Manufacturing Civil Society Principles, Practices and Effects

by Brandsen, Taco; Trommel, Willem; Verschuere, Bram

• ISBN13: 9781137351623
• ISBN10: 1137351624
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-05-07
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Faced with declining social cohesion, more and more governments are trying to revitalise society by attempting to reconstruct local communities, civil society and citizenship. One way to do this is to share public responsibilities with organized citizens and third sector organisations. As a result, relationships with citizens, communities and third sector organisations are increasingly brought within the realm of public management, subject to accountability procedures, embedded in hierarchical structures, included in arenas for competition and contracting. This volume examines the emergence of this new type of governance, exploring the dynamics, effectiveness and appropriateness of this governmental response to the fragmentation of modern social life.

Author Biography

Taco Brandsen is Professor of Comparative Public Administration at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His latest work includes New Public Governance, the Third Sector and Co-Production (2012, with Bram Verschuere and Victor Pestoff) and Civicness in the Governance and Delivery of Social Services (2010, with Adalbert Evers and Paul Dekker).
 
Bram Verschuere is Assistant Professor of Public Management at Ghent University, Belgium. His latest work includes New Public Governance, the Third Sector and Co-Production (2012, with Taco Brandsen and Victor Pestoff) as well as having published numerous articles in journals including Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Public Management Review and Voluntas.
 
Willem Trommel is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. As a sociologist by training he aims to study reforms in public governance through the lens of major transitions in society. His latest work addresses the 'localisation of social policy'. He co-edited Crafting Local Welfare States (2013) together with Duco Bannink and Hans Bosselaar.

Table of Contents

1. Manufacturing Civil Society: An Introduction
2. 'You're either with us or against us': Manufacturing Civility in the Netherlands
3. Diversity and Ambiguity in the English Third Sector: Responding to Contracts and Competition in Public Services Delivery
4. How Viable is the Big Society? Perceptions from Environmental NGOs in the UK
5. Civil Society Organisations as a Government Steering Mechanism: A cComparison between Sport Associations and Patient Organisations in the Netherlands
6. New forms of Dependency in Central and Eastern Europe? Reflections on the State-third Sector Relations in Public Service Provision in Post-Communist Countries
7. New challenges for the Cooperation between Civil Society and Public Sector – The Federal Volunteer Service in Germany
8. Public Governance of Welfare Services in Italy
9. The Autonomy of Organized Civil Society in Strategic Policy Decision Making: A Resource Dependence Perspective
10. Controlling or Empowering Non-Profit Organizations?: Dimensions of Accountability in Singapore
11. Active Citizenship: From Panacea to Political Program. In Search of an Appealing Narrative