophisticated SONPO concept and its complex criteria pose objective difficulties in the statistical recording of SONPO activities, which, in turn, directly affect the effectiveness of public policy in this area. Thus, according to the Russian Ministry of Justice, there were almost 219,000 nonprofit organizations registered in the Russian Federation at the beginning of 2019.5 Proceeding from the legal form alone, approximately 210,000 nonprofit organizations (excluding public and municipal institutions) may potentially apply for the SONPO status. However, given a second attribute, which is actual operation in at least one of the listed activities, there are, in fact, much fewer organizations like this. According to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (ROSSTAT), which keeps statistical records of SONPOs, there were about 140,000 SONPOs operating in the country in 2018. This quantitative indicator is quite stable and has not undergone significant changes in recent years. The fact that Russian legislation has taken up the very concept of SONPO, it being, to a certain extent, analogous to the term “public benefit organization” used in a number of legal systems outside Russia, testifies to the convergence of Russian legislation with world practice. This, in its turn, implies that the state should create favorable conditions for the operation of “public benefit organizations.” In accordance with Federal Law No. 442-FZ “On the Basics of Social Services for Citizens in the Russian Federation” of December 28, 2013, regions prepare registers of social service providers and implement the program for NPOs’ phased access to budget funds allocated for social services. Following President Putin’s speech at the Forum of Active Citizens “Community” on November 4, 2015, which noted the need for developing a long-term system-­ wide state–NPO partnership framework, essential amendments were made to the legislation to provide incentives to NPOs to engage in social services provision

5  The RF Ministry of Justice maintains the web portal unro.minjust.ru, which publishes information about noncommercial organizations registered in Russia and reports about their operations.

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financed from the public budget. The Russian government adopted a series of comprehensive measures to promote increased NPO involvement in social services: • A new legal status was established for SONPOs as social service providers entitling such NPOs to priority public (municipal) support (2016). In early 2019, the register of welfare service providers comprised over 200 NPOs. • A set of measures was developed to ensure a phased access for SONPOs operating in the social domain to the respective budgetary funding for 2016–2020 (2016). • The action plan (“roadmap”) for “Support of SONPO Access to Social Services Provision” was prepared for 2016. • Twenty priority areas were identified for welfare service provision as per the respective Presidential Decree No. 398 (2016). Apart from the federal efforts taken under the action plan developed by the Russian government, the regional authorities approved and are implementing the sector-specific comprehensive plans ensuring the aforesaid phased access for SONPOs operating in the social domain to public funding. The federal government tool, designed to motivate on-site performance, is the relevant checklist approved by Government Decree No. 1284-r on June 19, 2017, to award regional ratings resulting from the implementation of mechanisms to support SONPOs and socially responsible businesses, give access for NPOs to social service provision as well as implement competitive methods of public (municipal) service provision in the social domain.6 According to Tatyana Golikova, the Russian government’s Vice Chair for Social Policy, other amendments were being drafted in 2019 to ensure NPOs’ access to budget funding. As reported by the Office of the Deputy Chair of the Russian Government, there were over 1200 NPOs operating in the social domain in 2018, including 943 SONPO. The respective regional budget allocation for social services and social support totaled RUB 15.7 billion in 2018.7 Thus, recent developments in the regulatory framework reflect a sizable interest on the part of the state in using the nonprofit sector for public policy implementation and improved quality, variety, and access to social services, and this strategy is already yielding positive results. Therefore, the service function of civil society has grown significantly since the mid-2010s. Empirical data confirm both the current highly informed state of Russian NPOs regarding these public initiatives, intended to draw the government-financed NPO sector to social services, and their preparedness for intersectoral partnership promotion. The National NPO Survey conducted by the Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector of the HSE in 2018 showed that 81% of NPO leaders are aware of the presidential objective on proactive NPO involvement as social services  See Rudnik and Kushtanina (2018) and On development… (2018, pp. 44–53).  Agency for Social Information. Tatyana Golikova: Efforts continue to provide access to government budget money for NPOs. March 13, 2019 (in Russian). https://www.asi.org.ru/ news/2019/03/13/tatyana-golikova-rabota-po-obespecheniyu-dostupa-nko-k-byudzhetnym -sredstvam-prodolzhaetsya/ 6 7

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providers (39% are aware and 42% have heard something about it).8 In fact, an overwhelming majority of NPO leaders are supportive of a strengthened state–NPO partnership in addressing social tasks, while 90% of respondents believe that social and other nongovernmental nonprofit organizations should join hands with public institutions in addressing social issues on the educational, healthcare, and cultural agenda. Representatives of the nonprofit sector evaluate the current input by social and other NPOs in social services rather as satisfactory (55%), with 27% assessing it as “good” and 10% as “poor.” The majority of NPO leaders (66%) believe that, as of 2018, nonprofit organizations are more prepared than the commercial sector (31%) or equally prepared (35%) to provide social services; 20% suggested the commercial sector was better prepared. More than half of NPO leaders are convinced that it is especially important for Russia that NPOs participate in providing services in the social, cultural, educational, and healthcare domains. What is the extent of Russian NPOs’ involvement in social services? According to the HSE’s National NPO Survey, 72% of responding NPOs operate in what could be considered the social domain, including social services (32%), culture (24%), education (19%), physical culture and sport (18%), healthcare (10%), and research (5%). On average, the NPOs’ past record in this area amounts to 12.4 years. Some NPOs were initially established in the paradigm of a complex of social services. Others have come to the idea of diversifying the range of social services provided over time. For example, the Absolyut-Pomoshch charitable fund began with helping seriously ill children, then gradually the fund’s activities expanded to programs for preparing orphans and remedial boarding school graduates for full participation in society, innovative education projects, and welfare project grant competitions for NPOs and government organizations aimed at uniting efforts and extending the range of comprehensive support to orphaned children, remedial school graduates, and foster families. As another example, the Moscow charity fund Otchiy Dom, which supports orphans and children deprived of parental care and develops family education homes (nongovernment children’s homes), intends to begin providing medical services and work with children with oncological diseases.

8  The all-Russia NPO survey has been conducted since 2007 as part of civil society monitoring by the HSE. MarketUp, OOO, gathers information via personal interviews with NPO managers carried out on the basis of a half-formalized questionnaire designed at HSE’s Centre for Studies of Civil Society and Nonprofit Sector. The sampling volume in various sampling waves fluctuates from 850 to 1000 NPOs. The survey was carried out on the quota sampling using representative quotas on the legal forms and years of NPO registration. According to the set quotas, managers of organizations located in urban districts, urban settlements, and other types of municipalities in 33 RF entities are polled. The regions are selected based on the RF entity typology that breaks them down into three groups of features based on the urbanization index, the indicator of NPO sector development (in quantitative terms), and the indicator of the RF entity’s economic development expressed in terms of the per capita gross regional product (GRP) in relation to the Russian average. Respondents are selected based on the registers of NPOs and NPOs in the respective RF regions; selection is done mechanically. Not more than two-thirds of the total number of respondents in each RF entity are surveyed in the entity’s administrative center (except for Moscow and St. Petersburg).

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Between 2017 and 2019, 71% of NPOs surveyed have provided various free services, not only in the social sphere. NPOs actively offer free services in the social service sphere (70%), culture (62%), and healthcare (60%). In other areas, the share of free services is below 60%. Analysis of the present-day practices of engaging NPOs in solving state social policy tasks and providing welfare services to the population allows us to conclude that: • Fundamental changes in the social service sphere are long overdue. The social service market privatization process initiated by the RF President Putin as a response to society’s real needs not only is accompanied by respective changes in the law but also receives active support from representatives of the noncommercial sector, which will be tasked with providing services to the population on the largest scale possible. • Russian NPOs are well aware of the state’s initiatives to engage NPOs in providing services in the social sphere and demonstrate that they are ready both to develop intersectoral partnerships and to compete against for-profit entities in the social service sphere. Thus, over the 15 years of observations as part of HSE’s civil society monitoring, we have very clearly seen how the transformation processes in the Russian civil society put the civil society’s service function to the fore. On the one hand, the society has an intrinsic need to improve the social sphere and improve the services provided there. On the other hand, this is in line with global trends. In many countries, collaboration between the state and NPOs has been growing particularly well with respect to social sphere services: Involvement in solving social problems is a leading priority for NPOs, and the government is willing to use such a resource in their social policy. Russia would particularly benefit from the experience of countries such as France and Poland that seem to have recently solved the task of involving NPOs in service provision. Analysis shows that the process developed in gradual stages in these countries, taking into account the nongovernmental, noncommercial providers’ ability to afford the provision of government-guaranteed social services and taking into account consumers’ right to the affordability and quality of such services. NPO providers began by gaining firm ground in the social services sphere. In France, their share in this area of the social sphere is 62% (by the share of full-time total employment in the industry). The share of nongovernmental, for-profit providers in the social service sphere is 10%, and the share of state organizations is 28% (Archambault, 2015, p. 2287). In Poland, noncommercial providers have gained a foothold in such subindustries as social work services (77% organizations providing such services are nongovernmental), social adaptation and reintegration services (74% organizations providing such services are noncommercial), and inpatient and outpatient care for elderly (44% organizations providing such services are noncommercial) (Nalecz et al., 2015, p. 2360). Measures undertaken in these countries to launch mechanisms of long-term government financing for NPO services played an important role in the success of the

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state’s NPO engagement policy. The measures, designed to offer equal conditions for NPOs in competing against public social sphere organizations and give an opportunity to prepare strategic long-term and medium-term plans for collaboration with the state, included the institutionalized right of state-certified noncommercial providers to receive grants (subsidies) for service provision, the right to automatic extension of government financing for such organizations subject to compliance with the service provision terms and conditions, and even the right to adjust the service provision price in the process of negotiations between the state authority and the provider. Similarly, the institutionalization of the relations between the government and NPOs providing services in the social sphere is currently underway in Russia.

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Ringling, A. (2002). European experience with tools of government. In L. M. Salamon (Ed.), The tools of government: A guide to the new governance. Oxford University Press. Рудник Б.Л., Куштанина Е.В. (2018). Привлечение НКО к оказанию социальных услуг: прозрачность применяемых процедур // Вопросы государственного и муниципального управления. № 3. С.117-137 [Rudnik, B. L., & Kushtanina, E. V. (2018). Involving NPOs into social service provision: Transparency of the procedures applied. Public Administration Issues, 3, 117–137 (in Russian)]. Salamon, L. M. (1987). Of market failure, voluntary failure and third party government: The theory of government-nonprofit relations in the modern welfare state. Journal of Voluntary Action Research, 16, 29–49. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. (1998). The third route: Government-nonprofit collaboration in Germany and the United States. In W. Powell & E. Clemens (Eds.), Private action and the public good. Yale University Press. Salamon, L. M., & Toepler, S. (2015). Government–nonprofit cooperation: Anomaly or necessity? Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 26(6), 2155–2177. Шмиттер Ф. (1996). Размышления о гражданском обществе и консолидации демократии// Полис. № 5. С. 16-27. [Shmitter, F. (1996). Reflections on civil society and consolidation of democracy. Polis, 5, 16–27 (in Russian)]. Скобелина Н.А. (2007). Гражданское общество в России: проблемы институционализации/ ПОЛИТЭКС. № 4. URL: http://www.politex.info/content/view/118/30/ [Skobelina, N. A. (2007). Civil society in Russia: Issues of institutionalization. POLITEKS, Issue No. 4. Retrieved from http://www.politex.info/content/view/118/30/ (in Russian)]. О развитии добровольчества (волонтерства) и социально ориентированных некоммерческих организаций. (2018). Доклад Государственного совета Российской Федерации. [On development of volunteerism and socially oriented non-commercial organizations. (2018). Report of the State Council of the Russian Federation]. Туманова А. С., Сафонов А. А. (2017). Социально-экономические, политико-правовые и финансовые параметры гражданского общества в теоретических концептах и эмпирических исследованиях // Финансы: теория и практика. Т. 21. Вып. 5. С. 106–117. [Tumanova, A.  S., & Safonov, A.  A. (2017). Socio-economic, politico-legal, and financial parameters of civil society in theoretical concepts and empirical surveys. Finansy: Teoriya y praktika, 21(5), 106–117 (in Russian)]. Витюк В.В. (1999) Состав и структура гражданского общества как особой сферы социума // Гражданское общество: теория, история, современность / Отв. ред. З.Т.Голенкова. Москва. C. 28-67 [Vityuk, V. V. (1999). Composition and structure of civil society as a special sphere of environment. In: Z.T. Golenkova (Ed.), Civil society: Theory, history, our times (pp. 28–67) Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences]. Добровольцы участвуют в ликвидации последствий почти каждой десятой ЧС в России. URL: https://tass.ru/mchs/4784272 (дата доступа: 15.08.2019) [Volunteers take part in fighting almost every tenth emergency in Russia. 2019. Retrieved August 15, 2019, from https://tass. ru/mchs/4784272 (in Russian)].

Chapter 24

The Skeptic Who Came in from the Cold? The Formation of a Climate-Skeptic Alliance in Germany Alexander Ruser

Abstract  Despite a growing number of scientific studies and a robust consensus among climate scientists about the reality of human-made climate change, public debates remain controversial and climate politics contested. Civil society actors, in particular think tanks and private foundations, seem to be particularly important sources of information and argumentative ammunition fueling these controversies. Especially in the United States, civil society is believed to provide climate change skeptics with a competitive arena that allows them to spread their message and maintain an antagonistic image of the debate about climate change. In Germany, in contrast, political and public debate seems more consensual, leaving proponents of “fringe positions” fewer paths to influence public opinion and create fewer incentives to civil society actors to support and fund them. Against this background, the chapter investigates the influence of an emerging network of climate-skeptic civil society actors in Germany, draws comparisons with the United States, and seeks to uncover their impact on the formulation of climate policies by the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD). Keywords  Think tanks · Climate change · Climate skepticism · Civil society · Social network analysis

24.1  Introduction “I don’t believe it.” Donald Trump’s statement dismissing a report issued by his own administration, a report that outlined the dangers of human-made climate change for the United States (Cillizza, 2018), hardly surprised anyone inside or outside the United States. Even before this statement, the 45th President of the United States had indicated that he embraced climate-skeptic positions. Moreover, climate A. Ruser (*) Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_24

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skepticism and climate change denial themselves have been described as integral parts of the increasingly polarized political discourses in the United States. International opinion polls have shown time and time again that climate-skeptic views are more widespread there than in the rest of the world. Indeed, climateskeptic positions resonate well within America’s Republican Party granting climate skeptics a political platform unheard of in other developed countries. Also, corporate money and resources coming from more clandestine sources fund an increasing number of think tanks, pressure groups, grassroots, and “astroturf” movements which in turn create content for conservative media outlets spreading the word of climate change denial (McCright & Dunlap, 2011; Brulle, 2014; Ruser, 2018). Finally, climate change skepticism and denial are exceeding the limits of scientific dissent and political disagreement and are portrayed as part of a full-fledged “culture war” in the United States (Antonio & Brulle Robert, 2011; McCright & Dunlap, 2011). An important explanation for why climate-skeptic narratives resonate particularly well is the state of the civil society in the United States. Empirical studies paint the picture of a highly polarized civil society where conservative movements and activist culture warriors in the media side with corporate interest, while a phalanx of neoconservative and neoliberal think tanks provides intellectual ammunition to paid-for grassroots movements and action committees (McCright & Dunlap, 2015; Meyer, 2016; Ruser, 2018, 2021). This depiction stands in sharp contrast to research that sees civil society as key to establishing and enforcing accountability in climate politics at both the national and international levels (Newell, 2008) or describes civil society engagement as vital for the implementation of climate protection policies at the local level (De Oliveira, 2009). Susan Moser, for instance, puts high hopes in civil society on the way to “quietly building of a climate protection movement” (Moser, 2007, p. 140) and might feel partially vindicated, now that Fridays for Future school walkouts and Extinction Rebellion activists are making headlines. But civil society actors are said to not only raise the “pressure from the street.” Environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been identified as important catalysts for environmental politics (Bernauer et al., 2013) and key actors in a “new climate diplomacy” (Hsu et al., 2015). Civil society is often associated with the term “civility” in the understanding of Edward Shils, as the ability to transgress ideological boundaries and “a style of conduct that treats one’s political adversaries, unfamiliar customs and institutions, and moral diversity with respect” (Boyd, 2019, p. 142). From this perspective, civil society seems to be predestined for overcoming the partisan gridlock and special interests that have haunted climate politics in the past. For in Shils’ conception, civil society explicitly acknowledges diversity in and disagreement on normative questions. And what challenge could include more normative questions than climate change? It is tempting to conceive of “the” civil society as this special sphere in which different viewpoints can be discussed and fair and appropriate solutions can be found (see Strachwitz, Chap. 3 in this volume, for a new perspective on civil society

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and the public sphere). Such idealizations seem to be at work when Extinction Rebellion activists demand the installment of “citizens’ assemblies” which would then guarantee that political discussions about the challenge of climate change reflect the opinions of the people. Such normative conceptions of civil society and civility are ridden with prerequisites though. Shils’ (1991, p. 3) understanding of civility, for instance, rests upon the acceptance of specific normative concepts (e.g., equality). Likewise, Extinction Rebellion’s demand simply takes for granted that the (randomly chosen) members of a citizens’ assembly would accept the findings of climate science rather than challenge it. Moreover, it can be asked whether such normative conceptions automatically exclude climate skeptics. Do we have to conceive of climate change deniers as “uncivil” actors? In this chapter, I argue not only that climate-skeptic actors are part of civil societies but that climate-skeptic views are shaping the “infrastructure” of national and international civil society. To substantiate this claim, I focus on a case that used to present a stark contrast to the United States but is currently undergoing considerable changes: Germany. In the past, no leading German political party has embraced climate-skeptic narratives. Germany also lacks the infrastructure (in particular wealthy donors) to support a network of climate-skeptic think tanks or pressure groups. The electoral success of the “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) might indicate a fundamental change to all this. Despite the fact that the main appeal of the AfD seems to stem from its staunch Euroskepticism and especially its opposition to asylum and refugee policies, its critique of mainstream climate science and the political consensus on climate change politics certainly adds to the party’s attractiveness for some. In the following, I argue that these political changes were enabled by civil society actors in Germany. I show that they were complicit and even crucial in spreading climate-skeptic beliefs, deepening political divides. The chapter further highlights the limits of normative concepts of civil society, thus making the case for approaches that focus on the internal structuring of civil society actors and the formation of social capital and trust. The empirical probe into the alleged “uncivil side” of German civil society will focus on the emerging network of climate skeptics in the Federal Republic. Such an investigation seems to be particularly timely since new civil society organizations, most notably the AfD-aligned Desiderius Erasmus Foundation, have recently entered the stage and begin to form alliances with more established climate skeptics.

24.2  C  limate Skepticism on the Rise: Civil Society Gone Bad? In recent years, climate skeptic positions, once seen as a peculiarity of the United States, seem to have become more acceptable in Europe. Despite the fact that proclimate social movements such as Fridays for Future or the Extinction Rebellion are getting the most media attention, climate skepticism is not only gaining ground in

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online debates and some fringe media outlets, but is beginning to impact party manifestos and public debates. The rise of right-wing and populist parties is often identified as an important driver for European climate change skepticism (Schaller & Carius, 2019); however, right-wing positions and populist rhetoric do not automatically lead to climate-skeptic positions (Ruser & Machin, 2019). A source of confusion is the term “climate skepticism” itself. It does not refer to a uniform assemblage of concerns, a distinct methodological dispute or necessarily a scientific controversy. Pointing toward the “lack of clarity about what climate skepticism actually is,” Capstick and Pidgeon (2013, p. 390) list aspects as diverse as uncertainty about scientific findings in general, disputes about the existence, the impact, and the consequences of climate change but also “doubt about information sources and media exaggeration” as potential dimensions of climate skepticism. The ambiguity of the concept is mirrored by the different deviations from “mainstream” support of climate science by populist parties across Europe. At first glance, parties like United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) or Germany’s right-wing AfD seem to simply deny the scientific basis and thus existence of human-made climate change (Schaller & Carius, 2019, pp. 84–85). However, a closer look reveals much of the ambivalence. The AfD’s 2017 Manifesto for instance states that “carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but essential to life” (AfD, 2017, p. 65, author’s own translation), shifting the focus from whether climate change is happening to the question whether such a change would be an “unnatural” process. Likewise in an exclusive “Summer Interview” aired on August 12, 2018, on one of Germany’s main television channels, AfD party leader Alexander Gauland admitted that climate might be changing but denied any human influence in what he thinks to be an entirely natural process and further declared that climate politics are not likely to have any impact on the climate whatsoever. “Politicians cannot save people from heatwaves or another ice age. We experienced ice ages well before industrialization,” Gauland added (zeit-online.de/author’s translation), concluding that climate politics is utterly pointless. Most importantly, parties like the AfD justify climate-­ skeptic positions by decrying a “climate hysteria” (https://afdkompakt. de/2019/03/13/energiewende-­die-­klimahysterie-­bedroht-­unseren-­wohlstand/) and pointing to “common sense” for explaining their rejection of “mainstream” climate policies as well as opinions on climate change. But is climate skepticism “common sense”? And could this foreshadow a polarization of civil society on climate change similar to that experienced in the United States? Recent studies indicate that climate-skeptic positions might be indeed on the rise among the German population. While a national survey in 2011 found that only 7% share climate-skeptic beliefs, the 2017 European Perceptions of Climate Change (EPCC) project reported that 16% of the Germans do not believe “that the world’s climate is changing” (Steentjes et al., 2017, p. 18). Despite the somewhat limited comparability of surveys that draw on distinct samples, the increase in self-­identified climate skeptics demands an explanation. Since climate science has not changed and “mainstream” parties still pursue climate policies that reflect the acceptance of

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anthropogenic climate change as a fact, the explanation for the growing appeal of climate-skeptic positions might be found elsewhere. This chapter seeks answers by focusing on networks within German civil society. More specifically, it asks whether, despite the recent energizing of civil society by proclimate protest, the formation of new environmental groups, and the attempt to bring the urgency of climate action to the forefront of public debate, networks within civil society might be key for understanding the spread of climate-skeptic positions. By employing methods of social network analysis and basing the analytical strategy on Anheier’s notion of the role of social capital and trust in voluntary associations (Anheier & Kendall, 2002; Anheier et al., 2004), the chapter explores the possibility that civil society facilitates both: climate action and climate skepticism. This will allow for outlining some future research perspectives on civil society organizations as actors in national and international climate politics.

24.3  Civil Society as Hotbed for Climate Skepticism? Focusing on the role of civil society in climate politics does not seem to be a very “fashionable” idea in the first place. Frank Adloff for instance remarked that, despite continued interest and a growing literature, civil society tends to fly under the radar in current debates about the alleged crises of democracy and capitalism (2018, p.  398). While it was frequently referred to in former times especially when the focus was on discussing what forces could bring about democratization and liberal market economies (ibid. 399), contemporary debate focuses on the “return of the nation state” to restore order after the financial crises since 2007–2008 (Jessop, 2010) and to solve current and future challenges on international mass migration (Henrekson et al., 2019). However, with respect to global climate change, scholars increasingly (re)consider the role of civil society. In their 2015 paper, Hsu and colleagues explicitly encourage “subnational actors—ranging from provinces and cities, to civil sector organizations and private companies” to make up “for lost ground and missed opportunities” (Hsu et al., 2015, p. 501). The underlying assumption is that civil society actors can contribute to solving the climate crisis, putting them in opposition to politicians who, for whatever reason, have proven to be unwilling or incapable of tackling the problem. A recent and prominent example is the Extinction Rebellion protests. The activists justify their protests with the inactivity of their elected representatives and in general with a fundamental “ineptness” of parliamentary democracy: Extinction Rebellion believes that part of the problem is the way that government operates. The UK’s parliamentary democracy is a form of representative government: power is in the hands of a few representatives (Members of Parliament or MPs) who are elected by the people. This form of government has proved itself incapable of making the radical long-­ term policy decisions needed to deal effectively with the climate and ecological crisis. (https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-­truth/demands/).

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For this reason, the activists demand to move “beyond politics” by establishing “citizens’ assemblies,” which would then identify and implement the true will of the people on climate politics: A citizens’ assembly brings people together to learn, deliberate and make recommendations on an issue of public concern. Similar to jury service, members are randomly selected from the population by a process called sortition. Quotas are used to ensure that the assembly is representative in terms of key characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, education level and geography. Assembly members learn about critical thinking before they hear balanced information from experts and stakeholders. The members spend time deliberating in small, facilitated groups and then they draft and vote on recommendations. Citizens’ assemblies are conducted by non-partisan organizations under independent oversight. They are transparent, inclusive and effective. (https://guides.co/g/extinction-­rebellion-­the-­truth/159067)

The Extinction Rebellion’s demand reflects a strong belief in the intellectual capabilities if not moral superiority of civil society actors. However, since such moral qualities are often “assumed” rather than empirically confirmed features of civil society actors, scholars like Helmut Anheier have argued for a less normative depiction of civil society: “Civil society is the sphere of institutions, organizations and individuals located between the family, the state and the market in which people associate voluntarily to advance common interest” (Anheier, 2004, p. 22). Moreover, regarding the question of the formation of civil society, “civil virtues” might also not be sufficient for understanding the patterns of interaction, collaboration, and support that structure civil society. Emphasizing the collaborative dimension, Anheier and Kendall (2002) therefore suggest focusing on “social capital” as a basis for understanding why and how voluntary civil society actors exercise influence. Following the definition of Pierre Bourdieu, social capital can be defined as “the sum of actual and potential resources that can be mobilized through membership in social networks of individual actors and organizations” (Anheier et al., 2004, p. 84). This social capital approach is of particular interest here, for it depicts such voluntary associations and organizations as “incubators of values, civic attitudes and styles of organization” (Anheier & Kendall, 2002, p. 347). In order to understand how civil society actors may influence both normative convictions and values, public discourse and “civic attitudes,” and the positions of climate-skeptic actors (“styles of organization”), it is crucial to investigate the “networks of relations linking individuals and organizations that involve some elements of trust” (Anheier & Kendall, 2002, p. 351). Anheier and Kendall (2002) argue that these networks indicate the formation and distribution of social capital. In other words, “repeated interactions” between civil society actors are indicative and a prerequisite for social trust among the members of a network, thus allowing an understanding of a specific social infrastructure that allows members of distinct networks to accumulate and mobilize social capital.

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24.4  Methodological Approach Drawing on Anheier’s theoretical and methodological insights, this chapter tries to map the formation of social capital in the emerging network of climate-skeptic actors in Germany. In order to measure gains in social capital and to find out why (and how) climate-skeptic civil society actors could improve their visibility and manage to get a foothold in public and political discourse, the contribution draws on data on collaborations between climate-skeptic actors. Using an inductive approach, network connections were defined by “joint membership,” appearances at events (invited speeches, lectures, podium discussions), and collaboration on reports, op-­ eds, and other (off-and online) journalistic articles. Ties between individuals as well as collaboration at the organizational level were also considered. The final undirected network comprised 23 individual and organizational actors.

24.5  Findings The data were processed and analyzed with the statistical software pajek. The overall network could be displayed as a connected (single component) network with some central actors and more loosely connected actors at the periphery (Fig. 24.1). In addition, the network graph maps the relative position of actors in the network of climate change denial in Germany. With a density of 0.128, the network in general is rather loose, but calculating the respective “degree centrality” of the actors revealed significant hierarchies within it. Degree centrality is based on the total number of connections of actors, thus using the degree of “connectivity” as a proxy

Fig. 24.1  Network of climate change skeptics in Germany. Note: Node size indicates centrality degree

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for the relative importance of an actor. As indicated by the size of the nodes, some actors, most notably the organizational actors the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), the Heartland Institute, and the media outlet “Freie Welt” occupy central positions within the network. While the average degree centrality (arithmetic mean) is 2.95, EIKE has a calculated degree centrality value of 13, the Heartland Institute of 7, trailed by “Freie Welt” with 6. The key player in the network, EIKE, was founded in Germany in 2007 as a private association and is today “the biggest German climate sceptic platform” (Lörcher & Neverla, 2015, p. 23) with its “mission” being to challenge the assertion “of climate change as solely man-made” (https://www.eike-­klima-­energie.eu/about­us/). Financed by voluntary contributions of its members and donations, EIKE engages in a variety of activities, most notably the publication of (scientific) articles, the organization of conferences, and the issuing of op-eds and media appearances. The network analysis reveals ties between EIKE and a central player in the American climate-skeptic counter movement (Brulle, 2014), the Heartland Institute. Founded in 1984, Heartland has been a trailblazer in providing “counter-expertise” that favors “market-friendly environmentalism” and outright climate denial (Ruser, 2018, p. 76ff). The Heartland Institute in turn is affiliated with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). Founded in 1985 as a tax-exempt nonprofit group (501(c)(3)), CFACT’s mission is to “promote a much-needed, positive alternative voice on issues of environment and development” and market-based solutions (https://www.cfact.org/about/), a mission they pursue so successfully that they rank among the most influential “right-wing, anti-environmental groups” for decades (Willers, 1994, p. 1147; Ruser, 2018, p. 85). The ties between EIKE, the Heartland Institute, and CFACT indicate the emergence of an international network of climate-skeptic civil society organizations. This might further indicate an increase in social capital of these actors, for they are able to mobilize support and get information from beyond the national context. At the same time, EIKE, as the central actor, has an established network in Germany itself. The Institute and individual staff members maintain ties with AfD politicians at the federal as well as at the regional level, providing information (e.g., as invited speakers) for and commenting on party politics on climate change. Another central network actor is the media outlet “Freie Welt.” Publishing online since 2009, the outlet is part of the network “Zivile Koalition,” a civil society platform which rejects (among other things) policy initiatives in support of e-mobility or carbon taxing and maintains close ties with the AfD. “Freie Welt” provides climate skeptics like EIKE a platform for disseminating their views to a wider audience and links them with AfD politicians at the regional and federal level. What does this tell us about the “social infrastructure” of climate skeptics in Germany? The centrality of a small number of actors is at least hinting at the formation of “bridging social capital” formed by “instilling habits of co-operation [and] solidarity” (Anheier & Kendall, 2002, p. 352). Building trust, for instance, between a climate-skeptic research institute, a media outlet, and like-minded organizations and networks form outside Germany allows for better organization of activities and

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dissemination of their climate-skeptic message and the forging of lasting ties with politicians susceptible to their views.

24.6  C  onclusion and Outlook: German Civil Society as a Battleground for Climate Politics The formation of social capital and social networks is important to understand public debate and policymaking on climate change in Germany. Moreover, the data presented here point toward the increasing importance of relatively “new” private actors (EIKE and Freie Welt) with close ties to other civil society actors and the AfD party cadres. The ties between these organizations and members of the AfD show how climate-skeptic civil society organizations successfully reach out to elected representatives and presumably influence their agendas and policies. So far, these changes seem to “fly under the radar,” to use Adloff’s expression, since proclimate movements and civil society initiatives to promote more sustainable lifestyles get most of the scholarly and public attention. However, as argued here, the emergence of a climate-skeptic network in Germany and the accumulation of social capital among actors who hold radically different views on climate science, climate politics, and/or discourses about climate change might foreshadow a decline in “civility” and more polarized and partisan debates (see Dekker, Chap. 4 in this volume, for perspectives on civility). If this is true, “civil society” should not be conceived of as a fertile soil for civil action to save the climate but might well turn into the next battleground for climate politics. This in turn implies that civil society research should once again leave normative conceptions behind and recall Helmut Anheier’s definition of civil society as a sphere somewhere between the family, markets, and the state “in which people associate voluntarily to advance common interest” (Anheier, 2004, p. 22). The inevitably normative debates about climate politics then serve as a reminder that these “common interests” are likely to be conflicting.

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Bernauer, T., Böhmelt, T., & Koubi, V. (2013). Is there a democracy – Civil society paradox in global environmental governance? Global Environmental Politics, 13(1), 88–107. Boyd, R. (2019). Edward Shils on pluralism and civility. In C. Adair-Toteff & S. Turner (Eds.), The calling of social thought. Rediscovering the work of Edward Shils (pp. 140–153). Manchester University Press. Brulle, R. J. (2014). Institutionalizing delay: Foundation funding and the creation of U.S. Climate Change Counter-Movement Organization. Climate Change, 122(4), 681–694. Capstick, S. B., & Pidgeon, N. F. (2013). What is climate change skepticism? Examination of the concept using a mixed method study of the UK public. Global Environmental Change, 24, 389–401. Cillizza, C. (2018, November 27). Donald Trump buried a climate change report because “I don’t believe it” edition cnn. Retrieved July 28, 2021, from https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/26/politics/donald-­trump-­climate-­change/index.html De Oliveira, J. A. P. (2009). The implementation of climate change related at the subnational level: An analysis of three countries. Habitat International, 33, 253–259. Henrekson, M., Öner, Ö., & Sanandaji, T. (2019). The refugee crisis and the reinvigoration of the nation state: Does the European Union hava a common refugee policy? IFN Working Paper, No. 1265. Hsu, A., Moffat, A. S., Weinfurter, A. J., & Schwartz, J. D. (2015). Towards a new climate diplomacy. Nature Climate Change, 5, 501–503. Jessop, B. (2010). The “return” of the national state in the current crisis of the world market. Capital & Class, 34(1), 38–43. Lörcher, I., & Neverla, I. (2015). The dynamics of issue attention in online communication on climate change. Media and Communication, 3(1), 17–33. McCright, A., & Dunlap, R. (2011). The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American Public’s view of global warming 2001-2010. The Sociological Quarterly, 52, 155–194. McCright, A., & Dunlap, R. (2015). Challenging climate change: The Denial countermovement. In R. Dunlap & R. Brulle (Eds.), Climate change and society sociological perspectives (pp. 300–332). Oxford University Press. Meyer, J. (2016). Dark Money. The Hidden History of the Billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Doubleday. Moser, S. C. (2007). In the long shadows of inaction: The quiet building of a climate protection movement in the United States. Global Environmental Politics, 7(2), 124–144. Newell, P. (2008). Civil society, corporate accountability and the politics of climate change. Global Environmental Politics, 8(3), 122–153. Ruser, A. (2018). Climate politics and the impact of think tanks. Scientific expertise in Germany and the US. Palgrave Macmillan. Ruser, A. (2021) Widening the Gap: US Think Tanks and the manufactured chasm between scientific expertise and common sense on climate change. In: Julien Landry (ed.) Critical Perspectives on Think Tanks. Power, Politics and Knowledge. (pp. 195–214) Edward Elgar. Ruser, A., & Machin, A. (2019). Nationalizing the climate: Is the European Far-Right turning Green? Green European Journal. https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/ nationalising-the-climate-is-the-european-far-rightturning-green/ Schaller, S., & Carius, A. (2019). Convenient Truths. Mapping climate agendas of right-wing populist parties in Europe. Adelphi Consult. Shils, E. (1991). The virtue of civil society. Government and Opposition, 26(1), 3–20. Steentjes, K., Pidgeon, N., Poortinga, W., Corner, A., Arnold, A., Böhm, G., Mays, C., Poumadère, M., Ruddat, M., Scheer, D., Sonnberger, M., & Tvinnereim, E. (2017). European perceptions of climate change: Topline findings of a survey conducted in four European countries in 2016. Cardiff University. Willers, B. (1994). Sustainable development: A new world deception. Conservation Biology, 8(4), 1146–1148.

Chapter 25

The Recent Evolution of Foundations in France Edith Archambault Abstract  This chapter highlights the evolution of foundations in France since 1995. First, the favorable changes in the government–foundations relationships and their legal background are examined. Is France catching up its European neighbors in the development of the philanthropic sphere? This question is then discussed through analysis of recent empirical data on the different forms of foundations. It concludes on the fact that associations, an organizational form preferred by the French, remain the main challengers of foundations. The French consider foundations to be opaque and undemocratic organizations; they remain suspicious of foundations and the influence of wealthy individuals. This specific feature can be illustrated by the controversies surrounding donations to rebuild Notre Dame after the 2019 fire. Keywords  Foundations · Endowment funds · Individual donations · Corporate donations · Employment in associations and foundations

25.1  Introduction Twice at the turning point of the millennium, I wrote a chapter on the situation of foundations in France in books directed by Helmut Anheier (Anheier & Toepler, 1999; Schluter et al., 2001). These comparative books showed that among European countries, France had, with Ireland, the least developed foundation sector, a clear contrast with the postwar revival that took place in the bulk of European countries. Has this position fundamentally changed 20  years later? And are the historical, legal, and sociological reasons then evoked to explain the scarcity of foundations in France any different nowadays? The foundation has a two millennia tradition in Europe: Philanthropy in Antiquity was advocated by writers such as Plato, Epicurus, Seneca, and Cicero. The high school of Aristotle and the library of Alexandria were examples of outstanding foundations. In the Middle Ages, foundations were created at the initiative of the E. Archambault (*) Centre d’économie de la Sorbonne, Paris Sorbonne University, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_25

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Catholic Church and through the donations of the nobility and wealthier guilds or brotherhoods. They ran hospices, hospitals, orphanages, monasteries, colleges, and universities. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, monarchs across Europe were suspicious of the extension of mortmain property separated from the productive economy and escaping inheritance taxes. In France, Louis XIV and Louis XV restricted the rights of existing foundations and prohibited the creation of new ones. This millenary tradition was brutally eradicated in France by the 1789 Revolution, while in other European countries, foundations were gradually modernized. The reasons for this eradication are multiple. The first one is the principle of abolition of privileges adopted on the night of August 4, 1789, which completely suppressed the feudal order, including mortmain property, a distant memory of the days of serfdom. It proclaimed the equality of all citizens in terms of taxation and abolished the tax exemption of the aristocracy and clergy. Therefore, neither mortmain property nor inheritance tax exemption of foundations continued to exist. Later, the 1791 Le Chapelier Act established the monopoly of the state to determine the definition and activities of general interest. The state fought mainly guilds and brotherhoods as well as other intermediate entities and prohibited coalitions and numerous meetings. This law followed the influence of Rousseau’s Contrat Social, as evidenced by this passage from the Act’s preamble: “No one shall be allowed to arouse in any citizen any kind of intermediary interest and to separate him from the public weal through intermediate corporate interests.” Of course, this law and its philosophy were used during the main part of nineteenth century to fight resurgent foundations and associations, mutual societies, strikes and labor unions, as well as antiestablishment political parties. The final and mortal blow to foundations came from the revolutionary government’s need to finance wars against European countries that broke out to prevent revolutionary ideas from spreading outside France. To raise money indeed, the Jacobin1 state, in conflict with a Catholic Church that favored the monarchy, expelled the clergy and sold the Church’s real estate and foundation assets to the wealthy bourgeoisie. It nationalized and secularized some foundations—hospitals especially—or replaced universities by a state model to fight clerical influence. This eradication was durable. During the main part of nineteenth century, associations and mutual societies were either repressed or, if they were created upon the initiative of government, tolerated. No new foundations were created, but some existing foundations inspired by the Lumières philosophy were not eradicated by the Revolution, such as the 1780 Société Philanthropique which still works to assist vulnerable people. At the beginning of twentieth century, a tentative resurgence of some foundations can be observed, following the example of the Institut Pasteur2 (founded in 1887), such as Fondation Rothschild and Fondation Curie. During the 1  Jacobin is the name of the club where the members of the revolutionary government met at this time. They were in favor of a high level of administrative and political centralization. Now, by extension, Jacobin means in favor of centralization. 2  Institut Pasteur was created through a donation of Louis Pasteur’s friends and followers to give him a more suitable scientific facility than inside public university.

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interwar period, Fondation Deutsch de la Meurthe and many foreign foundations were at the origin of the Cité Universitaire, an international hall of residence for foreign students in Paris. After World War II, André Malraux, a novelist who was the first Minister of Culture, encouraged the creation of foundations to promote culture through private philanthropy, as the Americans did. In 1969, Malraux was also at the origin of Fondation de France, the main multipurpose grant-making foundation in France. In spite of this government impulse, there was a total absence of the so-called “foundation boom” experienced elsewhere in Europe or the United States in the 1980s and 1990s (Archambault et al., 1999; Archambault, 2001, 2004). Of course, this historical background is permanent and lies at the origin of the durable paucity of foundations in France. However, legislation has become more favorable to donations and the creation of foundations in the first decade of this millennium, as shown in the next section. Has France caught up to its European neighbors in the twenty-first century? This issue will then be discussed in light of the most recent empirical data. Finally, the chapter shows that foundations are in competition with a large associative network; the French remain suspicious of foundations and the influence of wealthy individuals, as this specific feature can be illustrated by the controversies surrounding donations to rebuild Notre Dame after the 2019 fire.

25.2  More Favorable Legislation: 2003 and 2008 Acts At the end of the twentieth century, two new laws bestowed legal personality on foundations, which were often confused with associations before (Pomey, 1980): • A 1987 Act defines a foundation as “the legal act through which one or several individuals or legal entities decide the irrevocable allocation of estate, rights or resources for a nonprofit making activity of general interest.” The process of establishing a Fondation reconnue d’utilité publique (RUP foundation hereafter) is long, complicated, and centralized. It requires a high minimum endowment of €762,200 that is not expendable. One-third of the foundation’s board members must be government representatives. RUP foundations benefit from a tax-exempt status and can receive tax-deductible donations and legacies exempt from inheritance tax. • According to a 1990 Act, corporate foundations are created by corporations, cooperatives, or mutual societies by an approval process that is independent of the state and simpler. The founder has to grant a five-year renewable sum of at least €152,000 that has to be consumed during the five-year period. Corporate foundations cannot receive donations and legacies. Because of the difficulty involved in creating an RUP foundation, many individuals and some companies opted for a nonautonomous legal status. These socalled sheltered foundations that require no minimum endowment were mainly hosted by Fondation de France or Institut de France, a public umbrella institution

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that houses the five academies. The sheltered foundations have their own boards, deciding on their grants or activities, while the sheltering institution usually manages their assets. The foundation landscape has changed dramatically since passage of the 2003 Patronage Act. This law simplified the creation of an RUP foundation and enhanced tax incentives for donations, and later new kinds of specialized foundations were proposed to potential founders. The 2003 Patronage Act includes administrative simplifications regarding the establishment of an RUP foundation and removal of the minimum permanent endowment that was formerly an important obstacle. In the case of foundations devoted to temporary causes, an expendable endowment can be authorized by the Council of State. But the main change is the spectacular reinforcement of tax incentives for donors to RUP and business foundations: • For individual donations, the credit on income tax rose from 40% to 66%, with a cap rising from 6% to 20% of taxable income. The donation amount over the cap can be deducted from income tax during the following 5 years. This last point is of course intended to enhance the creation of foundations. In addition, since 2009, donations have been 75% deductible from the wealth tax (Impôt sur la Fortune), with a cap of €50,000. • Tax deductibility of corporate giving rose from 33% to 60%, while the limit on authorized donations goes from 2.5 to 5 per thousand of turnover. As of 2020, the French tax deductibility of donations is the highest in Europe. At the end of the 2000s, four new legal statuses of foundations were proposed to potential founders in the field of research and higher education: scientific cooperation foundation, partnership foundation, university foundation, and hospital foundation. These new types of foundations have different economic models according to their by-laws, sometimes with the option for the founder to choose between flow, expendable, or permanent endowment foundations. Finally, in 2008, endowment funds following the Anglo-Saxon pattern were proposed to potential founders. Unlike the four new kinds of foundations, the endowment funds are multipurpose or generalist entities. They are very easy to create, without an a priori control of the government, and no minimum endowment was initially required. These new incentives to create foundations seem to indicate that the state’s historical suspicion of foundations vanished. Though the above-mentioned changes in the foundation statutes and tax incentives were proposed by right-leaning governments, the following left-leaning government did not reverse or suppress them. The legal vacuum until the end of the 1980s has been replaced by abundance, even overflow, of different legal statutes. Has this change provoked a foundation boom in France, later but similar to what has been observed in other European countries?

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25.3  The Landscape of Foundations Today The total number of foundations including endowment funds is 4858 in 2017, as shown in Table  25.1, which allocates foundations according to their legal form. However, in comparison with approximately 87,000 foundations in the United States, 25,000 in Germany, 12,000 in the UK, 14,000 in Denmark, and 18,000 in Sweden, the French philanthropic sector remains underdeveloped and has not yet overcome its historical lag. Even among the Southern European countries, the number of foundations in France is fewer than in Italy (6200) or Spain (8900) (Foundation Center, 2019). In 2017, the assets held by French foundations amounted to €26.5 billion, up 31% since 2013. RUP foundations hold 75% of these assets. In comparison, the level of foundations’ total assets is €770 billion in the United States, €100 billion in Germany, €70 billion in the UK, €44 billion in Denmark, and +€50 billion in Sweden. In Southern Europe, Italian foundations inherited assets of up to €85 billion from public banks, and Spanish foundations hold €22 billion assets, roughly the same order of magnitude as their French counterparts. Foundations in France have therefore a lesser economic role than they do in other European countries (Jevakhoff & Cavaillolès, 2017). The annual expenditure of French foundations is €7.4 billion. The expenses of RUP foundations, the oldest part of the philanthropic sector, represent 88% of this total expenditure. They are operating foundations, hiring the bulk of the sector’s employees while other foundations—corporate, sheltered, or new legal forms—and endowment funds as well, are mainly distributive or grant-making. Together, all kinds of foundations employ nearly 86,000 workers. Table 25.2 breaks down the total number of employees by the foundation’s main activity; social services come first, then hospitals and other human health services which were first historically. Education and research, which includes Institut Pasteur, have a lesser economic weight. Information and communication gather the bulk of grant-making foundations employees

Table 25.1  Number of foundations in France, 1990–2017 Years RUP foundations Corporate foundations Sheltered foundations New foundations Endowment funds Total foundations and endowment funds Total foundations, without endowment funds

1990 393 – 326 – – 719 719

1995 445  25 404 – – 874 874

2001  471   67  571 – – 1109 1109

2010  578  250  811   47  162 1848 1686

Source: Archambault (2004); Observatoire de la Philanthropie (2015, 2019)

2014  634  344 1161   89 1842 4071 2229

2017  638  400 1242   84 2494 4858 2364

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Table 25.2  Employees in foundations in France, by activities, as of December 31, 2015 Activities Social services Health Education and research Information and communication Other Total

Number 39,086 27,636 9336 6826 2887 85,771

% 45.6 32.2 10.9 8.0 3.3 100

Source: INSEE-CLAP (2015) Tableaux harmonises de l’économie sociale

To complete the economic picture of the French institutional philanthropy sector, its income sources are the following as of 2014 (Observatoire de la Philanthropie, 2015): • Investment income: 8% • Fees and sales, per diem reimbursements, and other third-party payments: 42% (coming roughly half from the private sector, half from the public sector) • Public grants and subsidies: 10% • Private giving: 30% • Miscellaneous: 8% Investment income’s share is modest because, as noted earlier, French foundations do not have a wealth of assets, especially in comparison with their foreign counterparts, and these assets are rapidly consumed in some grant-making foundations. Operating foundations have a higher share of commercial revenue, coming mainly from contracts with the public sector, because they run health, social services, or education establishments. Grant-making foundations rely mainly on private and public donations or subsidies.

25.4  Analysis of the Recent Growth of Foundations The total number of foundations, including endowment funds, experienced a spectacular growth after decades of quasi stagnation. This number was apparently multiplied by seven within 27 years, that means an average annual growth during the period of 7.3%. These numbers are in fact misleading. Table 25.3 breaks down the evolution between two subperiods, the second one including all the favorable new legislation described earlier. The first remark is that endowment funds explain the main part of the acceleration of growth during the 2001–2017 subperiod. Since 2009, endowment funds mushroomed: easy to create, with no a priori public control and no minimum endowment, half of these funds had no endowment at all! As such since 2014 a minimum endowment of €15,000 is required to prevent “empty shells.” The average

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Table 25.3  Evolution of French foundations: average annual growth during two subperiods RUP foundations Corporate foundations Sheltered foundations New foundations Endowment funds Total foundations and endowment funds Total foundations, without endowment funds

1990–2001 (%) 2001–2017 (%) 1990–2017 (%)  1.7 1.9 1.8 17.9 11.8 13.4  5.2 5.0 5.1 – 8.6 57.7  4 9.7 7.3  4 4.8 4.5

annual growth for the 2001–2017 falls from 9.7% to 4.8% when endowment funds are excluded. For the whole 1990–2017 period, it declines from 7.3% to 4.5% without endowment funds, and the rate of acceleration of the two subperiods is indeed very limited. Regarding the heavyweights of the foundation sector, the RUP foundations, their growth is slower than all other kinds of foundation and does not accelerate after the 2003 Patronage Act, which seems to have missed its main target. Potential founders did not choose to create a RUP foundation despite the higher tax credit, the simpler process, and the possibility of giving one year of income through the deferral to five subsequent years of the gift above the threshold. By contrast, corporate foundations saw a two-digit growth rate during the whole period. Corporate foundations did not exist before 1990, and the first subperiod beginning from scratch shows the highest growth rate. Companies that created foundations were mainly public corporations, cooperatives, or mutual societies. During the second subperiod, private standard corporations creating corporate foundations benefited more than individuals from the most favorable tax credit in Europe. Sheltered foundations continue to grow at the same rate during the two subperiods, and the sheltering institutions multiplied, without shifting to the more independent RUP foundation due to the lowering of the minimum endowment. Finally, new forms of foundations did not explode as endowment funds did but remain a modest number. To conclude, corporations were no doubt more eager than individuals to benefit from the higher tax benefits provided by the 2003 Patronage Act to create foundations. Despite its growth since 1990, it is unlikely that the French philanthropic sector will catch up to its neighbors’ level within the next decade.

25.5  D  eeply Rooted Cultural Causes Explain the Persistent Disaffection of the French with Regard to Foundations Among the causes of the scarcity of foundations in France cited in Archambault (2004), two of them have vanished. On the one hand, the state’s historical suspicion has been replaced by acknowledgment that “the state has no monopoly on public

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good,” as said Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in 1986. On the other hand, the legislation vacuum has been replaced by many legal statutes for foundations and endowment funds, unequally easy to create. However, the association remains the simplest legal entity to create and the most independent from the state in its governance and control. While more than 70,000 associations are created every year, fewer than 100 endowment funds or foundations are established. About 1,300,000 associations are spread throughout the French territory, while the fewer than 5000 foundations are highly concentrated in the Parisian area. French people simply like and trust associations, as many polls show, and dislike or ignore foundations. In fact, as an institution, the foundation appears less adapted to the French culture than the association for several reasons. First, operating foundations are part of the Catholic Church’s charitable tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. Some have kept this religious reference in their title and as a result are considered by a large part of the French population as remains of the past or are simply overlooked. Associations are partly relevant to this religious tradition, but their historical background is more complex: They are also heirs of medieval guilds, nineteenth-century workers’ movements, the twentieth-century Olympic movement, social protection facilities, minority groups’ advocacy, and environmental defense movements. Second, unlike cooperatives, mutual societies, and associations, foundations have no democratic governance that is based on the principle “one person, one vote” in annual general meetings. That is why it is questionable whether foundations belong to the social and solidarity economy (SSE) as the 2014 Act on SSE stated. According to the CIRIEC definition of SSE, only foundations created by social and solidarity economy organizations should be considered part of SSE (Chaves & Monzon, 2008, 2012). Third, a broad public–private partnership began in the 1960s, with the main associations working in the welfare activities: health and social services, education, culture, sports, and recreation. Of course, operating foundations working in these fields also benefited from public funding, but they were never leaders in the partnerships. In addition, there are no community foundations in France as in other European countries, in part because the central and local governments cannot create foundations. Therefore, in France, large associations play the role that foundations do in other European countries and in the United States. However, in recent years, some fundraising associations became foundations, and this change is encouraged by the 2014 SSE Act. Table 25.4 shows the evolution of the number of establishments with staff in foundations and associations and the number of their employees over the 2005–2015 decade. As is clear, associations comprise the lion’s share of the French nonprofit sector in terms of the number of establishments with staff and the number of employees. But foundations are larger (55 employees on average) than associations (10 employees on average). Foundations grew quickly over the two subperiods. Associations also grew during the 2005–2010 subperiod, but the number of establishments declined and employees remained steady during the 2010–2015 subperiod. There are two explanations for this dissimilar evolution: on the one hand, there

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Table 25.4  Foundations and associations in France, number and growth of establishments with employees, and number and growth of employees, 2005–2015 Years Foundations, establishments Growth Foundations, employment Growth Associations, establishments Growth Associations, employment Growth

2005 900 53,844 172,463 1,625,163

2010 1267 40.1% 67,933 26.2% 188,810 9.5% 1,840,864 13.3%

2015 1568 23.8% 85,771 27.7% 186,713 −1.1% 1,852,083 0.6%

Source: INSEE CLAP (2015)

was a reduction of public funding to civil society organizations since 2010 that impacted associations more than foundations, which depend less on public money. On the other hand, some associations merged to cope with their restricted income, others created endowment funds or foundations to capture donations, and a few large fundraising associations changed their legal statute to become foundations, such as Petits Frères des Pauvres or Fondation pour la Recherche sur le Cancer. Unfavorable inheritance legislation is also evoked as a persistent obstacle to the creation of foundations by testament or bequest. If the testator has children, between half and three-quarters of her/his estate is reserved for the children, according to their number. Most founders of recent RUP or sheltered foundations are alive, and they are younger nowadays than were founders two decades ago. Despite the more favorable attitude of the public powers, resistance to foundations remains in administrative culture and public opinion as well. The idea that state and local authorities have a monopoly on public interest activities remains alive and is detrimental to both corporate and RUP foundations. In administrative culture, the Jacobin belief in the superiority of the state in the provision of medical, social, cultural, or educational services is also still prevalent. The traditional view that for-profit enterprises should not engage in activities of general interest continues to prevail as well in administration and public opinion. A large part of the French population considers endowments to corporate foundations as tax-exempt alternatives to advertising expenses or “social or green washing.” More generally, corporate patronage is seen as an undue levy on resources that could have alternately been spent on wage increases or on taxes financing public services. Even tax credits for household giving can be viewed as gifts to the wealthier part of the population3 (Facq et al., 2019). These ambiguous behaviors can be illustrated by the recent controversies on individual and corporate donations to rebuild the Notre Dame cathedral after its 3  In spite of the fact that tax exemptions to support giving are rather fair in France because tax credits replaced reductions of taxable income in 1966. Reductions of taxable income are unfair with a progressive income tax which gives a larger tax exemption to the higher incomes.

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partial destruction by fire on April 15, 2019. Notre Dame is the most popular religious building even for the most secular part of the population4 because it is linked to French history and literature. During three hours, the roof framing, built in medieval timber, was burning, and the bulk of the French were rooted to their screens until the fire fighters said that the main part of Notre Dame was saved. This time of national union between believers and nonbelievers was short. The next day, giving pledges flowed toward Fondation de France, the Fondation du Patrimoine, and Fondation Notre-Dame. The wealthiest French families, Arnault (LVMH), Pinault (Kering), and Bettancourt (L’Oréal), gave €100,000,000 or €200,000,000  in an apparent competition to be the most generous. The controversial debates that followed in newspapers, on the Internet, and in pubs included at least these two points: • It is easy to find €1 billion in a few days for an historical building famous all over the world and not for the needy population (or the “yellow jackets”) or other less famous parts of our heritage; • The richest are generous with public money, as tax credits are 66% or 75% of their gifts. To reply to this last objection, the above cited donors, or their corporate foundations, said that they would waive their tax credits. (But some might have wondered whether those donors were over the cap because of previous donations!) This dispute is specific to a society with a passion for equality and a high level of distrust (Algan, 2007), especially of the wealthiest part of the population (Sellen, 2012, 2019). However, civil society organizations are schools of trust and citizenship. The recent growth of foundations may be an opportunity for them to be more clearly part of civil society.

25.6  Conclusion Though it is unlikely that French foundations will catch up to their more advanced neighbor countries in the next decade, there are clear signs of a change in the foundation world. New foundations are more grant-making and less operating; they are more flow-through foundations spending a higher part of their assets, and this behavior increases their legitimacy (see Toepler, Chap. 10 in this volume, for more on foundation legitimacy). New founders are often businessmen having sold their start-up; they are younger than their predecessors and eager to follow the management and impact of their foundation personally. Therefore, foundations are arguably more effective, and their governance is clearer.

4  Along with Denmark, France is the country where religious observances are the least. Official surveys on religious affiliation are seldom. In the most recent survey, 45% of the French said that they have no religion, 43% said they are Catholic, 8% Muslim, 2% Protestant, and 2% belonged to other religions (Jewish, Orthodox, Buddhist, etc.) (INSEE-INED, 2008).

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Even in a country with the highest level of taxes and social contributions in Europe, the state cannot do everything. Foundations could have a greater role in the detection of and the answers to new needs in the fields of health, research, education, culture, and social services. They could, more than they do now, help associations to deal with limited resources and be more efficient. They have to learn to cooperate with public powers at all levels and to acknowledge the superior legitimacy of elected entities. More community foundations would help foundations develop a better knowledge of the administrative culture and civil servants a better understanding of the hybrid culture of foundations, i.e., working for the general interest with business management efficiency. Having to please neither their shareholders as corporations do nor voters as central or local governments do, and even members as associations do, foundations can experiment in new and unpopular fields, for example, alternatives to jail. If successful, such innovations could be scaled up by the state. The mix of the world of foundations with other worlds would benefit the whole society.

References Algan, Y. (2007). La société de la défiance. Editions Rue d’Ulm. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (1999). Private funds and public purpose, philanthropic foundations in international perspectives. Plenum Publishers. Archambault, E. (2001). Country report: France. In A. Schluter, V. Then, & P. Walkenhorst (Eds.), Foundations in Europe. Society, management and law. Bertelsmann Foundation. Archambault, E. (2004). Pourquoi les fondations sont-elles si rares en France. In D. Girard (Ed.), Solidarités collectives; famille et solidarités (pp. 165–181). L’Harmattan. Archambault, E., Boumendil, J., & Tsyboula, S. (1999). Foundations in France. In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), Private funds and public purpose, philanthropic foundations in international perspectives. Plenum Publishers. Chaves, R., & Monzon, J. L. (2008). The European social economy. Concept and dimensions of the third sector. CIRIEC, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics. Chaves, R., & Monzon, J. L.. (2012) The social economy in the European Union. Report to the European Economic and Social Committee. Facq, G., Landais, C., & Myczkowski, A. (2019). Biens publics, charité privée. Editions Rue d’Ulm. Foundation Center. (2019). Retrieved June, 25, 2019, from http://data.foundationcenter.org/ INSEE-CLAP. (2015). Tableaux harmonisés de l’économie sociale. INSEE-INED. (2008). Trajectories and origins: Survey on the diversity of the french population. INED Population Studies. Jevakhoff, A., & Cavaillolès, D. (2017). le rôle économique des fondations. Paris Inspection Générale des Finances. Observatoire de la Philanthropie. (2015). Funds and foundations in France from 2001 to 2014. Fondation de France. Observatoire de la Philanthropie. (2019). https://www.fondationdefrance.org/fr/ observatoire-­philanthropie/les-­fondations-­et-­fonds-­de-­dotation-­en-­france-­en-­2018 Pomey, M. (1980). Traité des fondation d’utilité publique. Presses Universitaires de France. Schluter, A., Then, V., & Walkenhorst, P. (2001). Foundations in Europe. Society, management and law. Bertelsmann Foundation. Sellen, C. (2012). Philanthropie et économie. Essais autour de la générosité. Thèse IEP Paris. Sellen, C. (2019). Is philanthropy a way to convert wealth into happiness among wealthy people? Preliminary exploration in France. In G. Brulé & C. Sutter (Eds.), Subjective wellbeing and happiness. Springer.

Chapter 26

Pluralism and Inequality: Brief Reflections on Philanthropic Foundations and Their Study in the United States David C. Hammack

Abstract  Secure, permanent endowments and foundations have underwritten the extraordinarily diverse array of schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, hospitals, clinics, orphanages, old-age homes, and arts venues in the United States since the time of the American Revolution. Historical studies show that these institutions reflect many distinct and often mutually incompatible religious, philosophical, cultural, social, and aesthetic views; so long as the United States maintains significant separation between church and state, institutions animated by rival—and by new and newly introduced—views can thrive. Because they support distinctive perspectives and initiatives that are uncontrolled by the national state (even as they often seek to influence the state), foundations usefully contribute to pluralism. Because effective foundations require substantial financial assets, and because the American constitution under which they operate places great emphasis on private property, they cannot escape association with wealth and inequality. Keywords  Endowment · Foundation · Pluralism · Liberty · Inequality · History of philanthropy

26.1  A  merican Philanthropic Foundations: Basic Definitions and Uses Secure, permanent endowments and foundations have underwritten the extraordinarily diverse array of schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, hospitals, clinics, orphanages, old-age homes, and arts venues in the United States since the time of the American Revolution. These institutions reflect many distinct and often mutually incompatible religious, philosophical, cultural, social, and aesthetic views; so long as the United States maintains significant separation between church and state, D. C. Hammack (*) Department of History, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_26

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institutions animated by rival—and by new and newly introduced—views can thrive. Because they support distinctive perspectives and initiatives that are uncontrolled by the national state (even as they often seek to influence the state), foundations usefully contribute to pluralism. Because effective foundations require substantial financial assets, and because the American constitution under which they operate places great emphasis on private property, they cannot escape association with wealth and inequality. Their ability to ensure that resources are dedicated to purposes that require continuous attention makes foundations, like endowments, important to distinctive organizations that cannot rely on government or commercial support. Governments must take account of changing citizen concerns and changing tax revenues; in the United States, governments cannot directly finance religious activities. Market firms must deal with continually changing forces of supply and demand. Neither governments nor markets can provide reliable support to highly valued activities. Yet religious worship, education, scientific research, and the arts require sustained effort. The same is true of campaigns to advance public health, expand opportunity, maintain peace, and protect the environment. English, German, and American endowments and foundations have underwritten such activities since the seventeenth century or earlier (Jordan, 1959; Owen, 1964; Jones, 1969; Hammack & Anheier, 2013; Hall & Burke, 2006; Adam, 2004). Thoughtfully invested, and with pay-out set at a lower rate than investment income so that its funds keep pace with inflation, an endowment can persist over a long period and pay out much more than the initial investment (Wolf, 2011). These brief reflections elaborate and note some of the studies that support the conclusions asserted here, and comment on implications for understanding philanthropic foundations and for thinking about best foundation practices and about the relation between foundations and inequality.

26.2  T  he Values Dimension in Discussions of Foundations and Public Policy Policy debates are often framed in terms of generic services—elementary and secondary education, health care, social services. The focus is on quantity, efficiency, and equality: on providing more, with fewer resources, for everyone. But in practice, Americans (not unlike citizens of other nations) seek services that are both of high quality and are provided within a specific tradition (Hammack, 2015). For elementary and secondary education, for example, many families seek schools characterized as Jesuit or Ursuline, Quaker or Evangelical, Orthodox or Reformed Jewish, classical or progressive, devoted to a single tradition or community or welcoming to all. Although many of America’s historically Protestant or Jewish hospitals have moved away from religious control, in many parts of the United States at present most hospital beds are now in Catholic hospitals, subject to Catholic

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regulation of matters related to the beginning and the end of life regardless of the patient’s affiliation (Minow, 2000). Across the United States, aid to foundlings, orphans, and children in foster care is largely organized along religious lines, as is much aid to the aged poor. American foundations have played important roles in underwriting the development of the nation’s competing values communities. They have underwritten the education of administrators and teachers, the construction of houses of worship, schools, colleges, libraries, centers for the arts and recreation, laboratories and hospitals, orphanages and old-age homes. And foundations finance standard-setting efforts both within and across many cultural and professional communities. Analysis of foundation philanthropy must attend to questions of value.

26.3  Nineteenth-Century American Foundations: Values and Conflicts American philanthropic foundations have a long history, a history that has seen great change and has always involved conflict. Endowments and funds devoted to distinctive purposes multiplied in the United States from the Revolution on, playing notable parts in building institutions for the support of several denominations of evangelical Protestants, in developing the nation’s array of academies and colleges (Hammack, 2019; Findlay, 2000), and in establishing such distinctive libraries, museums, and schools devoted to humane values as the Lowell Institute, the Boston Athenaeum, the Astor and Lenox libraries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Cooper Union in New York, and the Franklin Institute, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Girard College in Philadelphia. From the early nineteenth century, American Protestants used endowed funds (investing assets and distributing income in foundation fashion) to subsidize religious missions both within the United States and abroad (Griffin, 1960; Banner, 1973). From the late nineteenth century, American Jews used such funds to aid Jewish communities in Europe that found themselves under attack (Lazare, 1996; Porter, 2017), and to support the Zionist enterprise. From the Civil War until the 1930s (and beyond), during decades in which the federal government remained aloof from elementary and secondary education, several American foundations effectively promoted the adoption of public schools and public libraries supported by local taxes, and encouraged national standards in elementary and secondary education and in college admissions (Harlan, 1958; Anderson, 1988; Anderson and Moss, 1999; Van Slyck, 1995). As the examples noted here suggest, nineteenth-century American foundations supported diverse, conflicting, and not infrequently controversial approaches to religion, education, social services, and culture and society in general. Endowed funds like other charities often made strong efforts to shape government policy. Protestants long made the greatest use of endowments (Lindeman, 1936), sometimes to underwrite anti-Catholic activities or (in collaboration with the federal government) to

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press Native Americans to convert and assimilate (Brown & McKeown, 2009; Pratt, 1967; Prucha, 1976, 1979; Hoxie, 1989; Yohn, 1995). Protestant funds collaborated with the federal government to provide medical and social support to soldiers during the Civil War. For several decades from the mid-nineteenth century, Protestant funds worked with the federal government to extend American influence, and support for Christians, in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (Curti, 1963; Field, 1969; Arnove, 1980; Rosenfield, 2014; Hollinger, 2017). During the eras of slavery and government-enforced racial segregation, Southern funds followed state law, aiding institutions that not only reinforced inequality but also provided rationales for white supremacy (Hammack, 2017). Philanthropic foundations generally opposed organized labor, although there have been some exceptions (Magat, 1999). Foundations and other civil society organizations also played roles in decreasing religious and ethnic conflict. Rising numbers as well as charitable wealth enabled Catholics and Jews to win increasing influence: From 1916, for example, they were included in work with soldiers as chaplains and in the United Service Organization, and in many places, they played prominent parts in the community chest and community foundation movements (Ross, 1989; Hammack, 1989; Hollinger, 2017). At the same time, government reliance on private initiative gave advantages to those who had both wealth and a desire to advance a cause. Communities that lacked wealth faced stark limits. Excluded from most institutions and unable to finance their own, African-Americans and Native Americans, for example, could care for their orphans or their destitute elderly only within their impoverished families (or were forced to see their orphans consigned to a public reformatory for juvenile offenders), even as white Protestants, Catholics, and Jews built substantial childcare and eldercare facilities (Hagesfeld, 2017; Tuennerman-Kaplan, 2001; Morton, 2000).

26.4  T  he Exceptional Decades of the Early Twentieth Century In the first three or four decades of the twentieth century, a small group of philanthropic foundations played such prominent roles in creating key new institutions that many writers continue even today to take those foundations, and those decades, as characteristic and definitive. This was the era in which the several Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Guggenheim foundations, joined by the Julius Rosenwald, Commonwealth, Russell Sage, and several other funds, did so much to create the modern research university with its research-focused faculty and the modern academic medical center (Curti & Nash, 1965; Lagemann, 1983, 1989; Geiger, 1986; Wheatley, 1988; Hammack & Anheier, 2013). This distinct group of foundations (notably the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Milbank Memorial Fund) also underwrote sustained efforts to establish national standards in public health and social services (Barona,

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2015; Schneider, 2002; Hammack & Wheeler, 1994), in housing and community development, in critical aspects of rural life, and in industrial safety. And they underwrote research into ways to eliminate the business cycle, with its periodic rounds of painful unemployment. In this period, when the US federal government provided almost no support for science or technology or higher education, philanthropic foundations were able to do some very substantial things. Working with scientists, with some key business leaders who valued science, with the rising elite professions, with state government officials and some military leaders, they successfully supported dramatic innovations. But defenders of traditional religious and social arrangements, also supported by foundations and endowments, strongly opposed them (Candler, 1909; Bryan, 1911). The period of exceptional foundation institution-building lasted just a few decades. After World War II, the scale of government and commercial funding in the relevant fields overwhelmed foundation wealth. Now the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and other federal funders dominated fields formerly left almost entirely to private foundations. To develop the seeds and agricultural techniques needed to create the “green revolution,” the Rockefeller, Ford, and other American funds now worked with the US government and with governments in Mexico, India, Indonesia, and other nations. Following the examples set in earlier periods by many private funds in Boston, New  York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, and other cities, Ford and other foundations underwrote local arts, educational, and public television organizations. By the 1960s, wealthy donors throughout the United States had concluded that every metropolitan region should have its substantial research university and medical research center and a full array of arts institutions. Nowhere can foundations provide all the money such facilities require: but foundation funds are important to the construction of new buildings, the launching of new programs, and the sustaining of select, donor-approved activities. In the 1960s, Ford and other funds made modest but often important grants that reinforced the more direct challenges to inequality pressed by the grassroots civil rights movement (and reinforced by concern for America’s reputation in a postcolonial world) (Hammack & Anheier, 2013).

26.5  Pluralism and Equality: Challenges and Best Practices American foundations reflect and reinforce the nation’s pluralism—the persistence of many distinct and competing cultural communities, religious and secular. Foundations also reflect inequality, but their resources are so small, relative to total private wealth and to the resources commanded by governments, that they lack the capacity to address inequality in fundamental ways. The great rise in the role of the US federal government has led some critics to voice urgent concern for the vitality of private initiative. Others critics have called alarmed attention to America’s increasing inequality and have demanded that

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foundations work to reverse that trend. Critics in both camps call both for foundations to become more assertive and for government to assert much greater control over foundations. Neither call has yet produced much of a response. Advocates of “strategic philanthropy” have sought to compensate for the relative decline of foundation wealth by emphasizing leverage. Donors, they argue, should narrow their focus, increase their control over grantees, seek other donors and governments as partners, emphasize self-help and the sale of services, and insist on measurable outcomes (Frumkin, 2006; Brest & Harvey, 2008; see also Barbetta, Chap. 12, in this volume). The demand for strategy has exerted considerable influence on the language used by foundation leaders. It has yet to be seen whether it is leading to much change in what foundations do, or in what they achieve (Hammack & Anheier, 2013). Complaints that foundations increase inequality very often ignore the distinction between a foundation, the particular form of the donor-advised fund, the many other forms of “philanthropy,” and the quiet use of “dark money” to influence political decision-makers, elections, and public opinion (Mayer, 2016; Giridharadas, 2018). Foundation wealth is limited: It is not sufficient to make inequality worse, or to reduce inequality in material ways (Anheier & Hammack, 2010; Hammack & Anheier, 2013). When American foundations have narrowly advanced the private and material interests of their donors, or intervened directly in political affairs, they have encountered criticism, resistance, and hostile public action (see Toepler, Chap. 10, and Leat, Chap. 11, both in this volume). When foundations have pushed a narrow religious or social reform agenda with great vigor, they have often provoked fierce opposition. Some large, newer American foundations are currently encountering criticism on these lines and are finding themselves pressed to respond (Ravitch, 2013; Reckhow, 2013; for a wider discussion, see Skocpol, 2016). Beyond these complaints, the most casual observation reveals that religious, cultural, and racial conflicts continue to divide the nation. Foundation efforts to mitigate such conflicts and to focus attention on common concerns continue, but it is also true that not a few foundations act in ways that sustain or even increase conflict. When fundamental values clash, conflict is unavoidable; that is a fundamental challenge facing pluralistic liberalism. But some institutional arrangements reinforce conflict in ways that donors fail to consider (see Ben-Ner, Chap. 20 in this volume). “Strategy” that avoids serious attention to the conflicts that reinforce national divisions is unlikely to promote desired change. Over time, a solid body of common practice has emerged to give philanthropic foundations their best chance of instill trust among citizens and ensure that assets will be applied to appropriate purposes over time. These common practices include: • Transparency (Hammack, 2006). • Avoiding conflicts of interest and enrichment of donors and staff, both in investing assets and in procedures for grant-making and otherwise distributing foundation benefits (Prewitt et al., 2006; Anheier & Hammack, 2010).

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• Taking care to serve purposes deemed valid and legitimate by government authorities and public opinion (Heydemann & Kinsey, 2010; Toepler, Chap. 10 in this volume). In England and many other nations, a foundation must obtain explicit government approval for its programmatic focus (Garside, 2000). Everywhere, foundations need community and government support. • Working closely, in sustained fashion, and quite openly with leaders and stakeholders of the fields they address and with the key institutions they fund—and helping those leaders and institutions win more general approval and support (Harlan, 1958; Lagemann, 1983; Lagemann, 1989; Wheatley, 1988; Hammack & Wheeler, 1994; Anderson and Moss, 1999; Hess, 2005; Reckhow, 2013). Acknowledgments  An earlier version of part of this chapter was prepared for a conference on Philanthropication thru Privatization, A New Route to Building Charitable Endowments, led by Lester Salamon, sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation, and held in Hannover, Germany, November 3–4, 2016; I want to thank the participants in this conference for stimulating comments. This chapter is largely based on Hammack and Anheier (2013), Anheier and Hammack (2010), and Hammack and Smith (2018).

References Adam, T. (Ed.). (2004). Philanthropy, patronage, and civil society: Experiences from Germany, Great Britain, and North America. Indiana University Press. Anderson, E., & Moss, A. A. (1999). Dangerous donations: Northern philanthropy and southern black education, 1902–1930. University of Missouri Press. Anderson, J.  D. (1988). The education of blacks in the south, 1860–1935. University of North Carolina Press. Anheier, H. K., & Hammack, D. C. (2010). American foundations. Brookings Institution Press. Arnove, R.  F. (1980). Philanthropy and cultural imperialism: The foundations at home and abroad. G. K. Hall. Banner, L. W. (1973). Religious benevolence as social control: A critique of an interpretation. The Journal of American History, 60(1), 23–41. Barona, J.  L. (2015). The Rockefeller Foundation, public health and international diplomacy, 1920–1945. Routledge. Brest, P., & Harvey, H. (2008). Money well spent: A strategic plan for smart philanthropy. Wiley. Brown, D. M., & McKeown, E. (2009). The poor belong to us: Catholic charities and american welfare. Harvard University Press. Bryan, W.  S. P. (1911). The church, her colleges, and the carnegie foundation. Princeton University Press. Candler, W. A. (1909). Dangerous donations and degrading doles: Or, a vast scheme for capturing and controlling the colleges and universities of the country. http://divinityarchive.com/ bitstream/handle/11258/5047/26178359.pdf?sequence=1 Curti, M. (1963). American philanthropy abroad: A history. Rutgers University Press. Curti, M., & Nash, R. (1965). Philanthropy in the shaping of American higher education. Rutgers University Press. Field, J. A. (1969). America and the mediterranean world, 1776–1882. Princeton University Press. Findlay, J. (2000). Agency, denominations, and the western colleges, 1830–1860. In R. Geiger (Ed.), The American college in the nineteenth century (pp. 115–126). Vanderbilt University Press.

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Frumkin, P. (2006). Strategic giving: The art and science of philanthropy. University of Chicago Press. Garside, P. L. (2000). The conduct of philanthropy: William sutton trust, 1900–2000. Althone Press. Geiger, R.  L. (1986). To advance knowledge: The growth of American research universities, 1900–1940. Oxford University Press. Giridharadas, A. (2018). Winners take all: The elite charade of changing the world. Knopf Doubleday. Griffin, C. S. (1960). Their brothers keepers: Moral stewardship in the United States, 1800–1865. Rutgers University Press. Hagesfeld, E. (2017). Saving the world by saving its children: The birth of the modern child welfare agency and the children’s homes of the national benevolent association of the disciples of christ, 1887–1974. History Ph.D. Dissertation, Case Western Reserve University. Hall, P. D., & Burke, C. B. (2006). Nonprofit, voluntary, and religious entities. In S. B. Carter, S. S. Gartner, M. Haines, A. L. Olmstead, R. Sutch, & G. Wright (Eds.), Historical statistics of the United States, earliest times to the present: Millennial edition. Cambridge University Press. Hammack, D. C. (1989). Community foundations: The delicate question of purpose. In R. Magat (Ed.), An agile servant (pp. 23–50). The Foundation Center. Hammack, D. C. (2006). American debates on the legitimacy of foundations: Historical perspectives. In K. Prewitt, M. Dogon, S. Heydemann, & S. Toepler (Eds.), The legitimacy of philanthropic foundations: United States and European perspectives (pp.  49–98). Russell Sage Foundation. Hammack, D. C. (2015). Researching policy for nonprofit organizations: A brief observation on dilemmas created by conflicting values. Nonprofit Policy Forum, 7, 1. https://doi.org/10.1515/ npf-­2015-­0037 Hammack, D.  C. (2017). Nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and civil society. In C. M. K. Nichols & N. C. Unger (Eds.), A companion to the gilded age and progressive era (pp. 215–228). Wiley. Hammack, D. C. (2019). Financing independence: Endowments, philanthropic foundations, and higher education in American history. In T. Adam & A. B. Barym (Eds.), The economics of higher education in the United States (pp. 98–123). Texas A&M University Press. Hammack, D. C., & Anheier, H. K. (2013). A versatile American institution: The changing ideals and realities of philanthropic foundations. The Brookings Institution Press. Hammack, D. C., & Smith, S. R. (2018). American philanthropic foundations: Regional difference and change. Indiana University Press. Hammack, D. C., & Wheeler, S. (1994). Social science in the making: Essays on the Russell Sage Foundation, 1907–1972. Russell Sage Foundation. Harlan, L. R. (1958). Separate and unequal; public school campaigns and racism in the Southern Seaboard States, 1901–1915. Atheneum. Hess, F. M. (2005). The best of intentions: How philanthropy is reshaping the landscape of K-12 education. Harvard Education Press. Heydemann, S., & Kinsey, R. (2010). The state and international philanthropy: The contribution of American foundations 1919–1991. In Anheier & Hammack (Eds.), American foundations roles and contributions (pp. 205–236). Hollinger, D.  A. (2017). Protestants abroad: How missionaries tried to change the world but changed America. Princeton University Press. Hoxie, F. E. (1989). Final promise: The campaign to assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920. Cambridge University Press. Jones, G. H. (1969). History of the law of charity, 1532–1827. Cambridge University Press. Jordan, W. K. (1959). Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660: A study of the changing patterns of English social aspirations. Russell Sage Foundation. Lagemann, E. C. (1983). Private power for the public good: A history of the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching. Wesleyan University Press. Lagemann, E. C. (1989). The politics of knowledge: The carnegie corporation, philanthropy, and public policy. Wesleyan University Press.

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Chapter 27

Businesses as Civil Society Actors? An Analysis Based on German Company Data Anaël Labigne, Olga Kononykhina, and Andreas Schlüter

Abstract  How do business and civil society relate? This chapter seeks to contribute to the answer in a very pragmatic way by sharing observations based on German company data collected as part of the German Corporate Engagement Monitor. The macroperspective on German companies should enable us to observe corporate social engagement in Germany more closely. The subsequent look at specific industries shows that the strategic relevance of the topic can also be identified by the varied engagement at the industry level. From the actor’s perspective, we challenge the dichotomy between shareholder and stakeholder value and identify concrete mechanisms in the connection between business and civil society in a narrower sense. Finally, we conclude with a business innovation agenda for the future. Keywords  Corporate citizenship · Corporate responsibility · Sustainability · Corporate social engagement · Germany

27.1  Concepts Matter: The Changing Business Landscape How do business and civil society relate? There are many answers to this question. For example, on the one hand, and most fundamentally, individuals have been able to gain autonomy through the act of choosing from different available goods. A long history of thought links free-market exchange with democratic development. More recently, the basic development model by Welzel and Inglehart (2008) argued that economic “action resources” enable self-expression through the very act of A. Labigne (*) Boehringer-Ingelheim, Ingelheim, Germany e-mail: [email protected] O. Kononykhina Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Schlüter Stifterverband, Essen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_27

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choosing goods, which may motivate people to demand freedom of choice in other societal realms too, and hence also in political affairs at some point in the future. In the long run, economic development makes the establishment of democratic institutions more likely (Welzel & Inglehart, 2008). On the other hand, people come to the marketplace with radically unequal resources. Self-expression may never take place, may simply be oppressed, or may—as Pierre Bourdieu and many sociologists have shown—reproduce and reinforce existing inequality. In other words, “choosing” is not an innocent concept, and free-market exchange alone will not lead to more civil societies. And these are just two perspectives among many on the question as to how business and civil society relate. In this chapter, we do not review the history of thought linking business and civil society. Instead, we aim to contribute to the question of how business and civil society relate in a very pragmatic way and by sharing observations based on German company data. We will do so on a concrete level by introducing data from a German Corporate Engagement Monitor. Our essay is thus conceptually linked to an applied institutional perspective. Interestingly, in Helmut Anheier’s research, third sector organizations generally and nonprofit organizations, in particular, have always been identified as an important part of the economy. We observe this train of thought in his publications on the nonprofit sector’s contribution to GDP, employment figures in different countries, and the service provision functions of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), for example. In other words, nonprofit organizations can indeed be conceptualized as key features of the economy. And as we will see, for-profits—business companies—can also be conceptualized as an important part of a strong civil society. This adds an additional standpoint to a research agenda which counters the “third sector equals civil society” equation, an equation which—as we and others argue—simply does not hold. Our interest is to find out more about the business contribution for a strong civil society instead of describing the role of different sectors in an abstract and purely theoretical way. One reason for Anheier’s early awareness of the economic role nonprofits play can be found in his cross-disciplinary education. After studying in Germany, a country where nonprofits play a strong role as employers, especially in the social and health sector, Anheier went to Yale University in the United States. From the 1970s onward, the Program on Nonprofit Organizations (PONPO) at Yale University, where Helmut Anheier was a student and scholar, disseminated a new line of reasoning with global impact. “A united academic effort, based on economic models and theoretical assumptions, laid the ground for the nonprofit approach which came into increasing use over the 1980s” (Lorentzen, 2010, p. 30). Over 400 publications by Anheier followed. Unlike the profit versus nonprofit binary, the notion of a “third sector” emerged not from economic theory, but from institutional theory. Thinking about society in three broad institutional systems may be a nineteenth-century construct (Strawe, 2009). However, the more general idea that society consists of different institutional realms is a classical sociological finding which Anheier and others used to understand the organizational behavior of nonprofit organizations beyond economic theories. Understandings of three institutional realms, namely market, state, and a third

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associational realm, have also been proposed in macrosociological theory (e.g., Eder, 2001). According to this theory, the third realm has its own organizations, namely, voluntary associations, social units which are not classes or status groups but moralizing communities; it also has its own institutional myths. This is where the link between organizational behavior and institutional theory comes in: The realm labeled as “market” functions through the myth of formal rationality, the institutional realm labeled as “state” through the myth of justice, and the “associational realm” through the myth of participation and discourse (Eder, 2001, p. 223). In the following, we argue that the myth of formal rationality is currently evolving in the market realm and that new aspects of participation and discourse are coming in. The societal perspective is becoming more important for businesses. For example, nonfinancial indicators are increasingly vital in the valuation of a company, with their total societal impact and their relational capital being taken seriously by different business actors, ranging from large corporations to entrepreneurs and startups. The meaningful bridge between social and economic impact no longer concerns solely academics. Additionally, in order to identify an alleged trend which emanates from a philanthropic spirit and is now beginning to impact on formally established corporate practices, we have to consider the historical perspective. Practices such as corporate citizenship (CC), corporate social responsibility (CSR), economic, social, and governance (ESG) framework, shared value (SV), total societal impact (TSI), or purpose-­driven business (PDB) represent a new chapter in the ongoing pursuit of more civil societies; however, the pursuit as such is not new. It is the terms and techniques that are new, not the ideas. We observe three changes. First, large companies, in particular, are experiencing a massive professionalization of their corporate engagement practices. This professionalization is accompanied by a codification: CC, CSR, ESG, SV, TSI, PDB, and many other technical terms make clear that the status quo of doing business is once again being challenged. Anheier and others have argued that until the 1980s little attention was paid to the third sector: market vs. state thinking dominated in theory as well as in practice. What the cultural sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel has called the “island of meaning” has only slowly changed concerning the third sector.1 Since then, the concept has been further developed in different ways to take it beyond treatment as a residual category.2 Now that we have a clearer picture of the third sector and civil society organizations, we are experiencing that the very “island of meaning” regarding a more responsible role of business is shifting: CC, CSR, and other such terms are an expression of that shift. In this connection, we observe blurred boundaries as well as hybridity (Anheier & Krlev, 2014). Second, current German legislation suggests that each enterprise must make a decision: Should the company’s social commitment be recognized as being of

 An argument Helmut Anheier made orally and which we are repeating here.  See e.g Powell and Steinberg (2006) or Taylor (2010) for a collection of essays which show this development. 1 2

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common benefit or should the company itself benefit from it? In practice, the legal-­ theoretical setting can stand in the way of more targeted thinking that links social and economic interests. In most businesses, especially in large companies, it becomes apparent that social commitment can only be sustainably anchored if it brings them a measurable advantage. But that does not fit in with the legal category of so-called selflessness (German: Selbstlosigkeit) which belongs to a charitable act in the legal sense (Sect. 51 (1), sent. 1 German Fiscal Code (AO)). Hence, new and open questions are emerging in this context. In Germany, where there is a rich social market economy—the so-called Soziale Marktwirtschaft—we can observe the fruitfulness of using a broad and inclusive understanding of civil society. Third, in most cases, the value-added that companies gain from a stronger focus on social needs will not be straightforward and will not be visible in the balance sheet in the short term. In successful cases, it will rather be strategic and thus depend on far-sighted executives and business leaders. In the words of John Browne and colleagues: “Critically, as traditional sources of competitive advantage are eroded, connection with society represents a final frontier of competitiveness: an opportunity to build lasting distinctiveness” (Browne et al., 2015, p. 122). Therefore, many business leaders can learn from the best nonprofit organization leaders who have experienced managing multiple bottom lines in parallel. To focus on the discussion about a meaningful connection between civil society and business, we need systematically collected representative data instead of occasional anecdotes of the societal impact of business. The macroperspective on German companies offered in the next section should enable us to observe corporate involvement in Germany more closely. The subsequent look at various industries will show that the strategic relevance of the topic can also be identified by the different involvement at the industry level, i.e., at the level of organizational fields. We then turn our attention to the actor’s perspective. We challenge the dichotomy between shareholder and stakeholder value and identify some concrete mechanisms in the connection between business and civil society in a narrower sense. Finally, we conclude with an innovation agenda for the future.

27.2  Data Matters: Observing Organizational Behavior As noted earlier, corporate citizenship (CC), corporate social responsibility (CSR), economic–social–governance (ESG) framework, shared value (SV), total societal impact (TSI), and purpose-driven business (PDB) are becoming increasingly popular in the business world. These concepts relate to concrete problems on a diverse range of questions: Is it possible to have a high quality of life in future cities, who might be able to have it, and what role should companies play in urban development (Albers & Hartenstein, 2017)? What should healthy management cultures look like? What kind of space for new forms of cooperation should be established and how? How should growing companies foster diversity internally (Hänsel & Kaz, 2016; Hansen, 2014)? Furthermore, sustainability in general and the social commitment

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of companies, in particular, are discussed as innovation drivers and competitive advantages (Altenburger, 2013; EFI—Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation, 2016). However, there is a great lack of solid data on the relationship between business enterprises and their social activities. Despite professionally prepared corporate citizenship reports, a wealth of corporate responsibility initiatives, conferences on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a European CSR reporting obligation and the growing importance of corporate partnerships with social groups, few representative surveys are available for the German context.3 The Corporate Engagement Monitor4 is a relatively new instrument that in conjunction with other instruments helps to fill this gap. This survey is embedded in a modern understanding of corporate citizenship, a corporate citizenship integrated into the company’s strategy. At the same time, however, the survey must also function as a sober statement of societal commitment across the breadth of the German corporate landscape. This brings with it several methodological challenges that have been discussed elsewhere.5 In Germany, corporate citizenship has only partially established itself as a term for the integrated social commitment of companies (Backhaus-Maul, 2004, 2010; Backhaus-Maul et al., 2018). There is indeed debate about the role of companies in the public sphere and their relationship to civil society (Alberg-Seberich et  al., 2015; Hüther et  al., 2015; Labigne, 2016; Lang & Sturm, 2015): Can there be a functioning civil society without committed companies? Is civil society to be understood as a sector lodged between market and state that forms social capital outside of family and bonding community cohesion? Are organizations, whatever their sector and whatever their legal form, to be assessed according to their actual actions when it comes to civil society? The recent misconduct revealed within several large nonprofit organizations, such as internal bullying, discrimination, and exploitation, clearly illustrates that sectoral affiliation (profit-oriented companies in business, public authorities in politics, and value-driven nonprofit organizations in civil society) still has the power to justify organizational action, but to an increasingly limited extent.6 However, in contrast to CSR and sustainability management, the ecological question is one of several important dimensions, but not the dominant one when studying corporate citizenship. Many German businesses started their responsibility programs with a focus on the ecological question not linking it to corporate  See Müller (2017) on the statutory “reporting obligation on social aspects.”  The Monitor Unternehmensengagements-Survey (MUE) (the Corporate Engagement Monitor in English) is a joint initiative, led by Civil Society in Numbers (ZiviZ) within the Stifterverband and the Bertelsmann Stiftung, to provide comprehensive data on corporate responsibility in Germany. The first wave of the MUE was conducted in October 2017 and included a representative selection of 120,000 German companies that were contacted by post with an invitation to complete an online survey. The response rate was 6.5%, N = 7279. The survey provides detailed representative information about German companies with 10+ employees. Two mini-MUE surveys were conducted in March and November 2020 to monitor the effects of COVID-19 on German corporate engagement. The large second wave of the MUE is scheduled for early 2022. 5  See www.unternehmensengagement.de for methodological details and data downloads. 6  Compare Rucht (2009), Anheier and Labigne (2012), Labigne (2014), and Hirschfeld (2016). 3 4

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citizenship, seeing corporate citizenship only as a nice add-on. This is one explanatory variable for the limited power of corporate citizenship in Germany. The corporate citizenship concept did not impact German companies even within the context and tradition of social market economy. A further aspect in the definition of terms is particularly noticeable in the practical comparison between CSR on the one hand and CC on the other. In German business practice, a phrase such as that of Peter T. Grauer, an American business leader, is unthinkable: “This is beyond CSR. Companies must play a stronger role as global corporate citizens and do so authentically and with a sense of urgency” (quoted in Browne et al., 2015, p. 29). Here, Grauer describes CSR as less attached to the core business and corporate citizenship as an entrepreneurially integrated element. In Germany, corporate citizenship is generally regarded as strategically irrelevant. Formats such as “social days” reveal in their very name the “non-inclusion” or lack of integration into everyday business life: Why else do we need a social day? John Browne and colleagues’ observation on the weak position of CSR is to the point: In my experience, CSR is seen as largely rather separate from the business, handled by a separate team. That team is often very talented, but their work is not usually seen as something that relates very closely to what the business does. It’ sort of: We carry out our business and then on Friday afternoon we think about CSR for half an hour (Browne et  al., 2015, p. 308).

The debate on CSR and corporate citizenship varies by country and may—just like Anheier and colleagues (Salamon and Anheier Salamon & Anheier, 1998) showed for the third sector—also be linked to different social origins. One aspect of the international debate in Germany could certainly be placed in the context of Germany’s social market economy and its roots in “Ordoliberalism” (Berthoin Antal et al., 2009), an approach that concerns the fundamental role of companies in society and the obligations that come with property ownership: “Eigentum verplichtet,” says the German constitution (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany). Thus, the focus is on the regulatory framework conditions for social entrepreneurship in its holistic sense, which are reflected in established institutions and shaped by the prevailing understanding of the state. Currently, the concept of a purpose-driven business (PDB) shows the relevance of familiar questions: Why does a company need social commitment, and to what extent does the company make a positive contribution to social development? The difference is the new link to human resources (HR). In the corporate process, the workforce is, for example, made aware of how the work of each employee is placed in a larger context. Especially younger employees are given an answer to their “impact question,” as in, what impact they are making on the world. In addition, new business areas can be opened by looking beyond existing products toward larger topics. Banks then make statements such as “Empowering people to stay a step ahead in life and in business,” and food companies, “Nourishing families so they can flourish and thrive.” Still, these diverse concepts adopted and used by a variety of companies pose the same challenge to those responsible for its

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operationalization and implementation: what is the added value of social engagement in business terms? In the case of corporate citizenship, this question is even more difficult to answer, since the focus of CC is on the social relationship and because the relationship between commitment practices and marketing, HR, innovation, or other classic business areas is not well understood yet. Even simple questions about corporate citizenship can only become tangible through concrete and transparent operationalization. All terms and concepts aside, the key question that remains is what contribution companies make beyond their core business, their products, their taxes paid, and jobs created. We therefore now offer four insights into the corporate landscape, into the sectors and players as well as into future-relevant topics.7 These insights are based on the Corporate Engagement Monitor, the largest study on the topic to date in Germany. More than 120,000 randomly selected companies based in Germany were contacted; of these, 7873 completed the online questionnaire (response rate 6.5%). All the following measurements are based on working definitions. In the first survey wave conducted in December 2017, corporate citizenship was operationalized as “all activities oriented towards the common good that go beyond business activities and legal requirements: from donations of money and goods to social and environmental projects that companies start or promote themselves” (Labigne et al., 2018b). The term “go beyond” is intended to ensure that integrated and nonintegrated measures occur in the survey so as to be able to evaluate both.

27.2.1  M  acroperspective: The Business Landscape in Germany When asked about the added value of CC measures for their own company, most business leaders think of marketing and branding. One result is that aspects relevant to the core business have been mentioned across all company sizes and industries: Companies believe that the competencies of the employees can be expanded through societal engagement strategies. This is where the HR link becomes clear. Added value can also include an increase in sales and profit, or, more generally, the claim that new business ideas can be developed through corporate commitment. This is where the link to innovation management becomes visible. In addition, investor expectations and regional political considerations, such as increasing the attractiveness of a location, are among the reasons for social commitment. Overall, as shown in Fig. 27.1, large corporations are more aware of the added value of their involvement than typical small- and medium-sized enterprises.

7  Analyses are based on detailed reports published in the Corporate Engagement Monitor project and made freely available on the abovementioned website: https://www.unternehmensengagement.de/.

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Percent of companies that fully agree or somewhat agree with the following statements Further survey results show that most companies in Germany do not consider the creation of jobs and the payment of taxes to be a sufficient social contribution by business. Nine out of ten company representatives state that companies should pay more attention to their role as models of corporate citizenship in the future. Around three out of four companies are following this credo with concrete actions: According to the available data, the corporate commitment rate for companies in Germany was 98% in 2018. This means that practically every German company (excluding the smallest ones, however, with under 10 employees or less than €2 million annual turnover) is engaged in addressing social issues beyond their core business and legal requirements based on a ten indicator measurement system shown in Fig. 27.2.

March 2020

2018

Meet expectations of investors

10

Increase revenue/ profit

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0

14 21

Develop business ideas

16

23 23

1924

Expand competencies of employees

29 39

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Increase location attractiveness

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Strengthen employee loyalty

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Improve attractiveness as employer

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Protect good reputation/trademark

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Corporations with more than 1000 employees

Fig. 27.1  Question: What is the added value of societal engagement for your company? Based on the weighted averages. Source: Stifterverband and Bertelsmann Foundation, Monitor Unternehmensengagement 2018–2020

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The ratio as well as regularity of such engagement varies significantly. Companies have different instruments at their disposal. Three of the categories listed in the next graph are particularly important for our question as to the connection between social and economic activity. The first is own social projects, i.e., socially relevant activities initiated by companies themselves. This instrument, which requires a company’s own initiative, is not very widespread, but more so than the second important category, i.e., company foundations, structures with governance implications for a company. While only about two out of ten companies worked through business foundations in 2018, almost nine out of ten companies engaged in more traditional activities such as cash donations. Donations in kind (77/78%) and employee leave (68%), i.e., a form of time donation, ranked second and third, respectively, in 2018. If one distinguishes between occasional commitment and regular commitment, considerably fewer companies are regularly active. For example, our data show that less than half of those who make in-kind donations do so regularly (35% in 2018 and 38% in 2020). It is also noteworthy that the data do not show any visible dynamic over time. Unlike environmental or governance issues, the S (the social dimension) of the ESG framework is the least embedded in core business practices so far. The data points are to be evaluated as indicators, but one thing remains clear: Corporate commitment with a focus on social commitment is often not linked to the business strategy. Of course, there are also strategic donations that fit the company, and time

Money donations Own social projects Hands-on volunteering Skilled volunteering Business foundation Sustainable investment Political advocacy

Common engagement

In kind donations

74 68 69 77 78 8587

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Employees engagement

Employee leaves of absence

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40 45

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4

Special engagement

Transfer of use

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22 27

4952

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2018

60

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March 2020

Fig. 27.2  Question: Has your company been socially engaged in one of the following ways during the last three years? Percent of companies that indicated their engagement (both regular and occasional). Based on the weighted averages. Source: Stifterverband and Bertelsmann Foundation, Monitor Unternehmensengagement 2018–2020

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donations have the potential to involve employees and thus the company itself more authentically. However, the involvement of employees in social issues can and must go beyond this. What is more: The very term corporate “donations” is reminiscent of the old charity narrative. The emphasis should be more on money, property, and time “investments” by the companies themselves, so-called social investments (Labigne et al., 2018a). It is not surprising that the individual companies are at different stages of development. An interesting question is whether entire industries also differ in their social commitment. Society vs. economic core business, how is this alleged tension assessed in different industries?

27.2.2  Industry Perspective: Growing Relevance Companies open up to new partnerships not only through cooperation with start-ups but also through cooperation with educational institutions and nonprofit organizations. We can observe this openness toward social actors in the German context, but the question arises as to whether the opening processes of companies are more widespread in different sectors. Cooperation with various nonprofit organizations can be an indicator of a company’s openness. Yet, this question of cooperation also presents a sober picture: Local groups are the most frequent cooperation partner of German companies regardless of their size and industry. Almost one in two companies has supported or collaborated with local associations. But, as shown in Fig. 27.3, only the food industry and the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors generally rank above the industry average in their efforts to enter into cooperation with other players such as international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and not only local groups. Presumably, advanced stakeholder management plays an explanatory role. Sectors such as the chemical, pharmaceutical, and food industries seem to take a more stakeholder-oriented point of view in their social cooperation than, for example, transportation, construction and the automotive supply industry. The business value of cooperation with societal groups is not seen across industries. A large number of respondents view the necessary “opening up the corporate culture,” in particular, as a challenge for their companies. Companies can underline their value and their responsibility for a sustainably functioning society by actively seeking dialogue with society and thus becoming motors for sustainable development impulses. Taking this role seriously and underpinning it with measures can be an integral part of a forward-looking corporate strategy. However, this need varies greatly from industry to industry. In addition, within these sectors, very different efforts can be observed at the level of the different companies (Labigne, 2019; Labigne & Knoll, 2018). Indeed, the differences in cooperation patterns among companies within an industry are probably even greater than the differences between industries. Single companies stand out in positive and negative ways.

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30

Food industry 25 Finance /Insurance

Yes, in specific cases

20

Healthcare /Social welfare

15 Mining/Metal

10

Other manufacturing Energy/Water industry Electrical Agriculture Trade engineering and Forestry Automotive industry /Supplier Construction

Traffic/ Logistics/ Transportation

ific

c spe Mechanical s, in Ye Engineering =%

5

0

%

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Service industry

Arts/ Entertainment/Leisure

Hotel and catering industry/Retail

es

cas

Chemical /Pharmaceutical

Real estate /Housing

rly

ula

eg

s, r

Ye

Information /Communication

10 Yes, regularly

15

20

Fig. 27.3  Question: Does your company cooperate with international NGOs in the area of societal engagement? Based on the weighted averages. Source: Stifterverband and Bertelsmann Foundation, Monitor Unternehmensengagement 2018–2020

27.2.3  Actors’ Perspective: The Role of Stakeholders Working with various interest groups is critical to the development of business value. Shareholder vs. stakeholder value is all too often mentioned as conflicting, but businesses need to engage with society as “[c]apitalism depends on public trust for its legitimacy and survival” (Browne et al., 2015, p. 290). The scope of this essay does not include all the stakeholders of companies, such as customers, employees, or suppliers. In the following, we focus on cooperation partners for explicitly societal concerns. In this context, some observers see companies alone as having a leading role in so-called “business-led collaborations” that aim to tackle social problems ranging from excessive resource consumption to youth unemployment. The predominant perspective, however, is mostly oriented toward cooperation between business and civil society and emphasizes the fruitful conflict between business and NGOs (Blanke, 2018; BSR & The Rockefeller Foundation, 2018; Zentes et al., 2012). The question arises as to the extent to which committed companies cooperate with other

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Transparency

59

Exchange

33

26

Effectiveness

46

20

41

Flexibility

41

22

Involvement of our employees

44

10

Visibility

12

38

43

20

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8

24

29

28

0

5 3

80

Applies partially

Rather does not apply

10

Does not apply

23

19

60

Applies fully

6

10

100

Fig. 27.4  Question: How important are the following aspects when cooperating with a nonprofit organization? Based on the weighted averages. Source: Stifterverband and Bertelsmann Foundation, Monitor Unternehmensengagement 2018–2020

companies and businesses on social issues and what companies are looking for in this partnership. As shown in Fig. 27.4, transparency and effectiveness rank highest: The majority of companies look for transparency and effectiveness when seeking nonprofits as partners. Furthermore, nearly three in four companies mentioned that exchange and visibility were entirely or at least partially important. A deeper look into the data reveals that corporate citizenship across the breadth of the German economy is most frequently seen in relation to one’s local region or one’s location in Germany. Basically, for most businesses, cooperation should entail minimum effort and some impact. However, it also turns out that about one in ten companies in Germany cooperates with internationally active NGOs (9%). This number is higher for the large companies—43% of companies with more than 10,000 employees work with international NGOs. This is not only about cooperation in the sense of partnerships, but also—and this is particularly evident in some sectors of the economy—about aspects such as risk and stakeholder management.

27.2.4  Here to Stay: The (Social) Innovation Agenda Societal engagement by companies ranges from brand development and brand protection to know-how transfer between companies and nonprofit organizations. It is noteworthy that the know-how transfer and innovation generation narrative can make the connection between business and the social sector mutually more fruitful. Diverse external contacts and the intensity of exchanges with social groups can stimulate innovation processes. The quantitative and qualitative data of the Corporate Engagement Monitor suggest that soft knowledge activated through the social engagement of companies can enrich the hard business of innovation. New insights and productive friction that can

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result from attempts to work together, for example, in a joint social or ecological engagement project, increase the chance of developing promising and relevant business ideas (Gilroy et al., 2019). Societal engagement activities, especially those that involve a company’s broader workforce, offer an auspicious way to strengthen open innovation. Once contacts and trust have been established, nothing prevents the company from involving NPO representatives in internal innovation processes. Open innovation arising from cooperation with atypical partners such as NPOs helps companies to better understand the changing markets and the changing society in which they operate. It is an opportunity for employees to learn, contribute, and leave their comfort zone by questioning the prevailing corporate culture and hierarchy. Beyond conventional open innovation collaboration with start-ups, suppliers, or universities, cooperation with educational or scientific organizations is widespread, especially among larger companies. Half of the German companies with more than 1000 employees do so. In this company size category, around one-third also cooperates with foundations, business associations, and charities. We find that the opening of companies toward broader civil society is most common among large companies in innovation-driven industries, such as global pharmaceutical companies. The idea is that true cocreation between atypical partners is happening and benefitting society at large by combining different resources and perspectives. Successful innovation impulses (new business, product, and service ideas) in this area are most frequently reported by the largest and “younger” companies (founded after 2010). While, as noted earlier, a stronger brand is widely seen as an added value resulting from social engagement, other innovation-relevant advantages are perceived differently depending on the size of the company. Employer attractiveness, employee motivation, and the attractiveness of the respective region have references to innovation management, but this agenda still needs to be worked out. Almost half of the companies with more than 1000 employees find that corporate citizenship activities strengthen employees’ skills. However, less than one-fifth of German companies report that activities have already led to new business ideas.

27.3  Conclusion: The New Governance of Business At the beginning of this chapter, three issues were raised: first, professionalization and codification in the field of corporate responsibility; second, legislation based on the concept of selflessness as stated in German law and thereby sometimes hindering a business case for corporate responsibility in specific civil society projects; and third, the question of the observation period for evaluating a company’s success, which is often too short and therefore unsustainable. First, it should be noted that professionalization of corporate engagement practices is making significant progress in the large enterprise segment. On the other hand, it is unclear how the breadth of the German economy relates to this. The traditionally socially committed small and medium-sized enterprises take a sensible,

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conservative view of the changes in large companies, which at the CEO level revolve around the ideas of purpose-driven business and total societal impact. Among smaller unlisted, owner-managed companies, there are no investors demanding priority be given to financial indicators, and thus, space remains for unconventional social or other investments. A separate analysis is needed to answer the second question of whether public welfare-oriented action must be selfless and how this selflessness is to be interpreted. In an interdisciplinary exchange between economists, sociologists, and lawyers, this analysis should address the question of how the suggested trade-off can be defused or interpreted in German nonprofit law. One possibility, and this brings us to our third point, is to relate the selflessness or the own added value for the company to a very causal short-term consideration of added value. In effect, corporate social responsibility offers above all long-term added value for the company. The medium- and long-term social and economic increases in added value mutually reinforce each other and are therefore compatible with our social and economic model of the social market economy. More fundamentally, we wanted to achieve a better understanding of whether businesses could be understood as civil society actors by looking at their actions. The current debates in this context deal more with the public positioning of a company, contextualized by a continuous change in society and values that demands “purpose.” But this just scratches the surface. The core of the debate is about the old question of whether social interests and business can be meaningfully linked. The question is difficult to answer, as we have no choice but to base our answers on decades- and even centuries-old category frameworks. These frameworks need to be deconstructed. Citizens, customers, and most observers usually assume that social and economic interests are in conflict and create tension, which is why the regulating state must create a balance. In the words of business ethicist Christoph Lütge (2014), most social scientists learn that life is a seesaw: If one side wins, another must lose. But, as Lütge continues, life is not a seesaw. This analysis has shown that the various newer concepts surrounding the role of business in society could be meaningfully linked to the tradition of the social market economy and “Ordoliberalism,” which is very marked in Germany. The data points mentioned have substantiated the fact that companies in Germany are indeed socially committed. It also became clear, however, that empirical questions must be differentiated according to sectors, actors, and topics—and that civil society and business research need to work together more closely to set the scene for the development of new organizations that make the possibility of doing well and doing good at the very same time a shared reality. Acknowledgments  The authors of this article would like to thank Helmut Anheier for many years of joint work, joint research projects, and intensive exchange on how to build strong civil society organizations. We are sure that Helmut Anheier will continue to lead the discussions about good governance, globalization, and NPO management. We wish him all the best for his next endeavors. This article is based on findings produced at Stifterverband’s analysis unit ZIVIZ gGmbH. Helmut

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Anheier played an important role establishing ZIVIZ in Germany. These findings have been published in German at www.unternehmensengagement.de and within the context of other reports. Thanks also to our Stifterverband colleague Dr. Patrick Gilroy for his ­contributions. Like Olga Kononykhina and Anaël Labigne, he was one of Helmut Anheier’s research assistants and close collaborators for many years.

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Hüther, M., Bergmann, K., & Enste, D. H. (Hrsg.) (2015). Unternehmen im öffentlichen Raum: Zwischen Markt und Mitverantwortung. Springer. Voluntas 27, 1018–1019. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11266-015-9676-x Labigne, A. (2014). The attitudinal dimension of civility: Voluntary associations and their role in France, Germany and the United States. Nomos. Labigne, A. (2016). Unternehmen im öffentlichen Raum  – Grundlegender Sammelband oder Sammelsurium? Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen, 29, 263–267. Labigne, A. Gilroy, P.; Kononykhina, O., Hollmann, D., & Riess, B. (2018a). Die sozialen Investitionen der deutschen Wirtschaft, Ziviz im Stifterverband. https://www.stifterverband. org/pressemitteilungen/2018_12_03_cc-­survey Labigne, A. Gilroy, P., Kononykhina, O., Hollmann, D., Schilcher, C., & Riess, B. (2018b). Bessere Daten für besseres Unternehmensengagement - CC-Survey 2018: Unternehmensengagement und Corporate Citizenship in Deutschland. https://www.cc-­survey.de/files/Stifterverband_ und_Bertelsmann_Stiftung_CC-­Survey-­2018_Erstergebnisse_web.pdf Labigne, A. (2019). Kooperationen mit internationalen NGOs: Wirtschaft und Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung. Labigne, A., & Knoll, K. (2018). Unternehmensengagement der Chemie- und Pharmabranche: Impulspapier für eine nachhaltife Entwicklung. Lang, R., & Sturm, E. (2015). Neue Verbindungen schaffen  - Unternehmenskooperationen für gemeinnützige Organisationen. UPJ. Lorentzen, H. (2010). Sector labels. In Third sector research (pp. 21–35). Springer. Lütge, C. (2014). Ethik des Wettbewerbs. C.H. Beck. Müller, S. (2017). Neue Berichtspflicht zu gesellschaftlichen Aspekten: CSR-Richtlinie-­ Unsetzungsgesetz. In Bilanz + Buchhaltung: die Zeitschrift für Buchhaltung und Rechnungswesen (Vol. 62, pp. 13–16). Powell, W., & Steinberg, R. (2006). Economic theories of nonprofit organizaitons. In W. Powell & R. Steinberg (Eds.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (2nd ed.). Yale University Press. Rucht, D. (2009). Von Zivilgesellschaft zu Zivilität: Konzeptuelle Überlegungen und Möglichkeiten der empirischen Analyse. In C. Frantz, & H. Kolb (Hrsg.), Transnationale Zivilgesellschaft in Europa: Traditionen, Muster, Hindernisse (pp. 75–102). Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1998). Social origins of civil society: Explaining the nonprofit sector cross-nationally. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9, 213–248. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022058200985 Strawe, C. (2009). Dreigliederung kontrovers, Impulse und Perspektiven der sozialen Dreigleiderung im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert. Sozialimpulse, (1/09). Taylor, R. (Ed.). (2010). Third sector research. Springer. Welzel, C., & Inglehart, R. (2008). The role of ordinary people in democratization. Journal of Democracy, 19(1), 126–140. Zentes, J., Kolb, S., & Fechter, M. (2012). Zwischen Konfrontation und Kooperation: Eine empirische Analyse der Rolle von NGOs aus Unternehmensperspektive.

Chapter 28

Scenarios for Civil Society Impact in Norway Per Selle, Kristin Strømsnes, and Stein Kuhnle Abstract  Referring to Helmut Anheier’s outline of four scenarios for the status of German civil society in 2030, the chapter discusses how these scenarios play out in Norway, a different type of welfare state. The scenarios relate to different approaches to civil society and to theoretical perspectives on the roles that civil society organizations (CSOs) play in society as economic actors, as local community actors, as political actors, and as innovators and entrepreneurs. The voluntary sector played an important role in the development of the Norwegian welfare state, but recent decades have seen a radical change in the relationship between the state and the voluntary sector and simultaneously a growing role for the market in health and welfare services. The voluntary welfare sector has not been able to take on a new and expanding role as new political space has opened. But as to civil involvement, CSOs are strengthening their role in close cooperation with the public sector in Norway. CSOs are important at the community level for building social capital and social cohesion, but their role as political actors is weakening, and they can hardly be expected to act as innovators, although examples of innovations can be found. Keywords  Civil society organizations · Scenarios for future role · Welfare state · Norway

28.1  Introduction What could civil society look like in the future, for example in 2030, asks Helmut K. Anheier in a book chapter published in 2019 that points to four possible scenarios for the German case: the New Public Management (NPM) scenario, the Civil Involvement scenario, the Accountability scenario and the Innovation scenario (Anheier, 2019). The four scenarios that he lines up relate to different approaches to civil society and to theoretical perspectives emphasizing the various roles that civil society organizations (CSOs) play in society—as economic nonprofit actors, as

P. Selle (*) · K. Strømsnes · S. Kuhnle Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_28

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local community actors, as political actors and as innovators and social entrepreneurs. In this chapter, we shall discuss how these different roles and scenarios, closely related to the changing relationships between state, market and civil society, play out in a different kind of welfare state than the one Anheier looks at: Norway. Here, the voluntary sector played an important role in the early development of the welfare state and was for a long time decisive for undertaking the large-scale tasks of welfare service provision. Since the turn of the century, however, we can observe a radical change in the relationship between the state and the voluntary sector, at the same time as the market sector has gained a new and significant role in the fields of health and welfare services. Relating to Anheier’s scenarios, we shall discuss the implications of this profound change for the relationship between sectors in general and between state and civil society in particular. In this discussion, we emphasize both the historical development and current trends in order to gain insight into in what direction Norwegian civil society is moving.

28.2  The Four Roles and the Overall Norwegian Position The importance of civil society in society and within the welfare state varies across Western political systems, historically and today. That means that the different scenarios or roles emphasized by Anheier are not necessarily pointing in the same direction or are equally important in different welfare systems. The possibilities and challenges vary, and it is important to understand these differences in order to understand the future role of civil society. Even if the broader thinking about welfare challenges in modern Western democracies increasingly is influenced by similar type of ideas, context and the historical legacy of the different types of welfare states still matter. Therefore, insight into this variation is crucial in order to understand the opportunities and challenges for civil society organizations within different types of welfare states. We shall here give a bird’s eye view on the Norwegian case, a case not that different from the rest of Scandinavia (Henriksen et al., 2019). We start by spelling out the core content of the four roles that civil society organizations are said to have. The different roles are interconnected, however, in different ways in different political systems. In this part, we shall also give our assessment of the overall Norwegian situation connected to each of Anheier’s four scenarios. A prime role that CSOs have is the role as nonprofit actors, which contribute to society and the economy on a nonprofit basis. Voluntary organizations or institutions provide important welfare services within a mixed welfare economy, and sometimes bring alternative approaches as to how welfare issues can be solved. With the development of the NPM approach within the public sector since the late 1980s, as part of the neoliberal wave, the role of large-scale nonprofit actors has been strengthened in many countries, even when competition from commercial market actors has increased. However, we argue that this is not the case in Norway.

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Instead, it is primarily market actors that have captured the new space opened at the cost of nonprofit actors. A second role civil society organizations have is the role as local community actors and actors that contribute to the creation of social capital and social cohesion in society. The organizations include different groups of people in their activities and are seen as important both because they activate citizens in meaningful activities in the local communities and because they connect citizens in networks of dense social relations. Thus, organizations contribute to the creation of social capital and trust in society. In Norway, this role has historically been crucial, and it has been strengthened through the tremendous increase in different types of culture, sports and leisure organizations since the 1960s. These types of organizations have become the dominant group among Norwegian CSOs, and the main reason why Norway is among the countries with the highest density of voluntary organizations. Due to increasing heterogeneity in society, the organizations’ role as community builders and in integrating different groups in society has become even more important. Third, civil society has an important political or advocacy role. CSOs play a particularly important role when it comes to the creation of social responsibility, as they often represent voices that to a lesser degree are heard through ordinary representative channels. In Norway, as a rather open political system with a long history of close contact between state and civil society, the impact of these types of organizations has historically been particularly strong. The comprehensive contact between state and civil society has even had a deep influence on the development and structure of the welfare state itself. We argue that their political role today, even if still important, is more limited than before, not least since the relative position of the more politically based CSOs has decreased as the culture, sport, and leisure fields have become more dominant. The fourth role attributed to civil society is the role as innovators and social entrepreneurs (see Then and Mildenberger, Chap. 6, for more on civil society and social innovation). Being close to citizens and their concerns, civil society actors may be ideal for social problem-solving and social innovation. This role has become an important part of the discussion about how to solve deep-going challenges within Western democracies. What seems clear, however, is that the innovative role of civil society, so important in the early years of the building of the Norwegian welfare state, has clearly diminished and become more fragmented and less institutionalized. This change is closely connected to the structural changes of Norwegian civil society as expressed through the other scenarios mentioned above. In short, the rather optimistic tone often found in research and politics on the increasing role and importance of civil society in modern Western democracies is no obvious thing in the Norwegian context. A strong and autonomous civil society is decisive in any democracy, but good intentions meet structural barriers in Norway. Before discussing the scenarios themselves in more detail, we provide some basic information about how the position of Norwegian civil society relative to the state and market has changed since the emergence and growth of the welfare state.

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28.3  State and Civil Society in Norway 28.3.1  The Growth and Maturation of the Welfare State Historically, civil society has played an important role in the Scandinavian countries. A “Scandinavian” or “Nordic” model of welfare (Erikson et  al., 1987; Christiansen et al., 2006; Pedersen & Kuhnle, 2017; Enjolras & Strømsnes, 2018) with emphasis on public (state and municipalities) responsibility for welfare and social citizenship rights can be discerned both in programmatic statements and in practice before World War II.  The claim by Robert Nisbet (1962), however, that there is an inherent conflict between government and voluntary organizations or civil society, representing two different worlds, does not fit the Norwegian case (Enjolras & Strømsnes, 2018). The voluntary sector played a crucial role in the early development of the welfare state from the end of the nineteenth century and was for a long time decisive for large-scale tasks of welfare service provision. Nisbet’s view was long considered conventional wisdom, but with reference to American history, Lester M. Salamon (Salamon, 1987) set forward a different view emphasizing that collaboration, not separation or antagonism, between government and the third sector has historically been the predominant characteristic. Norway, as other Scandinavian countries, represents an important example of an historically close relationship between the sectors. Far from resisting the expansion of state involvement in social issues and problems, voluntary health and welfare organizations were actually in the forefront of this development, demanding a more active social role of the state (Selle et al., 2018). Thus, the conflict paradigm does not fit the Norwegian experience. Cooperation and coordination between the voluntary and state sectors extend back well into the late nineteenth century. Although the state gradually became the dominant actor for welfare provision—income maintenance and social benefits-in-kind services—the voluntary sector was mostly complicitly and cooperatively involved in the development of the modern welfare state (Kuhnle & Selle, 1992a). The Norwegian case has been described as one of coordination through shared goals rather than through forced hierarchical command (Kuhnle & Selle, 1992b). “The relationships between government and the voluntary sector were blended into the history of the welfare state and did not change significantly over time because of a basic consensus over the goals of social policy,” as Gidron et al. (1992), p. 23) sum up the Norwegian case. But, as we shall see later, much has changed since the early 1990s. The idea of public responsibility for welfare grew particularly strong during the first three decades after World War II, also called “the golden age of the welfare state” (Esping-Andersen, 1996), strongly advocated by the large organizations within the field (Berven & Selle, 2001). This was a period of major expansion of the Nordic welfare states, when the scope of social programs and the principle of universal population coverage of social security schemes gained general political support and were implemented. Voluntary organizations were still active, both in terms of welfare provision and in their role as pressure and advocacy groups, but became

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relatively less important, and definitely less visible, compared to the public sector in the rapidly expanding welfare state. Toward the end of the 1970s, however, the growth and various aspects of the welfare state were criticized—for different reasons—from both the political left and right (Kettunen, 2019), and new perspectives on the “modernization of the public sector” emerged (OECD, 1981; Olsen, 1988). Seen in retrospect, this change can be understood as the first step in the later opening up for extensive market solutions within welfare. Values of decentralization, self-help, “consumer democracy,” and freedom of choice emerged as important ideas in politics in the 1980s, and voluntary organizations were “rediscovered” both in the social sciences and in politics and political debates (Kuhnle & Selle, 1992b). For example, all three long-term (four-year) governmental programs in Norway in the 1980s—two by social democratic governments, one by a three-party nonsocialist government—began to strongly emphasize the constructive role of “civil society” and “the third sector.” We can observe a general ideological (if not always empirical) shift toward emphasis on individualization, privatization and decentralization of welfare responsibility in Norway during this period, and this seems to have been part of a conscious strategy to upgrade the importance of voluntary organizations. The concept of “welfare society” rather than “welfare state” was introduced in the long-term governmental program. This was probably an attempt to downplay growing expectations toward the strong and dominant role of the state, but the two concepts are very close in Scandinavian languages and are also used interchangeably by both leftist and center-right governments in Norway in recent years (Haave, 2019; Kettunen, 2019).

28.3.2  What Was Later to Come What has happened then to the voluntary sector, or civil society, and its relationship to the state from the 1990s on? In what way does the growing importance of the market sector affect relationships between the sectors and the role and possible future role of civil society organizations and activities? In other words, how do recent developments in Norway relate to Anheier’s scenarios? Let us start by looking into some core conditions for the later comprehensive changes. Through the building and institutionalization of the welfare state during the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, a fundamental change occurred in the relationship between an increasingly strong state and the voluntary sector. The relative importance of civil society-based generation of services within the health and social spheres was greatly weakened institutionally and even more so ideologically, while the small-scale voluntary sector continued to expand through the growth of leisure and culturally based organizations, often focusing on children and youth, i.e., comprehensive changes within Anheier’s scenarios 1 and 2. The structural duality that developed has been a typical feature of Norwegian organizational society since the so-called “new cultural policy” of the 1970s, in which culture- and leisure-based

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voluntary organizations were increasingly understood as having an important role for democracy, social integration and learning (Selle & Øymyr, 1995). Consequently, an important division developed between the fields of health and social services and the rest of the voluntary sector, with a greater emphasis within health and welfare services on professionalism and less emphasis on voluntary work (Selle et al., 2018). These two main structural forms into which the voluntary sector developed were neither equal in power nor similar as to societal perspective. The small-scale form was increasingly seen as very important and embraced by “everyone,” gradually even by social democrats who historically were basically against philanthropy and voluntarism not emerging from their own institutions and organizations (Selle & Wollebæk, 2001). The small-scale type was barely viewed as politically challenging by anyone, especially after the weakening of the clearly politicized social movements from the 1970s. A deep-going change within the voluntary sector from emphasizing ideology and advocacy (scenario 3) toward increasingly emphasizing the importance of activity in its own right was seen, and in which their role in social integration and as schools in democracy were strongly emphasized (scenario 2). The institution-based form—the nonprofit organization—on the other hand was something that inspired very little interest at a time when increasing numbers of people considered generation and funding of services to be primarily a task for the public sector (Selle et al., 2018). The main features of the civil society regime that would become so typical within the Scandinavian kind of welfare state now become visible. Voluntary institution-­ based generation of services within health and welfare has lost much of its punch, but core ideological elements of this tradition are absorbed into and safeguarded in a welfare state with strong universal features. The civil society institutions in healthcare and social services tended to be weakened also because the need for such a way of organizing declined as government responsibility and capacity increased. While the small-scale form is important for democratic schooling, socialization and social integration within a welfare state of the Scandinavian type, the large-scale form became a nonadaptable remnant of the past in the heyday of the welfare state. It came increasingly to be regarded as an ineffective and socially unacceptable form of charity that was unable to offer the same level of professionalism and equality as the public sector could. The very extensive small-scale part of the voluntary sector has ranked Norway among the countries with the largest voluntary sector (Sivesind, 2017; Henriksen et al., 2019). The increased focus on the individual as such also gradually led to a greater division between voluntary organization and voluntary work, where voluntary work was no longer something that sprang almost exclusively out of voluntary organizations but could occur in any organizational setting. It allowed for extensive voluntary work within the operation of public institutions and even to a limited extent within market-based institutions (Selle & Strømsnes, 2019). These tendencies were visible before the rise of neoliberalism and the growth of NPM arrangements and opened up for later institutional change. These developments are an intimate part of changes in the relationship between state, voluntary sector and market. Based on the idea and the experience of the crisis

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in the welfare state and the rise of NPM, the important difference from “the golden age of the welfare state” between voluntary work within health and social services and within culture and leisure activities was broken down. In other words, all types of small-scale voluntarism now become part of the same integrated “family” (Selle et  al., 2018). This further meant that, as the “voluntary language” became more general in form and voluntary work more individualized and independent of the organizational setting, the boundaries of the sector were clearly weakened at the individual level, but not at the institutional level. Within the “crisis of the welfare state” thinking the emphasis was increasingly on the situation of the individual client, opening up for service delivery within “any” institutional form as long as it was understood as efficient and not too costly. This resulted in increased market interest for health and welfare and put the nonprofit service providers in a very challenging structural position. As we shall see, this development was further strengthened after the turn of the millennium.

28.4  T  he Scenarios: Challenges and Opportunities of Civil Society Organizations in Norway What, then, does the future of civil society look like in the Norwegian case when seen through the lens of Anheier’s scenarios? In order to try to answer this question, we need to relate to the structural changes outlined above. These give direction to the challenges and opportunities of civil society within the Norwegian welfare state.

28.4.1  New Public Management Traditionally, Norwegian voluntary organizations have not primarily been valued as nonprofit actors. However, that does not imply that their economic and service role has been marginal. Voluntary nonprofit organizations have been important as owners and managers of huge welfare institutions. As the welfare state matured, many of these institutions were, however, transferred to the state with little or no compensation (Berven & Selle, 2001; Heitmann, 2013). Throughout the entire decade of the 1950s, the organizations and institutions within health and social services set up many different committees and fora that discussed the central health challenges of the time, such as elderly care, dementia, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The public sector was invited to participate in these committees. The initiative most often came from the organizations themselves in their effort to get the public sector sufficiently involved (Berven & Selle, 2001). The health and social services organizations did not envisage that they should in the longer run be a dominant generator of welfare services. The generation of funding and provision of welfare services was, ideally, seen as a public responsibility.

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Voluntary-based organizations viewed themselves more as discoverers, initiative-­ takers and experienced cohelpers in finding solutions to major, common challenges, that is, showing “how it should be done” within a unique combination of service production and advocacy, i.e., a rather unique combination of all four scenarios. This historically very important combination was gradually broken down after the weakening of the traditional social movements from the 1970s and left what remained of these types of institutions as primarily service producers and less as advocacy groups (Selle & Strømsnes, 2019). The relationship between state and civil society was historically marked by strong, socially integrating and homogenizing forces. When, toward the end of the 1950s, the state became richer and more developed, the welfare organizations found it almost a natural thing to “surrender” their tasks to the state and local government. Nevertheless, not all voluntary service provision disappeared overnight; within certain niche areas the organizations could still play an important role through long-­ term contracts with the state. The voluntary institution-based generation of services gradually appeared within a completely new framework, where the public authorities determined the rules. What was left of voluntary service generation had little autonomy and became an integral part of public welfare policy, with ideological decline and a decreasing advocacy role as a result. It was the organizations’ public sector orientation with its strong emphasis on universalism and that orientation’s breakthrough and dominance within the emerging welfare state that caused the organizations to end up in such an ideological vacuum, resulting in a declining role within scenarios 1 (NPM) and 3 (accountability) and, as will later be underlined, putting pressure on their role as innovators (scenario 4). The very strength of the more general Norwegian state-friendliness, partly explaining the strong universal dimension in the Norwegian welfare regime, made these organizations see themselves as an important part of such an integrative system (Kuhnle & Selle, 1992b). This “golden age” ended quite quickly in that they went from being an absolutely key societal actor to being viewed by many as something old-fashioned that had become passé. In this new “public responsibility and community” ideology, they relinquished the initiative and over time lost important parts of their own distinctive identity as voluntary institutions and generators of ideas and services. Importantly, this transformation happened before the neoliberal move and was a main characteristic of the welfare state of the 1970s and 1980s (Kuhnle & Selle, 1992a). Within the organizations there was the belief that the state’s responsibility and ways of working were to a large extent fixed in a system with only the state and the voluntary sector, but where the state now doubtlessly commanded the decision-­ making power, initiative, money and even the ideological strength (Berven & Selle, 2001). That the organizations primarily saw themselves as part of a national community is crucial. They landed in a situation in which there were scarcely the conditions to foster the idea that they alone, within important areas of society, had something important to offer that no one else could replace. The result was that the voluntary-based large-scale institutions that remained were gradually less interested

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in, or capable of, reproducing and developing their own ideology and organization. It goes without saying that this put them in a challenging position when it comes to advocacy and innovation (scenarios 3 and 4). The state gradually changed its thinking quite fundamentally regarding its own role within the field of welfare services. The new and strong influence of neoliberalism and NPM beginning in the late 1980s meant that market solutions, even within welfare broadly understood, were gradually viewed as cost-efficient and normal. A new space for nonpublic sector generation of services had opened up, still within a state-dominated setting, but the institution-based voluntary sector had landed in a position with no ideological and institutional strength for radical renewal. With the introduction of the NPM approach in the public sector, the role that the organizations can play as economic nonprofit actors has to an increasing degree been valued. Within the mixed welfare economy, voluntary nonprofit service providers compete with market actors, and increasingly with big global companies, within a system of quasi-markets and competitive tenders. Often the contracts that the state offers are short-term, which has made it more difficult for the organizations to develop alternative ideas and solutions. The organizations compete with market actors on their home ground, where primarily the factors of cost and efficiency count. Market actors and market solutions have rapidly gained entry as providers of health and social services and the use of quasi-markets and NPM tools has increased through open tenders and user choice (Sivesind, 2017). A good example is the decline of the nonprofit share of nursing homes within elderly care, while the for-­ profit share has grown (Sivesind & Trætteberg, 2017, p. 7). In general, we can observe that the consequences of increased NPM thinking with emphasis on client satisfaction, cost and efficiency has strengthened the market sector, while the nonprofit sector has been too weak institutionally and ideologically to fill the new space which opened also for them. Just as during the emergence and growth of the welfare state, Norway may be on a path toward a situation with only two main principal actors within the health and social services. However, this time it is mostly about the state and the market, with the voluntary sector on the sidelines.

28.4.2  Civil Involvement Through the building and institutionalization of the welfare state, a fundamental change occurred in the relationship between the state and voluntary sector. However, even if the relative importance of nonprofit organizations within the health and social services declined institutionally and not the least ideologically, the locally based and small-scale voluntary sector greatly expanded through the growth of leisure and culturally based organizations. These types of organizations are furthermore increasingly understood as a particularly important part of civil society and of democracy more generally. To an increasing degree, there exists a duality in how the state relates to these two parts of civil society.

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The expansion of the locally based, small-scale voluntary sector since the early 1960s was followed by an upturn in terms of how these organizations were valued by the state. In this period, the culture- and leisure-oriented organizations were highly appreciated because of their assumed importance for the socialization of children and youth in society. The voluntary organizations were understood as having an important socially cohesive role in addition to their highly valued role as “schools of democracy.” Since the turn of the millennium, the organizations’ role in building local community and social capital is again highlighted by the state, but this time especially related to the integration of immigrants and refugees in society (St.meld. no. 39, 2006–2007; Selle & Strømsnes, 2012). By activating citizens in meaningful activities in the local communities and connecting them in networks of dense social relations, they are assumed to play a decisive role in the integration of different groups in an increasingly plural society. Thus, the integrating role that the organizations play as creators of social capital and social cohesion (the local community role) has become more important over time in Norway and Scandinavia (Selle et al., 2019). This is obviously so when it comes to integrating immigrants and refugees in local communities, but the understanding of these organizations’ value and importance is more general. Public authorities increasingly rely on these locally based activity-oriented organizations for social integration, and it is especially the community organizations within sport, leisure and culture that are seen as having the possibility to include new groups of people in their activities, and thus also are given extensive public support to do so. This development has in practice led to an even stronger division within the voluntary sector between large-scale organizations within the fields of health and social services and the more small-scale and most often nonpolitical organizations within the fields of leisure and culture. In recent public documents, it is mainly these small-­ scale organizations with their integrating and social capital-creating role that are emphasized, while the large-scale organizations within the health and social services are barely mentioned (Selle & Strømsnes, 2019). In other words, we see a rather clear-cut strengthening of the civil involvement scenario in Norway.

28.4.3  Accountability Accountability is closely related to advocacy and the political importance of CSOs. This role differs from the more consensus-oriented and integrative role of the community-­based organizations, even though many more community-based organizations also played a very important political role historically (Selle et al., 2019). The advocacy role has, however, become more limited as the community-based organizations have become less political and the more large-scale nonprofits increasingly have lost autonomy and institutional and ideological strength. This has subsequently weakened their advocacy role. However, important changes in the public sector and in its policies toward the voluntary sector, as well as reorganizing within the voluntary sector itself, are

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changing communication and contact both within the sector and across sectors. The pronounced policy change toward the voluntary sector seen after the turn of the millennium was made concrete in the Voluntary Sector Parliamentary Report published in 2007 with the title “Voluntarism for Everyone” (St.meld no. 39, 2006–2007). The report stresses the notion of coordinating and developing a comprehensive governmental voluntary sector policy that should simultaneously help to identify and strengthen the voluntary sector as an independent sector in society. The result is an even stronger orientation toward small-scale voluntary activity and the individual. Since the 1970s, in addition to being more general, the thinking has become more top-down, strongly emphasizing the integrative role of the voluntary sector within a general and largely apolitical understanding of these integrative arrangements, particularly for children and youth. The promise of a new, comprehensive voluntary sector policy resulted in a series of changes to the sector’s framework, in both economic and organizational terms (Selle et al., 2018; Strømsnes, 2013). One of the initiatives taken was to set up a public register for Norwegian CSOs, in the hope of broadening the role and increasing the unity of the sector. Another means to improve the economy within the sector was a system for reclaiming value-added tax, implemented in 2010, the main aim of which is to compensate for costs incurred by voluntary organizations regarding value-added tax on the purchase of goods and services. Simultaneously, significant changes have taken place within public administration, where the responsibility for coordinating state policy concerning the voluntary sector was placed with the Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs in 2005 (Ministry of Culture from 2010). In parallel with these changes, there has been a significant change within the voluntary sector itself, most clearly expressed through the foundation of the Association of NGOs in Norway (Frivillighet Norge) in 2005 as an umbrella organization and spokesperson for the voluntary sector trying to strengthen the sectors’ cooperative and negotiation role toward the state. These rather broad institutional changes, described in more detail in Selle et al. (2018), resulting in an increased governmental overview and control of the sector, have under the influence of NPM also contributed to the weakening of the organizations’ political role. The meeting between the neoliberal contract culture and voluntary institutional operations creates special challenges for institutions in the large-scale voluntary sector. The ideological weakening results in the organizations having difficulties making visible their own value in competition with alternative solutions. In the new age of cost-effectiveness, organizations struggle to be competitive when the new contract culture replaces the old, more long-term trust-based system (Selle & Strømsnes, 2019). There may be many reasons for this, including costly pension agreements and the way the state understands European Union requirements designed to prevent systems that distort competition (Sivesind, 2017). In any case, whether we talk about the large-scale nonprofits or the more local type of organizations, their distinct political role has become less important over time, even though organizations are still included in a corporative political system where hearings, councils and committees are frequently used and the organizations are included in public planning processes of different kinds. To a lesser degree than

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before we see organizations that develop alternative political ideas and solutions to new and significant problems in society. Not least within the social and welfare fields, this is a clear trend. The state is increasingly defining the space open to CSOs. Evidently, this development has implications not only for their overall role in democracy, but also for their possible roles as innovators and social entrepreneurs in a period of increasing social and democratic challenges.

28.4.4  Innovation As already emphasized, in the development of the Norwegian welfare state, civil society actors played an important role not only as service providers and advocates, but also as innovators and social entrepreneurs, particularly in the field of welfare broadly understood. As the welfare state has taken over more and more of the responsibility for providing welfare services, the voluntary actors have lost much of this innovative role. The later development with NPM thinking within the public sector and the increased competition with market actors have made the potential for real innovation even more challenging. As mentioned above, we have seen increased attention and interest within the public sector and in public documents for the role organizations play in social innovation. However, the understanding of the need for civil society autonomy to take on such a role is not really part of the thinking. Instead, we see more public supervision of the sector and increased control. This narrowed space for innovation has gradually influenced the thinking and the organization within the entire field of health and social services. In the voluntary sector, market-inspired ideas about management and efficiency have become evident as the old membership-based organization model has lost strength and new relationships have developed between management and members and between organization and nonmembers (Tranvik & Selle, 2007). The old trust-based system with voluntary institutions on long-term contracts has crumbled away with the entry of the (neo)liberal contract culture and its emphasis on costs, competition, efficiency and short-term contracts, while the market philosophy has become more legitimate within the voluntary sector. The institutions wish to appear just as efficient and “cheap” as market-based solutions, but what ought to give them a distinctive character of special value for society is virtually disappearing in the process. These types of adaptation are not always easy in institutions in which the old culture and structure may still be strong and “frozen.” The result is that they frequently appear to be neither sufficiently economically effective nor, in terms of value, clear and future-oriented enough in what they are trying to do that is particularly viable for clients and society. This is an extremely difficult position to be in for those who want to make a difference in a period in which competition, cost, and efficiency are what count (Smith, 2016). A very special form of governance structure that was an important part of Scandinavian exceptionalism has gradually disappeared, being replaced by a system much more centered on costs and control.

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Voluntary-based organizations and institutions have sought to adapt to this contract culture, but they most often appear ideologically and financially too weak to compete on an equal footing with large and increasingly international private businesses. Organizations still experience some success in retaining and renewing older contracts for a certain period, but it appears difficult to win new ones (Sivesind, 2017). Only to a very limited extent do we see these voluntary-based institutions playing a role in the new discussions around social innovation and the building of more hybrid social enterprises combining voluntary and market features (Smith, 2016; Henriksen et  al., 2012). Putting it sharply, whether it is a case of political input (lack of ideological force) or output (lack of institutional force), or the combination thereof, they are far from playing first violin. Both as advocacy organizations and as service-providing institutions with an ideological distinction, their role is much more limited than before, even if some older organizations still play a role as service providers without being pivotal in the discourse about where to go from here within their specific field of operation. There has been a fundamental change in their structural position from helping the state to desperately needing help from the same state to be able to compete with market solutions to survive. The title of the Voluntary Sector Parliamentary Report, “Voluntarism for Everyone,” is illustrative of the new thinking around what constitutes a voluntary sector policy (St.meld no. 39, 2006–2007). The voluntary sector is, here with a special emphasis on the community-based or local organizations, expected to contribute to the integration of various groups in society, and “stimulating the increased participation and engagement of groups that currently fall outside voluntary organizations’ parameters” (St.meld no. 39, 2006–2007, p. 21). The voluntary sector is thus increasingly perceived as a significant instrument in fulfilling various political aims. When this has become their structural position one should not be overwhelmingly surprised if their innovative role is constrained, even if civil society-based innovation may also happen in a more consensus-oriented or nonpolitical setting. However, a necessary condition for that to happen is civil society autonomy and the belief in having an important societal role. The development is not pointing in that direction.

28.5  Discussion and Conclusion In conclusion, we could say that concerning Anheier’s first scenario, the Norwegian voluntary sector has a rather limited role within the NPM approach, even if not completely marginal. However, the nonprofit organizations’ structural position is insecure, and the large-scale voluntary welfare sector has not been able to take on a new and expanding role as new political space has opened. The lack of institutional dynamics and ideological power already visible before the NPM period made this a great challenge. Concerning the civil involvement scenario, we have seen quite the opposite of what Anheier saw in Germany; instead of weakening, we see in Norway a further

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strengthening of this role in close cooperation with and with the support of the public sector. It is a role increasingly seen as key to social integration. Comparative research shows that Norway, as the rest of Scandinavia, is among the countries with the strongest position on these matters, organizations understood as very important for developing social capital and social cohesion (Rothstein & Stolle, 2003; Larsen, 2013; Wollebæk & Segaard, 2011). However, we have seen a weakening of civil society organizations as political actors and an increasing emphasis on nonpolitical activities, especially within the rising culture- and leisure-type organizations. That means that their advocacy role has decreased from being very important in the heyday of the welfare state to becoming more limited, changing the deeper structure of comprehensive contact between state and civil society (Selle et al., 2018). To be innovative you do not necessarily need to be political or conflict-oriented even if it may help, but in any case, you need extensive autonomy. We have argued that the combination of being less political and more integrated within public planning puts pressure on the conditions for innovation. Overall, the structuring of both the nonprofit institutions and the more small-scale and locally based voluntary organizations make us conclude that extensive innovation should hardly be expected, even if we observe examples of new civil society initiatives and new organizational forms also in Norway (Loga et al., 2016). Altogether, referring to Anheier’s (2019) scenarios, the developments outlined in this chapter have resulted in a special structuring of the civil society in Norway at this stage, with great space and continued growth within the civil involvement scenario and greater challenges and more limited roles within the other three. More comparative research on these matters is essential for a deeper understanding of the importance of these scenarios and not least for a better understanding of the complex relationships among them. The study of patterns of structuring civil society pertains to the core of the opportunities that exist for civil society in different Western countries. Much is at stake, since a vibrant civil society is an integral part of any real democracy.

References Anheier, H.  K. (2019). The future role of civil society in a welfare state: Perspectives from Germany. In S.  Kuhnle, P.  Selle, & S.  E. O.  Hort (Eds.), Globalizing welfare. An evolving Asian-European dialogue (pp. 234–249). Edward Elgar Publishing. Berven, N., & Selle, P. (Eds.). (2001). Svekket kvinnemakt? De frivillige organisasjonene og velferdsstaten. Gyldendal Akademisk. Christiansen, N. F., Petersen, K., Edling, N., & Haave, P. (Eds.). (2006). The Nordic model of welfare: A historical reappraisal. Museum Tusculanum Press. Enjolras, B., & Strømsnes, K. (Eds.). (2018). Scandinavian civil society and social transformations. The case of Norway. Springer. Erikson, R., Hansen, E. J., Ringen, S., & Uusitalo, H. (Eds.). (1987). The Scandinavian model: Welfare states and welfare research. M. E. Sharpe.

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Esping-Andersen, G. (Ed.). (1996). Welfare states in transition: National adaptations in global economies. Sage. Gidron, B., Kramer, R. M., & Salamon, L. M. (Eds.). (1992). Government and the third sector: Emerging relationships in welfare states. Jossey-Bass Publishers. Haave, P. (2019). The winding road of the Norwegian ‘welfare state’. In N.  Edling (Ed.), The changing meanings of the welfare state. Berghahn. Heitmann, J. H. (2013). Som en blixt från klar himmel. In L. Trägårdh, P. Selle, L. S. Henriksen, & H. Hallin (Eds.), Civilsamhället klämt mellan stat och kapital: Velferd, mångfald, framtid (pp. 102–117). SNS förlag. Henriksen, L. S., Smith, S. R., & Zimmer, A. (2012). At the eve of convergence? Transformations of social service provision in Denmark, Germany and the United States. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 23(2), 509–514. Henriksen, L. S., Strømsnes, K., & Svedberg, L. (Eds.). (2019). Civic engagement in Scandinavia. Volunteering, informal help and giving in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Springer. Kettunen, P. (2019). The concept of society in the making of the Nordic welfare state. In S. Kuhnle, P. Selle, & S. E. O. Hort (Eds.), Globalizing welfare – An evolving Asian-European dialogue. Edward Elgar Publishing. Kuhnle, S., & Selle, P. (1992a). Government and voluntary organizations: A relational perspective. In S. Kuhnle & P. Selle (Eds.), Government and voluntary organizations: A relational perspective (pp. 1–33). Avebury. Kuhnle, S., & Selle, P. (1992b). The historical precedent for government-nonprofit cooperation in Norway. In B. Gidron, R. M. Kramer, & L. M. Salamon (Eds.), Government and the third sector: Emerging relationships in welfare states (pp. 75–99). Jossey-Bass Publishers. Larsen, C. A. (2013). The rise & fall of social cohesion. The construction & deconstruction of social trust in the US, UK, Sweden and Denmark. Oxford University Press. Loga, J. M., Eimhjellen, I., Eschweiler, J., Ingstad, E. L., Stokstad, S., & Winsvold, M. (Eds.). (2016). Sosiale entreprenører – partnerskap for nye løsninger. Uni Research (Report 2016:1). Nisbet, R. (1962). Power and community (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. OECD. (1981). The welfare state in crisis. OECD. Olsen, J.  P. (1988). The modernization of public administration in the Nordic countries: Some research questions. Administrative Studies, 7, 2–17. Pedersen, A. W., & Kuhnle, S. (2017). The Nordic welfare state model. In O. Knutsen (Ed.), The nordic models in political science: Challenged, but still viable? (pp. 219–238). Fagbokforlaget. Rothstein, B., & Stolle, D. (2003). Introduction: Social capital in Scandinavia. Scandinavian Political Studies, 26(1), 1–26. Salamon, L.  M. (1987). Partners in public service: The scope and theory of government-­ nonprofit relations. In W. W. Powell (Ed.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook. Yale University Press. Selle, P., & Strømsnes, K. (Eds.). (2012). Organisasjonene og det offentlige. Har vi fått en ny frivillighetspolitikk? Center for Research on Civil Society and Voluntary Sector (Report 2012-6). Selle, P., & Strømsnes, K. (2019). The challenging position of civil society service production within the Norwegian welfare state. In S. Kuhnle, P. Selle, & S. E. O. Hort (Eds.), Globalizing welfare. An evolving Asian-European dialogue (pp. 250–268). Edward Elgar Publishing. Selle, P., Strømsnes, K., Svedberg, L., Ibsen, B., & Henriksen, L. S. (2019). The scandinavian organizational landscape: Extensive and different. In L. S. Henriksen, K. Strømsnes, & L. Svedberg (Eds.), Civic engagement in Scandinavia. Volunteering, informal help and giving in Denmark, Norway and Sweden (pp. 33–66). Springer. Selle, P., & Øymyr, B. (1995). Frivillig organisering og demokrati: Det frivillige organisasjonssamfunnet endrar seg 1940–1990. Det Norske Samlaget. Selle, P., Strømsnes, K., & Loga, J. (2018). State and civil society: A regime change. In B. Enjolras & K.  Strømsnes (Eds.), Scandinavian civil society and social transformations. The case of Norway (pp. 117–163). Springer.

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Selle, P., & Wollebæk, D. (2001). Det nye organisasjonssamfunnet. Demokrati i omforming. Fagbokforlaget. Sivesind, K. H. (2017). The changing roles of for-profit and nonprofit welfare provision in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. In K.  H. Sivesind & J.  Saglie (Eds.), Promoting active citizenship? Markets and choice in Scandinavian welfare (pp. 33–74). Palgrave Macmillan. Sivesind, K.  H., & Trætteberg, H.  S. (2017). Does out-contracting of welfare services promote active citizenship? In K. H. Sivesind & J. Saglie (Eds.), Promoting active citizenship? Markets and choice in Scandinavian welfare (pp. 1–31). Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, S. R. (2016). Voluntary organizations and the welfare state: Is it time for a new paradigm? Paper delivered at the ECPR-conference, Prague, September 2016. St.meld no. 39 (2006–2007) Frivillighet for alle. Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs. Strømsnes, K. (2013). Norsk frivillighetspolitik: Ny och enhetlig? In L.  Trägårdh, P.  Selle, L.  S. Henriksen, & H.  Hallin (Eds.), Civilsamhället klämt mellan stat och kapital: Velferd, mångfald, framtid (pp. 89–101). SNS förlag. Tranvik, T., & Selle, P. (2007). The rise and fall of popular mass movements: Organizational change and globalization – The Norwegian case. Acta Sociologica, 50(1), 57–70. Wollebæk, D., & Segaard, S. B. (Eds.). (2011). Sosial kapital i Norge. Cappelen Damm.

Chapter 29

Women in the German Nonprofit Sector: Working Conditions and Promotion Opportunities Annette Zimmer and Eckhard Priller

Abstract  Growth and professionalization as well as demographic change are leading to an increased demand for qualified personnel at the shop-floor and executive levels in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). In the German nonprofit sector, these trends might open windows of opportunity for women’s career advancement. However, the results of the research project “Careers in the Nonprofit Sector: Working Conditions and Opportunities for Advancement of Women” indicate that German NPOs still have a long way to go in terms of professionalization and gender equality, particularly in management and at the executive level. Why this is the case was examined on the basis of guideline-supported interviews with employees from different hierarchical levels of 31 NPOs in order to formulate specific recommendations for action to promote gender equality and activate untapped potential. Keywords  Gender equality · Nonprofit organization · Career · Obstacles · Women · Germany

29.1  Introduction Equal pay and career opportunities as key features of gender equality have so far been given relatively little attention in nonprofit research internationally and in Germany apart from a few exceptions (Sandberg, 2008; Sandberg, Schneider, & Voigt, 2017; Schwabenland, Lange, Onyx, & Nakagawa, 2016; Zimmer, Priller, & Paul, 2017). This is remarkable since nonprofit organizations (NPOs), such as voluntary associations, foundations, and social enterprises as part of the civil society A. Zimmer (*) University of Münster, Münster, Germany e-mail: [email protected] E. Priller Maecenata Foundation, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_29

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infrastructure, are expected to be promoters of innovation and social change. Moreover, many NPOs can trace their beginnings back to social movements, including the women’s movement. Also, the sector has been experiencing a boom phase for some time in Germany and worldwide (Zimmer, Priller, & Anheier, 2013, p. 24). Parallel to the growth in size, NPOs have become more professional, and as a result, there has been a sustained increase in the number of jobs they offer. Many of those are in the social service and health industries, both of which are key domains of female employment in Germany and worldwide. As of the late 2010s, the German nonprofit sector has more than 2.6 million employees, of whom the vast majority is employed in NPOs working in areas of activity related to social policy. Accordingly, the German nonprofit sector is to a large extent embedded in the country’s welfare state that, since its early beginnings in the nineteenth century, builds on the so-called breadwinner model as a normative and factual premise. According to this model, women are primarily perceived as being mothers and housewives. If they are working at all, then only part-time. However, partly as a result of demographic change and similar to other economic sectors, personnel bottlenecks are already becoming apparent in Germany’s nonprofit sector. Personnel shortages, especially at the management level and in positions of authority, are likely to grow in the foreseeable future. Against this background and from the point of view of gender equality, we address the topic of whether the increased demand for qualified personnel might open a window of opportunity for women to improve their career perspectives in NPOs. In this chapter, we take a closer look at working conditions, career opportunities and obstacles from the point of view of gender equality and fair representation of women particularly in positions of authority. In doing so, we draw heavily on the results of the research project “Careers in the Nonprofit Sector: Working Conditions and Opportunities for Advancement of Women” (Zimmer et al., 2017), which was made possible through the support of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSJ). We outline the design of the two-year project, and then present and illustrate the results of each research step. In our conclusion, we refer to the policy recommendations for further action drawn up in cooperation with the project’s advisory board in which representatives of major German NPOs served and provided advice to the research team throughout the research process.1

1  A detailed project description, acknowledgment of the advisory board, and compilation of the results can be downloaded at: https://miami.uni-muenster.de/ Record/2c78a53e-4232-488d-9a4d-afc9ac20e5d9.

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29.2  Design and Execution of the Study The research project on careers in the nonprofit sector was conducted between 2015 and 2017 as a collaboration between the Institute of Political Science at Münster University (Annette Zimmer) and the Maecenata Institute in Berlin (Eckhard Priller). The research was based on a mixed method design encompassing (1) a secondary statistical analysis of existing datasets, (2) an online survey of German NPOs, and, as the core of the project, (3) guideline-based qualitative interviews with employees of 31 German NPOs representing different areas of activity such as social services, healthcare, sports, and humanitarian aid. With a special focus on gender equality and career chances for women, the following topics were examined more closely: 1. The German nonprofit sector as a labor market specifically for women: Based on secondary statistical analyses of two datasets, we examined working conditions and the organization of working time in NPOs. The first dataset further scrutinized was the WZB Nonprofit Organizational Survey (WZB-­ Organisationsbefragung). Conducted in 2012, the survey addressed 11,971 NPOs. With more than 3000 cases (N = 3111), the survey achieved an excellent return rate. The second dataset was the WZB Oversampling of “Good Work,” which is a representative survey of working conditions throughout German industries. “Good Work” is conducted on a regular basis by the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and consists of computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) of employees working in any sector of the German industry. The WZB Oversampling addressed 733 employees (N = 733) of nonprofit organizations in different positions of authority (shop floor and executive level) (Zimmer et al., 2017, pp. 20–21). 2. The professionalization of leadership structures in NPOs and the presence of women at the management level: For the first time in Germany, an online survey of large and well-known NPOs, selected with the help of multistage sampling, was conducted in 2015 with the aim of investigating the leadership structures at the management level in terms of both the degree of professionalization and gender sensitivity and representation of women. With random sampling based on the address dataset of the WZB Nonprofit Organizational Survey, some 1500 NPOs were identified and contacted online, of which 472 organizations (N = 472) participated in the online survey. 3. NPOs as employers and working environments: Whether and to what extent NPOs promote or hinder career opportunities for women was analyzed with the help of qualitative interviews, which were conducted with employees and executives working in 31 NPOs throughout Germany. The sample of the 31 organizations was selected with the goal of covering both a broad spectrum of areas of activity, ranging from social services, sports, and protection of the environment to interest representation (trade unions and business associations), and encompassing a variety of organizational forms of NPOs, such as foundations, social enterprises, and nonprofit limited corporations. Also, the NPOs were selected

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with a special eye on their size and differentiated management structure (multilayered organizations encompassing various management levels). Altogether, 73 face-to-face interviews were conducted from June 2016 to April 2017 with employees and executives of the 31 NPOs. Those interviewed (52 women and 21 men) were working at different hierarchical levels (entry, middle, and top levels) of the selected 31 NPOs (Zimmer et  al., 2017, pp.  51–53). The face-to-face ­interviews were complemented with 23 telephone interviews conducted in 2016 with representatives of the departments of human resources of the selected NPOs. Here, an interview guide was used that primarily addressed topics of personnel development and career enhancement.

29.3  Findings 29.3.1  T  he German Nonprofit Sector as a Labor Market for Women The results of the secondary statistical analyses confirmed findings that were partly already known from previous investigations that showed that employment in Germany’s nonprofit sector is predominantly female (75%) (Priller & Schmeißer, 2013). In comparison to total employment, the proportion of women in the NPO sector is relatively high. As shown in Fig. 29.1, females make up the lion’s share of

Total number of employees

47%

53%

Nonprofit sector

76%

24%

Social services in the nonprofit sector: Healthcare

26%

74%

Social services

17%

83%

Educaon

29%

71%

0%

10%

20%

30%

female

40%

50%

60%

70%

80% 90% 100%

male

Fig. 29.1  Employment in German NPOs by sector, gender, and employment structure. Source: Schmeißer (2013, p. 19)

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employees in nonprofit organizations active in social services (83%), healthcare (74%), and education (71%) in Germany. The results also indicate that the NPO sector is characterized by very flexible employment conditions compared to the public and commercial sectors (Priller & Paul, 2015; Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 22). The so-called normal employment relationship of a full-time job is the exception rather than the rule in the nonprofit sector, where only every second position is a full-time job. The proportion of part-time employment is correspondingly high. This form of employment is particularly notable in the core areas of NPO employment, that is, social services and healthcare. Another feature of the NPO sector’s flexible world of work includes temporary, fixed-time work contracts: One in five jobs is temporary. It should be pointed out that the gender bias is highly pronounced in flexible employment relationships in NPOs. As evident in Fig. 29.2, while only every one in three male employees has a flexible employment relationship, this applies to the vast majority of female employees. Hence, there is no gender-equitable participation in the labor market of the nonprofit sector. For the overwhelming majority of female employees, working in the nonprofit sector means working in a flexible and temporary job with correspondingly low earning potential. Contrary to what might be expected on the basis of this finding, the female employees in NPOs are not dissatisfied with their particular work situation. Indeed, job satisfaction in the nonprofit sector is significantly better than in the overall economy (Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 21). Job satisfaction is particularly pronounced among female employees of NPOs engaged in social services and among those who work

male

67%

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28%

0%

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9%

14%

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30%

20%

45%

40%

50%

60%

4%

13%

70%

Full-me, unrestricted

Full-me, fixed-term

Part-me, unrestricted

Part-me, fixed-term

80%

90%

100%

Fig. 29.2  Employment in German NPOs by gender. Source: Schmeißer (2013, p.  23); WZB Oversampling of “Good Work” own calculation

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in social enterprises. The reasons for the high job satisfaction of female NPO employees are manifold. Compared to companies, NPOs are more responsive with respect to the needs of employees with children and particularly of young mothers as some of the female interviewees reported (Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 70). This refers to working time regulations that are sometimes more flexible than in other industries as well as to special arrangements as regards holidays and taking time off by using hours worked overtime. Also, as shown in Table 29.1, standardized working time models such as “working time accounts” that allow flexible arrangements of the employee’s overall working time are quite common in NPOs, particularly among larger NPOs. For their part, smaller organizations more often opt in favor of the “flexible working hours” model that enables employees to adjust their daily working hours to their private needs. For instance, women with school children might start their working day after the kids are at school. Also, other models of working time arrangements are common in NPOs, such as “trust working time” that translates into a situation in which the focus is on completing specific tasks agreed upon between the employer and the employee and not on the factual presence of the employee. The same holds true for “home office” that has significantly gained popularity among NPOs in recent years. NPOs do not widely use sabbaticals or partial retirement, the latter probably because part-time work is very common among NPOs, particularly in the female workforce. Under these conditions, partial retirement translates into very low pension payments. However, flexibilization of working hours and employee-friendly working arrangements might not be the most important reason why job satisfaction among female workers in the nonprofit sector turns out to be rather high in Germany. It is most likely that women feel comfortable with their job situation in the sector because working in NPOs, particularly in those active in the social policy domain, does not endanger the classical role models of men and women that still today are quite present in Germany. Working part-time and with flexible working hours, albeit with a small salary, modernizes to a certain extent the traditional breadwinner model. However, it does not endanger its conceptualization that ascribes the Table 29.1  Use of working time models in German NPOs overall and by number of employees

Working time accounts Flexible working hours Trust working time Home office Partial retirement Sabbatical

In the total NPO sector (%) 50

In NPOs of different sizes according to number of employees 1–5 (%) 6–20 (%) >20 (%) 32 45 66

44

54

44

34

41 31 20  7

57 31 39  0

41 34 12  3

29 30  2 11

Source: WZB Oversampling of “Good Work,” own calculation

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Table 29.2  Agreement with the statement “I have opportunities for promotion in my NPO”

I fully agree I somewhat agree I rather disagree I do not agree

Female (%) 15 19 31 34

Male (%) 17 24 30 29

Source: WZB Oversampling of “Good Work” own calculation

responsibility for the economic well-being of the family to the man and husband, whereas it simultaneously allows the part-time working woman to realize herself in her profession and to pursue a socially valuable activity. In a nutshell: The job satisfaction of women working in the sector might reflect their compliance with traditional social norms. The gender-based familial arrangement is not called into question by the professional activity of the female spouse (Priller & Zimmer, 2017). Against this background, it might be no surprise, as Table 29.2 indicates, that women in NPOs rate their chances of advancing in their organization and/or in the sector even less than their male colleagues. Nonprofit organizations seem to provide an employee-friendly job environment that caters to the needs and professional aspirations of both men and women. However, with respect to opportunities for career advancement, female nonprofit employees are slightly less optimistic than their male colleagues. The results of the online survey on the presence of women at NPO managerial level support this assessment. Still at the beginning of the 2020s, women are represented on management floors and in NPO governing bodies only to a limited extent.

29.3.2  T  he Presence of Women at the Management Level in NPOs An important structural feature of German NPOs is the complexity of their management and leadership structures. In addition to executive boards and executive management (board of directors), German NPOs often have other bodies taking on consultation and control functions, such as advisory committees, supervisory boards of trustees, presidiums, and boards of trustees. A further characteristic of German NPOs is their federal structure with membership organizations operating at the local level and umbrellas at the subnational and national level that are responsible for lobbying and overall strategic guidance. Business associations, trade unions, the German welfare associations, and the majority of NPOs active in the areas of leisure and recreation are federalized organizations. Hence, there are numerous executive bodies in search of qualified personnel for positions of authority. Also, there is a general trend toward more professionalization at the management level that translates into a “double top” consisting of a professionalized, paid executive

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management and an executive board usually staffed with volunteer members. Both features—professionalization and the multilayered structure—could possibly contribute to an improvement of women’s involvement at the management level of German NPOs. As noted earlier, the online survey undertaken in 2015 targeted NPOs operating in a variety of areas of nonprofit activity ranging from social services to interest representation or environmental issues (Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 47). Special attention was paid to larger organizations and to NPOs that have recently emerged and are characterized by organizational and legal forms, such as the nonprofit limited liability company (gGmbH), the nonprofit stock corporation (gAG), or the limited entrepreneur company (gUG) (cf. Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 39f/Box 2). The sampling was guided by the hypothesis that these recently founded and more entrepreneurial organizations might be more responsive to considerations of gender equality and affirmative action. The aim of the survey, in which 472 NPOs participated, was twofold: first to find out whether and to what extent the trend toward professionalization has impacted the leadership and management bodies of German NPOs and second to investigate whether to what extent and in which bodies and with which NPOs women are present at executive levels. As shown in Table 29.3, the survey results indicate that German NPOs still have a long way to go in terms of professionalization and gender equality at the management level. Members of the executive boards of German NPOs are still predominantly unpaid volunteers (79%); the majority is still male (62%) and only a minority female (38%) (Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 45). Only every tenth organization that participated in the survey was run by a professional, salaried executive board. Unlike the executive boards, the executive management of German NPOs is more often carried out by professional staff. Of the surveyed NPOs with an executive management body, the majority (60%) were working with salaried managing directors. Again, the executive directors are predominately male (58%). However, 42% of the executive bodies of the surveyed NPOs were staffed with at least one woman in an executive position. The recently founded and more business-like NPOs organized as gGmbHs, gAGs, or gUGs were prominently represented among the more professionalized NPOs. It seems that the more business-like legal and organizational structures of NPOs work in favor of gender sensitivity, whereas the introduction of

Table 29.3  Proportion of women in German NPO supervisory and advisory bodies (N = 472) Executive board Executive management Advisory committee Supervisory board of trustees Presidium Board of trustees Source: Zimmer et al. (2017, p. 46)

Average proportion of women (%) 38 42 41 28 30 33

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salaried positions at the board level does not significantly contribute to gender equality (Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 45). Furthermore, women are not well represented in the advisory and supervisory bodies of German NPOs. This is particularly true of supervisory boards of trustees. It has to be mentioned that in Germany large NPOs and specifically the big German foundations have boards of trustees as key supervisory bodies that sometimes provide their members remuneration. In contrast to advisory committees that are quite popular in the German nonprofit sector (Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 44), supervisory boards of trustees are less frequent. As a rule of thumb, the more important the committee in question is, the lower the proportion of women on it. The underrepresentation of women at management and supervisory levels is furthered to the extent that formal regulations in the pursuit of gender equality are a rarity in the appointment of NPO executive committees. Only just under 6% of the organizations surveyed stated that they had laid down such a quota regulation, for example, in the articles of association or statutes for either the board of directors or another governing body. However, it should be pointed out that the executive management bodies might provide avenues for the advancement of women in positions of authority in German NPOs. Women have made inroads into these bodies and particularly in those NPOs that are working in specific areas of activity, as indicated in Table 29.4. For example, women are well represented at the executive management level in NPOs operating in areas of activity that have gained importance in recent decades such as international activities, culture, art and media and environmental protection. The same holds true for traditional and highly professionalized NPOs such as business associations and trade unions. NPOs operating in the area of education and childcare are women-friendly at the executive board and executive management level. In contrast, NPOs engaged in leisure activities are far less gender sensitive. The maturity of NPOs seems to have an influence on whether women are taken into account when taking positions in governing or executive bodies. For example, there is a significant negative correlation between the age of an NPO and the

Table 29.4  Proportion of women on German NPO executive boards and in executive management by area of activity International activities Education and childcare Culture, art, and media Business associations and trade unions Healthcare Environmental, nature, and animal protection Social services Citizen and consumer interests, politics Sports and physical activity Hobby and leisure activities Source: Zimmer et al. (2017, p. 47)

Executive board (%) 39.8 49.1 35.1 26.0 44.4 39.2 40.9 32.1 22.8 34.9

Executive management (%) 57.9 54.4 50.9 45.2 39.9 37.5 35.4 31.7 30.0 17.5

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average proportion of women on the board: the more traditional or older an NPO is, the fewer women tend to be represented on the executive board or in management. To put it the other way round, women are more likely to advance into a managerial position if they work either for a newer NPO or for an NPO that is less characterized by voluntary work. However, this is only true to a limited extent for large and financially strong NPOs. The size and financial strength of an NPO appear to have a negative impact on women’s chances of assuming a managerial position and being present on the board of directors, in management, or in another governing body (Zimmer et al., 2017, p. 48). Apart from the fact that only a small minority of NPOs have gender-sensitive provisions in their statutes and their regulations for the appointment of their executive boards, the results of the online survey do not allow any conclusions to be drawn as to why the dominance of women at the operational level is not reflected on the top floors and management levels of the NPOs. This issue was addressed in face-­ to-­face interviews with employees and managers (73) and in telephone interviews with HR managers (23), highlights of which are presented in the next section.

29.4  N  POs as Employers and Working Environments: Opportunities and Obstacles for Women’s Career Advancement 29.4.1  W  ork and Employment in Transition: An Opportunity for Women The fact that the world of work is in a state of transition and that the nonprofit sector is no exception to the trend is made clear in the interviews we conducted with employees and executives in the sector. The shortage of professionals is seen as a central problem that will be of great concern to NPOs in the future. At the same time, it is critically noted that the potential of well-trained women has so far been underused even in the nonprofit sector. This is the assessment of a female NPO executive: At the moment we have a situation in this country where we are looking for more and more skilled workers, and in the course of this—I believe—women’s employment and the view of it will change. Most women are really well educated. In Germany this resource of well-­ educated, motivated women is not tapped into sufficiently.

However, the way to achieve this is not by means of women adapting to the working world, which has so far been dominated by men. Rather, from the point of view of the interviewees, the development is exactly the other way round: the professional world and everyday working life must successively adapt to the needs, wishes, and ideas of women in order to “keep the business running” and to have sufficient skilled workers and managerial personnel available. Due to its structural peculiarities and the value orientation of its organizations, the nonprofit sector as a

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labor market in many respects already fulfills the requirement profile for self-­ determined, interesting, meaningful, and socially valuable work. Also, men and women do not work in the nonprofit sector primarily in order to earn a lot of money; there are other reasons that motivate them to choose a job as well as a career at an NPO, as became clear in an interview with a female NPO executive at the top level: “The perspective to earn a lot of money or to make a lot of money for some product just didn't attract me. However, to improve the world somehow appealed to me enormously.” But there is still a long way to go before work and employment in the nonprofit sector meet gender-sensitive standards at the operational and/or entry level of NPOs as well as at the management level. The results of the interviews with NPO staff at the entry level (25 interviews), middle management (27 interviews), and the top level of the organizations (21 interviews) reveal the “stumbling blocks” and obstacles that help explain why so far few women have been able to climb the career ladder in the sector.

29.4.2  G  eneral Career Obstacles: Thinking Patterns or Gender Stereotypes Some major obstacles to women’s professional advancement and development can be observed in German society in general and are not limited to the nonprofit sector. In this respect, women also encounter career obstacles in NPOs which are still present in society and which are caused by entrenched thinking patterns or gender stereotypes. These are shaping the world of work and corporate cultures, including those of NPOs. In addition, stereotypes indirectly influence women’s individual behavior and self-assessment. Accordingly, from the point of view of their environment—as well as partly according to their own assessment—traditionally and in accord with the conservative sentiments of German society women are not considered for demanding tasks at management levels of organizations, including NPOs, because: • leadership as a quality is more likely to be attributed to men than women; • women are primarily expected to take responsibility for their families and children; • in terms of commitment and performance, women subjectively face different demands than men and therefore do not dare to assume leadership and control or deliberately do not strive for these tasks. The interviews showed that women continue to struggle with preconceived and culturally entrenched prejudices, especially when it comes to being considered for executive positions. For example, an employee who works at middle management level of an NPO remarked:

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You can have the best degrees, as well as the most practical experience, but then men with less extensive CVs overtake you right and left. Much less is enough for men to advance to much better and more prestigious positions.

Traditional role models and the responsibility for family and children still attributed primarily to women continue to play a central role. This is what a male managing director of an NPO said: “If I take my job as managing director seriously from a business management point of view, then there is always a risk. So I always put the organization at risk when I decide in favor of a childless 30-year-old woman.” On the other hand, the female interviewees noted that women often fail to present themselves in the right light and position themselves for the next career step. A female NPO executive noted: “Women don’t handle their abilities with enough self-­ confidence. Women are more likely to resign.” And a female employee at middle management level thought that the reason was “because we women often don’t put ourselves forward enough or we are unwilling to jump in at the deep end.” In addition to these factors prevailing in society as a whole, NPO-specific barriers were identified on the basis of the interviews, which counteract the advancement of women on the career ladder. These are closely related to structural peculiarities of NPOs, in particular to their value orientation and to the structural feature of rather flat hierarchies. On the one hand, these features make work in the sector attractive; on the other hand, the structural peculiarities of NPOs contribute significantly to the fact that classical patterns and gender roles are not questioned and thus perpetuated.

29.4.3  N  PO-Specific Factors and Their Impact as a Career Hurdle for Women From an organizational theory point of view, nonprofit organizations generally differ from their commercial and state counterparts according to a number of criteria and structural peculiarities such as: • value and norm orientation, which is usually expressed in the objectives of the organization; • management, which is often participatory and, in larger NPOs, characterized by flat hierarchies and autonomous working areas; • work organization and working conditions which are characterized by family-­ friendly benefits and flexible working arrangements, particularly in the operative area. In the interviews we conducted, it became clear that the high attractiveness of NPOs as a workplace for women is precisely due to these structural peculiarities. For women, but also for men, this is particularly true for the normative-idealistic orientation of NPOs. Both women and men make a conscious decision to work in the NPO sector on the basis of a strong intrinsic motivation. A female middle

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management employee stated, “I want to do something useful; I want to stand up for something and do something for society.” This sentiment is no different from a male top-level executive’s statement: “I need a normative framework. So, I have to do something where I somehow feel a sense in it.” Thus, NPOs meet to a high degree the expectations of women (but also of men) for a meaningful and socially useful professional activity. NPOs also meet the wishes and needs of women for flexible working hours and family-friendly benefits. As one top female manager remarked: As a mother, I think it’s cool to have a job like this. So that’s probably also a very feminine thing. and also due a bit to the sector, where it’s simply more feasible to have this flexibility.

Furthermore, due to their specific management structure, NPOs enable autonomous work to a considerable extent in the context of projects and have areas of responsibility that require extensive specialist knowledge. Thus, they provide a very attractive working framework at the level of middle management without this being associated with the everyday stress of a top management position and its extensive representative obligations. However, the structural peculiarities of NPOs do not consistently benefit women's professional advancement. The majority of interviewed women and men mentioned that women—even more than men—tend in some cases to be satisfied with a position once reached, to decide to stay in the team and, in particular, to shy away from frequent work-related relocations. Since for many women “being the boss” is not a value in itself, it is not worth throwing the “hat in the ring” in order to take another step up the career ladder. According the assessment of a female NPO employee from middle management: “It’s all about me being happy with my work, having a good environment and having fun. . .a job title doesn’t really matter.” But even women at the entry level do not see any value in career advancement in the sense of consecutive promotions in their own NPO or in the sector itself. This is the future perspective of an interviewee who is still at the beginning of her career: “Responsibility, stress, no free time, a lot of coordinating activity. I don’t think it’s very positive and I don’t see myself in future in a management position.” The fact that NPOs provide a working environment in which women—as well as men—consciously decide against a career and for a more harmonious work–life balance, while still being able to work autonomously and innovatively, is only one aspect that can be used to explain the still very low representation of women on the management floors of NPOs. In the interviews, the female interviewees in particular also mentioned concrete structural reasons that make it difficult for women in NPOs to advance professionally. Repeated reference has been made to the personnel autonomy of the “executive boards,” which are mainly made up of male volunteers and which to a certain extent favor men because they tend to recruit their peers. One female interviewee, an executive, reported: “I can sense this old boys’ club mentality.” Another male executive recounted, “If a colleague leaves, we get ourselves the same person who fits in, of whom we know how they think and act.” Furthermore, it was critically noted that some of the volunteers have expectations and requirements that are difficult or impossible to fulfill in the day-to-day

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work of the salaried employees, so that advancement to the next higher position is actually realistically not worthwhile. As one female top executive noted: In the nonprofit sector, you’re freely available, so to speak. Since they (volunteer executive board members) have a lot of time at the weekend, they think: We wouldn’t have anything better to do at our weekends. In this respect, I actually experience this as unnerving.

29.5  C  hange Requirements from the Point of View of Employees and HR Managers Due to the attractiveness of work and employment with NPOs, the majority of organizations have so far not considered it necessary to position themselves particularly in the labor market and to solicit employees. “We are swamped with applications,” said a human resources manager of a larger association. It is in particular the NPOs that have been only recently established and are characterized by company-like management structures and working methods that are taking up this topic in a special way. These newer NPOs follow the example of large and internationally operating companies both in terms of personnel recruitment and development procedures. With reference to the principles of excellence and fit, these NPOs structure the selection of their personnel similar to commercial enterprises with recourse to headhunters and assessment centers. This applies in particular to middle management and the top management level, where the objective is to “bring top talent into the sector” (says a female top executive) and at the same time to pay attention to “value conformity” (says a male top executive) with the sector and the recruiting NPO. However, both from the point of view of HR managers and executives, much is being done in NPOs to keep women in the organizations, especially at the entry level and in middle management, and to make it easier for them to reconcile work and family life. Such measures include reduced working hours (part-time), home office (even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic), time off (sabbatical years), and the arrangement of childcare or family services. However, according to one interviewed top female executive, this is particularly true for working conditions below management level: “Yes, I think the conditions for employees are good in this respect. There is already a lot of support. We are organized as an association. It’s really good up to a certain level.” At the same time, the interviewees, especially at the top management level, unanimously pointed out deficits in the personnel development strategies of the NPOs, which up to now have not gone beyond employee appraisals and the offer of internal and external professional training programs. From the perspective of the interviewees, personnel development in the sense of gender equality does not take place. A female employee at entry level remarked, “You can find models and solutions to effectively promote women, but that requires extra work, that’s an investment. It means setting priorities, looking for, approaching and training women, supporting them. There is still a long way to go.”

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What needs to be done in this respect in order to change conditions and achieve gender equality in everyday working life and especially on the management floors of the NPOs was not left in doubt by the female interviewees. As a female top executive argued: “There are, in my opinion, few alternatives other than the quota, if you really want it. A quota and an unconditional will to promote it, otherwise it won’t work.” The interviewed HR managers, on the other hand, were rather cautious with regard to the introduction of a quota system, especially for executive positions. It was pointed out, for example, that women’s careers were promoted more implicitly than explicitly by means of specific instruments. Particularly the encouragement by superiors of female potentials to assume management tasks was mentioned. In some cases, however, the issue was also played down with phrases such as “That has never been a problem for us,” “Gender is not considered; the candidate just has to fit and has to be suitable,” or “We define ourselves through our work and not through gender relations.”

29.6  Conclusion and Recommended Action In sum, the results of the project “Careers in the Nonprofit Sector: Working Conditions and Opportunities for Advancement of Women” give the picture of a German nonprofit sector which is highly attractive for women as a labor market, but which has not yet recognized the signs of the times and is therefore only poorly prepared to manage both the personnel bottlenecks at the shop-floor and operational level of NPOs resulting from demographic change and the forthcoming natural fluctuation of personnel at the management levels of its organizations. It is therefore safe to assume that the sector and its NPOs will have to deal increasingly with personnel development issues throughout the organizations in the coming years. Against this background and on the basis of the findings of the study, recommendations for action were developed in cooperation with the project advisory board and in consultation with the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ). These recommendations both aim to change the framework conditions at policy level and also directly address possible changes within NPOs, which can enable an improvement in gender equality in the sector. Finally, the willingness of the sector’s employees and stakeholders to make lasting changes is also required. In this respect, policy-makers in Germany are called upon to act as legislators and (1) create incentives for women to work in near-full-time job arrangements, (2) make the presence of women on the executive and supervisory bodies of NPOs mandatory, and (3) limit cooperation with private providers (NPOs, commercial companies) to those whose governing bodies meet the women’s quota. As regards incentives, tax law should be amended so that (income) tax-splitting is abolished or modified to the extent that there is no tax incentive for a spouse not to work or to work part-time. Furthermore, full tax deductibility should be

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introduced for all household-related services, including childcare and nursing. In particular, women in senior positions must receive comprehensive support and relief from household and family tasks (childcare, eldercare). For the appointment of control, management, and top executive bodies, the introduction of a quota of 50% women is recommended for small- and medium-sized NPOs on a voluntary basis and for large and financially strong NPOs on a mandatory basis. The legal and organizational forms customary in the NPO sector (association, foundation, gGmbH, gAG, gUG) must be changed accordingly. Another way is to modify the (tax) legislation for charities and nonprofit organizations so that the charitable status of an NPO is linked to the fulfillment of the women’s quota in its governing bodies. Policy-makers must provide support and, in close consultation with the federal states and local authorities, further expand childcare and align proven approaches, e.g., local alliances for the family and professional mentoring and qualification programs, more closely with the needs of women in (NPO) management positions. In this context, policy-makers must act as multipliers and, in cooperation with umbrella organizations and associations in the sector, launch an initiative which, in the form of certification, highlights the exemplary function of such NPOs which promote their female employees in a special way and fulfill the quota of women in their governing bodies. The recommendations addressed to the German NPOs aim to achieve more gender equality in their organizations, with a view to taking greater account of women’s concerns and interests at both the structural and the process and procedural levels. At the structural level, the aim is to ensure that the composition of the committees with personnel responsibility and management functions is more gender-oriented and to design full-time management positions that take greater account of the work– life balance requirements. At the process and procedural level, NPOs must identify and support women as “high-potential” employees: They must do much more to enable young female managers to advance and remain in a leadership position even in the family phase. It is therefore recommended: • to make personnel recruitment procedures more open and transparent in general and for executives in particular; • to structure personnel development as an organizational task more strongly, to make it more gender-sensitive, and to align it more specifically with the requirements of management personnel; • to accept work–life compatibility and work–life balance as central issues for management personnel and to develop future-oriented solutions, schemes, and supporting measures. Employees, and especially women in NPOs, are called upon to take a more career-oriented and proactive approach. In particular, women starting their careers must become more active and make use of existing support programs or demand additional ones. Regular staff appraisals, further training, qualification, and mentoring programs or coaching, integration into networks as well as personal promotion and development plans must be demanded. More self-confidence is called for:

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Women must learn to delegate more, strive to make work processes more efficient, and, in particular, avoid losing themselves in the “nitty-gritty.” The fact that this is still more difficult for some women than for their male colleagues in their daily work has a lot to do with their socialization and the existing role models in Germany. In this respect, courage and a willingness to take risks are required in addition to initiative and self-confidence. This is particularly true with regard to the working environment of the nonprofit sector and the sector’s potential for shaping and changing society in a positive way.

References Priller, E., & Paul, F. (2015). Gute Arbeit in atypischen Beschäftigungsverhältnissen? Eine Analyse der Arbeitsbedingungen von Frauen in gemeinnützigen Organisationen unter Berücksichtigung ihrer Beschäftigungsformen und Lebenslagen. Hans-Böckler-Stiftung. Priller, E., & Schmeißer, C. (2013). Die Beschäftigungssituation in Dritte-Sektor-Organisationen. Das Sozialwesen im Vergleich. Sozialer Fortschritt, 62(8–9), 227–234. Priller, E., & Zimmer, A. (2017). Hochgeschätzte Beschäftigung in Nonprofit-Organisationen: Wie lange noch? In L.  Theuvsen, R.  Andeßner, M.  Gmür, & D.  Greiling (Eds.), Nonprofit-­ organisationen und nachhaltigkeit (pp. 387–400). SpringerGabler. Sandberg, B. (2008). Führungsfrauen in Stiftungen  – Ein Beitrag zur Empirie von Geschlechterstrukturen im Dritten Sektor. Zeitschrift für Frauenforschung & Geschlechterstudien, 2, 52–63. Sandberg, B., Schneider, F., & Voigt, J. (2017). Geschlechtsspezifische Entgeltunterschiede bei Führungskräften in Stiftungen  – Ergebnisse einer empirischen Untersuchung. Zeitschrift für Öffentliche und Gemeinwirtschaftliche Unternehmen, 40(2-3), 177–189. Schmeißer, C. (2013). Die Arbeitswelt des Dritten Sektors. Atypische Beschäftigung und Arbeitsbedingungen in gemeinnützigen Organisationen. WZB-Discussion Paper SP V 2013-302. Schwabenland, C., Lange, C., Onyx, J., & Nakagawa, S. (2016). Women’s emancipation and civil society organizations. Policy Press. Zimmer, A., Priller, E., Paul, F. (2017). Karriere im Nonprofit-Sektor? Münster. https://www.uni-­ muenster.de/ZEUGS/publikationen/workingpapers/index.html Zimmer, A., Priller, E., & Anheier, H. (2013). Der nonprofit-sektor in Deutschland. In R.  Simsa, M.  Meyer, & C.  Badelt (Eds.), Handbuch der nonprofit-organisation (pp.  5–36). Schäffer-Poeschel.

Chapter 30

Los Angeles and the State of the Nonprofit Sector: A Review of Findings and Examination of Three Theses Marcus Lam, Hagai Katz, and Jennifer Mosley

Abstract  Helmut Anheier once articulated three perspectives for the changing role of the nonprofit sector in a postindustrial, transnational society: (1) social service providers resulting from a shrinking government sector; (2) the fostering of civic engagement as organizational manifestation of civil society; or (3) social accountability agents holding elected officials accountable. Drawing from these perspectives, this chapter tests three hypotheses: (1) increased privatization of government services leads to less government funding and increased revenue from fees for services; (2) a positive correlation exists between density of nonprofit organizations and social capital; and (3) increased expenses on lobbying activities. This chapter also provides a retrospective look at the “State of the Nonprofit Sector” research conducted by Anheier and his team at the Center for Civil Society at UCLA. We test our three hypotheses with more recent data for the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles County. Results offer partial support for our hypotheses and that, while the number of nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles has contracted slightly since 2007, the sector’s expenses have increased. This suggests that the nonprofit sector continues to “do more with less” and that findings from prior “State of the Sector” reports still resonate today. Keywords  Los Angeles · Program service revenue · Social capital · Lobbying · Nonprofit sector

M. Lam (*) School of Leadership and Education Sciences, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] H. Katz Department of Business Administration, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel e-mail: [email protected] J. Mosley Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Hoelscher et al. (eds.), Civil Society: Concepts, Challenges, Contexts, Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98008-5_30

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30.1  Introduction In the early days of third sector studies, when theoretical development was still very much lacking, DiMaggio and Anheier’s (1990, p. 137) seminal article offered a set of theses about “Why are there nonprofit organizations?” and the “Behavioral effects of nonprofitness.” They addressed these two questions at three levels—the organization, industry, and firm—and argued that the distinct composition of the nonprofit sector in a given region can be predicted by macro and meso contextual factors such as public policy, government spending, public service demand heterogeneity, and ethnic, racial, and income diversity of communities. They concluded that the roots and behavior of nonprofits reflect institutional structures and state policies, and therefore, they are constituted as adjuncts to, or in opposition to, states. Almost 20 years later, Anheier argued that “nonprofits are increasingly part of new public management and a mixed economy of welfare” (Anheier, 2009, p.  1082). This requires adopting an ecological approach, which considers the individual organization only within the context of the population it is derived from and the environment in which it exists. These suggestions have inspired budding and seasoned nonprofit researchers alike and laid the groundwork for further study addressing organizational, industry, and cross-national comparative work on the nonprofit sector and civil society (e.g., Anheier, Lam, & Howard, 2013; Baum & Oliver, 1996), and provided a foundation for further theoretical developments (Salamon & Anheier, 1998). In this chapter, we build on DiMaggio and Anheier (1990) as well as draw on more recent work by Anheier. Specifically, we apply the framework he outlines in Anheier (2009) for understanding the role of the nonprofit sector in a transitioning world, from industrial to postindustrial and from nation-state to transnational and globalizing societies. To do this, we use the Los Angeles metropolitan region in the United States as a case study. The Los Angeles region is an ideal setting to test Anheier’s (2009) framework as it is hailed as a quintessential transformational “twenty-first century city” (Heikkila, 2004), and Anheier spent a decade researching this region as a Professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin School of Public Affairs as well as mentoring graduate students including the authors of this chapter. The chapter proceeds as follows. The next section outlines the arguments made in Anheier (2009) and his framework for understanding the role of the nonprofit sector in transitioning societies. We state three hypotheses based on this framework. Next, we provide brief background on the Los Angeles (LA) region and revisit the findings from the six State of the Nonprofit sector reports (2003–2008) authored by Anheier and his graduate students as well as the recommendations and conclusions from these reports. Following our presentation of the data and method of analysis, we then present our results, including a current look at the LA nonprofit sector. The chapter ends with implications of our findings for furthering Anheier’s framework and examines the policy changes or sector-wide changes in light of the recommendations made in the reports.

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30.2  Role of the Nonprofit Sector Anheier (2009) contemplated the changing role of the nonprofit sector in a postindustrial and transnational society for an article in the American Behavioral Scientist titled, “What kind of nonprofit sector, what kind of society?”. In short, Anheier argued that the nonprofit sector’s role in these societal transitions can be grouped into three broad trends: 1. The nonprofit sector as part of the New Public Management (NPM) movement in which the devolution of government social and health services will lead nonprofits to play a central role in service provision to communities through government contracting and privatization efforts; 2. The nonprofit sector will continue to be central to building a strong civil society by fostering civic engagement and social capital following a neo-Tocquevillian perspective; 3. The nonprofit sector will be a vital core of social accountability through citizen “watchdog” and grassroots activities that work to challenge and hold accountable state authority through such things as community councils, public expenditure tracking, or citizen advisory boards. Finding support for any of these propositions, as Anheier (2009) further argues, will additionally give us a vision for the role of the state. From this perspective, we can draw out the following hypotheses: H1: Based on the NPM argument, we should see an increasing role for the nonprofit sector in public service provision with less government support. As such, we hypothesize that under this scenario, nonprofits will be more business-like and entrepreneurial, leading to less government funding and support and greater reliance on fee-for-service revenue. H2: Based on the neo-Tocquevillian perspective, we should see correlations between the density of nonprofit organizations/activities and measures of social capital. As such, we hypothesize a positive relationship between nonprofit density or nonprofit expenditure and measures of social capital. H3: Based on the social accountability perspective, we should see an increasing percentage of the nonprofit sector consisting of “social accountability” organizations such as community councils, citizen advisory boards, etc. (National Taxonomy for Exempt Entities (NTEE) codes R: “Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy” and S: “Community Improvement & Capacity Building”). We should also see increases in spending on lobbying expenses for all nonprofits. To examine these three hypotheses, we use the Los Angeles metropolitan region as a case study. This region is significant as Anheier was instrumental in launching the Center for Civil Society at UCLA, conducting pioneering research into the scale and scope of the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles, and bringing academics, practitioners, and policy-makers together for annual forums to discuss how to strengthen the nonprofit sector.

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30.3  Case Study: The Los Angeles Nonprofit Sector In 2003, the UCLA Center for Civil Society, founded by Helmut Anheier, launched the first State of the Nonprofit Sector in Los Angeles summit with its first “State of the Nonprofit Sector” report. The report (Anheier, Katz, Mosley, & Hasenfeld, 2003), the first of its kind to document the scale and scope of the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles, found that the nonprofit sector was a significant economic force, comprising 10% of total employment in the region with high reliance on government funding. However, the LA nonprofit sector was smaller in size compared to the national average and smaller compared to other metropolitan areas such as San Francisco and New  York. As such, the report highlighted an apparent gap between social service needs and the nonprofit sector’s ability to address the needs of vulnerable and underserved communities. It thus recommended increased and regular collaboration and dialogue between government, practitioners, academics, and civic leaders to enhance information-sharing and intersectoral collaborations to address public policy concerns (Anheier et al., 2003). The report not only gave the research and practitioner community a first look at the scale and scope of the nonprofit sector for a large and diverse metropolitan region, it also offered a discussion about how macro level demographic and policy variables may influence the composition of the nonprofit sector, and most importantly, the report offered a set of policy and practice recommendations about how to strengthen sector. Since the initial 2003 report and its subsequent summit, the UCLA Center for Civil Society has produced numerous annual State of the Sector reports that shed light on not only the overall sector but specific subfields such as human service organizations, arts and culture organizations, and foundations (Mosley, Katz, Hasenfeld, & Anheier, 2003). The annual summits brought together hundreds of nonprofit practitioners and researchers to discuss the major challenges facing the local nonprofit sector and also offered a venue for professionals to engage, network, and build opportunities to find solutions to these pressing problems and make the LA nonprofit sector more robust and effective.

30.4  S  tate of the Nonprofit Sector in Los Angeles: A Brief Summary of Early Findings 30.4.1  Underlying Themes From 2003 to 2014, UCLA’s Center for Civil Society documented the annual change in the scale and scope of the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles. The resulting reports offered indicators such as the number of registered charities, average total assets, expenses, revenue, and total employment. Each year, the reports also offered a more

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specific look at a subsector of nonprofits from human service organizations and foundations to arts and culture organizations. More importantly, it offered a set of local policy recommendations to strengthen the sector. Anheier outlined the structure, data, and writing for the first report in 2003 and led the authorship of subsequent reports through to 2007. Three underlying themes run through the reports. The first theme points to the relative size of the sector. Los Angeles is a metropolitan region with a highly diverse population and demand heterogeneity for social, cultural, educational, and health services; and while its nonprofit sector is similar to other metropolitan regions such as New York when measured by the total number of organizations, the Los Angeles nonprofit sector is comparatively smaller when measured by financial activity (Anheier et al., 2013). For example, in terms of total numbers of organizations, Los Angeles has 31,486 registered nonprofits compared to 34,261 in New York. Given New York’s larger population, this may be expected, but there is unexpected disparity when it comes to total assets, with the New York nonprofit sector holding over twice as much assets as the Los Angeles nonprofit sector ($65 billion in total assets compared to New York’s $149 billion). Similarly, the New York nonprofit sector spends over twice as much ($88 billion in total expenses) compared to Los Angeles ($35 billion). The second theme is the need for greater inter- and intrasectoral collaborations and dialogue. Anheier et al. (2013) argue that the relative financial robustness of the New York’s nonprofit sector compared to that of Los Angeles may be due to the longer and deeper legacy of intersectoral connections between government and the nonprofit sector and a well-established philanthropic sector with older and larger well-endowed foundations (i.e., Ford, Rockefeller, etc.) that have a deep history of supporting the nonprofit sector. In short, Anheier et al. (2013) state: In New York City, a partnership between city government and nonprofit organizations was put in place early and developed over time; by contrast, in Los Angeles, such partnership remained patchy and did not evolve into a general pattern whereby public agencies and private nonprofits collaborate to address community needs of many kinds. These differences in urban government have important implications for the nonprofit sector, because community-based organizations, particularly those in the health and human services, benefit greatly from a well-functioning and supportive public sector. (Anheier et  al., 2013, p. 515)

As such, a common recommendation made throughout the reports is to increase dialogue, partnerships, and collaborations between government agencies and the nonprofit sector. A third and final theme of the reports is the incredible resiliency of the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles and continuing “to do more with less.” The reports point to the continued survival and provision of vital health, cultural, artistic, and social services by the nonprofit sector despite increased demand and need for services on the one hand, and the relative decrease and lack of resources and support from the government and philanthropic sector, on the other. The next section offers a summary of findings from the reports.

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30.4.2  Summary of Findings The first report in 2003, subtitled “Positioning for the Future” (Anheier et al., 2003), offered a detailed look at human service nonprofits, drawing data from the first ever “Los Angeles Survey of Human Service Nonprofits.” It found that government funding represented nearly three-quarters of total revenue for nonprofit human service organizations in Los Angeles and, similar to the nonprofit sector overall, the human services subsector was dominated by a small number of large, well-resourced organizations and a larger number of smaller organizations with virtually no foundation or government funding but serving a disproportionate share of vulnerable clients. The 2004 report, entitled “Facing Uncertainty” (Anheier, Katz, Mosley, & Spivak, 2004), continued to decry an underresourced nonprofit sector serving an ever-increasing demand for vital health and human services in the region, as well as a gap between vulnerable communities and the availability of nonprofit services. The report offered a first look at comparative nonprofit wages and found that nonprofit wages are 17% lower than government wages and 4% lower than for-profit wages, on average. Its recommendation was a continued call for dialogue between nonprofit and government sectors through annual forums. The 2004 report also sought to dispel common myths about the outsized role of foundations in effective positive change. While it is unrealistic for foundations to replace government support or to be the panacea to catalyze change, foundations can play an important role in the policy process through coordination and strategic funding initiatives. The report thus encouraged foundations to clarify their roles with both government agencies and their nonprofit grantees and set realistic expectations about the impact that they can make. The 2005 report, “Driving Change” (Anheier, Katz, Lam, Mosley, & Spivak, 2005), shifted the conversation from the gap in service provision and service needs to highlight the resiliency of the nonprofit sector. While the number of nonprofits decreased compared to previous years, employment growth in the sector outpaced that in the for-profit and government sectors. The research also found that civic engagement and trust levels remained stable and correlated with volunteering and giving. The theme of resiliency continued in the 2006 report, “New Horizons” (Anheier, Lam, Mosley, Garrow, & Guihama, 2006). It found that nonprofit expenditure at 6.4% of gross metropolitan product (GMP) was the highest since 2003, and annual nonprofit wages were approaching for-profit sector wages. The report also offered a closer look at the foundation sector. It found that overall, the LA foundation sector was relatively young. Compared to well-established foundations on the east coast, more than half of foundations were created only since 1990. However, foundation grant dollars were concentrated in a small number of very large gifts, “with the top 1/2 of 1% of grants representing almost a quarter of all grant dollars allocated to LA recipients” (Anheier et al., 2006, p. vi).

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The 2007 report, “Creating Opportunities” (Anheier, Garrow, Lam, & Guihama, 2007), was the last one under Anheier’s lead authorship. The report continued to document the scale and scope of the sector, but also encouraged nonprofits to be proactive change agents.

30.4.3  Summary of Recommendations A consistent recommendation made throughout the series is to build and strengthen inter- and intrasectoral collaborations and dialogue as well as to formalize and institutionalize government–nonprofit partnerships and relationships. Early reports called for support of umbrella organizations and coordinating bodies to facilitate collaboration, and greater support for small underresourced human service organizations. Specifically, the recommendations included the first call to create an “office of a nonprofit liaison at the state and local levels” as a step toward continued dialogue and building stronger advocacy networks. Recommendations also encouraged nonprofits to be proactive and engage in “scenario planning” in order to stay ahead of anticipated changes and thus create effective responses. Finally, later reports recommended the creation of a “Southern California Nonprofit and Philanthropy Forecast,” a collaborative platform that would allow leaders of nonprofits, foundations, and government to discuss future trends in needs, as well as the policy environment. Indeed, both Los Angeles and its nonprofit sector have changed drastically since the Center for Civil Society was active in documenting the scale and scope of the nonprofit sector. In the next section, we provide an update about the Los Angeles nonprofit sector with data sources similar to those used in the previous reports. We also present data that demonstrate support for the three hypotheses outlined earlier in the chapter. In the conclusion, we take another look at the recommendations from the reports and discuss changes in  local policy aligned with those recommendations.

30.5  State of the Nonprofit Sector in Los Angeles Since 2006 Table 30.1 shows the growth in the number of nonprofit organizations from 2006 to 2018 at the national, state, and local levels. The data on nonprofit organizations were derived from the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) Internal Revenue Service, Exempt Organizations Business Master File (https://nccs-­data.urban.org). At the national level, there were some 1.5 million registered nonprofits in 2018, an increase of about 3.5% since 2006. Similarly, at the state level, California saw an increase of 3.3%, from 148,709 organizations to 153,593 organizations. At the local level, however, the Los Angeles County nonprofit sector appears to have contracted with a 1.6% decline in registered nonprofits, from 38,598 in 2006 to 37,946 in 2018.

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Table 30.1  Growth in registered nonprofits, United States, California and Los Angeles County, 2006–2018 Year USA 2006 1,448,485 2010 1,621,316 2014 1,497,172 2018 1,499,450 Nominal annual growth rate 2006–2010 12% 2010–2014 −8% 2014–2018 0%

CA 148,709 166,725 154,353 153,593

LA 38,598 42,666 38,715 37,946

12% −7% 0%

11% −9% −2%

Source: Business Master File Table 30.2  Distribution of total expenditures by subsector, Los Angeles County, 2013

Arts, culture, and humanities Education, higher Education Hospitals Environment Health Human services International Mutual benefit Public and societal benefit Religion Unknown total (in millions)

Expenses (%) 3.0 20.8 8.6 27.9 0.5 15.2 15.7 1.3 0.01 6.2 0.8 0.004 US $41,878

Figure 30.1 shows total expenditure for reporting charities in the five-county region in Southern California. Total expenditure for Los Angeles County saw a 55% increase from 2006 to 2013 and far exceeds spending in the other counties (adjusted for inflation). However, this growth rate is smaller relative to other Southern California counties (except Orange County which experienced 49% growth in total expenditure between 2006 and 2013). In terms of per capita nonprofit spending, Los Angeles County’s 2006–2013 growth was 51%, ranking third out of the five counties (ranging from 42% growth in Orange County to 109% growth in San Bernardino County). Table 30.2 shows the distribution of total expenditure by major subsectors for 2013. Similar to the national composition, higher education and hospitals comprise nearly half of total expenditure. This is followed by spending by the human services and health subsectors, respectively.

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$48,394

Total Expenditure(in millions) (2006 dollars)

$45,000 $40,000 $35,000 $31,320 $30,000 $25,000 $20,000 $15,000 $11,706

$10,000 $5,000 $-

$5,295 $3,246 $1,468 $911 2006

$4,847 $2,442 $1,595 2007 Los Angeles

2008

2009

San Bernardino

2010 Orange

2011 Riverside

2012

2013

Ventura

Fig. 30.1 Total expenditure, reporting charities, five-county region, 2006–2013. Source: Core Trend

30.6  Hypotheses 30.6.1  Hypothesis 1: New Public Management Argument We now turn to our three hypotheses. Data for our first hypothesis are drawn from the NCCS Statistics of Income (SOI) Files for 2008–2012. Following the NPM argument, we expect to see program service revenues as a percentage of total revenue increase and government contributions as percentage of total revenue decrease. Figure 30.2 shows the change of government contributions as a percentage of total revenue for a sample of nonprofits at the national, state, and county levels. Figure  30.3 shows the percentage of program revenue at the national, state, and county levels. Figure  30.4 shows the percentage of government contributions by subsector for Los Angeles County. On average, Los Angeles County has a higher level of government contributions as a percentage of total revenue (12.6% in 2012) compared to both state and national averages (10.6% and 8.1%, respectively). This is true for all years from 2008 to 2012. This gap between Los Angeles County and the national average widened between 2008 and 2012 from a 1.5% point difference to nearly a 5% point difference. For earned or program service revenue, the trend appears to be the opposite of government contributions. First, program revenue comprises nearly half of total revenue, on average, at all levels of government. On average, Los Angeles County nonprofits saw the biggest decrease in program service revenue between 2008 and 2012, from 48.4% to 46.6% of total revenue. At the state level, program service revenue increased over the time period.

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13.0%

12.6% 12.0%

11.0% 10.6%

10.5% 10.0%

9.0%

9.1% 8.9% 8.1%

8.0% 7.0%

2008

2009

2010 US

2011

CA

2012

LA

Fig. 30.2  Government contributions as percentage of total nonprofit revenue, by levels of government. Source: Statistics of Income Files 2008–2012 56.0% 54.3% 54.0%

53.6%

52.0% 50.0% 48.4%

48.7%

48.0% 46.0%

46.6%

46.6%

44.0% 42.0%

2008

2009

2010 US

CA

2011

2012

LA

Fig. 30.3  Program service revenue as percentage of total nonprofit revenue, by levels of government. Source: Statistics of Income Files 2008–2012

There is more nuance when we examine government contributions by subsector (Fig. 30.4). Five of the eight nonprofit subsectors saw an increase in government contributions as a share of their total revenue from 2008 and 2012: human services, education, public and societal benefit, environment, and arts, culture, and humanities. On average, we see wide variation by subsector with respect to reliance on government contributions. Human service organizations rely on government contributions the most, with nearly a quarter of total revenue comprised of government contributions in 2012 (an increase of 3% points from 2008). In the education subsector, the government’s contribution is modest with 12.4% for nonhigher education

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25% 23.1%

20% 19.7%

15%

14.5%

12.4% 11.8% 9.9%

10%

8.3%

7.9% 5%

0%

6.5%

4.2% 3.1%

3.8% 2.0% 0.7% 2008

2009

2010

0.3% 2012

2011

Arts. culture. and humanities

Education. higher

Education

Hospitals

Environment

Health

Human services

Public and societal benefit

Fig. 30.4  Average government contributions as percentage of total nonprofit revenues, by subsector, Los Angeles. Source: Statistics of Income Files 2008–2012

and 4.2% for higher education in 2012. Nonprofit hospitals rely the least on government contributions with less than 1% on average.

30.6.2  H  ypothesis 2: Neo-Tocquevillian and Social Capital Argument For our second hypothesis, which arises from the neo-Tocquevillian thought, we expect to find trends in the prevalence of nonprofit organizations that correspond to changes in different expressions of civic engagement and social capital. To test this hypothesis, we juxtapose the number of nonprofit organizations per 100,000 population in the years 2009–2017, with volunteering, which is an indicator of social engagement, and with social trust which is considered to be a core element of social capital. As Robert Putnam said in his seminal article, “Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital”: “Trust and engagement are two facets of the same underlying factor—social capital” (Putnam, 1995, p.  73). Here too, the data on nonprofit organizations were derived from the Urban Institute’s NCCS Business Master Files. Volunteering and trust data were obtained from the Public Use Files of the California Health Interview Survey. This survey, conducted annually by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (http://healthpolicy.ucla.edu/ chis/) (California Health Interview Survey, 2007), includes a few questions on community involvement, from which we took two items: (1) the share of respondents that said that they strongly agree that “people in neighborhood can be trusted” and (2) the share of respondents that said that they “did volunteer work or community services past year.”

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50%

420 45%

400

380 40% 360

340

35%

320 30%

300

280 25% 260

20%

2009

2011

2013

People in neighborhood can be trusted (% "Stongly agree")

2015

2017

240

Did volunteer work or community services past year (%)

Nonpro Organizaons per 100,000 populaon

Fig. 30.5 Prevalence of nonprofit organizations, civic engagement, and social capital in Los Angeles

In Fig. 30.5, we can see that the prevalence of nonprofit organizations and the two indicators of social capital demonstrate very similar patterns. There is a clear decline in both the prevalence of nonprofit organizations and the two indicators of social capital between 2009 and 2013, which is only partially compensated for by 2017. The resurgence in the prevalence of nonprofit organizations predates that of social capital by 2 years. The decline may be related to the great recession after 2008, and may be temporary. If this is true, we can only know once newer data become available.

30.6.3  Hypothesis 3: Social Accountability Argument To test the social accountability argument, we examine changes in “Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy” and “Community Improvement & Capacity Building” organizations (NTEE codes R and S, respectively) as well as lobbying expenses. We examined the changes in the number of organizations between 2006 and 2018 for Los Angeles County, the state of California, and nationally. At all administrative levels, we find that the number of “Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy” and “Community Improvement & Capacity Building” declined by an average of 17%

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between 2006 and 2018. Specifically, in 2006, these organizations represented 10%, 9%, and 8% of total registered nonprofits in Los Angeles County, California, and the United States, respectively. By 2018, this percentage had declined to 8.5%, 7.6%, and 6.6% of total registered nonprofits in Los Angeles County, California, and the United States, respectively (see Table 30.1 for the total number of registered nonprofits in 2006 and 2018). For lobbying activities, we again draw from the NCCS SOI Files and examine changes between 2 years, 2008 and 2012. Specifically, we draw from Part IV, Line 4 of the Form 990 submitted by most US nonprofit organizations to the Internal Revenue Service, which asks, “Did the organization engage in lobbying activities, or have a section 501(h) election in effect during the tax year?” At the national, state, and county levels, 21%, 16%, and 17% responded “yes,” respectively, in 2008. In 2012, the percentage of those responding to “yes” increased most at the national level (to 26%) and at the state level (to 19%), but also at the county level (to 18%).

30.7  Discussion and Conclusion In this chapter, we have sought to respond to the questions posed by Anheier (2009) that asked, “What Kind of Nonprofit Sector, What Kind of Society?” We have done this with descriptive data for demonstration purposes only and acknowledge the limitations in the conclusions that we may draw. We find partial support for the first hypotheses that the nonprofit sector’s increasing role in public service provision would be accompanied by less government support. On average, government contribution as a percentage of total revenue increased between 2008 and 2012 in Los Angeles County. This seems to suggest that even if social services are indeed devolving to the nonprofit sector, governments are continuing to provide support rather than reducing it. However, when we examine this trend by subsector, we see a more nuanced picture. Higher education institutions, hospitals, and other health organizations appear to be relying less on government support, while other subsectors such as human services and arts and culture show increases in government support. As Anheier (2009) notes, changes in the nonprofit sector can be viewed as a reflection of the role of the state. Findings for our first hypothesis suggest that states are increasingly supporting social services such as human services and nonhigher education organizations as well as “expressive” services such as arts and culture organizations. The health sector and higher education appear to be less reliant on government support. From a public goods lens, these findings may not be surprising, as health and higher education services are often, especially in the United States, viewed as “private” goods that are excludable and rival and thus more conducive to pricing and earned income strategies (Anheier, 2014). Arts and culture, public and societal benefit, and a broad range of human services may produce more goods that are “quasi-public” and thus rely on more of a mixed income portfolio that includes donative income from individuals and foundations, government

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contributions, and, to a lesser extent, fees (Young, 2017). We should caution, however, that the SOI Files from which data are drawn cover a sample of organizations and specifically oversample larger organizations. For our second hypothesis, our analyses provide partial support for the neo-­ Tocquevillian hypothesis, showing congruence between the prevalence of nonprofits and social capital. However, as nonprofit organizations have declined in numbers in the post-2008 financial crisis years, so have volunteering and trust. For our third hypothesis, the data also show mixed results. While we see a decrease in “Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy” and “Community Improvement & Capacity Building” organizations at all levels of government (national, state, and local), the percentages of those who indicated spending on lobbying increased from 2008 to 2012. We should point out, however, that the decrease in the number of “Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy” and “Community Improvement & Capacity Building” organizations represents a downward trend for the entire sector as a whole between the years under observation. Thus, this seems to suggest that what we are seeing may be an artifact of the data due to cleaning procedures (i.e., efforts by the NCCS to purge the Business Master Files of defunct or closed organizations). Additionally, the lobby question asked in Part IV, Line 4 of Form 990 conflates “lobby activities” with filing of Schedule H, a schedule that is relevant to hospitals. Thus, it is possible that the increase maybe due to organizations filing Schedule H rather than increases in lobbying activities. Indeed, when we examine this question by the 12 major subsectors, only the hospital subsector showed an increase between 2008 and 2012 with no change in the other subsectors. Finally, as with the first hypothesis, the sample drawn from SOI Files oversamples larger organizations, and thus further caution must be taken when interpreting our findings. Revisiting the Los Angeles nonprofit sector since the 2007 State of the Sector Report, we find a slight contraction in terms of the number of organizations but a steady increase with respect to total expenses.1 It would appear that the findings from the early State of the Sector reports still hold true and that nonprofits in the Los Angeles region are “doing more with less;” that is, increasing expenses by fewer or a higher concentration of organizations. Further, a repeated recommendation made by the reports to create an office of nonprofit liaison at the city level appears to have finally become a reality. Anheier and his contemporaries did much to lay the foundation for the study of the nonprofit sector and for theoretical formulations to explain its rise, development, and goals. Our demonstrative test of the hypotheses posed by Anheier (2009) shows that there is still much research to be done on how specific forces and dynamics affect organizational behavior or organizational level mechanisms (i.e., financial health) on the micro level, and factors such as social capital and public policy on the macro level. While this exercise may have offered a bit of direction as to which of 1  Indeed, one explanation for this contraction can be the survival of a smaller number of well-­ resourced organizations that could weather economic downturns such as the 2008 recession compared to smaller, less resourced organizations. We did not, however, examine this hypothesis explicitly. We would like to thank Alexander Ruser for pointing out this alternative explanation.

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the three hypotheses are supported, more data need to be collected in the years to come in order to seriously examine these hypotheses in the context of Los Angeles. Similar analyses may be performed in other regions and in other scales of analysis, from localities through nations to the global arena. We are honored, however, to continue to build on the theoretical and empirical foundation that Anheier laid and to mentor, nurture, and create opportunities for the next generation of nonprofit scholars and researchers in the same way Helmut Anheier did for us.

References Anheier, H. K. (2009). What kind of nonprofit sector, what kind of society? Comparative Policy Reflections, 52(7), 1082–1094. Anheier, H. K. (2014). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management, policy (2nd ed.). Routledge. Anheier, H. K., Garrow, E., Lam, M., & Guihama, J. (2007). Creating opportunities: The state of the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles 2007. UCLA School of Public Affairs. Anheier, H. K., Katz, H., Lam, M., Mosley, J., & Spivak, L. (2005). Driving change: The state of the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles 2005. UCLA School of Public Affairs. Anheier, H. K., Katz, H., Mosley, J., & Hasenfeld, Y. (2003). The state of the nonprofit and community sector in greater Los Angeles: Positioning for the future – The 2003 report. UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research. Anheier, H. K., Katz, H., Mosley, J., & Spivak, L. (2004). Facing uncertainty: The state of the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles 2004. UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research. Anheier, H. K., Lam, M., & Howard, D. B. (2013). The nonprofit sector in New York City and Los Angeles. In D. Halle & A. A. Beveridge (Eds.), New York and Los Angeles: The uncertain future (pp. 513–532). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., Lam, M., Mosley, J., Garrow, E., & Guihama, J. (2006). New horizons: The state of the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles 2006. UCLA School of Public Affairs. Baum, J.  A., & Oliver, C. (1996). Toward an institutional ecology of organizational founding. Academy of Management Journal, 39(5), 1378–1427. California Health Interview Survey. (2007). CHIS 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 adult public use files. UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. DiMaggio, P. J., & Anheier, H. K. (1990). The sociology of nonprofit organizations and sectors. Annual Review of Sociology, 16, 37–159. Heikkila, E. J. (2004). What is the nature of the 21st century city? Planning Theory & Practice, 5(3), 379–387. Mosley, J. E., Katz, H., Hasenfeld, Y., & Anheier, H. K. (2003). The challenge of meeting social needs in Los Angeles: Nonprofit human service organizations in a diverse community. UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research. Putnam, R. D. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65–78. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1998). Social origins of civil society: Explaining the nonprofit sector cross-nationally. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9(3), 213–248. Young, D. (2017). Financing nonprofits and other social enterprises: A benefits approach. Edward Elgar.

Appendix: Helmut K. Anheier’s Publications

Authored Books Anheier, H. K.. (2014). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management and policy (2nd ed., fully revised and expanded). Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Knudsen, E. (2022, Forthcoming). Governing soft power. Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2016). Arabic Translation: ‫الإبداع يف العمل اخلريي‬: Creative philanthropy: Toward a new philanthropy for the twenty-first century. Obeikan Publishing. Anheier, H. K., & Marković-Vastag, D. (2022, Forthcoming). Gender equality in the creative industries: A comparative study. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (2022, Forthcoming). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management and policy (3rd ed., fully revised and expanded). Routledge. Anheier, H. K. (2004). Civil society: Measurement and policy dialogue. Earthscan. Anheier, H. K. (2005). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management and policy. Routledge. Anheier, H.  K., Förster, S., Mangold, J., & Striebing, C. (2017). Stiftungen in Deutschland 1: Eine Verortung. Springer. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2006). Creative philanthropy. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2019). The ambiguity of success: On the performance of philanthropic foundations. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & List, R. (2005). International dictionary of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations. Taylor & Francis. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (2001). The nonprofit sector in Germany. Manchester University Press. Hammack, D., & Anheier, H.  K. (2013). A versatile American institution: The changing ideals and realities of philanthropic foundations. Brookings.

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Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1995). Hungarian Translation: Szektor Születik. A nonprofit szektor nemzetközi összehasonlitásban. Nonprofit Kutatocsoport. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1996a). The emerging nonprofit sector. Manchester University Press. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1996b). Japanese Translation: [The Emerging Nonprofit Sector]. Diamond Publishers.

Special Journal Issues Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (1996). Organizational Failures and Bankruptcies. American Behavioral Scientist, 39(8). Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (2015). Rollback of democracy? Trajectories of democratic developments in Europe. Global Policy, 6(1). Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (2018). Philanthropic foundations: Comparative perspectives on the United States and Germany. American Behavioral Scientist, 2 issues. Anheier, H. K., & Chalmers, D. (Eds.). (2012). Changing the debate on Europe- The inaugural Dahrendorf Symposium. Global Policy, 3(1). Anheier, H. K., Chenard, M. J., & Westad, A. (2014). (Eds.). Addressing climate change – The 2013 Dahrendorf Symposium. Global Policy, 5. Anheier, H. K., & Falkner, R. (Eds.). (2017). Europe and the world: Global insecurity and power shifts. Global Policy, 8(4). Anheier, H. K., & Krlev, G. (Eds.). (2014). Welfare regimes, policy reforms, and hybridity. American Behavioral Scientist, 58(11). Anheier, H. K., & Krlev, G. (Eds.). (2015). Governance and management of hybridity. International Studies of Management & Organization. Anheier, H. K., & O’Halley, J. (Eds.). (2018). Ten years after the financial crisis: Lessons learned, lessons forgotten. Global Policy, 9(S1). Falkner, R., & Anheier, H.  K. (Eds.). (2017). Europe and the World: Rethinking Europe’s external relations in an age of global turmoil. International Politics, 54(4). Kendall, J., & Anheier, H.  K. (Eds.). (1998). The third sector at the crossroads. Special issue of Voluntas, The International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. Kendall, J., Anheier, H.  K., & Potucek, M. (Eds.). (2000). Ten years after: Civil society and the third sector in central and eastern Europe. Special Issue of Voluntas, The International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations. Krlev, G., Mildenberger, G., & Anheier, H. K. (2020). Special Issue: Innovation and societal transformation – what changes when the ‘social’ comes in? International Review of Applied Economics, 34(5), 529–540.

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Edited Books Anheier, H.  K. (Ed.). (1996). Organizational failures and bankruptcies. Special Issue of The American Behavioral Scientist. Sage. Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (1999). When things go wrong: Failures, bankruptcies, and breakdowns in organizations. Sage. Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (2001). Social services in Europe. Ministry of Family, Health, Elderly and Youths and European Observatory for the Development of Social Services [Updated and expanded version published in 2003]. Anheier, H. K., Glasius, M., & Kaldor, M. (Eds.). (2001). Global civil society 2001 [translated into Korean in 2004, Arabic in 2005 and French in 2008]. Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Isar, R. (eds.). (2008). The cultural economy. In The cultures and globalization series (Vol. 2). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Isar, R. (Eds.). (2011). Cultural heritage, memory and identity. In The culture and globalization series (Vol. 4). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Isar, R. (Eds.). (2012). Cities, cultural policy and governance. In The culture and globalization series (Vol. 5). Sage. Anheier, H. K., Isar, R., & Waterman, C. (Eds.). (2010). Cultural expression, creativity and innovation. In The cultures and globalization series (Vol. 3). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Juergensmeyer, M. (Eds.). (2012). Global studies encyclopedia (5 Vols.). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Kumar, S. (Eds.). (2003). Social services in Europe [Updated and expanded version of 2001 publication]. ISS. Anheier, H.  K., & Toepler, S. (Eds.). (1999). Private funds and public purpose, philanthropic foundations in international perspectives [publication in Korean, 2004]. Plenum Publishers. Anheier, H.  K., & Toepler, S. (Eds.). (2010). International encyclopedia of civil society (3 Vols.). Springer. Helmut Anheier (Ed.). (2022). The future of the liberal order: The key questions. Routledge. Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (1998). Stiftungen für eine zukunftsfähige Bürgergesellschaft. Maecenata Verlag. Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (2006). Innovations in strategic philanthropy. Springer. Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (2013). Governance challenges & innovations. Financial and fiscal governance. Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K., & Baums, T. (Eds.). (2020). Advances in corporate governance: Comparative perspectives. Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & BenNer, A. (Eds.). (2003). The study of the nonprofit enterprise: Theories and approaches. Plenum, Kluwer. Anheier, H. K., & Daly, S. (Eds.). (2006). The politics of foundations: A comparative analysis. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., Förster, S., Mangold, J., & Striebing, C. (Eds.). (2017). Stiftungen in Deutschland 2: Wirkungsfelder. Springer.

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Anheier, H. K., Förster, S., Mangold, J., & Striebing, C. (Eds.). (2017). Stiftungen in Deutschland 3: Portraits und Themen. Springer. Anheier, H. K., Haber, M., & Kayser, M. (Eds.). (2018). Governance indicators: Impact and promise. Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Hammack, D. (2010). American foundations. Roles and contributions. The Brookings Institution Press. Anheier, H.  K., & Hurrelmann, K. (Eds.). (2014). Die Hauptstädter: Berlin 25 Jahre nach dem Fall der Mauer. Hofmann & Campe. Anheier, H. K., & Isar, R. (2007). Conflicts and tension. In The cultures and globalization (Vol. 1). Sage. Anheier, H.  K., Kaldor, M., & Glasius, M. (Eds.). (2004). Global civil society 2004/5. Sage. Anheier, H.  K., Kaldor, M., & Glasius, M. (Eds.). (2006). Global civil society 2006/7. Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Kendall, J. (Eds.). (2001). The nonprofit sector at the crossroad: A comparative policy analysis. Routledge. Anheier, H. K., Mildenberger, G., & Krlev, G. (Eds.). (2019). Social innovations: Comparative perspectives. Routledge. Anheier, H.  K., Priller, E., Seibel, W., & Zimmer, A. (Eds.). (1997). Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland. Sigma. Anheier, H.  K., Rossi, G., & Boccacin, L. (Eds.). (2008). The social generative action of the third sector. Comparing international experiences. V&P. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (Eds.). (1998). The nonprofit sector in the developing world. Manchester University Press. Anheier, H.  K., Schröder, A., & Then, V. (Eds.). (2012). Soziale Investitionen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven. VS Verlag. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (Eds.). (1990). The third sector: Comparative studies of nonprofit organizations. De Gruyter. Anheier, H. K., & Then, V. (Eds.). (2004). Zwischen Eigennutz und Gemeinwohl: Neue Formen und Wege der Gemeinnützigkeit. Bertelsmann. Anheier, H. K., Thümler, E., Bögelein, N., & Beller, A. (Eds.). (2014). Philanthropy and education. Strategies for impact. Palgrave Macmillan. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (Eds.). (2020). The Routledge companion to nonprofit management. Routledge. Helmut K.  Anheier et  al (Eds.). (2008). Global civil society 2007/2008. Communicative power and democracy. Sage. Anheier, H. K., et al. (Eds.). (2009). Global civil society 2009: Poverty and activism. Sage. Anheier, H.  K., et  al. (Eds.). (2011). Global civil society 2011. Global justice. Palgrave. Anheier, H.  K., & Lorentz, B. (Eds.). (2012). Bridging the trust divide. Cultural diplomacy and fostering understanding between China and the West. Stiftung Mercator & German Council of Foreign Relations.

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Blümle, B., Anheier, H.  K., & Schauer, R. (Eds.). (1995). Der Nonprofit Sektor: Zum Stand der Forschung in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Trauner Universitätsverlag. Galsius, M., Kaldor, M., & Anheier, H. K. (Eds.). (2002). Global civil society 2002. Oxford University Press. Glasius, M., Kaldor, M., & Anheier, H.  K. (Eds.). (2005). Global civil society 2005/6. Sage. Kaldor, M., Anheier, H. K., & Glasius, M. (Eds.). (2003). Global civil society 2003. Oxford University Press. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (Eds.). (1997). Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-national analysis. Manchester University Press. Schauer, R., Anheier, H. K., & Blümle, B. (Eds.). (1997). Der Nonprofit Sektor im Aufwind—Zur wachsenden Bedeutung von Nonprofit Organizationen auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene. Trauner Universitätsverlag. Schauer, R., Blümle, E.-B., Witt, D., & Anheier, H. K. (Eds.). (2000). NonprofitOrganisationen im Wandel. Universitätsverlag Trauner. Other Book Publications as Principal Investigator/Academic Lead: Hertie School of Governance. The Governance Report. Oxford University Press: 2013—Financial crisis, governance readiness, sovereignty 2014—Governance capacities 2015—Europe 2016—Infrastructure 2017—Democracy 2018—Ten Years After: Governance Capacity after the Global Financial Crisis

Articles in Journals Abels, C.  M., Anheier, H.  K., Begg, I., & Featherstone, K. (2020a). Enhancing Europe’s power: A rejoinder. Global Policy, 11(3), 395–399. Abels, C.  M., Anheier, H.  K., Begg, I., & Featherstone, K. (2020b). Enhancing Europe’s global power: A scenario exercise with eight proposals. Global Policy, 11(1), 128–142. Anheier, H. K. (1987a). Structural analysis and strategic research design: Studying politicized inter-organizational networks. Sociological Forum, 2, 563–582. Anheier, H.  K. (1987b). Vergleichende Aspekte zur Rolle von Nicht-­ Regierungsorganisationen in Afrika. Internationales Afrika-Forum, 23(2), 183–190. Anheier, H. K. (1987c). The socio-genesis of psychological disorders among factory workers in developing countries: The case of Nigeria. International Sociology, 2(3), 219–234. Anheier, H. K. (1990a). Themes in international research on non-profit organizations. The Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 19(4), 371–391.

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Anheier, H. K. (1990b). Zur internationalen Forschung über den Nonprofit-Sektor: Themen und Ansätze. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 30(2), 163–180. Anheier, H. K. (1991a). Employment and earnings in the German nonprofit sector: Structure and trends. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 62(4), 673–694. Anheier, H. K. (1991b). Las Fundaciones en Alemania: Este y Oste. The Economist, 51, 28–41. Anheier, H. K. (1992). Economic environment and business behavior: A study of informal sector economies in Nigeria. World Development, 20(11), 1573–1585. Anheier, H. K. (1995a). Nonprofit sector theories: Three issues. The Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 24(1), 101–115. Anheier, H. K. (1995b). Quatre Aspects de la Recherche Comparative sur le Secteur Sans But Lucratif. Revues des Etudes Cooperatives, Mutualistes et Associatives, 55(3), 59–68. Anheier, H.  K. (1995c). Vergleichende Forschung zum Nonprofit-Sektor: Vier Fragestellungen. Journal für Sozialforschung, 35(1), 15–26. Anheier, H.  K. (1996). Organizational failures and bankruptcies: What are the issues? American Behavioral Scientist, 39(8), 950–959. Anheier, H. K. (1997). ‘Clean models of individual rationality’ vs. ‘Dirty hands of institutions’: William Brustein’s sociology of Nazism. American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 199–209. Anheier, H.  K. (1999). Dimensionen der Zivilgesellschaft: Eine vergleichende Analyse. Berliner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 9(2), 197–212. Anheier, H. K. (2001). Dimensions of the Third Sector: Comparative perspectives on structure and change. Journal of Youth Studies, 4(2), 3–27. Anheier, H. K. (2005). Measure for measure: A commentary on Heinrich and the state of civil society indicators research. Journal of Civil Society, 1(3), 241–246. Anheier, H. K. (2007). Bringing civility back in – Reflections on global civil society. Development Dialogue, 49, 41–50. Anheier, H.  K. (2009). What kind of nonprofit sector  – What kind of society? Comparative policy reflections. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(7), 1082–1094. Anheier, H. K. (2012). Zivilgesellschaft und Krisen: Dahrendorf’sche Reflektionen. Leviathan. Berliner Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft, 40, 421–440. Anheier, H.  K. (2014a). Civil society research: Ten years on. Journal of Civil Society, 10(4), 335–339. Anheier, H. K. (2014b). Institutional voids and the role of civil society: The case of global finance. Global Policy, 5(1), 23–35. Anheier, H.  K. (2015a). Current trajectories of democracy  – Diagnosis, implications, proposals. Global Policy, 6(1), 1–3. Anheier, H. K. (2015b). How to rule the void? Policy responses to a ‘hollowing out’ of democracy. Global Policy, 6(1), 127–129. Anheier, H. K. (2017a). Civil society challenged: Towards an enabling policy environment. Economics, 11(2017–29).

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Anheier, H. K. (2017). Of hiding hands and other ways of coping with uncertainty: A commentary. Social Research, 83(4), 1005–1010. Anheier, H. K. (2018a). The United Nations and civil society in times of change: Four propositions. Global Policy, 9(3), 291–300. Anheier, H. K. (2018b). Philanthropic foundations in cross-national perspective: A comparative approach. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(12), 1591–1602. Anheier, H. K. (2019a). Towards the new Laswell school of public policy. Global Policy, 10(1), 104–106. Anheier, H.  K. (2019b). The future of public policy schools. Global Policy, 10(1), 75–83. Anheier, H. K. (2020). Cultures, values, and identities: What are the issues? Global Perspectives, 1(1). Anheier, H. K., & BenNer, A. (1997a). The shifting boundaries: Long-terms changes in the size of the forprofit, nonprofit, cooperative and government sectors. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 68(3), 335–354. Anheier, H.  K., & BenNer, A. (1997b). Grenzverschiebungen: langfristige Veränderungen des Umfangs von gewinnorientiertem, Nonprofit-, genossenschaftlichem und staatlichem Sektor. Zeitschrift für Gemeinwirtschaft, 3–4, 30–49. Anheier, H. K., & Brincker, G.-S. (2012). Setting the stage: Lord Ralf Dahrendorf and the European project. Global Policy, 3(1), 6–8. Anheier, H. K., & Falkenhain, M. (2012). Europe’s Stratified social space: Diagnosis and remedies. Global Policy, 3(1), 52–61. Anheier, H. K., & Falkner, R. (2017). Europe challenged: An introduction to the special issue. Global Policy, 8(4), 5–8. Anheier, H. K., & Filip, A. The Dahrendorf quandary, crisis severity, and country performance. Global Policy, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-­5899.12901 Anheier, H. K., & Filip, A. The Rodrik Trilemma and the Dahrendorf quandary: An empirical assessment. Global Perspectives, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/ gp.2021.21245 Anheier, H. K., & Gerhards, J. (1991a). The acknowledgement of literary influence: A structural analysis of a German literary network. Sociological Forum, 6(1), 137–156. Anheier, H. K., & Gerhards, J. (1991b). Literary myths and social structure. Social Forces, 69(3), 811–830. Anheier, H.  K., & Gerhards, J. (1993). Der Mythos vom Schriftsteller und was dahinter steckt. Ein empirischer Beitrag zur Basis-Überbauproblematik. Journal für Sozialforschung, 33(2), 121–138. Anheier, H. K., & Haley, J. A. (2018). Ten years after the global financial crisis: An introduction. Global Policy, 9(Suppl 1), 5–6. Anheier, H. K., & Kendall, J. (2002). Trust and the voluntary sector. British Journal of Sociology, 53(3), 343–362. Anheier, H.  K., & Knapp, M. (1990). VOLUNTAS.  An editorial statement. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 1(1), 1–13.

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Anheier, H. K., & Krlev, G. (2014). Welfare regimes, policy reforms, and hybridity—An introduction. American Behavioral Scientist, 58(11), 1395–1411. Anheier, H. K., & Krlev, G. (2015). Guest editor’s introduction - Governance and management of hybridity. International Studies of Management & Organization, 45(3), 193–206. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2007). La gestione delle fondazioni filanthropiche: le sfide della creativita. Politiche Sociali E Service, IX, 43–62. Anheier, H.  K., & Leat, D. (2013). Philanthropic foundations: What rationales? Social Research, 80(2), 449–472. Anheier, H. K., & Neidhardt, F. (1998). The NSDAP in Munich: Membership profile and development 1925–1930. American Behavioral Scientist, 41(9), 1219–1236. Anheier, H.  K., & Ohlemacher, T. (1996). Aktivisten, Netzwerke und Bewegungserfolg: Die ‘Einzelmitglieder’ der NSDAP 1925–30. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 48(4), 677–703. Anheier, H. K., & Priller, E. (1991). The nonprofit sector in East Germany: Before and after unification. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 2(1), 78–94. Anheier, H. K., & Romo, F. P. (1992). Modelle strukturellen Versagens in Policy-­ Netzwerken. Journal für Sozialforschung, 32(1), 33–60. Anheier, H. K., & Rudney, G. (1998). An input-output analysis of the German and U.S. nonprofit sector. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 69(1), 5–31. Anheier, H. K., & Ruser, A. (2014). The EU’s future role on the global stage. Global Policy, 5, 58–67. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (1992). Genese und Schwerpunkte Internationaler Forschung zum Nonprofit-Sektor. Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegung, 5(4), 40–48. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (1999). Volunteering in cross-national perspective: Initial comparisons. Law and Contemporary Problems, 62(4), 43–66. Anheier, H. K., & Savelsberg, J. J. (1984). A review essay on recent urban social science in West Germany. Urban Affairs Quarterly, 19(3), 303–314. Anheier, H. K., & Striebing, C. (2018). Foundations in Germany: Culture and the arts. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(12), 1735–1756. Anheier, H. K., & Themudo, N. (2005). Governance and management of international membership organizations. The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 11(2), 185–198. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (2019). Policy neglect: The true challenge to the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit Policy Forum, 10(4). Anheier, H.  K., & Toepler, S. (2020). Zivilgesellschaft zwischen Repression und Vernachlässigung. Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen, 33(3), 587–600. Anheier, H. K., Knapp, M., & Salamon, L. M. (1993a). Pas de chiffres, pas de politique: EUROSTAT et le secteur sans but lucratif. Revues des Etudes Cooperatives, Mutualistes et Associatives, 46(2), 87–96. Anheier, H. K., Rudney, G., & Salamon, L. M. (1993b). The nonprofit sector and the United Nations system of accounts: Country applications of SNA guidelines.

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4(4) (Special Issue on National Accounting and the Nonprofit Sector, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.), 486–501. Anheier, H.  K., Gerhards, J., & Romo, F.  P. (1995). Forms of capital and social structure in cultural fields: Examining Bourdieu’s social topography. American Journal of Sociology, 100(4), 859–903. Anheier, H. K., Toepler, S., & Sokolowski, W. (1997). Implications of government funding for nonprofit organizations: Three propositions. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 10(3), 190–213. Anheier, H. K., Neidhardt, F., & Vortkamp, W. (1998). The ups and downs of the Nazi movement: Activity cycles of the Munich NSDAP, 1925–30. American Behavioral Scientist, 41(9), 1262–1281. Anheier, H.  K., Neidhardt, F., & Vortkamp, W. (1999). Konjunkturen der NS-­ Bewegung. Aktivitäten der Münchner NSDAP, 1925–30. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 50(4), 619–643. Anheier, H. K., Priller, E., & Zimmer, A. (2001). Civil society in transition: East Germany ten years after unification. Central and Eastern European Policy Review, 15(1), 8–17. Anheier, H. K., Themudo, N., & Freise, M. (2003). Transnationale Zivilgesellschaft und Organisationsentwicklung. Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 16(2), 87–96. Anheier, H. K., Beller, A., & Haß, R. (2011). Accountability und Transparenz des Dritten Sektors in Deutschland: Ein Paradox? Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen, 24(3), 96–105. Anheier, H. K., Hass, R., & Beller, A. (2013). Accountability and transparency in the German nonprofit sector: A paradox? International Review of Public Administration, 18(3), 69–84. Anheier, H.  K., Förster, S., Mangold, J., & Striebing, C. (2018). Foundations in Germany: A portrait. American Behavioral Scientist, 62(12), 1639–1669. Anheier, H. K., Toepler, S., & Lang, M. (2019). Civil society in times of change: Shrinking, changing and expanding spaces and the need for new regulatory approaches. Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, 13. Anheier, H. K., Arora, P., Biersteker, T., Centeno, M. A., Curran, S., Messner, D., Schulz-Forberg, H., & Singh, J. P. (2020). Introducing global perspectives: An editorial essay. Global Perspectives, 1(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.11777 DiMaggio, P., & Anheier, H. K. (1990). A sociological conceptualization of the non-­ profit organizations and sectors. Annual Review of Sociology, 16, 137–159. DiMaggio, P., & Anheier, H.  K. (1991). Hungarian translation: “A nonprofit szervezetek es a nonprofit sector szociologiaja”. Nonprofit Kutatask, 1(1), 71–84. Gerhards, J., & Anheier, H.  K. (1987). Die Vergesellschaftung des Literaten: Sozialposition und soziale Netzwerke von Schriftstellern. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 16(5), 385–394. Gerhards, J., & Anheier, H. K. (1989). The literary field: An empirical investigation of Bourdieu’s sociology of art. International Sociology, 4(2), 131–146.

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Helmut, K. (1997). Anheier, Eckhard Priller and Annette Zimmer “Der Nonprofit Sektor in den neuen Bundesländern: Kontinuität, Neuanfang oder Kopie?”. Zeitschrift für öffentliche und gemeinwirtschaftliche Unternehmen, 20(1), 58–76. Kendall, J., & Anheier, H. K. (1999). The third sector and the European Union policy process: An initial assessment. Journal of European Public Policy, 6(2), 283–307. Romo, F. P., & Anheier, H. K. (1996). Organizational success and failure: A network approach. American Behavioral Scientist, 39(8), 1057–1079. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1992a). Toward an understanding of the international nonprofit sector. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 2(3), 311–324. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1992b). In search of the nonprofit sector I: The question of definitions. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 3(2), 125–161. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1992c). In search of the nonprofit sector II: The problem of classification. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 3(3), 267–309. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1993). Mapping the nonprofit sector cross-­ nationally: A comparative methodology. Voluntas, 4(4) (Special Issue on National Accounting and the Nonprofit Sector, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.), 530–554. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1994). The nonprofit sector: A Global force [in Bulgarian]. Bulgarian Sociological Review, 19(1–2), 3–28. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1997). The civil society sector. Society, 34(4), 60–65. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1998a). Social origins of civil society: Explaining the nonprofit sector cross-nationally. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9(3), 213–247. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1998b). On developing comparative nonprofit-­ sector theory: A reply to Steinberg and Young, and Ragin. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9(3), 271–281.

Contributions to Edited Volumes Albrow, M., & Anheier, H. K. (2006). Violence and the possibility of global civil society. In H. K. Anheier, M. Kaldor, & M. Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society 2006/07 (pp. 1–18). Sage. Anheier, H.  K. (2000b). Social economy, third sector, undeclared work and the informal economy. In German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (Ed.), Informal sector, shadow economy and civic society as a challenge for the European sciences (pp.  9–34). German Federal Ministry for Education and Research.

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Anheier, H.  K. (2000c). Der Dritte Sektor in Europa: Ansätze für eine Forschungsagenda. In Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Ed.), Informelle Ökonomie, Schattenwirtschaft und Zivilgesellschaft als Herausforderung für die Europäische Sozialforschung (pp.  9–40). Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. Anheier, H.  K. (2013b). Governance: What are the issues?” In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), The governance report 2013 (pp.  11–32). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K. (2013c). Recommendations and conclusion. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), The governance report 2013 (pp.  149–162). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K. (2017a). Democracy challenged. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.). The governance report 2017 (pp. 13–20). Anheier, H. K. (2017b). Innovations at a glance. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.). The governance report 2017 (pp. 165–175). Anheier, H. K., & Alter, R. (2016a). The infrastructure challenge: Changing needs, persistent myths. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), The governance report 2016 (pp. 15–30). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K., & Alter, R. (2016b). Improving infrastructure governance: Implications and recommendations. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), The governance report 2016 (pp. 175–188). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., Cingolani, L., Hallerberg, M., Kaufmann, S., List, R. R., Pisani-­ Ferri, J., Wegrich, K., & Ziaja, S.. (2018b). Global crise and governance  – Lessons, implications, recommendations. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), The governance report 2018 (pp. 105–118). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Fliegauf, M. (2013). The contribution of innovation research to understanding governance innovation: A review. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), Governance challenges and innovations. financial and fiscal governance (pp. 137–169). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Kaufmann, S. (2016). Governance innovations: Infrastructure. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.),. The governance report 2016 (pp. 125–148). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K., Kaufmann, S., & Ziaja, S. (2018a). Ten years after: The global financial and economic crisis  – Impact and implications. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), The governance report 2018 (pp.  13–28). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Korreck, S. (2013). Governance innovations. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.),. The governance report 2013 (pp.  83–116). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2012). Rumo a Fundações Comunitárias Criativas: Uma Análise Preliminar. In P. deCourcy Hero & P. Walkenhorst (Eds.), Missão Local Visão Global. Fundações Comunitárias no Século XXI (pp. 323–348). Insular. Anheier, H. K., & Mertens, S. (2003). International and European perspectives on the nonprofit sector: Data, theory, statistics. In Organization for Economic

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Cooperation and Development (Ed.), The nonprofit sector in a changing economy (pp. 269–292). OECD. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M.. (2000). Nonprofit institutions and the household sector. In United Nations Statistics Division (Ed.), Household accounting: ­Experience in concepts and compilation (Series F, No. 75, Vol. 1, pp. 275–300). United Nations. Anheier, H. K., Stanig, P., & Kayser, M. (2013b). Introducing a new generation of governance indicators. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), The governance report 2013 (pp. 117–148). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H., & Daly, S. (2006a). Philanthropic foundations in modern society. In H. K. Anheier & S. Daly (Eds.), Politics of foundations: A comparative analysis (pp. 3–26). Routledge. Anheier, H., & Daly, S. (2006c). Comparing foundation visions. In H. K. Anheier & S.  Daly (Eds.), Politics of foundations: A comparative analysis (pp.  45–58). Routledge. Anheier, H., & Daly, S. (2006d). Combining roles and visions: Patterns and implications. In H. K. Anheier & S. Daly (Eds.), Politics of foundations: A comparative analysis (pp. 59–72). Routledge. Anheier, H. K. (1987a). Indigenous voluntary associations, non-profits and development in Africa. In W. Powell (Ed.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (pp. 416–433). Yale University Press. Anheier, H.  K. (1987b). Mittelschichten: Afrika. In P.  Waldmann (Ed.), Pipers Wörterbuch zur Politik 6 (pp. 352–353). Piper Verlag. Anheier, H. K. (1989). Private Voluntary Organizations and Development in West Africa: Comparative Perspective. In E. James (Ed.), Non-Profit organizations: Comparative perspectives (pp. 339–357). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K. (1990a). Institutional choice and organizational behavior in the third sector. In H. K. Anheier & W. Seibel (Eds.), The third sector: Comparative studies of nonprofit organizations (pp. 47–52). De Gruyter. Anheier, H. K. (1990b). A profile of the third sector in west Germany. In H. K. Anheier & W. Seibel (Eds.), The third sector: Comparative studies of nonprofit organizations (pp. 313–331). De Gruyter. Anheier, H. K. (1990c). Private voluntary organizations and the third world: The case of Africa. In H. K. Anheier & W. Seibel (Eds.), The third sector: Comparative studies of nonprofit organizations (pp. 361–376). De Gruyter. Anheier, H.  K. (1991). West Germany: The ambiguities of peak associations. In R. Wuthnow (Ed.), Between states and markets: The public sphere in advanced industrial societies (pp. 64–93). Princeton University Press. Anheier, H. K. (1992a). An elaborate network: Profiling the third sector in Germany. In B. Gidron, R. Kramer, & L. M. Salamon (Eds.), Government and the nonprofit sector: Emerging relationships in welfare states (pp. 31–56). Jossey-Bass. Anheier, H.  K. (1992b). Voluntary Associations in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. In A.  Zimmer (Ed.), Vereinswesen heute  – Zwischen Tradition und Innovation (pp. 257–276). Birkhäuser Verlag.

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Anheier, H. K. (1993). Employment and earnings in the german nonprofit sector: Structure and trends. In A. Ben-Ner & B. Gui (Eds.), The nonprofit sector in the mixed economy (pp. 183–204). University of Michigan Press. Anheier, H.  K. (1994). A comparative analysis of institutional development and NGOs in Africa. In E. Sandberg (Ed.), The changing politics of non-­governmental organizations and African states (pp. 139–168). Praeger Publishers. Anheier, H.  K. (1997a). Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland: Eine quantitative Strukturbeschreibung. In H.  K. Anheier, E.  Priller, W.  Seibel, & A.  Zimmer (Eds.), Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland (pp. 29–74). Sigma. Anheier, H.  K. (1997b). Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich. In R.  H. Jung (Ed.), Ökonomisierung und Europäisierung als Herausforderung für die Betriebe der Gesundheits- und Sozialwirtschaft (pp. 13–32). IKO Verlag. Anheier, H. K. (1998a). Der Dritte Sektor und der Staat. In R. G. Strachwitz (Ed.), Dritter Sektor—Dritte Kraft (pp. 351–368). Raabe Verlag. Anheier, H. K. (1998b). Dritter Sektor und Zivilgesellschaft. In R. G. Strachwitz (Ed.), Dritter Sektor—Dritte Kraft (pp. 13–22). Raabe Verlag. Anheier, H.  K. (1998c). Stiftungen in Zahlen: Eine sozialökonomische Strukturbeschreibung deutscher Stiftungen. In B.  Stiftung (Ed.), Handbuch Stiftungen (pp. 47–82). Gabler. Anheier, H.  K. (1999). Kritische Bemerkungen zur Reform des deutschen Stiftungsrechts— erste Analysen. In B.  Stiftung & M.  Institute (Eds.), Expertenkommission zur Reform des Stiftungs- und Gemeinnützigkeitsrechts (pp. 225–236). Bertelsmann. Anheier, H. K. (2000a). Wandlungsprozesse im Dritten Sektor: Ein organisationstheoretischer Versuch. In R. Schauer, E.-B. Blümle, D. Witt, & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Nonprofit-Organisationen im Wandel (pp.  15–30). Universitätsverlag Trauner. Anheier, H.  K. (2001a). Foundations in Europe: A comparative perspective. In A. Schlueter, V. Then, & P. Walkenhorst (Eds.), Foundation handbook Europe (pp. 35–82). Directory of Social Change. Anheier, H.  K. (2001b). Article ‘voluntary associations, sociology of, ’. In N.  Smelser & P.  B. Baltes (Eds.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (pp. 16302–16306). Elsevier. Anheier, H. K. (2001c). Measuring global civil society. In H. K. Anheier, M. Glasius, & M.  Kaldor (Eds.), Global civil society 2001 (pp.  221–230). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K. (2001d). Facets of the third sector: A comparative analysis of scale and structure. In K. Ernst, M. Halbertsma, & S. Janssen (Eds.), Trends and strategies in the arts and cultural industries (pp. 105–126). van Dorn. Anheier, H. K. (2001e). De derde sector in Europa: een essay over groei structuurverandering. In A.  Burger & P.  Dekker (Eds.), Noch Markt, noch Staat (pp. 271–286). Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. Anheier, H. K. (2003a). Movement development and organizational networks: The role of single members in the German Nazi Party, 1925–1930. In M. Diani &

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D. McAdam (Eds.), Social movements and networks: Relational approached to collective action (pp. 49–78). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K. (2003b). Dimensions of the nonprofit sector: Comparative Perspectives on structure and change. In H. K. Anheier & A. BenNer (Eds.), The study of nonprofit enterprise: Theories and approaches (pp.  247–276). Plenum/Kluwer. Anheier, H. K. (2003c). The nonprofit sector and health care: A cross-national view. In J.  M. Kovacs (Ed.), Small transformations—The politics of welfare reform east and west (pp. 3–23). Lit Verlag and Transaction. Anheier, H. K. (2003d). Das Stiftungswesen in Zahlen: Eine sozial-ökonomische Strukturbeschreibung deutscher Stiftungen. In B.  Stiftung (Ed.), Handbuch Stiftungen (pp. 47–82). Gabler. Anheier, H. K. (2006). Global perspectives: Introduction. In H. K. Anheier (Ed.), Innovations in strategic philanthropy (pp. 117–120). Springer. Anheier, H. K. (2007a). Introducing cultural indicator suites. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), Conflicts and tension (The culture and globalization series) (Vol. 1, pp. 335–348). Sage. Anheier, H. K. (2007b). Nongovernmental organizations. In G. Ritzer & C. Rojek (Eds.), The Blackwell encyclopedia of sociology. Anheier, H. K. (2008a). Cultural indicator suites. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), The cultural economy (The culture and globalization series) (Vol. 2, pp. 327–332). Sage. Anheier, H.  K. (2008b). What kind of nonprofit sector, what kind of society? Comparative policy reflections. In H. K. Anheier, G. Rossi, & L. Boccacin (Eds.), The Social generative action of the third sector. Comparing international experiences (pp. 279–296). V&P. Anheier, H. K. (2009a). Über Zivilität und globale Zivilgesellschaft. In V. Rittberger (Ed.), Wer regiert die Welt und mit welchem Recht? Beiträge zur Global Governance Forschung (pp. 207–218). Nomos. Anheier, H.  K. (2009b). Stiftungen und das Hochschulwesen. In A.  Schlüter & P.  Strohschneider (Eds.), Bildung? Bildung! 26 Thesen zur Bildung als Herausforderung im 21. Jahrhundert (pp. 238–248). Berlin Verlag. Anheier, H.  K. (2010a). American foundations: Their roles and contributions in society. In H. K. Anheier & D. Hammack (Eds.), American foundations: Roles and contributions (pp. 3–28). The Brookings Institution. Anheier, H. K. (2010b). Social Science research outside the ivory tower: The role of think-tanks and civil society. In F.  Caillods (Ed.), World social science report (pp. 338–340). UNESCO and ISSC. Anheier, H.  K. (2011a). Civility and global civil society: The missing link. In D.  Kostovicova & M.  Glasius (Eds.), Bottom-up politics. An Agency-centred approach to globalization (pp. 50–60). Palgrave Macmillan. Anheier, H. K. (2011b). Introduction to part III: Environmental justice. In H. K. Anheier et  al. (Eds.), Global civil society 2011: Globality and the absence of justice (pp. 63–64). Palgrave Macmillan.

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Anheier, H. K. (2011c). Il principio di sussidiarietà in Germania: un saggio storico in chiave comparativa. In P. Donati (Ed.), Verso una società sussidiaria: Teorie e pratiche della sussidiarietà in Europa (pp. 201–218). Bononia University Press. Anheier, H. K. (2012a). Foundations in the complex cultural diplomacy environment. In H. K. Anheier & B. Lorentz (Eds.), Bridging the trust divide. Cultural diplomacy and fostering understanding between China and the West (pp. 9–16). Stiftung Mercator. Anheier, H. K. (2012b). Von Non-Profit-Organisationen und Philanthropie zu sozialer Investition –Auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Forschungs-Agenda. In H. K.Anheier, A.  Schröder, & V.  Then (Eds.), Soziale Investitionen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (pp. 17–38). VS Verlag. Anheier, H. K. (2013a). Organisationen im Widerstand. Organisationsmöglichkeiten der Civil Society. In A.  Al-Any (Ed.), Widerstand in Organisationen. Organisationen im Widerstand (pp. 207–213). Springer. Anheier, H. K. (2014). Welche Rolle kann Zivilgesellschaft in Zukunft spielen? In P.  Masuch et  al. (Eds.), Grundlagen und Herausforderungen des Sozialstaats: Denkschrift 60 Jahre Bundessozialgericht (pp. 615–628). Erich Schmidt Verlag. Anheier, H. K. (2015a). Towards a monitoring framework. In Y. R. Isar (Ed.), 2005 convention global report, re/shaping cultural policies. A decade promoting the diversity of cultural expression for development (pp. 31–42). UNESCO. Anheier, H. K. (2015b). The 2005 UNESCO convention and civil society: An initial assessment. In C.  De Beukelaer, M.  Pyykkonen, & J.  P. Singh (Eds.), Globalization, culture and development: The UNESCO convention on cultural diversity (pp. 182–202). Palgrave Macmillan. Anheier, H. K. (2015c). Foundation models in Europe. In European Foundations For Research And Innovation, (EUFORI) study. Anheier, H.  K. (2017c). Infrastructure and the Principle of the Hiding Hand. In K. Wegrich, G. Kostka, & G. Hammerschmid (Eds.), The governance of infrastructure (pp. 63–77). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K. (2018a). Governance indicators: Development and assessment. In H. K. Anheier, M. Haber, & M. Kayser (Eds.), Governance indicators: Impact and promise (pp. 1–10). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K. (2018b). The principle of the hiding hand revisited. In A.  Mica, R.  Wiśniewski, I.  Zielińska, & K.  Wyrzykowska (Eds.), The sociology of the invisible hand. Peter Lang. Anheier, H. K. (2019). The future role of civil society in a welfare state: Perspectives from Germany. In S. Kuhnle, P. Selle, & S. E. O. Hort (Eds.), Globalizing welfare: An evolving Asian-European dialogue (pp. 234–249). Anheier, H. K. (2020). Of hiding hands and other hands – An essay on a hirschmanian ‘petite idée’. In L.  Meldolesi & N.  Stame (Eds.), A passion for the possible (pp. 451–460). Anheier, H. K. (2021a). The encyclopedia of global studies revisited. In M. K. Sheikh & I. Svensson (Eds.), Religion, conflict, and global society: A festschrift celebrating Mark Juergensmeyer (pp. 223–231).

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Anheier, H.  K. (2021b). Zur Zukunft der Public Policy School: Ein Essay. In U. Bachmann & T. Schwinn (Eds.), Theorie als Beruf. Festschrift für Wolfgang Schluchter (pp. 87–106). Anheier, H. K., & Abels, C. M. (2020a). Corporate governance in comparative perspective. In H.  K. Anheier & T.  Baums (Eds.), Advances in corporate governance (pp. 1–9). Anheier, H.  K., & Abels, C.  M.. (2020b). Corporate governance: What are the issues? In H. K. Anheier & T. Baums (Eds.), Advances in corporate governance (pp. 10–42). Anheier, H.  K., & Abels, C.  M. (2020c). Advances in corporate governance: Conclusion and implications. In H. K. Anheier & T. Baums (Eds.). Advances in corporate governance (pp. 292–300). Anheier, H.  K., & Appel, A. (2006). Zivilgesellschaft. In D.  Fuchs & P.  Roller (Eds.), Hundert Grundbegriffe (pp. 340–344). Reclam. Anheier, H. K., Archambault, E., & Salamon, L. M. (1996). International comparison of giving behavior. In C. Pharoah (Ed.), Dimensions of the voluntary sector. Charities Aid Foundation. Anheier, H. K., Archambault, E., & Salamon, L. M. (1997). Das Spendenwesen im internationalen Vergleich. In H. K. Anheier, E. Priller, W. Seibel, & A. Zimmer (Eds.), Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland (pp. 197–210). Sigma. Anheier, H.  K., Beller, A., & Spengler, N. (2011a). Non-profits during times of crisis: Organizational behaviour and policy responses. In The Europa international foundation directory (20th ed., pp. 20–25). Routledge. Anheier, H.  K., Beller, A., & Spengler, N. (2011c). Non-profits during Times of Crisis: Organizational behaviour and policy responses. In The Europa international foundation directory (20th ed., pp. 25–30). Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & BenNer, A. (1997a). Changements dans les delimitations et les importances relatives des secteurs prive lucratif, non lucratif, cooperatif et public. In L. Monnier & B. Thiry (Eds.), Mutations structurelles et interet general (pp. 31–50). De Boek et Larcier. Anheier, H. K., & BenNer, A. (1997b). Cambios a largo plazo en el tamano y limites de los sectores privados con animo de lurco, sin amino de lurco y publicos. In L.  Monnier & B.  Thiry (Eds.), Cambios Estructurales a Interes General (pp. 37–58). Edita Ciriec Espania. Anheier, H. K., Carlson, L., & Kendall, J. (2001a). The nonprofit sector at the crossroad. In H. K. Anheier & J. Kendall (Eds.), The nonprofit sector at the crossroad: A comparative policy analysis (pp. 1–16). Routledge. Anheier, H. K., & Cunningham, K. (1994). The Internationalization of the nonprofit sector. In R. Herman (Ed.), Handbook of nonprofit management (pp. 100–116). Jossey-Bass. Anheier, H. K., & Daly, S. (2004). Philanthropic foundations: A new global force? In H. K. Anheier, M. Kaldor, & M. Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society 2004/5 (pp. 158–174). Sage.

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Anheier, H. K., & Daly, S. (2006b). Comparing foundation roles. In H. K. Anheier & S. Daly (Eds.), Politics of foundations: A comparative analysis (pp. 27–44). Routledge. Anheier, H.  K., Förster, S., Mangold, J., & Striebing, C. (2017a). Stiftungen in Deutschland: Rollen und Positionierungen. In H. Anheier, S. Förster, J. ­Mangold, & C. Striebing (Eds.), Stiftungen in Deutschland 2: Wirkungsfelder (pp. 1–21). Springer. Anheier, H.  K., Förster, S., Mangold, J., & Striebing, C. (2017b). Resümee und Handlungsempfehlungen. In H. Anheier, S. Förster, J. Mangold, & C. Striebing (Eds.), Stiftungen in Deutschland 2: Wirkungsfelder (pp. 371–391). Springer. Anheier, H. K., Förster, S., Mangold, J., & Striebing, C. (2017c). Einleitung und Vorgehensweise. In H. Anheier, S. Förster, J. Mangold, & C. Striebing (Eds.), Stiftungen in Deutschland 3: Portraits und Themen (pp. 1–12). Springer. Anheier, H. K., & Freise, M. (2003). Dritter Sektor und sozialer Wandel: Zwischen New Public Management und zivilgesellschaftlicher Institution. In D. Rucht & J. Kocka (Eds.), WZB Jahrbuch 2003. Sigma. Anheier, H.  K., & Freise, M. (2004). Der Dritte Sektor im Diskurs des Dritten Weges. In J. Beckert, J. Eckert, M. Kohli, & W. Streeck (Eds.), Transnationale Solidarität: Chancen und Grenzen (pp. 109–128). Campus. Anheier, H. K., Freise, M., & Themudo, N. (2005b). Entwicklungslinien der internationalen Zivilgesellschaft. In K. Birkhölzer, A. Klein, E. Priller, & A. Zimmer (Eds.), Dritter Sektor – Drittes System (pp. 17–38). VS Verlag. Anheier, H.  K., Gerstenberg, N., & Hurrelmann, K. (2014a). Was bewegt die Hauptstädter? In H.  K. Anheier & K.  Hurrelmann (Eds.), Die Hauptstädter: Berlin 25 Jahre nach dem Fall der Mauer (pp. 15–35). Hofmann & Campe. Anheier, H.  K., & Hawkes, A. (2008). Accountability in a globalizing world. In H. K. Anheier et al. (Eds.), Global civil society 2007/08 (pp. 124–143). Sage. Anheier, H.  K., & Hawkes, A. (2009). Accountability in a globalising world: International non-governmental organisations and foundations. In J.  Eurich & A. Brink (Eds.), Leadership in sozialen organisationen (pp. 193–212). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Anheier, H. K., & Hoelscher, M. (2010a). Cultural indicator suites: An introduction. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), Cultural expression, creativity and innovation (The cultures and globalization series) (Vol. 3, pp. 301–306). Sage. Anheier, H.  K., & Hoelscher, M. (2010b). Creativity, innovation, globalization: What international experts think. In H.  K. Anheier & R.  Isar (Eds.), Cultural expression, creativity and innovation (The culture and globalization series) (Vol. 3, pp. 421–436). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Hölscher, M. (2015). Cultural sustainability in small and medium-­ sized cities: What are the issues? In S.  Hristova, D.-S.  Milena, & D.  Nancy (Eds.), Culture and sustainability of European cities: Imagining Europolis. Anheier, H. K., Hurrelmann, K., & Zürn, M. (2014b). Berlin: Nie fertig, immer im Werden? In H. K. Anheier & K. Hurrelmann (Eds.), Die Hauptstädter: Berlin 25 Jahre nach dem Fall der Mauer (pp. 255–273). Hofmann & Campe.

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Anheier, H. K., & Isar, R. (2007). Introducing the cultures and globalization series. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), Conflicts and tension (The culture and globalization series) (Vol. 1, pp. 3–16). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Isar, R. (2010). Introducing the cultural and globalization series and the cultural economy. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), Cultural expression, creativity and innovation (The culture and globalization series) (Vol. 3, pp. 1–16). Sage. Anheier, H. K., Kaldor, M., & Glasius, M. (2001b). Introducing global civil society. In H.  K. Anheier, M.  Glasius, & M.  Kaldor (Eds.), Global civil society 2001 (pp. 3–22). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., Kaldor, M., & Glasius, M. (2012a). The global civil society yearbook: Lessons and insights 2001–2011. In M. Kaldor, H. L. Moore, & S. Selchow (Eds.), Global civil society 2012. Ten years of critical reflection (pp.  2–26). Palgrave Macmillan. Anheier, H.  K., & Katz, H. (2003). Mapping global civil society. In M.  Kaldor, H. K. Anheier, & M. Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society 2003 (pp. 241–258). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Katz, H. (2004). Network approaches to global civil society. In H.  K. Anheier, M.  Kaldor, & M.  Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society 2004/5 (pp. 206–221). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Katz, H. (2006). Learning from History? Comparative historical methods and researching global civil society. In M.  Glasius, M.  Kaldor, & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Global civil society 2005/6 (pp. 288–302). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Katz, H. (2009). Introducing futures research: Forecasting and scenarios. In H. K. Anheier et al. (Eds.), Global civil society 2009: Poverty and activism (pp. 238–251). Sage. Anheier, H. K., Katz, H., & Lam, M. M. (2008). Diffusion models and global civil society. In H.  K. Anheier et  al. (Eds.), Global civil society 2007/08 (pp. 245–257). Sage. Anheier, H.  K., Kehl, K., Mildenberger, G., & Spengler, N. (2011b). Zivilgesellschafts- und Engagementforschung: Bilanz, Forschungsagenden und Perspektiven. In E.  Priller, M.  Alscher, D.  Dathe, & R.  Speth (Eds.), Zivilengagement. Herausforderungen für Gesellschaft, Politik und Wissenschaft (pp. 119–133). Lit Verlag. Anheier, H. K., Knapp, M., & Salamon, L. M. (1992). No numbers, no policy: Can EUROSTAT count the nonprofit sector? In S. Saxon-Harrold & J. Kendall (Eds.), Researching the voluntary sector: A national, local and international perspective (pp. 197–205). Charities Aid Foundation. Anheier, H. K., & Kononykhina, O. (2015). Partnering with civil society. In Y. R. Isar (Ed.), 2005 convention global report, re/ shaping cultural policies. A decade promoting the diversity of cultural expression for development (pp. 89–100). UNESCO. Anheier, H. K., & Lam, M. M. (2002). Foundations and the third sector in international perspectives—An overview. In E. Publications (Ed.), The Europa interna-

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tional foundation directory (20th ed., pp. 3–14). Taylor & Francis and Europa Publications. Anheier, H. K., & Lam, M. M. (2004). Applying the civil society diamond: Case studies. In H. K. Anheier (Ed.), Civil society: Measurement, evaluation, policy (pp. 107–135). Earthscan. Anheier, H. K., & Lam, M. M. (2006). Global perspectives: Conclusion. In H. K.Anheier (Ed.), Innovations in strategic philanthropy (pp. 213–222). Springer. Anheier, H. K., & Lam, M. M. (2012). Foundations and the third sector in international perspective – An overview. In The Europa international foundation directory (21st ed.). Routledge. Anheier, H. K., Lam, M. M., & Howard, D. B. (2013a). Philanthropy and the nonprofit sector: Comparing New York and Los Angeles. In D. Halle & A. Beveridge (Eds.), New York and Los Angeles: The uncertain future. Oxford University Press. Anheier, H.  K., Lang, M., & Toepler, S. (2020c). Comparative nonprofit sector research: A critical assessment. In P. Bromley & W. W. Powell (Eds.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (3rd ed., pp. 648–676). Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2006). Creative philanthropy: Toward a New philanthropy for the twenty-first century. In B. Stiftung (Ed.), Effectiveness, efficiency and accountability in philanthropy (pp. 29–37). Bertelsmann. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2008a). Managing philanthropic foundations: The challenge of creativity. In H. K. Anheier, G. Rossi, & L. Boccacin (Eds.), The Social generative action of the third sector. Comparing international experiences (pp. 49–78). V&P. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2008b). Managing philanthropic foundations for creativity. In C.  Wankel (Ed.), 21st century management: A reference handbook (pp. 510–517). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2011). Zu einer neuen Philanthropie des 21. Jahrhunderts: Perspektiven für Förderstiftungen. In J.  Kocka & G.  Stock (Eds.), Stiften, Schenken, Prägen. Zivilgesellschaftliche Wissenschaftsförderung im Wandel (pp. 101–115). Campus. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2016). The creative value of foundations in a democracy. In M. Moody & B. Breeze (Eds.), The philanthropy reader (pp. 342–345). Routledge. Anheier, H.  K., & List, R. (2013). Governance: Issues and Frameworks. In Governance Challenges & Innovations. Financial and Fiscal Governance (pp. 3–21). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Moulton, L. (1999a). Organizational failures, bankruptcies, and breakdown—An introduction. In H. K. Anheier (Ed.), When things go wrong: Failures, bankruptcies, and breakdowns in organizations (pp. 3–16). Sage. Anheier, H.  K., & Moulton, L. (1999b). Studying failures: The way ahead. In H. K. Anheier (Ed.), When things go wrong: Failures, bankruptcies, and breakdowns in organizations (pp. 273–290). Sage. Anheier, H.  K., & Nassauer, A. (2015). The ‘swarm intelligence’ and occupy  recent subterranean politics in Germany. In M.  Kaldor & S.  Selchow (Eds.), Subterranean politics in Europe (pp. 94–118). Palgrave Macmillan.

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Anheier, H.  K., & Neidhardt, F. (1993). Zur soziografischen Entwicklung der NSDAP in München 1925–1930: Nicht Außenseiter, sondern Volkspartei. In S.  München (Ed.), München  – “Hauptstadt der Bewegung” (pp.  179–186). Klinkhardt & Biermann. Anheier, H.  K., & Priller, E. (1997). Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland: Eine Sozialökonomische Strukturbeschreibung. In R. Jung et al. (Eds.), Sozialökonomie in Europa (pp. 68–92). Europa-Verlag. Anheier, H.  K., Priller, E., & Zimmer, A. (2000). Zur zivilgesellschaftlichen Dimension des Dritten Sektors. In H.-D. Klingemann & F. Neidhardt (Eds.), Zur Zukunft der Demokratie (pp. 71–98). Sigma. Anheier, H.  K., & Romo, F. (1999b). Foundations in Germany and the United States: A comparative analysis. In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), Private funds and public purpose, philanthropic foundations in international perspectives (pp. 79–120). Plenum Publishers. Anheier, H.  K., & Romo, F.  P. (1995). Democratic organizational development: Elite control, free riders and the social infrastructure. In H.  E. Chehabi & A. Stepan (Eds.), Politics, society and democracy: Comparative studies. Essays in honor of Juan Linz (pp. 89–110). Westview Press. Anheier, H. K., & Romo, F. P. (1999a). Stalemate: A study of structural failure. In H. K. Anheier (Ed.), When things go wrong: Failures, bankruptcies, and breakdowns in organizations (pp. 241–272). Sage. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (1993a). Zur Definition und Klassifikation von Nonprofit Organisationen. In R. Bauer (Ed.), Intermediäre Organisationen des Sozial- und Gesundheitswesens in Europa (pp. 1–16). Schäuble Verlag. Anheier, H.  K., & Salamon, L.  M. (1993b). Das Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Projekt: Zur Definition und Klassifikation des Dritten Sektors. In H.  Meulemann & A.  Elting-Camus (Eds.), Lebensverhältnisse und Soziale Konflikte im Neuen Europa (pp. 770–773). Westdeutscher Verlag. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (1998). The nonprofit sector in the developing world. In H.  K. Anheier & L.  M. Salamon (Eds.), The nonprofit sector in the developing world (pp. 1–53). Manchester University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (2006). The nonprofit sector in comparative perspective. In W. W. Powell & R. Steinberg (Eds.), The nonprofit sector: A research handbook (pp. 89–114). Yale University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Scherer, N. (2015). Voluntary actions and social movements. In D. Porta, Donatella, & M. Diani (Eds.), Oxford handbook of social movements (pp. 494–510). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., Schröder, A., & Then, V. (2012b). Soziale Investitionen – Einleitung. In H.  K. Anheier, A.  Schröder, & V.  Then (Eds.), Soziale Investitionen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (pp. 7–14). VS Verlag. Anheier, H.  K., & Seibel, H.  D. (1987a). Unternehmer: Afrika. In P.  Waldmann (Ed.), Pipers Wörterbuch zur Politik 6 (pp. 602–606). Piper Verlag. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, H. D. (1987b). Sozialstrukturen: Afrika. In P. Waldmann (Ed.), Pipers Wörterbuch zur Politik 6 (pp. 534–540). Piper Verlag.

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Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (1990). The third sector in comparative perspective: Four propositions. In H.  K. Anheier & W.  Seibel (Eds.), The third sector: Comparative studies of nonprofit organizations (pp. 379–387). De Gruyter. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (1997). Germany. In L. M. Salamon & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-national analysis (pp. 128–168). Manchester University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, W. (1998). The nonprofit sector and the transformation of eastern Europe: A comparative analysis. In W.  Powell & E.  Clemens (Eds.), Public goods and private action (pp. 177–192). Yale University Press. Anheier, H.  K., & Seibel, W. (1999). Der Nonprofit-Sektor in Deutschland. In C.  Badelt (Ed.), Handbuch der Nonprofit Organisationen: Strukturen und Management (pp. 17–39). Schaeffer und Poeschel. Anheier, H. K., & Stares, S. (2002). Introducing the global civil society index. In M.  Galsius, M.  Kaldor, & H.  K. Anheier (Eds.), Global civil society 2002 (pp. 241–254). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., Stares, S., & Grenier, P. (2005a). Social capital and life satisfaction: A comparative analysis. In W. A. Arts & L. Halman (Eds.), European values at the turn of the millennium (pp. 81–107). Koninklijke Brill. Anheier, H. K., & Striebing, C. (2017). Rollen und Positionierungen von Stiftungen in Kunst und Kultur. In H. Anheier, S. Förster, J. Mangold, & C. Striebing (Eds.), Stiftungen in Deutschland 2: Wirkungsfelder (pp. 313–369). Springer. Anheier, H. K., & Themudo, N. (2002). Organizational form of global civil society: Implications of going global. In M. Galsius, M. Kaldor, & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Global civil society 2002 (pp. 191–216). Oxford University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Then, V. (2004). Einführung. In H. K. Anheier & V. Then (Eds.), Zwischen Eigennutz und Gemeinwohl: Neue Formen und Wege der Gemeinnützigkeit (pp. 11–23). Bertelsmann Stiftung. Anheier, H. K., & Theomudo, N. (2005). The internationalization of the nonprofit sector. In R. D. Herman (Ed.), The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership & management (pp. 102–127). Jossey-Bass. Anheier, H.  K., & Toepler, S. (1996). Kommerzialisierungstendenzen amerikanischer Museen. In G. Wiese & R. Wiese (Eds.), Die Finanzen des Museums. Schriften des Freilichtmuseums Kiekeberg (pp. 155–170). Freilichtmuseum am Kiekeberg. Anheier, H.  K., & Toepler, S. (1997). Philanthropic giving and fundraising in Europe: Patterns and current developments. In D.  Burlingame (Ed.), Critical issues in fundraising (pp. 81–109). Wiley. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (1998a). Stiftungen in internationaler Perspektive. In H.  K. Anheier (Ed.), Stiftungen für eine zukunftsfähige Bürgergesellschaft (pp. 9–50). Maecenata Verlag. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (1998b). Money and the muse: Are museums becoming more commercial? In B. Weisbrod (Ed.), The commercialization of the nonprofit sector (pp. 233–248). Cambridge University Press. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (1999a). Philanthropic foundations: An international perspective. In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), Private funds and public pur-

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pose, philanthropic foundations in international perspectives (pp. 3–26). Plenum Publishers. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (1999b). Why study foundation? In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), Private funds and public purpose, philanthropic foundations in international perspectives (pp. 255–260). Plenum Publishers. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (2003). Bürgerschaftliches Engagement zur Stärkung der Zivilgesellschaft im internationalen Vergleich. In E.-K. des Deutschen Bundestages (Ed.), Bürgerschaftliches Engagement im internationalen Vergleich (pp. 13–56). Leske und Budrich. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (2004). Organizational theory and nonprofit management: An overview. In A.  Zimmer & E.  Priller (Eds.), Future of civil society: Making central European nonprofit-organizations work (pp.  253–270). VS Verlag. Anheier, H.  K., & Toepler, S. (2005). Definition und Phänomenologie der Non-­ profit Organization. In K. J. Hopt, T. von Hippel, & W. R. Walz (Eds.), Nonprofit-­ Organisationen in Recht, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (pp. 17–33). Mohr Siebeck. Anheier, H. K., & Winder, D. (2006). Local perspectives: Introduction. In H. K. Anheier (Ed.), Innovations in strategic philanthropy (pp. 3–6). Springer. Atingdui, L., Anheier, H. K., Larelya, E., & Sokolowski, W. (1998). The nonprofit sector in Ghana. In H. K. Anheier & L. M. Salamon (Eds.), The nonprofit sector in the developing world (pp. 158–197). Manchester University Press. DiMaggio, P., & Anheier, H.  K. (1993). Per una sociologia delle organizzanioni nonprofit. In U. Ascoli & S. Pasquinelli (Eds.), Il Welfare Mix. Stato Sociale e Terzo Settore (pp. 35–59). Franco Angeli. DiMaggio, P., & Anheier, H. K. (2002). A sociological conceptualization of the non-­ profit organizations and sectors. In J. Stephen Ott (Ed.), The nature of the nonprofit sector (pp. 274–287). Westview. Anheier, H. K., & Fliegauf, M. (2013). Financial governance through the lens of innovation. In Hertie School of Governance (Ed.), Governance challenges and innovations. Financial and fiscal governance (pp.  171–185). Oxford University Press. Gerhards, J., & Anheier, H. K. (1997). Das literarische Kräftefeld als ausdifferenziertes und intern stratifiziertes System. In J. Gerhards (Ed.), Soziologie der Kunst (pp. 125–142). Westdeutscher Verlag. Hammack, D., & Anheier, H. K. (2010). Looking forward: American Foundations between continuity and change. In H.  K. Anheier & D.  Hammack (Eds.), American foundations: Roles and contributions (pp. 388–402). The Brookings Institution. Helmut, K. A. (2001). Der Dritte Sektor und Arbeit in Deutschland und Europa. In C.  Groth & W.  Maenning (Eds.), Strategien gegen Jugendarbeitslosigkeit im internationalen Vergleich (pp. 169–186). Lang. Howard, D.  B., & Anheier, H.  K. (2018). Foundations in Los Angeles. In D.  C. Hamamck & S.  R. Smith (Eds.), American philanthropic foundations. regional difference and change (pp. 239–273). Indiana University Press.

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Isar, R., & Anheier, H.  K. (2007). Conflicts and tensions: Introduction. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), Conflicts and tension (The culture and globalization series) (Vol. 1, pp. 19–28). Sage. Isar, R., & Anheier, H. K. (2008). Introducing the culture and globalization series and the cultural economy. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), The cultural economy (The culture and globalization series) (Vol. 2, pp. 1–12). Sage. Isar, R., Viejo-Rose, D., & Anheier, H. K. (2011). Introduction. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), Heritage, memory, identity (The cultures and globalization series) (Vol. 4, pp. 1–20). Sage. Isar, Y. R., Hoelscher, M., & Anheier, H. K. (2012). Introduction. In H. K. Anheier & R. Isar (Eds.), Cities, cultural policy and governance (The culture and globalization series) (Vol. 5, pp. 1–12). Sage. Kaldor, M., Anheier, H. K., & Glasius, M. (2003). Global civil society in an age of regressive globalization. In M.  Kaldor, H.  K. Anheier, & M.  Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society 2003 (pp. 3–34). Oxford University Press. Kaldor, M., Anheier, H. K., & Glasius, M. (2004). Introduction. In H. K. Anheier, M. Kaldor, & M. Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society 2004/5 (pp. 1–22). Sage. Katz, H., & Anheier, H. K. (2006). Global connectedness: The structure of transnational NGO networks. In M. Glasius, M. Kaldor, & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Global civil society 2005/6 (pp. 240–265). Sage. Katz, H., Anheier, H., & Lam, M. M. (2007). Fuzzy sets approaches to the study of global civil society. In H. K. Anheier, M. Kaldor, & M. Glasius (Eds.), Global civil society 2006/07 (pp. 186–197). Sage. Kendall, J., & Anheier, H. K. (2001a). The nonprofit sector and the European Union. In H. K. Anheier & J. Kendall (Eds.), The nonprofit sector at the crossroad: A comparative policy analysis (pp. 126–152). Routledge. Kendall, J., & Anheier, H. K. (2001b). Conclusion. In H. K. Anheier & J. Kendall (Eds.), the nonprofit sector at the crossroad: A comparative policy analysis (pp. 228–250). Routledge. Klocke, A., Hurrelmann, K., & Anheier, H. K. (2010). Ziel und Aufbau der Hertie-­ Studie FrankfurtRhein/Main. In G.  Hertie-Stiftung (Ed.), Hertie-Studie FrankfurtRhein/Main (pp. 11–20). Societätsverlag. Krlev, G., & Anheier, H. K. (2020). Hybridity: Origins and effects. In H. K. Anheier & S.  Toepler (Eds.), The Routledge companion to nonprofit management (pp. 494–512). Krlev, G., Anheier, H. K., & Mildenberger, G. (2019a). Research strategy: Identifying the actors—An open approach. In H. K. Anheier, G. Mildenberger, & G. Krlev (Eds.), Social innovations: Comparative perspectives (pp. 36–48). Routledge. Krlev, G., Anheier, H. K., & Mildenberger, G. (2019b). Methods: Identifying and analysing the social innovation streams. In H. K. Anheier, G. Mildenberger, & G.  Krlev (Eds.), Social innovations: Comparative perspectives (pp.  49–74). Routledge. Krlev, G., Anheier, H. K., & Mildenberger, G. (2019c). Results: The comparative analysis. In H. K. Anheier, G. Mildenberger, & G. Krlev (Eds.), Social innovations: Comparative perspectives (pp. 257–279). Routledge.

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Krlev, G., Anheier, H. K., & Mildenberger, G. (2019d). Conclusions and implications for research, policy and practice. In H.  K. Anheier, G.  Mildenberger, & G. Krlev (Eds.), Social innovations: Comparative perspectives (pp. 280–288). Routledge. Krlev, G., & Helmut, K. (2019). Anheier and Georg Mildenberger “Introduction: Social innovation—what is it and who makes it?”. In H.  K. Anheier, G. Mildenberger, & G. Krlev (Eds.), Social innovations: Comparative perspectives (pp. 3–35). Routledge. Lester, M., & Salamon und Helmut K. Anheier. (1997). Der Dritte Sektor in internationaler Perspektive. In H.  K. Anheier, E.  Priller, W.  Seibel, & A.  Zimmer (Eds.), Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland (pp. 153–174). Sigma. Merkel, J., & Anheier, H.  K. (2014). Berlin—25 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall. In H. K. Anheier & K. Hurrelmann (Eds.), Die Hauptstädter: Berlin 25 Jahre nach dem Fall der Mauer (pp. 37–72). Hofmann & Campe. Moulton, L., & Anheier, H.  K. (2000). Public-private partnerships in the United States: Historical patterns and current trends. In S. P. Osborne (Ed.), Public private partnerships (pp. 105–119). Routledge. Romo, F. P., & Anheier, H. K. (1999). Organizational success and failure: A network approach. In H. K. Anheier (Ed.), When things go wrong: Failures, bankruptcies, and breakdowns in organizations (pp. 215–240). Sage. Salamon, L., Wojciech Sokolowski, S., & Anheier, H.  K. (2001). Sociale Oorsprungen ven de non-profitsector: een landenvergelijkling. In A. Burger & P. Dekker (Eds.), Noch Markt, noch Staat (pp. 251–270). Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1995c). En busca del sector no lucrativo I. La cuestion de las deficiones. In Umbral XXI – El desafio del tercer sector: accion voluntaria y desarrollo social (Special journal issue, , pp. 7–26). Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1992). A comparative study of the nonprofit sector: Purpose, methodology, definition, classification. In S.  Saxon-Harrold & J. Kendall (Eds.), Researching the voluntary sector: A national, local and international perspective (pp. 179–196). Charities Aid Foundation. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1994). The nonprofit sector cross-nationally: Types and patterns. In S. S. Harrold & J. Kendall (Eds.), Researching the voluntary sector (pp. 147–163). Charities Aid Foundation. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1995a). Caring sector or caring society? A comparative study. In P. Schervish & V. Hodgkinson (Eds.), The future of caring and service to the community (pp. 373–398). Jossey-Bass. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1995b). The emerging sector: The nonprofit sector in comparative perspective—An overview. In S.  Saxon-Harrold (Ed.), Dimensions of the voluntary (pp. 71–88). Charities Aid Foundation. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1997a). The challenge of definition: Thirteen realities in search of a concept. In L.  M. Salamon & H.  K. Anheier (Eds.), Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-national analysis (pp. 11–28). Manchester University Press.

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Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1997b). Toward a common definition. In L. M. Salamon & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-­ national analysis (pp. 29–50). Manchester University Press. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1997c). Toward a common classification. In L. M. Salamon & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-­ national analysis (pp. 51–100). Manchester University Press. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1997d). Conclusion. In L.  M. Salamon & H.  K. Anheier (Eds.), Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-national analysis (pp. 493–505). Manchester University Press. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1997e). Die institutionellen Grundlagen der Zivilgesellschaft. In R.  Schauer, H.  K. Anheier, & B.  Blümle (Eds.), Der Nonprofit Sektor im Aufwind—Zur wachsenden Bedeutung von Nonprofit Organizationen auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene (pp. 13–56). Trauner Universitätsverlag. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1997f). Il Settore non profit: una nuova forza globale. In G. Rossi (Ed.), Terzo settore, stato e mercato nella trasformazione delle politiche sociali in Europa (pp. 296–312). Francoangeli. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1997g). The Johns Hopkins comparative nonprofit sector project - An overview of phase 2. In C. Pharoah (Ed.), Dimensions of the voluntary sector. Charities aid foundation (pp. 285–288). Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1997h). Der Dritte Sektor in vergleichender Perspektive. In H. K. Anheier, E. Priller, W. Seibel, & A. Zimmer (Eds.), Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland (pp. 211–248). Sigma. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1998a). The third route: Social service provision in the United States and Germany. In W. Powell & E. Clemens (Eds.), Public goods and private action (pp. 151–162). Yale University Press. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1998b). Towards an understanding of the nonprofit sector in the developing world. In H. K. Anheier & L. M. Salamon (Eds.), The nonprofit sector in the developing world (pp.  348–373). Manchester University Press. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1999). The third world’s third sector. In D. Lewis (Ed.), Bridging the chasm: International perspectives on voluntary action (pp. 60–93). Earthscan. Salamon, L. M., Anheier, H. K., & Lester. (1997). Introduction: In search of the nonprofit sector. In L. M. Salamon & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-national analysis (pp. 1–9). Manchester University Press. Schröder, A., Anheier, H.  K., & Then, V. (2012). Soziale Investitionen: Schlussfolgerungen für Politik, Forschung und Sektorentwicklung. In H.  K. Anheier, A.  Schröder, & V.  Then (Eds.), Soziale Investitionen. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven (pp. 357–366). VS Verlag. Seibel, W., & Anheier, H. K. (1990). Sociological and political science approaches to the nonprofit sector. In H. K. Anheier & W. Seibel (Eds.), The third sector: Comparative studies of nonprofit organizations (pp. 7–20). De Gruyter.

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Spengler, N., & Anheier, H. K. (2009). Vorwort. In N. Spengler & H. K. Anheier (Eds.), Auf dem Weg zu einem Informationssystem Zivilgesellschaft (pp.  3–4). Zivilgesellschaft in Zahlen Band 1. Zivilgesellschaft in Zahlen. Toepler, S., & Anheier, H.  K. (2005). Theorien zur Existenz von Nonprofit-­ Organisationen. In K. J. Hopt, T. von Hippel, & W. R. Walz (Eds.), Nonprofit-­ Organisationen in Recht, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (pp. 47–63). Mohr Siebeck. Toepler, S., & Anheier, H.  K. (2020). Nonprofit management: Introduction and overview. In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.), The Routledge companion to nonprofit management (pp. 1–8).

Encyclopedia Entries In (2021). The Blackwell encyclopedia of sociology. Wiley. Nongovernmental Organizations. Nongovernmental Organizations In J. D. Wright (Ed.). (2015). International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Elsevier. Databases, Core: Economics (41032) (updated from previous version) Survey Research Centers and Companies (41079) with Nikolas Scherer Resourcing and Funding: Social/Behavioral Research (North America) (41051) Statistical Systems: Labor and Work (41074) (updated from previous version) Research and Teaching Infrastructure: Social/Behavioral Sciences (European Union) (41043) (updated from previous version) Policy Knowledge: Foundations (75035) In H. K. Anheier & M. Juergensmeyer (Eds.). (2012). Global studies encyclopedia (5 Volumes). Sage. Entries in Global Studies Encyclopedia: Civility, pp. 206–209 Cultural Observatories, pp. 335–336 Global Civil Society, pp. 198–205 Global Connectedness, pp. 269–272 Global Data Systems and Reporting, pp. 357–360 Global Intellectuals, pp. 699–700 Global Reporting Initiatives, pp. 722–724 Globalization and Transnationality Indexes, pp. 765–767 Humanitarian Intervention, pp. 826–829 Immigration, pp. 877–881 Individualism, pp. 896–898 Intelligence Agencies, pp. 981–922 International Labour Organisation, pp.932–933 Investments, pp. 964–967

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Labor, pp. 1013–1019 Mercantilism, pp. 1148–1151 Microsoft, pp. 1154–1156 OECD, pp. 1271–1273 Revolutions, pp. 1486–1490 Scripts and Writing Systems, pp.1501–1504 Secret Societies, pp. 1504–1506 Global Sites, pp. 1547–1551 World Cultures, pp. 1803–1805 In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.). (2010). International encyclopedia of civil society. Springer. Civility, pp. 475–477. Secret Societies, pp. 1355–1359 Social Investment, pp. 1427–1431 Social Origins Theory, pp. 1445–1452 In T. Mizrahi & L. E. Davis (Eds.). (2008). Encyclopedia of social work. Oxford University Press. Foundations, pp. 233–236. In (2021). The Blackwell encyclopedia of sociology. Wiley. Nongovernmental Organizations In J. D. Wright (Ed.). (2015). International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Elsevier. Databases, Core: Economics (41032) (updated from previous version) Survey Research Centers and Companies (41079) with Nikolas Scherer Resourcing and Funding: Social/Behavioral Research (North America) (41051) Statistical Systems: Labor and Work (41074) (updated from previous version) Research and Teaching Infrastructure: Social/Behavioral Sciences (European Union) (41043) (updated from previous version) Policy Knowledge: Foundations (75035) In H. K. Anheier & M. Juergensmeyer (Eds.). (2012). Global studies encyclopedia (5 Volumes). Sage. Civility, pp. 206–209 Cultural Observatories, pp. 335–336 Global Civil Society, pp. 198–205 Global Connectedness, pp. 269–272 Global Data Systems and Reporting, pp. 357–360 Global Intellectuals, pp. 699–700 Global Reporting Initiatives, pp. 722–724 Globalization and Transnationality Indexes, pp. 765–767 Humanitarian Intervention, pp. 826–829 Immigration, pp. 877–881

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Individualism, pp. 896–898 Intelligence Agencies, pp. 981–922 International Labour Organisation, pp. 932–933 Investments, pp. 964–967 Labor, pp. 1013–1019 Mercantilism, pp. 1148–1151 Microsoft, pp. 1154–1156 OECD, pp. 1271–1273 Revolutions, pp. 1486–1490 Scripts and Writing Systems, pp. 1501–1504 Secret Societies, pp. 1504–1506 Global Sites, pp. 1547–1551 World Cultures, pp. 1803–1805 In H. K. Anheier & S. Toepler (Eds.). (2010). International encyclopedia of civil society. Springer. Civility, pp. 475–477 Secret Societies, pp. 1355–1359 Social Investment, pp. 1427–1431 Social Origins Theory, pp. 1445–1452 In T. Mizrahi & L. E. Davis (Eds.). (2008). Encyclopedia of social work. Oxford University Press. Foundations, pp. 233–236

 elected Other Contributions (e.g., Reports, Commissioned S Studies, Working Papers, Book Reviews) Anheier, H. K. (1986). International directory of research on non-profit organizations, foundations and the third sector. Yale Program on Non-Profit Organizations Working Paper 119. Yale University. Anheier, H. K. (1987). Review of James F. Short, The social fabric: Dimensions and issues. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 90, 592–593. Anheier, H. K. (1997). Review of Stanley G. Payne, A history of fascism 1914–1945. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Anheier, H.  K. (1998). Hoffnungsträger Dritter Sektor? In Senatsamt für die Gleichstellung (Ed.), Neue Wege in die Arbeitszukunft (pp.  21–46). Senat der Freien Hansestadt Hamburg. Anheier, H. K. (1999). Stiftungen: Investitionen in die Zukunft der Gesellschaft. In Bertelsmann Stiftung, Industrie-Club Düsseldorf and Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Vereinigung (Eds.), Stiftungen: Investitionen in die Zukunft der Gesellschaft (pp. 9–17). Bertelsmann.

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Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (2000). Third way, third sector. Report of the Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics. London School of Economics. Anheier, H.  K. (2000). Managing nonprofit organizations: What are the issues? Working Paper 1. Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics. Anheier, H.  K. (2004). Review of John Keane, Global civil society. American Journal of Sociology, 110(1), 234–235. Anheier, H. K. (2007). Review of Peter Frumkin, Strategic giving: The art and science of philanthropy. American Journal of Sociology, 113(3), 907–909. Anheier, H. K. (2010). Globalization and the cultural economy, a case of architecture. Keynote speech prepared for the symposium global practice at the international architectural education summit, 17–19 July 2009, Tokyo (pp.  42–48). International Architectural Education Summit (Eds.). documents volume 1, Tokyo 2009. University of California, Los Angeles. Anheier, H. K. (2014). Zivilgesellschaft in Europa. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, http://www.bpb.de/politik/wahlen/europawahl/71376/zivilgesellschaft-­ in-­europa, 2014. Anheier, H. K. (2014). The Nonprofits of 2025. 10th anniversary essays. Stanford Social Innovation Review. http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_nonprofits_of_2025 Anheier, H.  K. (Principal Investigator). (2015). Positionierung und Beitrag deutscher Stiftungen: Erste Ergebnisse einer repräsentativen Umfrage. Hertie School of Governance & Universität Heidelberg (Centrum für Soziale Investitionen): Briefing Paper 1. Anheier, H. K. (2015). Sechs Thesen zur Berliner Kulturpolitik. Hertie School of Governance. Anheier, H.  K. (2015). Innovation und gesellschaftliche Balance. In Das. Deutschland-­Prinzip. W. Clement (Ed). Econ. Anheier, H.  K. (Principal Investigator). (2016). Stiftungen in Deutschland. Zusammenfassende Ergebnisse und Handlungsempfehlungen. Hertie School of Governance & Universität Heidelberg (Centrum für soziale Investitionen): Briefing Paper 2. Anheier, H. K. (Principal Investigator). (2016). Foundations and the ambiguity of success and failure. A case collection. Hertie School of Governance (updated 2017). Anheier, H. K. (Principal Investigator). (2017). Frauen in Kultur und Medien. Ein Europäischer Vergleich. Hertie School of Governance. Anheier, H. K. (2017). Civil society challenged: Towards an enabling policy environment. Economics discussion papers, No 2017–45. Institute for the World Economy. Anheier, H.  K. (Principal Investigator). (2017). Die Auswärtige Kultur- und Bildungspolitik Deutschlands im internationalen Vergleich. Zwischenbericht: Hertie School of Governance. Anheier, H. K. (Principal Investigator). (2018). Online participation in culture and politics: Towards more democratic societies? Council of Europe.

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Anheier, H. K. (Principal Investigator). (2018). The cultural values project: Cultural relations in societies in transition. A Report to the Goethe Institute and the British Council. Hertie School of Governance. Anheier, H. K. (2019). Zivilgesellschaft in Europa. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. https://www.bpb.de/politik/wahlen/europawahl/71376/ zivilgesellschaft-­in-­europa Anheier, H.  K. (2021). Philanthropy must go beyond traditional grantmaking. Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR). https://ssir.org/articles/entry/ philanthropy_must_go_beyond_traditional_grantmaking# Anheier, H. K., & Begg, I. (Eds.). (2020). Ralf Dahrendorf and the European Union 2030: Looking back, looking forward. LSE Ideas. Anheier, H. K., & Filip, A. (2020). The Rodrik Trilemma and the Dahrendorf quandary: An empirical assessment. Working Paper, Dahrendorf Forum. London School of Economics and Political Science. Anheier, H. K., & Förster, S. (2013). Kinder- und Jugendhilfe in neuer Verantwortung. Materialien zum 14. Kinder- und Jugendbericht. Sachverständigenkommission 14. Kinder- und Jugendbericht. Deutsches Jugendinstitut. Anheier, H. K., & Nassauer, A. (2012).The ‘swarm intelligence’. Mapping subterranean politics in Germany. Country Report Germany. Submitted to the Trans-­ European Research Project on Subterranean Politics in Europe at London School of Economics and Political Science, Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, Department of International Development. Anheier, H. K., Nguyen, A., & Kil, H. J. (2007). Baseline study on nonprofit organizations, philanthropy and civic engagement in Orange County. Study conducted for Orange County Community Foundation. UCLA School of Public Affairs, Center for Civil Society. Anheier, H. K., Rudney, G., & Salamon, L. M. (1992). The nonprofit sector and the United Nations System of Accounts: Definition, treatment and practice. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 4. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Anheier, H.  K., & Ruser, A. (2013) Europe’s (future) role on the global stage. Dahrendorf Symposium Paper Series. Dahrendorf Symposium, . Anheier, H.  K., & Seibel, W. (1993). Defining the nonprofit sector: Germany. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 6. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Anheier, H.  K. (1986). Review of Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 89(4), 825–828. Anheier, H.  K. (1987). Zwischen Staat und Privatwirtschaft. Deutsche Universitätszeitung, 1/2, 36–37. Anheier, H.  K. (1988). Review of Peter J.  Williamson, Varieties of corporatism: Theory and practice. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 91(1), 163–165. Anheier, H.  K. (1988). Review essay, Economic games from socialist countries. Simulations and Games, 19(3), 361–364.

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Anheier, H. K. (1991). Review of Max Kaase and Hans-Dieter Klingemann (Eds.), Wahlen und Wähler: Analysen aus Anlaß der Bundestagswahl 1987. Contemporary Sociology, 20(4), 581–582. Anheier, H. K. (1992). Entry, Non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In R. Bauer (Ed.), Lexikon des Sozial-und Gesundheitswesens (pp. 1422–1427). Oldenbourg. Anheier, H.  K. (1992). Review essay, German Sociology at the Crossroads. Contemporary Sociology, 21(5), 676–678. Anheier, H. K. (1993). Review of Volker Kirchberg, Kultur und Stadtgesellschaft. Contemporary Sociology, 22(4), 559–560. Anheier, H. K. (1993). Review of Charles Clotfelter, Who benefits from the nonprofit sector? American Journal of Sociology, 96(3), 806–807. Anheier, H. K. (1994). Review of Walter Powell and Paul DiMaggio, The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 46(2), 330–332. Anheier, H. K. (1995). Review of Richard Münch, Das Projekt Europa: Zwischen Nationalstaat, regionaler Autonomie und Weltgesellschaft. Contemporary Sociology, 24(4), 368–369. Anheier, H. K. (1995). Review of Priscilla Packhurst Fergusson, Paris As Revolution: Writing the Nineteenth-Century City. American Journal of Sociology, 101(2), 501–503. Anheier, H.  K. (1995). Review of Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism and German National Socialism. Contemporary Sociology, 24(6), 771–772. Anheier, H. K. (1995). Para una revision de las teorias economicas del sector no lucrativo. CIRIEC-Espagna, 21, 23–33. Anheier, H. K. (1996). Review of Charles Ragin and Howard Becker, what is a case. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 48(4), 791–792. Anheier, H. K. (1997). Review of Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg, Handbook of economic sociology. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 49(1), 153–154. Anheier, H.  K. (1999). Mehr als Teil einer tiefen Krise: Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland. Kommune, 17(4), IX–XI. Anheier, H. K. (2000). Zivilgesellschaft und Dritter Sektor. Deutschland, 5, 22–23. Anheier, H. K. (2001). Civil society: Measurement and policy dialogue. Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics and Civicus. Anheier, H. K. (Ed.). (2001). Organizational theory and the nonprofit form. Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics. Anheier, H. K. (2001). Nonprofit organizations and democracy: Toward a comparative research Agenda. In A. J. Abramson (Ed.), Mapping new worlds. Selected research on the nonprofit sector around the globe (pp.  17–22). The Aspen Institute. Anheier, H. K. (2009). Germany – third sector independence and the subsidiarity principle: A comparative historical essay. In M. Smerdon (Ed.), The first principle of voluntary action. Baring Foundation.

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Anheier, H. K. (2017). Eine Weltversammlung der Zivilgesellschaft: vier Thesen. Vereinte Nationen, 2/2017, 51–56. Anheier, H.  K., & Appel, A. (2004). Stiftungen in der Bürgergesellschaft: Grundlegende Fragen zu Möglichkeiten und Grenzen. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 14, 3–11. Anheier, H. K., & Begg, I. (2020). Introduction. In H. K. Anheier & I. Begg (Eds.), Ralf Dahrendorf and the European Union 2030: Looking back, looking forward (pp. 12–17). Anheier, H. K., Begg, I., & Knudsen, E. (2020). Can circles be squared? Quandaries and contestation shaping the future of Europe. In H. K. Anheier & I. Begg (Eds.), Ralf Dahrendorf and the European Union 2030: Looking back, looking forward (pp. 110–114). Anheier, H. K., Hollerweger, E., Badelt, C., & Kendall, J. (2003). Work in the nonprofit sector: Forms, patterns and methodologies. Report for the International Labor Organization. Anheier, H. K., & Howard, D. B. (2017). Foundations in Los Angeles. In D. Mitchell (Ed.), California policy options 2017 (pp.  43–75). UCLA School of Public Affairs. Anheier, H. K., Katz, H., Lam, M. M., Mosley, J., & Spivak, L. (2005). Driving change: The state of the nonprofit and community sector in Los Angeles – The 2005 report. UCLA School of Public Affairs, Center for Civil Society. Anheier, H. K., Katz, H., Mosley, J., & Hasenfeld, Y. (2003). The state of the nonprofit and community sector in greater Los Angeles. Positioning for the future – The 2003 report. UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, Center for Civil Society. Anheier, H. K., Katz, H., Mosley, J., & Spivak, L. (2004). Facing uncertainty: The state of the nonprofit and community sector in Los Angeles – The 2004 report. UCLA School of Public Affairs, Center for Civil Society. Anheier, H. K., Lam, M. K., Mosley, J., Garrow, E., & Guihama, J. (2006). New Horizons: The state of the nonprofit and community sector in Los Angeles – The 2006 report. UCLA School of Public Affairs, Center for Civil Society. Anheier, H. K., Lam, M. M., Garrow, E., & Guihama, J. (2008). The Los Angeles nonprofit sector: A profile. In D. Mitchell (Ed.), California policy options 2008 (pp. 109–139). UCLA School of Public Affairs. Anheier, H. K., Lam, M. M., Garrow, E., & Guihama, J. (2007). New horizons: The state of the nonprofit and community sector in Los Angeles. – The 2007 report. UCLA School of Public Affairs, Center for Civil Society. Anheier, H. K., Lam, M. M., Garrow, E., Howard, D. B., & Guihama, J. (2007). Arts in the balance: Art funding in Los Angeles. In Study conducted for Southern California Grantmakers. UCLA School of Public Affairs, Center for Civil Society. Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2002). From charity to creativity: Philanthropic foundations in the 21st century. Shroud.

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Anheier, H. K., & List, R. (Eds.). (2000). Cross-border philanthropy: An exploratory study of international giving in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany and Japan. Charities Aid Foundation. Anheier, H.  K., Lorentz, B., & Fratzscher, M. (2016). Governance von Infrastrukturprojekten: Internationale Best Practices und Innovationen. Hertie School of Governance. Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (1996). Il settore nonprofit: una nuova forza globale. Impresse Sociale, 29, 4–10. Anheier, H. K., & Seibel, H. D. (1987). Small-scale industries and economic development in Ghana: Business behavior and strategies in informal sector economies. Breitenbach Verlag. Anheier, H.  K., & Seibel, W. (1993). A Nonprofit Szektor És A Társadalmi Átalakulás. Europa Forum, 3, 22–37. Anheier, H.  K., & Sprengler, N. (Eds.). (2009). Auf dem Weg zu einem Informationssystem Zivilgesellschaft : Anspruch, Potentiale, Verknüpfungen. Deutscher Stifterverband. Anheier, H. K., & Toepler, S. (2002). Zivilgesellschaftliches Engagement im internationalen Vergleich. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 9, 31–38. Gidron, B., Katz, H., Anheier, H. K., & Salamon, L. M. (1999). The Israeli nonprofit sector—An overview of major economic parameters. Israeli Center for Third Sector Research. Hasenfeld, Y., Katz, H., Mosley, J., & Anheier, H. K. (2003). Serving a diverse and dynamic metropolis: The human services nonprofit sector in Los Angeles. UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, Center for Civil Society. Helmut, K., & Anheier, A. (2021). Statute for European cross-border associations and non-profit organisations. A report to the European parliament. Hopt, K., von Hippel, T., Anheier, H. K., Then, V., Ebke, W., Reimer, E., & Vahlpahl, T. (2008). Feasibility study on a European foundation statute. http://ec.europa. eu/internal_market/company/docs/eufoundation/feasibilitystudy_en.pdf Mosley, J., Katz, H., Hasenfeld, Y., & Anheier, H. K. (2003). The challenge of meeting social needs in Los Angeles: Nonprofit human service organizations in a diverse community. UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, Center for Civil Society. Priller, E., Zimmer, A., & Anheier, H. K. (1999). Der Dritte Sektor in Deutschland. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B9(99), 12–21. Romo, F. P., & Anheier, H. K. (1991). The omega phenomenon: The social infrastructure, interpersonal choice and the social periphery. The Russell Sage Foundation Working Papers 16. Russell Sage Foundation. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1992). Toward an international understanding of the nonprofit sector. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 1. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1992). In search of the nonprofit sector I: The question of definitions. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 2. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies.

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Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1992). In search of the nonprofit sector II: The problem of classification. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 3. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1994). Caring sector or caring society: Discovering the nonprofit sector cross-nationally. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 17. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1996). The third route: Subsidiarity, third-party government and the provision of social services. In Occasional Paper Series. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1996). The international classification of nonprofit organizations – ICNPO, Revision 1, 1996. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 19. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1996). The nonprofit sector: A new global force. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 21. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, 1996. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1996). Social origins of civil society: Explaining the nonprofit sector cross-nationally. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 22. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L.  M., & Anheier, H.  K. (1997). The third world’s nonprofit sector in comparative perspective. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 24. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies, 1997. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1997). Nonprofit institutions and the 1993 system of national accounts. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 25. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L. M., Anheier, H. K., & Wojtech Sokolowski and Associates. (1996). The emerging sector: A statistical supplement. Working Papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L. M., & Ohlemacher, T. (1996). Politische Unternehmer, Netzwerke und Bewegungserfolg. Die Einzelmitglieder der NSDAP, 1925–1930. Arbeitspapiere des Wissenschaftszentrums Berlin FS III 96–101. Salamon, L., Anheier, H. K., List, R., Toepler, S., & Sokolowski, W. (Eds.). (1999). Global civil society: Dimensions of the nonprofit sector. Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1994). The emerging sector – An overview. The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1994). The third route: Subsidiarity, third-party government and the provision of social services. In Innovation and employment study series occasional paper. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1997). El sector de la sociedad civil. Revista del Ministerio de Trabajo y asuntos sociales, 5, 37–48.

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Salamon, L. M., & Anheier, H. K. (1998). The emerging sector revisited. A summary. The Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies. United Nations Statistical Division. (Ed.), Anheier, H. K. (project co-director and member of drafting committee), Salamon, L. M., & Tice, H. (2003). Handbook on nonprofit institutions. United Nations.

Blogs and Related Contributions (Selection) Anheier, H. K. (2015, December 16). Barack Obama: Comeback kid 2015. Hertie School of Governance. https://www.hertie-­school.org/en/debate/allcontent/ detail/content/barack-­obama-­comeback-­kid-­2015/ Anheier, H. K. (2015, June 11). Berlin’s cultural policy: Unrealistic, over-­ambitious, dilettantish? Hertie School of Governance, https://www.hertie-­school.org/en/ debate/allcontent/detail/content/berlins-­c ultural-­p olicy-­u nrealistic-­o ver­ambitious-­dilettantish/ Anheier, H. K. (2015, August 4). Democracy requires the critical engagement of practitioners and experts alike if it is to thrive in these challenging times. Democratic Audit UK, http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=15068 Anheier, H.  K.. (2016, January 27). Foreign policy of societies: Foundations as international actors. Hertie School of Governance. https://www.hertie-­school. org/blog/foreign-­policy-­of-­societies-­foundations-­as-­international-­actors/ Anheier, H. K. (2017, November 30). Dieter Grimm and the way forward for the European project. http://www.dahrendorf-­forum.eu/ dieter-­grimm-­and-­the-­way-­forward-­for-­the-­european-­project/ Anheier, H.  K. (2017, October 27). Ralf Dahrendorf and the European project. Dahrendorf Forum. http://www.dahrendorf-­forum.eu/ ralf-­dahrendorf-­and-­the-­european-­project/ Anheier, H.  K. (2017, October 20). Rage against the elites. Project Syndicate, https://www.project-­syndicate.org/onpoint/rage-­against-­the-­elites-­by-­helmut-­ k%2D%2Danheier-­2017-­10?barrier=accessreg Anheier, H.  K. (2017, September 22). Germany’s crisis of complacency. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/onpoint/germany-­s-­crisis-­of-­ complacency-­by-­helmut-­k%2D%2Danheier-­2017-­09?barrier=accessreg Anheier, H. K. (2017, July 27). Democratic resilience for a populist age. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/commentary/democratic-­ resilience-­against-­populism-­by-­helmut-­k%2D%2Danheier-­2017-­07?barrier=ac cessreg Anheier, H. K. (2018, October 26). The decline of the west, again. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/onpoint/the-­decline-­of-­the-­west-­again-­by-­ helmut-­k%2D%2Danheier-­2018-­10?barrier=accesspaylog

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Anheier, H.  K. (2018, October 2). One hundred years of ineptitude. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/commentary/2008-­crisis-­lessons-­ weak-­governance-­by-­helmut-­k%2D%2Danheier-­2018-­10?barrier=accesspaylog Anheier, H. K. (2018, July 19). How to debate a populist. Project Syndicate, https:// www.project-­s yndicate.org/commentary/political-­p olarization-­d ebate-­ populists-­1968-­by-­helmut-­k%2D%2Danheier-­2018-­07?barrier=accesspaylog Anheier, H. K. (2018, March 13). Germany’s dangerous political marriage. Project Syndicate, https://www.project-­syndicate.org/commentary/germany-­grand-­ coalition-­risks-­by-­helmut-­k%2D%2Danheier-­2018-­03?barrier=accesspaylog Anheier, H. K. (2018, February 20). Freeing German democracy. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/commentary/germany-­coalition-­agreement-­ stifles-­debate-­by-­helmut-­k%2D%2Danheier-­2018-­02?barrier=accesspaylog Anheier, H. K. (2018, January 16). While Germany slept. Project Syndicate, https:// www.project-­s yndicate.org/commentary/germany-­m inority-­g overnment-­ reform-­by-­helmut-­k%2D%2Danheier-­2018-­01?barrier=accesspaylog Anheier, H.  K. (2019, November 21). The west’s arrested social development. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/commentary/ addressing-­economic-­inequality-­and-­declining-­social-­mobility-­by-­helmut-­k-­ anheier-­2019-­11?a_la=english&a_d=5dd6b689832267261424f0be&a_m=&a_ a=click&a_s=&a_p=%2Fcolumnist%2Fhelmut-­k-­anheier&a_li=addressing-­ economic-­i nequality-­a nd-­d eclining-­s ocial-­m obility-­b y-­h elmut-­k -­ anheier-­2 019-­1 1&a_pa=columnist-­c ommentaries&a_ps=&a_ms=&a_ r=&barrier=accesspaylog Anheier, H. K. (2019, January 18). The end of postwar Germany. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/onpoint/the-­end-­of-­postwar-­germany-­by-­ h e l m u t -­k % 2 D % 2 D a n h e i e r -­2 0 1 9 -­0 1 ? a _ l a = e n g l i s h & a _ d = 5 c 4 1 a b 9c78b6c71a78aa59e8&a_m=&a_a=click&a_s=&a_p=homepage&a_li=the-­ end-­o f-­p ostwar-­g ermany-­b y-­h elmut-­k %2D%2Danheier-­2 019-­0 1&a_ pa=curated&a_ps=&barrier=accesspaylog Anheier, H.  K. (2020, September 11). The Q-ing of the west. Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/onpoint/conspiracy-­theories-­qanon-­from­america-­to-­germany-­by-­helmut-­k-­anheier-­and-­andrea-­roemmele-­2020-­09?a_ la=english&a_d=5f5b35a8e7335120b891dfea&a_m=&a_a=click&a_s=&a_ p=%2Fcolumnist%2Fhelmut-­k-­anheier&a_li=conspiracy-­theories-­qanon-­from-­ america-­to-­germany-­by-­helmut-­k-­anheier-­and-­andrea-­roemmele-­2020-­09&a_ pa=columnist-­commentaries&a_ps=&a_ms=&a_r= Anheier, H.  K. (2020, July 3). “All eyes on Germany. Project Syndicate. https:// www.project-­s yndicate.org/onpoint/germany-­u nderappreciated-­d omestic­problems-­inequality-­cohesion-­by-­helmut-­k-­anheier-­2020-­07?a_la=english&a_ d=5efe6b6273108920808c3163&a_m=&a_a=click&a_s=&a_ p=%2Fcolumnist%2Fhelmut-­k -­a nheier&a_li=germany-­u nderappreciated-­ domestic-­p roblems-­i nequality-­c ohesion-­b y-­h elmut-­k -­a nheier-­2 020-­0 7&a_ pa=columnist-­commentaries&a_ps=&a_ms=&a_r=

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483

Anheier, H. K. (2020, May 8). “Germany’s “Zero Hour”—Then and Now” Project Syndicate. https://www.project-­syndicate.org/onpoint/germanys-­zero-­hour-­ then-­and-­now-­by-­helmut-­k-­anheier-­2020-­05?barrier=accesspaylog Anheier, H. K. (2021, January 6). Germany after Merkel. Project Syndicate. https:// w w w . p r o j e c t -­s y n d i c a t e . o r g / o n p o i n t / germany-­2021-­election-­issues-­immigration-­modernization-­economy-­helmut-­k-­ anheier-­2021-­01?a_la=english&a_d=5ff592a146da974c4cb1bcb2&a_m=&a_ a = c l i c k & a _ s = & a _ p = % 2 F c o l u m n i s t % 2 F h e l m u t -­k -­a n h e i e r & a _ li=germany-­2 021-­e lection-­i ssues-­i mmigration-­m odernization-­e conomy-­ helmut-­k -­a nheier-­2 021-­0 1&a_pa=columnist-­c ommentaries&a_ps=&a_ ms=&a_r=&barrier=accesspay Anheier, H. K., Abels, C., Begg, I., & Featherstone, K. (2020, March 2). Enhancing Europe’s global power. Dahrendorf Forum. https://www.dahrendorf-­forum.eu/ enhancing-­europes-­global-­power/ Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. (2015, April 27). Response to strategic philanthropy and its discontents. Stanford Social Innovation Review, http://www.ssireview.org/ up_for_debate/strategic_philanthropy_and_its_discontents/anheier_leat Anheier, H. K., & Leat, D. Embracing change: How foundations can be cured of the benign fallibility syndrome. The Conference Board Inc., https://conference-­­ board.org/research/corporate-­citizenship-­matters/embracing-­change

Index

A Abstract services, 282 Accountability, 16, 17, 19, 22, 72, 75, 79, 80, 88, 96, 110, 151, 152, 160, 206, 208, 210, 213, 214, 270, 350, 397, 404, 406–408 Action orientations, 75–77, 91 Activism, 111, 191, 192, 194–196, 202, 210, 284 Adaptive strategies, 282, 283 Advocacy, 21, 39, 40, 70, 88, 89, 94, 95, 129, 160, 161, 207, 210, 211, 218, 222, 241, 243, 244, 292, 314, 315, 328, 366, 399, 400, 402, 404–406, 409, 410, 433, 437, 442, 444 Alexander, J.C., 64 Alignment of interests, 302 Almond, G.A., 56 Alternative facts, 275 Alternative for Germany (AfD), 351 Altruism, 76, 136–140, 145, 146, 289, 294 Altruistic giving, 292 American Behavioral Scientist, 433 Amnesty International, 78, 209, 317 Andorra, 37, 252 Anheier, H.K., 2, 13, 38, 51, 70, 83, 102, 132, 152, 168, 178, 190, 218, 233, 249, 263, 275, 289, 310, 333, 353, 359, 382, 397 An-Na’im, A.A., 264 Anti-globalism, 206, 207, 209 Appiah, K.A., 265 Arnold Ventures, 183 Arterial Network, 243, 244 Artists, 234, 236, 239–244, 246, 247, 314

Arts organizations, 234, 240, 241, 243, 244, 310 Association law, 135–137, 139, 145, 146, 148 Association of NGOs in Norway, 407 Associations, 15, 17, 19, 41, 42, 60, 61, 63, 70–72, 89, 117, 120, 135, 137, 160, 163, 172, 193, 198, 199, 213, 219, 223, 230, 243, 253, 269, 300–302, 305, 314, 336, 356, 360, 361, 366, 367, 369, 372, 390, 393, 415, 419, 421, 426, 428 Attac, 42, 78, 79 Attention merchants, 282 Attribution, 123, 182, 183 Austerity policies, 326–328 Australia, 59, 132, 140, 142–144, 146–148 Austria, 59, 74, 255, 259, 276, 340 Authoritarianism, 24, 192, 206–210, 230, 312 Azerbaijan, 224 B Bangladesh, 224, 240 Barber, R.B., 206 Barriers to advocacy, 221, 222 Barriers to entry, 221, 222 Barriers to resources, 221, 222 Beck, U., 200, 201, 265 Belarus, 224 Belgium, 59, 118, 251, 259 Belief in experts, 277, 281 Bellah, R.N., 9, 266–271 Benign fallibility syndrome, 23, 178, 184 Bertelsmann Stiftung, 385 Beveridge, W., 32

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486 Bhutan, 222 Big Society, 325, 328 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 21, 159 Blended value, 89, 90, 93, 96, 97 Bodin, J., 33, 34 Bolivia, 222, 224 Bollywood, 239, 240 Boston Athenaeum, 373 Bourdieu, P., 235, 241, 244–247, 354, 382 Brazil, 224, 311 Breaking the Silence, 315–317 Brexit, 37, 197, 207, 311, 325, 326, 329–330 British Council, 237, 240, 257 Broad Foundation, 159 Browne, J., 384, 386, 391 B’Tselem, 315–317 Buddhism, 268, 271 Budget funding, 342 Bush, G.W., 37, 190 Business in society, 394 C Cameron, D., 325, 328, 329 Career advancement, 419, 422–426 Caritas, 72 Carnegie Corporation, 160, 171, 172 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 218 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 374 Cascade, 218–220, 227, 230 Catholic Church, 360, 366 Catholics, 72, 266, 269, 372, 374 Censorships, 242, 247, 278, 282, 283 Central government, 327 Centre for Social Investment (CSI), University of Heidelberg, 4, 83 Centre for Studies of Civil Society and the Nonprofit Sector, 334, 340, 342 Change agents, 154, 160, 161, 163, 437 Charitable donations, 290, 297 Charities, 18, 25, 62, 70, 132, 135, 137, 138, 141–143, 146, 156, 157, 169, 172, 179, 180, 228, 240, 290, 291, 302, 323, 324, 327–329, 334, 343, 373, 390, 393, 402, 428, 434, 438 Charity Commission, 328 China, 22, 34, 37, 43, 219, 220, 224, 226, 268 Christianity, 266, 268, 271 Church and state, 34, 371 Cities, 3, 4, 19, 34, 190, 234, 235, 237, 244, 353, 375, 384, 432, 435, 444

Index Citizens, 7, 9, 15–17, 19, 22, 24, 33–36, 38–47, 52, 55–60, 71, 80, 88, 90, 92, 94–96, 98, 106, 108, 172, 180, 192, 205, 206, 242, 243, 265, 270, 275–284, 315, 318, 335–339, 341, 351, 354, 360, 372, 376, 386, 394, 399, 406, 414, 421, 427, 433 Citizens’ assembly, 351, 354 Citizenship, 51–65, 265, 269, 270, 311, 313, 337, 368 Civic engagement, 15, 17, 42, 311, 433, 436, 441, 442 Civicness, 54–56, 61, 62, 64, 65, 105 Civics, 61–62 Civic space, 39–42, 190 Civicus, 3, 132, 206, 218, 249, 333 Civility, 2, 7, 51–65, 194, 206, 350, 351, 357 Civil religions, 9, 263–272 Civil society, 2–10, 13, 15, 17, 21, 22, 25, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38–46, 51–65, 70–72, 75, 79, 80, 83–98, 121, 132–149, 180, 189–203, 207, 208, 211–213, 218–220, 227, 230, 235, 238, 240–244, 249, 250, 256, 263–265, 269, 271, 272, 275–285, 289, 304, 310–319, 323, 325, 329, 333–336, 338–344, 350–354, 356, 357, 368, 381–385, 391, 393, 394, 397–410, 413, 432–434, 437 Civil society actors, 9, 41, 46, 93, 96, 233–247, 275–277, 282, 284, 310, 350, 351, 353–355, 357, 381–394, 399, 408 Civil society, concept, 41, 43, 64 Civil society diamond, 7, 132–149, 218 Civil society index, 3, 249, 333 Civil society organizations, 7, 9, 10, 14–16, 18, 20, 23, 25, 39, 40, 42, 70–80, 90, 94, 95, 105, 134–137, 139–148, 178–181, 206–210, 212, 222, 283, 310, 314–316, 318, 319, 333–345, 351, 353, 356, 357, 367, 368, 374, 383, 397–399, 401, 403–410 Civil society space, 138, 139, 275 Civil sphere, 64 Climate change denial, 350, 355 Climate change skepticism, 350, 352 Cluster analysis, 250, 254 Coercion, 87, 136, 137, 140, 174, 190, 220 Cohesion, 238, 338, 385, 399, 406, 410 Collective actions, 61, 65, 94, 200, 213, 275, 303, 334, 336–338 Commercialization, 327

Index Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), 356 Common good, 53, 56, 62, 65, 76, 77, 170, 172, 181, 387 Common law, 132, 134, 135, 138, 147 Commonwealth Fund, 374 Communities of choice, 38 Communities of fate, 38 Compact, 325, 326, 328 Comparative advantage of foundation, 179 Comparative research, 3, 14, 15, 25, 218, 284, 410 Complementarity, 154, 155, 294 Complementary (role), 97 Congress of Vienna, 34 Constraints, strategic, 153 Contract culture, 407–409 Contracting, 16–18, 433 Control group, 123, 124, 183 Cooperatives, 15, 70, 72, 80, 94, 106–108, 110, 117, 120, 121, 303, 338, 361, 365, 366, 407 Cooper Union, 373 Coproduction, 16, 17, 19, 24 Corporate citizenship, 383–388, 392, 393 Corporate foundations, 361, 363, 365, 367, 368 Corporate social responsibility (CSR), 95, 103, 104, 383–386, 394 Cosmopolitan condition, 201 Council of Europe, 4, 9, 250–252, 255, 257 Counterfactual, 182, 183 Cox, H., 168, 268 Creative strategies, 9, 276, 282–285 Crisis narrative, 211 Croatia, 59, 251, 259 Crowdfunding, 107, 144 Cultural capital, 237, 244, 246 Cultural diplomacy, 9, 233–247, 257 Cultural infrastructure, 240, 253, 257 Cultural operators, 235–237, 241, 245 Cultural policies, 234, 250, 251, 256, 401 Cultural relations, 233–247 Cultural Value Project, 234 Cultures, 3, 6, 8, 9, 17, 21, 40, 53, 54, 56, 70, 125, 154, 234, 237–239, 241, 242, 244, 246, 249–257, 264–266, 268–270, 288–290, 294, 300, 303, 312, 314, 318, 330, 336, 339, 340, 343, 344, 350, 361, 366, 367, 369, 373, 384, 390, 393, 399, 403, 406–408, 421, 423, 434, 435, 439, 440, 443

487 Cultures and Globalization Series, 3, 233 Curators, 246, 247 D Dahrendorf, R., 2, 4, 32 Dark money, 376 Decentralization, 108, 211, 401 De Coubertin, P., 39 Deductibility, 135, 148, 157, 362, 427 Deductible gift recipient (DGR), 135, 147, 148 Delegitimization, 311, 316 Deliberative democracy, 32 Demand heterogeneity, 88, 432, 435 Democracy, 8–10, 14, 20, 33–36, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 53, 57, 62–64, 70–73, 80, 87, 161, 167–174, 196, 197, 205, 207, 208, 211–213, 218, 219, 222, 230, 242, 249–260, 275–277, 279–281, 284, 285, 310–319, 324, 353, 398, 399, 401, 402, 405, 406, 408, 410 Democratic backsliding, 219 Democratic crises, 277, 310 Democratic deficits, 311 Democratic gatekeepers, 314, 318 Democratic governance, 80, 366 Democratic publics, 277, 279–281 Democratic regression, 310–311, 319 Democratic societies, 45, 98, 152, 167, 168, 242, 252 Denmark, 15, 59, 259, 363 De Tocqueville, A., 7, 61, 65, 288, 300, 319 Dewey, J., 35, 55, 277, 279–282 Diakonie, 72 Diffusion, 85, 93, 194, 218–230, 284 Distrust, 21, 22, 43, 209, 278, 337, 368 Diversity, 22, 25, 54, 55, 64, 88, 103, 111, 132, 158, 207, 238, 240–242, 246, 247, 253, 264, 288, 295–300, 303–305, 334, 350, 384, 432 Doctors Without Borders, 78 Donations, 20, 71, 74, 107, 118, 143, 145, 146, 148, 157, 179, 290–292, 294, 297–300, 303, 316, 317, 338, 356, 360–362, 364, 367, 368, 387, 389, 390 Donor-advised funds, 24, 25 Dunant, H., 39 Durkheim, E., 267

488 E Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), 39, 78 Economic capital, 244 Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), 183 Economic role of nonprofits, 382 Effectiveness, 21, 25, 122, 126–128, 151–153, 178–180, 182–184, 250, 297, 329, 339, 341, 392 Egypt, 41, 227–229, 237 Elektrizitätswerke Schönau (EWS), 106, 107, 109, 110 Eliasoph, N., 56, 61, 62 Enabling Principle, 145–147, 149 Encouraging Principle, 143, 147–149 Encroachment, 310–319 Endowment funds, 362–367 Endowments, 70, 157, 160, 181, 293, 361, 362, 364, 365, 367, 371–373, 375, 377 England, 10, 141, 193, 323, 377 Environmental nongovernmental organizations, 107, 350 Equality, 33, 42, 64, 94, 95, 118, 139, 140, 143, 144, 146–149, 242, 251, 253–255, 258, 269, 304, 315, 351, 360, 368, 372, 375–377, 402, 413–415, 420, 421, 426–428 Equality Principle, 143–146, 149 Eritrea, 228, 229 Ethiopia, 228, 229 European Commission, 38, 234, 244 European Cultural Foundation, 242 European Enlightenment, 267, 269 European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), 356, 357 European System of Accounts (ESA), 119, 121 Evaluations, 8, 16, 118, 152, 178, 182–184 Evolution, 10, 108, 111, 178, 212, 267, 269, 293, 300, 359–369 Extinction Rebellion, 197, 350, 351, 353, 354 F Fact-checking, 282 Fake news, 276, 284, 316, 319 Falk, R., 195, 265 Favoritism, 303 Field theory, 235, 241, 244, 246, 247 Filer Commission, 154, 173 Finland, 59, 251, 259 Flexible employment conditions, 417

Index Fondation Curie, 360 Fondation de France, 361, 368 Fondation Rothschild, 360 Ford Foundation, 21, 156, 170–173, 240, 276 Foreign funding, 221, 222, 224, 317 Foucault, M., 134, 191, 197 Foundation roles, 8, 161, 162, 168 Foundations, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 16, 17, 21–25, 47, 70, 103, 106, 107, 117, 118, 120, 123, 133, 151–163, 167–174, 177–184, 200, 219, 264, 267, 276, 290, 291, 301, 312, 315, 317, 327, 329, 351, 359–369, 371–377, 389, 393, 407, 413, 415, 421, 428, 432, 434–437, 443–445 Foundations, philanthropic, 8, 10, 21–24, 151, 155, 177–181, 184, 371–377 Fragmentation, 196, 289, 300–303 France, 10, 59, 71, 79, 97, 155, 235, 251, 255, 259, 340, 344, 359–369 Freedom of expression, 41, 243, 253 Freedoms, 34, 41, 44, 71, 92, 104, 133, 135, 137, 140, 146–148, 210, 212, 214, 218, 219, 230, 244, 251, 253–255, 258, 269, 310, 311, 314, 315, 318, 334, 335, 382, 401 Freie Welt, 356, 357 Fridays for Future, 40, 197, 280, 281, 350, 351 Friedman, M., 32, 46 Functional definition, 31 Functions of civil society, 334, 336 Funding intermediation, 155, 161–163 Fundraising, 20, 23, 24, 45, 132–149, 299, 329, 366, 367 Fundraising appeals, 299, 301 Fundraising laws, 7, 132, 138, 142–147 G Gaither Report, 170 Gap-filler (role), 171 Gardner, J.W., 173 Gauland, A., 352 Gender equality, 33, 42, 118, 413–415, 420, 421, 426, 427 Gender stereotypes, 423–424 German Corporate Engagement Monitor, 382 Germany, 4, 10, 15, 35, 56, 59, 70–72, 74, 80, 97, 106, 107, 109, 155, 179, 250, 254, 255, 259, 340, 349–357, 363, 377, 382, 384–388, 392, 394, 395, 409, 413–418, 421, 422, 427, 429

Index Giving, 21, 25, 31, 39, 57, 64, 143–146, 156, 157, 169, 211, 224, 291–294, 299, 317, 319, 334, 362, 364, 365, 367, 368, 436 Global citizenship, 265, 270, 271 Global civil society, 3, 8, 9, 51, 52, 54, 65, 92, 189–202, 206–214, 218–230, 263, 265–271 Global civil society, concept, 194 Global civil society yearbooks, 3, 8, 190, 193–195, 200, 201, 218, 249 Global Compact, 103 Global cultural citizenship, 241 Global financial crisis, 250 Globalization, 3, 36, 46, 54, 180, 190, 191, 193–198, 201, 202, 209, 212, 249, 264–266, 311, 319 Globalization from below, 195 Global North, 238, 246 Global religiosity, 266, 268 Global South, 238, 241–243 Goethe-Institut, 236, 237, 241 Good citizen, 55, 57–60 Governance, 4, 16–25, 34, 35, 78, 89, 90, 102, 158, 192, 201, 206, 211, 219, 249, 250, 265, 270, 271, 295, 297, 298, 302, 310, 327, 329, 340, 366, 368, 383, 384, 389, 393–394, 408 Government–civil society relationships, 15 Government contributions, 439–441, 443–444 Government failure, 73, 88 Gramsci, A., 43, 193, 319 Grant-making foundation, 361 Great Britain, 57, 179 Greenpeace, 78, 79 Green Revolution, 375 H Habermas, J., 32, 36, 38, 45, 87, 96, 269, 270 Habits, 277, 280, 281, 283, 293, 356 Hansmann, H.B., 14, 87, 288 Heartland Institute, 356 Hegel, G., 40, 319 Hess Natur, 109 Hewlett Foundation, 159 Hiding hand, 7, 101–112 Hinduism, 269, 271 Hirschman, A.O., 7, 39, 102, 104, 105 Historical legacy, 398 Human-made climate change, 349, 352 Human rights, 41, 192, 205, 207, 218–220, 229, 242, 243, 266, 269–272, 310, 313–319, 334

489 Human rights organizations, 275, 310, 311, 316, 317 Human Rights Watch, 78 Hungary, 35, 59, 80, 208, 255, 259, 311, 318 Hybridity, 7, 74, 76, 77, 90–92, 98, 383 Hybrid organizations, 16, 25, 83 I Illiberal, 219, 220, 230, 310, 311, 319, 329 Illiberal norm diffusion, 220–221 Impact assessment, 118, 129 Impact evaluation, 103 Impact investing, 16, 103 Impact of the Third Sector as Social Innovation (ITTSOIN), 85 Impacts, 2, 6, 10, 17, 20, 22, 23, 36, 52, 72, 73, 80, 103, 110–112, 117–119, 122–124, 129, 158, 161, 162, 170, 173, 178, 182, 184, 199, 207, 221, 250, 265, 266, 288, 311, 324, 326, 330, 337, 352, 368, 382–384, 386, 392, 394, 397–410, 422, 424–426, 436 Impact, social, 7, 16, 93, 96, 97, 117–129 Income tax exemption, 135, 147 India, 59, 192, 219, 222, 224, 237–241, 271, 375 Indicator Framework on Culture and Democracy (IFCD), 4, 9, 249–260 Indicators, 3, 4, 7, 70, 118, 125, 133, 182–184, 249–254, 256–260, 327, 336, 337, 340, 341, 343, 383, 388–390, 394, 434, 441, 442 Individualization, 36, 401 Inequalities, 20, 22, 112, 161, 209, 246, 268, 271, 312, 315, 371–377, 382 Information asymmetry, 87, 178 Information excess, 9, 276, 277, 281–285 Infrastructures, 9, 14, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25, 44, 78, 102, 105, 111, 195, 246, 281–284, 313, 324, 326, 351, 354, 356, 414 In-group, 289, 292–295, 299, 302–304 In-group orientation, 298–299, 304 Innovations, 2, 7, 8, 18, 20, 21, 23, 37, 38, 43, 85, 86, 93–95, 101, 103–105, 109, 111, 112, 154, 158, 161, 180, 181, 183–184, 197, 252, 285, 314, 327, 369, 375, 384, 385, 387, 392–393, 397, 405, 408–410, 414 Institute of Political Science, Münster University, 415

490 Institutionalization, 62, 103, 192, 336, 345, 401, 405 Institutional myths, 383 Institut Pasteur, 360, 363 Internal Revenue Service (IRS), 171, 291, 437, 443 International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), 218, 222, 224, 227, 228, 230 International Committee of the Red Cross, 39, 78 International development, 160, 222, 238, 239 International NGO (INGO), 78–79, 192, 196, 224, 269, 270, 391, 392 International Solidarity Movement, 313 Inter-sectoral collaborations, 434 Iran, 228, 229 Iraq, 37 Islam, 39, 268, 269, 271 Israel, 10, 59, 208, 218, 310–319 Italy, 56, 79, 97, 251, 255, 259, 363 J Jewish, 266, 312–315, 317, 318, 368, 372, 373 Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, 2, 132, 249, 340 Johns Hopkins University, 14, 121, 218 Johnson, B., 197 Journal of Civil Society, 3, 14 Judaism, 266, 269, 271 Julius Rosenwald Fund, 374 Jurisprudence, 132–149 K Kenya, 229 Khanna, P., 31–37, 45, 47 Khoj International, 240 Kin altruism, 294 Kramer, R.M., 154, 159 L Labor markets, 180, 209, 279, 415–419, 423, 426, 427 Lane, R.E., 57 Law, 32, 37, 43, 58, 60, 87, 94, 95, 106, 107, 132, 133, 135, 139–149, 153, 171, 173, 183, 219, 222, 224, 227–229, 251–253, 271, 311, 312, 316, 317, 324, 335, 341, 344, 360, 362, 374, 386, 393, 394, 427

Index Legal restrictions, 9, 208, 218 Legitimacy, 2, 6, 8, 72, 74, 78, 87, 90, 92, 94–96, 98, 152, 153, 161, 168, 174, 206, 208, 213, 230, 256, 311–313, 368, 369, 391 Lessenich, S., 201, 202 Lifecycles, 9, 209, 210, 212, 213 Likud, 313 Lippmann, W., 277–281 Lobbying, 21, 38, 107, 156, 162, 171, 419, 433, 442–444 Local community actors, 398, 399 Local governments, 16, 17, 327, 366, 369, 404 London School of Economics, 3, 8, 13, 189, 218 Los Angeles County, 437–439, 442, 443 M Maecenata Institute, 415 Malraux, A., 361 Market failures, 87, 296, 300 Market sector, 86, 87, 95, 398, 401, 405 May, T., 325 MDRC, 183, 184 Measurements, 3, 7, 8, 118, 126, 129, 132, 136, 140, 160, 177–184, 195, 250, 387, 388 Media Cloud, 276 Mediatization, 329–330 Medici, 101, 297 Mega-philanthropy, 161 Merkel, A., 32 Methodological nationalism, 3, 8, 190, 191, 195, 196, 198–200, 202, 234 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 373 Mexico, 56, 192, 222, 375 Milbank Memorial Fund, 374 MitOst, 242 Mixed welfare economy, 398, 405 Mobilization capacity, 70 Mobilizing, 70, 75, 79, 95, 98, 327, 336–339 Moral responsibility, 265 Moynihan Commission, 278 N Nationalism, 207, 270, 310–313, 319 National sovereignty, 36–37, 200 National state, 372, 437, 439, 443, 444 Nation state, 33–36, 38, 39, 46, 47, 193, 194, 198, 200, 208, 209, 234, 235, 257, 270, 353, 432

Index Neoinstitutionalism, 152 Neo-liberal ideology, 327 Neoliberalism, 282, 402, 405 Neo-nationalism, 206–209 Neo-Tocquevillian, 433, 441–442, 444 Nepal, 224, 240 Netanyahu, 315–317 Netherland, 15, 58, 59, 254, 259 New Israel Fund (NIF), 314–316 New Labour administration, 325, 326, 328 New Public Management (NPM), 16, 326, 397, 398, 402–405, 407–409, 432, 433, 439–441 Nielsen, W., 152, 154, 158 Nondistribution constraint, 75, 77 Nones, 266, 272, 278, 281 Nongovernmental organization (NGO), 21, 78, 218–230, 242 Nonprofit density, 433 Nonprofit institutions (NPIs), 2, 120, 121, 154, 410 Nonprofit management, 14, 20, 298 Nonprofit organization (NPO), 77, 316–318, 337, 339, 341–345, 384, 392, 393, 402, 416–426, 428 Nonprofit sector, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 14–17, 24, 39, 63, 86, 88–90, 142, 152, 158, 159, 161, 163, 181, 192, 287–304, 340–343, 366, 382, 405, 413–429, 432–445 Non-state actors, 35, 37, 38, 212, 234, 235, 242 Norms, 19, 53, 56, 58, 90, 98, 104, 133, 190, 209, 219, 220, 224, 230, 270, 295, 312, 334, 336, 424 Norway, 10, 15, 59, 259, 397–410 Notre Dame cathedral, 367 NTEE major group “Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy”, 433, 442 NTEE major group “Community Improvement & Capacity Building”, 433, 442 O Occupation, 313, 315, 316, 319 Office for Civil Society (OCS), 328, 330 Open Society Institute, 21, 242 Organizational behavior, 8, 153, 163, 382–393, 444 Orwell, G., 35 Outcome measures, 118 Outcomes, 16, 18, 22, 43, 85, 119, 122–128, 179, 206, 235, 236, 242, 246, 251, 376

491 Out-group, 292–295, 299, 302, 303 Oxfam, 78 P Parochialism, 264 Participation, 16–19, 21, 40, 42, 45, 56–58, 61, 62, 73, 89, 90, 102, 103, 120, 123, 172, 206, 249–260, 270, 280, 302, 311, 334, 343, 383, 409, 417 Partisanship, 275, 276, 310 Partnerships, 9, 16, 17, 25, 42, 45, 80, 105–107, 163, 264, 314, 315, 325, 340–344, 362, 366, 385, 390, 392, 435, 437 Part-time work, 418 Performance measurement, 18, 23, 152, 178 Performance measurement, measures, 18, 23, 152, 178 Persistent fragile action, 7, 101–112 Philanthropy, 6, 10, 13–16, 24, 25, 147, 151, 155, 157, 158, 168, 170, 173, 174, 177, 179–180, 264, 291, 305, 361, 364, 373, 376, 402, 437 Pifer, A.J., 171–173 Planetary politics, 9, 189–203 Pluralism, 44, 88, 154, 180, 243, 289, 300, 303, 304, 371–377 Pluralization, 211 Poland, 35, 59, 80, 251, 255, 259, 276, 311, 318, 344 Polarization, 9, 24, 54, 287–304, 352 Policy change, 154, 220, 407, 432 Policy climate, 328–329 Policy formulation, 171 Politeness, 52–56, 58 Political activism, 75, 190, 192, 280, 311 Political advocacy, 39, 70, 89, 94, 210 Political capacities, 277 Political cycle, 9, 212 Political participation, 39, 63, 73, 74, 192, 193, 202, 253, 310 Politics, 8, 21, 34, 38, 43, 44, 53–58, 61, 62, 64, 65, 79, 96, 108, 156, 172, 178, 190–192, 194–197, 202, 230, 241, 243, 252, 265, 278, 287, 302, 312, 313, 319, 350–354, 356, 357, 385, 399, 401, 421 Popper, K., 40, 44 Populism, 6, 22, 311–313, 319 Power politics, 211 Privatization, 317, 344, 377, 401, 433 Professionalism, 72, 210, 253, 313, 402

492 Professionalization, 18, 23, 24, 157, 161–163, 174, 210, 383, 393, 415, 419, 420 Program officer profession, 158 Program on Nonprofit Organizations (PONPO), 382 Program service revenues, 439, 440 Project myopia, 211 Prosocial behavior, 61 Protestants, 72, 368, 372–374 Public affairs, 33, 40, 44, 45, 53, 54, 159, 278–280, 282, 283, 432 Public benefit, 135, 136, 138–140, 142, 145, 147, 341 Public charities, 152 Public goods, 70, 72–75, 288, 296, 297 Public goods theory, 319, 443 Public opinion, 56, 64, 79, 118, 170, 269, 270, 277, 280, 311, 367, 376, 377 Public–philanthropic partnerships, 163 Public policy, 2, 4, 6, 13, 14, 20, 21, 25, 95, 96, 152, 172, 222, 323, 324, 330, 341, 342, 372–373, 432, 434, 444 Public-private partnerships (PPPs), 80 Public purposes, 120, 151, 152, 155, 156, 171 Public responsibility, 400, 403, 404 Public sector, 15–18, 22, 23, 75, 86–88, 93–95, 128, 314, 328, 364, 398, 401–406, 408, 410, 435 Public services, 15–17, 265, 325, 328, 367, 432, 433, 443 Public sphere, 2, 7, 31–47, 96, 193, 269, 310, 329, 351, 385 Purpose-driven business (PDB), 383, 384, 386, 394 Putin, V., 341, 344 Putnam, R.D., 52, 61, 142 R Randomized controlled trial (RCT), 183 Recruitment procedures, 428 Red Crescent, 78 Red Cross, 72, 210 Redistribution, 154 Reece Committee, 168 Reflective intelligence, 280–283 Refugee crisis, 72, 319 Regulations, 8, 17–19, 21, 24, 35, 37, 42, 44, 75, 93, 95, 96, 133, 135, 139–145, 149, 151–163, 174, 209, 213, 228, 240, 251, 296, 297, 310, 314, 317, 328, 373, 418, 421, 422

Index Religion, 8, 9, 34, 40, 193, 263–272, 289–295, 297, 299, 303, 314, 315, 368, 373, 439 Renewable energy, 93, 95, 106–108, 110 Responsibility to Protect doctrine, 36 Rhetoric–reality gap, 324–327 Risk adversity, 174 Robust action, 101–105, 110–112 Rockefeller Foundation, 170, 198, 374 Rockefeller, J.D. Sr., 155, 156, 160, 167–170, 198, 297, 374, 375, 391, 435 Role models, 418, 424, 429 Rousseau, J.J., 267 Rucht, D., 53, 63, 385 Rudolph, S., 265, 266 RUP foundation, 361–363, 365, 367 Russell Sage Foundation, 374 Russia, 10, 21, 34, 41, 59, 208, 219, 220, 224, 254, 259, 268, 284, 311, 333–345 Rwanda, 229, 316 S Salamon, L.M., 2, 3, 14, 32, 38, 132, 249, 328, 386, 400 Sanctions, 8, 73, 152, 162, 313 Satellite Account on Non-profit and Related Institutions and Volunteer Work (UN Satellite Account Handbook), 119, 129 Save the Children, 210 School Strikes for Climate, 197 See also Fridays for Future Schumpeter, 85 Serbia, 79, 251, 254, 259 Shared policy-making cycle, 181, 182 Shared Society, 315, 325 Shared values, 93, 264, 267–269, 383, 384 Shareholder value, 32, 46 Sheltered foundations, 361–363, 365, 367 Shils, E., 53, 54, 350, 351 Shrinking space, 2, 6, 98, 207, 213, 310 Simmel, G., 300 Sladek, M., 107 Sladek, U., 108 Smith, A., 36, 104 Smith, W.C., 269 Social accountability, 433, 442–443 Social activity, 245, 336, 338, 339, 385 Social and solidarity economy (SSE), 366 Social benefits, 7, 8, 87, 117, 118, 129, 181, 303

Index Social capital, 52, 54, 61, 76, 85, 92, 244–246, 311, 351, 353–357, 385, 399, 406, 410, 433, 441–442, 444 Social citizenship, 400 Social economy, 88–90, 94–96, 117–129, 182 Social enterprises, 17, 18, 24, 117, 136, 409, 413, 415, 418 Social entrepreneurs, 97, 398, 399, 408 Social entrepreneurship, 83, 94, 97, 386 Social identities, 289, 293, 299 Social impact bonds (SIBs), 16–18 Social impact investment, 93, 96, 97 Social impacts, 7, 117–129 Social innovation, 4, 7, 16–20, 24, 25, 83–98, 178, 180–181, 184, 399, 408, 409 Social integration, 70, 73, 74, 78, 402, 406, 410 Social investments, 4, 10, 83, 84, 86, 90–95, 97, 98, 142, 390 Socially oriented nonprofit organization (SONPO), 341, 342 Social movement organizations, 102, 105, 106, 109–111 Social movements, 7, 8, 17, 20, 21, 33, 89, 92–94, 110, 192, 269, 270, 313, 319, 336, 351, 402, 404, 414 Social network analysis, 353 Social norms, 336, 419 Social origins theory, 15 Social policies, 179, 184, 301, 323, 326, 340, 342, 344, 400, 414, 418 Social service provision, 340, 342 Social services, 15–17, 39, 44, 70, 88, 95, 97, 290, 291, 339–344, 363, 364, 366, 369, 372–374, 402, 403, 405, 406, 408, 414, 415, 417, 420, 421, 434, 435, 443 South Africa, 60, 192, 222 South Asia Network for the Arts (SANA), 240 Sovereignty, 36, 37, 209 Spatial definitions, 335 Spencer, H., 32 Spirits of capitalism, 168 Splintering, 289, 300–303 Stakeholders, 15, 17–20, 45, 46, 74, 85, 90, 94–96, 104, 110, 112, 152, 178, 211, 237, 241, 250, 296–301, 303, 354, 377, 384, 390–392, 427 State–civil society relations, 310, 319 State–NPO partnership, 341, 343 State of the Nonprofit Sector in Los Angeles reports, 434–439 Statistics of Income files, 440, 441 Stifterverband, 394, 395

493 Strategic philanthropy, 159, 161, 162, 376 Structural–operational model, 132 Substitution, 154, 155 Successful failure, 7, 70–80 Sudan, 228 Supplementarity, 154, 155 Supply of nonprofit organizations, 295–298 Sustainability, 14, 17, 20, 84, 103, 108, 110–112, 222, 237, 298–299, 384, 385 Sustainable development, 101–112, 118, 390 Sustainable development goals (SDGs), 105, 112, 124, 129, 385 Sweden, 15, 60, 251, 259, 363 Switzerland, 60, 251, 255, 259 System of National Accounts (SNA), 7, 117–129, 132 T Tax benefits, 151, 365 Tax deductibility of donations, 362 Tax deductions, 78 Tax Reform Act (TRA), 156, 161, 162, 171 Taxonomy, 433 Theoretical, Empirical and Policy Foundations for Building Social Innovation in Europe the Nordic Model (TEPSIE), 84 Theories of nonprofit organizations, 14 Theory of change, 22 Think tanks, 160, 218, 279, 350, 351 Third sector, 10, 14, 16, 63, 64, 74, 88–90, 137, 191, 193, 195, 196, 202, 206, 207, 304, 314, 323–330, 336, 382, 383, 386, 400, 401, 432 Third Way, 257, 325 1789 Revolution, 360 Time donations, 389–390 Titmuss, 87 Tolerance, 54–56, 58, 264, 270, 271 Traditional breadwinner model, 418 Transnational civil society organizations (CSOs), 9 Transparency, 18, 19, 72, 79, 253, 376, 392 Triangle Network, 240 Trump, D., 279, 311, 312, 319, 349 Trustees, 71, 153, 161, 178, 301, 419–421 Trust in government, 282, 311 Trust, 20, 43, 45, 46, 56, 61, 87, 92, 142, 207, 210, 276, 280, 284, 289, 297, 311, 336–338, 351, 353, 354, 356, 366, 368, 376, 391, 393, 399, 418, 436, 441, 444

Index

494 TSE sector contribution model, 122, 124 Tunnel vision, 211 Turkey, 35, 41, 60, 228, 242, 259, 260, 311, 318 Turkmenistan, 224 U UCLA Center for Civil Society, Luskin School of Public Affairs, 432, 434 Uganda, 228, 229 Uncertainties, 17, 58, 101, 102, 105, 108, 109, 162, 178, 180, 193, 330, 352, 436 United Kingdom, 15, 56, 60, 70, 238–240, 259, 284, 311 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), 352 United Nations System of National Accounts, 132 USA, 224, 290, 292 “Us” vs. “Them”, 302 V Value-based definition, 335 Van Graan, M., 243, 246 Venture capital, 154, 161 Venture philanthropy, 154, 159, 162 Verba, S., 56 Voices, 38–40, 45, 96, 104, 110, 154, 173, 178, 208, 220, 242–244, 275, 311, 317, 329, 356, 375, 399 Voluntarism, 402, 403, 407, 409 Voluntary associations, 7, 61–64, 70, 117, 265, 335, 353, 354, 383, 413 Voluntary failure, 328 Voluntary sector, 2, 178, 325, 328, 398, 400–402, 404–409

Voluntary work, 402, 403, 422 Voluntas, 3, 13 Volunteering, 15, 52, 58, 61–63, 145, 243, 334, 338, 436, 441, 444 W Walsh Commission, 168 Walton Family Foundation, 160 Weisbrod, B.A., 14, 88, 136, 288 Welfare service provision, 342, 398, 400 Welfare society, 401 Welfare state regimes, 14 Welfare states, 32, 70, 74, 78, 398–405, 408, 410, 414 What works, 179, 181, 183 W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 118, 122 Women’s quota, 427, 428 Working conditions, 10, 201, 246, 413–429 Working time models, 418 Work–life balance, 425, 428 Work–life compatibility, 428 World Health Organization (WHO), 160 World Summit on Sustainable Development, 118 Worldviews, 288, 289, 295, 300, 302, 303, 319, 337 World Wildlife Fund, 78 Wuthnow, R., 58 Y Yemen, 227–229 Young Foundation, 85, 93, 95 Z Zambia, 229