The state and the reconstruction of civil society

Abstract

The current relationship between the state and civil society in Europe is a curious and historically unique one. This is no longer a situation in which participation and association prepare citizens for the offices of the state; rather, it is the state urging a sometimes-reluctant citizenry to engage actively in civil society. This phenomenon stems from a combination of changes in prevailing governance paradigms and of the more general process of social liquefaction. In the article, we analyse these two intertwining trends and discuss the new type of relationship between the state and civil society that may be emerging.

Points for practitioners

The article puts the current vogue for renewed state–civil society relationships in a larger context. It shows that, however commendable many initiatives may be, there is the risk that the desire on the part of governments for their citizens to participate and self-organize may lead the state to take over such initiatives, leading to a manufactured civil society that has little to do with spontaneous citizen initiatives. Another possible consequence is that truly spontaneous citizen initiatives will shun collaboration with the state and focus only inwards, to the detriment of broader public values. Therefore, in this area, the state must strike a delicate balance between encouragement and restraint.

Keywords

administration and democracy citizen participation civil society public administration public management third sector

(Governmental) Expectations towards a diverse and changing civil society

Governments, from the local to the central level, increasingly express their desire to engage civil society, which is regarded as instrumental in dealing with contemporary societal issues. Well-known examples are the Big Society in the UK and the ‘Doe-Democratie’ in the Netherlands (Van de Wijdeven, 2012), as well as the many efforts that local governments in a lot of countries put into participation or co-production. Whether these intentions are politically/ideologically driven, or whether the rationale is financial austerity, these governments all have to face the fact that civil society is not a homogeneous artefact to deal with. Rather, contemporary civil society is diverse and continuously changing.

A diverse and changing civil society

The current relationship between the state and civil society in Europe is a curious and historically unique one, which will no doubt keep researchers occupied for years to come.¹ In order to understand current state–civil society relationships, the Tocquevillian conceptualization of civil society needs to be re-examined in the light of contemporary developments. The bottom line of Toquevillian thinking is that civil society should be regarded (and preserved) as a ‘self-regulating universe of voluntary associations committed to be protected from intrusion by the state on rights and freedoms’ (Edwards, 2004: 7). Scholars like Putnam can be situated in this line of thought, given the value they place upon voluntary associations in ‘curbing the power of centralizing institutions, protecting pluralism, and nurturing constructive social norms like “trust and cooperation”’ (Edwards, 2004: 7).

Although building social capital and defending pluralism is still a valued role played by civil society, it plays two other important societal roles (see, e.g., Anheier, 2005: 82–83): service delivery, mainly via private, non-profit organizations in sectors like education and health care; and expression, via organizations that are active in civic advocacy or stand up for a cause (like human rights or the environment), or that play a representative role (like unions or consumer organizations). These roles are performed in a context in which traditional forms of (ideologically or religiously driven) social organization are in a process of reorientation or, as Bauman (2000) has argued, even decline. Various drivers behind this development have been identified, notably, individualization, changing life patterns, and changing government–civil society relations.

Moreover, although civil society is often portrayed as an actor, it is no more than a cover term for a heterogeneous collection of organizations and initiatives with different roles and functions in a changing context. Evers and Laville (2004: 17) position civil society in the centre of a welfare triangle, in between the spheres of state (public agencies), market (private firms) and community (households and families) (see also Pestoff, 1992). Ideal-typically, civil society organizations are private, not-for-profit and formal organizations, and can, as such, be discerned from public agencies or private firms. Within this broad category, there is a lot of diversity, however, leading to hybridity. Civil society organizations rarely are ideal-typical in reality (Brandsen et al., 2005; Evers, 2005; Hustinx et al., 2014). We discuss two examples of ‘types’ of civil organizations to illustrate this hybridity.

To begin with, in the welfare triangle, many non-profit organizations delivering services (being part of civil society) have moved in the direction of the sphere of the state or the market. Welfare state growth propelled an era of ‘big government’ during the 1970s and 1980s. Part of the result, in many jurisdictions, was an increased collaboration between states and non-profit organizations: states commissioned services in return for subsidies, leading to a situation of third-party government in which governments and non-profit sectors became ‘interdependent’ (Salamon, 1995). For example, service-delivering non-profits in welfare, education or health care often adopt features of state agencies. They deliver what we consider to be public services, are often dependent on the state for their funding and face an accountability regime in relation to the government that subsidizes them. The result of this ‘third-party government’, present in large parts of society, was that the increased collaboration between civil society and the state in the provision of social services led to hybridization in service-delivering civil society non-profits (see earlier): they are becoming more ‘public’ and less ‘civil society’ in the original Toquevillian meaning because they are subsidized by public money, implement public policy programmes and are held accountable by the public commissioners. Also, many of these non-profits tend to gravitate towards the market sphere in the welfare triangle. In the case that regulation forces them to operate on liberalized markets or to behave increasingly managerial, private non-profits resemble private market organizations.

Contemporary governments thus aim to shift responsibility for public service delivery to civil society, yet this also seems to imply that the latter’s activities must be redirected towards the policy objectives of government (an echo of what was happening under New Public Management (NPM)). The result is a real risk that many of these organizations lose contact with their traditional member groups and, by implication, also may lose their original legitimacy as independent service providers.

Second, we see the emergence of more informal, temporary and single-issue organizations that operate on the border between civil society and ‘communities’: they show features of informal, small-scale communities, hence moving in the direction of communities in the welfare triangle of Evers and Laville. These civil society organizations are often local initiatives, grown from the bottom up and dealing with new societal issues like clean energy, urban agriculture, climate or neighbourhood redevelopment, often long before these problems appear on the radars of the public sector (De Rynck and Verschuere, 2014). Many of these organizations seem to combine roles: they stand up for a cause (a new societal issue) via the delivery of new kinds of services (e.g. clean energy, the sustainable use of public space). In a certain sense, we may classify these parts of civil society as ‘neo-Toquevillian’ as these organizations represent diversity and pluralism (e.g. in the issues they deal with) and tend to act in an autonomous way. In some cases, these organizations are also ‘adversarial’ vis-a-vis government (Young, 2000) as they often deal with issues that are politically difficult or salient, or behave in an activist way (Verschuere et al., 2012). Indeed, civil society actors may be willing to cooperate with governments to tackle new societal challenges, but they may also display the opposite reaction and withdraw from the public sphere. Distrust in political institutions, together with growing anxiety about a declining welfare state, may trigger a revival of such small-scale social initiatives, outside the formal sphere of national, organized solidarity. This tendency towards new civil society patterns ‘from beneath’ is a growing phenomenon in the current welfare state landscapes, and raises important questions regarding the future of the nation-state under conditions of ‘glocalization’ (Ritzer, 2000). There are still doubts, though, about the scale and impact of such initiatives. Will non-institutional and sub-national social practices re-emerge and develop into a crucial factor in welfare policy and governance? If so, what does it mean for patterns of national solidarity? Does ‘localism’ imply social isolationism and thus, indirectly, a decline of public values like equal social rights?

Problem statement: manufacturing a diverse and changing civil society

This diverse and changing picture of contemporary civil society, which we can only very briefly outline here, is partly a logical consequence of new approaches to governance. However, this diverse picture also raises many questions about the new role of government and the new type of civility that is expected or desired to emerge. Taking into account the rhetoric of many policymakers, civil society looms large in European public debates. A large collection of buzzwords accompanies this resurrection of the civil society discourse: social responsibility, citizenship, Big Society, activation, participation, horizontalization, to name but a few. A firm belief in civil society as a solution, as a more effective alternative to welfare state and market arrangements, feeds the current debate on how to solve pressing social problems. Many policymakers believe that civil society is the answer to the problems of our time, but how realistic is that? The empirical picture leaves us with many questions. There is the (at least partial) decline of traditional civil society and the emergence of new civic initiatives and new activism, of which the scale and impact is still unclear. Then the question is how such a fragmented and diverse civil society can deal with complex issues such as unemployment, social vulnerability or social disintegration.

The answer is as simple as it is puzzling: civil society, in all its diversity, should be reinvented and given a new position in society. Indeed, we and others have spoken in terms of ‘manufacturing’ (Brandsen et al., 2014; Hodgson, 2004). States have started: encouraging citizen participation, co-production and self-organization; involving civil society organizations in public service delivery; and encouraging civil engagement and good behaviour in publicity campaigns. It brings states and civil society into a new kind of relationship, one of which many will be suspicious.

This grand ambition – the manufacturing of a new civil society by the state – raises numerous issues. In the remainder of this article, we will analyse each of the two key developments that condition the nature of state–civil society relationships in our time: shifts in governance paradigms and social liquefaction, respectively. Based on this analysis, we will reflect on what future civil society may look like, as it is being shaped by both top-down and bottom-up dynamics.

Developments that condition the nature of contemporary state–civil society relations

Although some of the issues in the relationship between the state and civil society are old and even timeless, it is important to locate our discussion on the relationship between civil society and the state in the specific social context where it originated. Arguably, the discussion over the relationship between the state and civil society² is as old as scholarship itself and there is a high risk of overstating the similarity between present and past debates. For a start, the sharp distinction between the two concepts presupposed in our present discussion is of relatively recent origin. Traditionally, civil society and political society were regarded as more integrated. In the Aristotelian view of politics, participation in civil society inevitably meant participation in political life and the only alternative was to withdraw to a secluded existence. There was no public life separate from politics. The notion of a third domain next to the state and market originated in the political philosophy of the 18th century, with an increasing emphasis on its autonomy – especially from the state (Hall and Trentmann, 2005). Also, the notion of government is now very different from how it has been perceived during most of history. It is no overstatement to say that in the past century, the role of states has changed fundamentally. Despite measures towards re-privatization, they are still more dominant in society than they have been at any time in human history. Although past issues keep recurring, the current conditions of state–civil society relationships are quite distinct and have given rise to a new type of debate.

Two different developments weave together here: one is the evolution of governance paradigms from a centralist to a more pluralist approach; the other is the liquefaction of social life, as described by prominent sociologists. Both developments link to various disciplinary and interdisciplinary traditions; both are more complex and contradictory than we could here do justice to by any measure. They come together in a specific way, creating a new dynamic in state–civil society relations that is specific to our time. Where this dynamic leads to is a question for empirical research. The effects of efforts to recreate or reshape civil society seem to hinge on the interfaces between the institutional architecture of modern society (with a dominant position of the state and quasi-state institutions) and the emerging dynamics of a late-modern network society, with a diverse and heterogeneous civil society with hybrid relationships with government, as a result of public management paradigms that have shifted over time (Evers, 2005).

From public administration to public governance

The first development is a change in approaches to governance. In traditional bureaucratic public administration models, it is the state (or the ‘public sphere’) that has or should have a quasi-monopoly in policymaking and public service delivery. This approach came simultaneously with the growth of the welfare state in many countries, characterized by an explosion of government responsibilities in domains like social services, welfare, education, economic policy and so on. These new governmental responsibilities also led to large state bureaucracies and increased public budgets.

Previous research has shown that the role civil society plays in the public sphere, or the impact civil society has, differs strongly between countries (Salamon et al., 2003; Smith and Grønbjerg, 2006). In corporatist countries like Germany, The Netherlands or Belgium, many parts of public service delivery have traditionally been entrusted to civil society (Dekker, 2004; Zimmer, 1999). In other countries, for example, in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, governmental bureaucracies traditionally deliver these services, and only a ‘small’ civil society in domains like education and welfare is observed (Jenei and Kuti, 2007; Wijkström and Zimmer, 2011). This implies that the path-dependent nature of government–civil society relationships in public service delivery and the underlying paradigm of public administration should be taken into account.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the economic growth of the previous decades slowed down, and the limits of the large and bureaucratic welfare state also became apparent. An increasing number of observers and policymakers made an argument for another ‘kind of’ government that was smaller and played another societal role. This movement, under the large umbrella of New Public Management (NPM), argued for a more businesslike governmental machinery, with the introduction of concepts like performance management and measurement, market-type mechanisms (competition), and outsourcing (Hood, 1991). Obviously, this movement has also affected many quasi-governmental organizations, like the civil society organizations that deliver public services (Bode and Brandsen, 2014). Increasingly, these were expected to prove performance – efficiency, effectiveness and quality – in return for the governmental subsidies that they were working with. In the heartland of NPM, the Anglo-Saxon world, many NPOs that previously had the quasi-monopoly in social service delivery and health care now also have to compete with commercial suppliers. Implicit in this approach is a shift in thinking about civil society organizations in which their trust-based legitimacy as non-profit-seeking suppliers of common goods (Hansmann, 2003; Ortmann and Schlesinger, 2003) is no longer taken for granted. The expectations with which they are confronted – from performance management and measurement to the introduction of competition in areas that were previously monopolized by civil society – has inevitably introduced a ‘managerial’ culture in organizations that were previously dominated by a ‘softer’ culture, for example, in caring for the vulnerable, educating young people and shaping and promoting the arts (see, e.g., Eikenberry and Kluver, 2004).

The latest stage in thinking about government and the public sector has been labelled ‘New Public Governance’ (e.g. Osborne, 2006). This paradigm is based on the assumption that for effective policymaking and service delivery, government should collaborate in pluralistic networks with many other actors, since complex social problems can only be dealt with through the combination of various resources. According to this philosophy, public value can only exist in a co-production between government, citizens, associations, entrepreneurs and firms. This approach also implies recognition of the specific nature of the services that civil society organizations tend to provide.

These developments have radically altered the relationships between the state and traditional (in some countries, pillarized) service-delivering organizations. However, and this is new, states also attempt to reach out to a so-called ‘new’ civil society that emerges around relatively new issues in the public debate, such as the environment, multiculturalism, mobility and public safety. Whereas this relationship was previously a rather adversarial one in which the new civil society opposed governmental policy, there is currently a trend towards a more cooperative relationship (Emerson et al., 2011; Hartz-Karp and Meister, 2010; Hendriks, 2010; Pemberton, 2013), an observation that also comes out of the literature on co-production (Alford, 2014; Verschuere et al., 2012).

This is neither a linear nor homogeneous development. Different manifestations of this new approach to public governance exist; old and new paradigms exist alongside one another, and distinctions that are theoretically clear are not so in practice. However, the general direction of current development is towards a more pluralist approach that sees a role for civil society not simply as the adversary or contractor of public policy, but as intrinsic collaborator.

Social liquefaction

This coincides with another development, which is the decline of traditional civil society. Modernity has entered a permanent state of turbulence, according to the concepts of influential social theorists, such as Beck’s (1992) ‘risk society’, Giddens’s (1990) ‘manufactured uncertainty’ and Bauman’s (2000) ‘liquid modernity’. The solid, defined, territorialized and state-bound concept of modern life is melting down.

This manifests itself in various areas of life. In work and welfare, traditional social ties (labour relations, community solidarity) become weaker and fragile as flexible contracting grows in number. The living environment is increasingly an urban one, with increasing anonymity. The effects of economic individualization, migration and information technology lead to cultural fragmentation and the decline of traditional communities. One of the main drivers behind this trend is economic globalization. Economic interdependencies are more than ever shaped at the global scale. Yet, the social and cultural consequences of this process highly differ from place to place, even within the context of a single nation-state. Sassen (2008) speaks of a ‘global–local’ axis, and Ritzer (2000) of a ‘glocalized’ social space. The implication is that national governments are gradually losing their powers to regulate and exercise control, fuelling assumptions about the emergence of new types of collaborative governance, as discussed in the previous paragraph.

Over the past century, it has been common to emphasize the problematic aspects of social fragmentation: our churches are empty, villages and communities are disappearing, and our values and bonds are slipping away. This romantic tale stretches back as far as Tonniës’s (1887) classical distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, which experienced a revival with Putnam’s (2001) popular analysis of declining social capital. One of the great issues of contemporary social science is whether as the old social order is fading, a new one is emerging and, if so, what it will look like. Yet, in the public discourse on social change, the image of decline has tended to predominate (whereas in relation to technological change, there is a tendency towards optimism).

The role of states in relation to such developments has always been contradictory, but at this point in time, the dominant discourse is one of restoration (or regeneration, reconstruction, revitalization, etc.). Yet, if the ‘national’ is no longer a source of ‘binding’, socially, culturally and economically, how can we expect manufacturing strategies to be successful? Baumann (2000) argues that the romance between nation and state is cooling down and rapidly developing into a ‘living apart together’ arrangement. This explains why governments are trying hard to reinvent the civil sphere –for living apart may easily end up in divorce. However, according to the global–local theorists, this should be seen as a spasm of death. Not all scholars do adhere to this pessimistic view of the future of the nation-state (see, e.g., Schinkel, 2012), nevertheless, it posits an intriguing puzzle: how likely is it that civil society can reinvent itself, from below, in local contexts that are liquefied and without the help of solid institutional resources?

The complications of regenerating civil society

As a result of these two trends, public authorities are increasingly inclined to define social relations and responsibilities as something that can be manufactured and managed. Fear over weakening or changing social relations and the loss of values are, of course, far from new. They are at the core of 2500-year-old plays and are presumably as old as man itself, so that is, in itself, hardly historically unique. Nor is it unusual for states to try to regulate social life and turn society away from perceived moral degeneration. In that sense, current efforts to revitalize civil society are a new phase in a continuous process.

There are two respects, though, in which they are historically distinct, if not unique. First, as noted earlier, the role of the state in society has changed essentially from where it was even a hundred years ago. Barring some exceptions, it has rarely been as powerful as it is today. Second, its ambition is not only to co-opt or integrate, but also to recreate, civil society. To put it provocatively: public governance in modern welfare states is looking for methods to reinvent (or revitalize) ‘the social’. Ambitions include a large-scale reconstruction of local communities, civil society and citizenship by giving public responsibilities to citizens and civil society organizations. As a consequence, relationships with citizens, communities and third sector organizations are cast within the mould of public management.

This restoration is fraught with complications. For a start, the state is not separate from society, but part of it, if only because its own mechanisms of control rest partly on the social relations that are in meltdown. The solid state, intervening in society with powerful social technologies, is no more. Governance instruments that rely on authority, hierarchy and bureaucracy increasingly suffer from a lack of effectiveness and legitimacy. As a consequence, we witness the emergence of new modes of public governance, aiming at the recovery of solid ground for state intervention. One of the strategies involved in this process is the use of social capital as a source for public governance. Community initiatives, local social practices and third sector organizations are appointed a position and function within public governance. In Flanders (Belgium), for example, with the decree on local social policy, local governments are expected to engage third sector organizations and organized civil society in the development and implementation of local social policies (De Corte and Verschuere, 2014). Waardenburg and Van de Bovenkamp (2014), in a study on Dutch sports and patient associations, show that such civil society organizations can be ‘manufactured’ by government as means to implement public policy. This governmental control of organizations can be achieved through at least four mechanisms: financially; through accountability procedures; via demands for partnerships; and via the use of symbolic policy language (Waardenburg and Van de Bovenkamp, 2014: 89). In other words, the involvement of civil society cannot, in itself, be seen as a way to give citizens more control. It is also a manner used by government to steer governmental policies. These two examples of increased government–civil society cooperation, among many others, leave us with a paradox, as we noted earlier: if social and cultural erosion is the problem, how can it be launched as part of the solution?

A second complication is that it is unclear how relations that are inherently built bottom-up can be constructed with help from the top down. The search for civil society from above may lead to what Trommel (2009) has described as ‘greedy governance’, aiming to manufacture a civil sphere by means of public interventions. This may easily destroy what it wants to promote: a lively, self-governing civil society. The recreated communities may not be able to exist without government support. It is an intriguing question whether new forms of ‘civility’ are identical or even comparable to their classic predecessors. The very fact that states are involved in shaping civil society organizations, by means of financial instruments, accountability procedures, performance management or otherwise, may imply that organizations lose their original identity. Indeed, in the worst cases, efforts to integrate the state with bottom-up organizations and networks may be an expression of totalitarianism (Tilly, 2005). Even in cases of weak state intervention, one must wonder whether ‘civility’ still has the meaning it had before.

A third problem is that different paradigms of governance continue to coexist, which sometimes leads to contradictory pressures. NPM also involves civil society, but with a narrower focus on performance and management. The risk is then that government (and society) starts to overemphasize management indicators to judge civil society organizations, or that civil society organizations are forced into competition with commercial organizations. Ultimately, this may lead to mission drift and goal displacement (Eikenberry and Kluver, 2014). In the UK, Harlock (2014) has shown in the context of elderly care how organizations from civil society try to negotiate and manage changes in their public service environment in a condition of high dependence on local officials for funding, and often struggle to maintain their goals. Verschuere and De Corte (2014) show that non-profit organizations in the Flemish (Belgian) welfare sector perceive decreased autonomy (concerning the choice of processes, results and target groups) vis-a-vis government in cases of large public resource dependence. Moreover, it can already be observed that the cross-national variety in state–civil society relationships has diminished as a result of the application of NPM principles (Bode, 2006).

Finding a new balance between bottom-up and top-down initiatives

Our analysis of top-down efforts to reconstruct civil society is not meant to suggest that bottom-up initiatives have been replaced. To the contrary, some recent studies have shown that in European cities (Evers et al., 2014) and in Belgian cities (De Rynck and Verschuere, 2014), a lot of initiatives emerge, often from within society, to address new societal problems. These initiatives are often very concrete (single-issue), are not always part of established and institutionalized civil society, and develop various relations with local government: sometimes adversarial (advocating issues and policies that may not be political priorities), sometimes complementary to what government does, and sometimes filling in public service delivery gaps in domains in which government is not active (Young, 2000). Thus, although the process of social liquefaction has affected classical communities and types of participation, they are far from gone. There are also indications of new, emerging kinds of social relationships. In other words, top-down civil society meets bottom-up. The question is how these two driving forces relate to one another in practice. This is ultimately a question for empirical research, but in the literature, one can observe various expectations about how the relationship will develop.

An optimistic view, often found in the literature on social innovation, would suggest that they are complementary or even synergetic. Top-down efforts to restore civil society do not necessarily frustrate bottom-up initiatives. National policy agendas such as the Big Society in England do promote such initiatives, but leave a lot of space for agency ‘from beneath’. Food banks, voluntary care associations and local safety projects all have in common that they are problem-driven rather than ideologically motivated, that they involve actors with various ‘identities’, and that they have flexible organizational forms. In conditions of increasing public austerity, and a flowering ‘glocal’ landscape, a large variety of local social innovations emerge that shape new civil responsibilities, but in novel ways different from traditional organizations (Evers et al., 2014). Governments at various levels have (if only temporarily) supported such initiatives.

Yet, of course, it is also possible that there is friction or even outright competition over resources between initiatives with different backgrounds. At the very least, the parties involved will have to fundamentally reconsider their roles. An interesting example is the German Federal Volunteer Service, which was created when conscription was abolished in 2011 (Beller and Haß, 2014). Until then, many young men had refused military service and instead opted for a year of civilian duty, usually within the non-profit sector. The effect of the reform was that about 90,000 young men who had supported the welfare state in a broad range of social and health services and health institutions, as well as organizations in civil protection and sports, were suddenly no longer available. As compensation, the government founded a new volunteer service, which operated next to a similar service organized by the non-profit sector. It has led to a complicated relationship. Although the state has adopted a stronger role in volunteering, for the implementation of its policy, it still depends on voluntary organizations to recruit, motivate and supervise the volunteers. Although, in the end, this may lead to more effective arrangements, in the short term, it has channelled a lot of energy towards negotiation and administrative processes, rather than to the core business of the organizations.

The dynamics between top-down and bottom-up initiatives can, indeed, be complex. Even when spontaneous initiatives are successful and self-sustaining, they may have a ‘dark side’ that invites public intervention, for instance, when they are seen as undermining or contradicting institutionalized public values. Another contemporary example may be the existence of grassroots organizations that organize soup kitchens for homeless or otherwise vulnerable people, with the underlying aim of recruiting fighters that can be deployed in the Middle East. A well-known example is the tension between equality and exclusion. If new civil society networks are too closed, they may come to resemble ‘gated communities’ that are at odds with public values of open access and equality. In a study on housing cooperatives, Brandsen and Helderman (2012) noted that the benefits of lively communities often come at the cost of high barriers against intrusions from the outside. Other instances of such ‘voluntary failure’ are a lack of resources, a narrow scope of action with a focus on single issues while ignoring others, a lack of accountability that leads to a focus on narrow interests while neglecting larger social needs, or a lack of professional competence (Anheier, 2005; Salamon, 1987). Yet, when state interference to correct for or prevent such dynamics is too strong, initiatives may not get off the ground at all, and the autonomy of civil society may be compromised.

Towards intermediary communities of public craftsmanship

It can be argued that new concepts and practices emerge that seek to overcome the distinction between adversarial and collaborative relationships (Young, 2000). As Hecksher and Adler (2006) have argued for the private sector, new forms of collaboration can be observed, challenged by conditions of increasing (global economic) complexity and (informational) uncertainty. Supported by the opportunities of Internet-based interaction, professional workers join in (virtual) communities that embrace the value of knowledge-sharing, being a vital precondition for innovation. The collaborations that emerge transgress organizational hierarchies (in the classic words of Tönnies, Gemeinschaft) and, at the same time, challenge the logic of markets and politics (Gesellschaft). Rather, it seems a logic capable of developing ‘togetherness’ both at a distance, in an abstract, anonymous space, and at the familiar level of a concrete place. A similar argument is plausible for the public sector (Trommel, 2013). In between the institutional logic of the national welfare state and the newly emerging social dynamics at local levels, collaborations develop between actors who have one foot in the ‘old world’ (professionals, managers, civil society organizations, local politicians, interest organizations, etc.) and the other in improvised social ground (cf. Boutellier, 2013). The overarching value that binds these actors together might be characterized as a problem-driven search for ‘public craftsmanship’ (cf. Sennett, 2008). Bannink, Bosselaar and Trommel (2012) have spoken of ‘crafting communities’, aiming at making sound connections between the different spheres on which public governance rests. As such, this type of public collaborative might be regarded as a new social-political vehicle that can ‘ride the global–local axis’, or, in the words of Sassen, a novel assemblage that better fits the requirements of a post-national world. It is, of course, much too early to verify this and to identify the characteristics of a new type of civil society. Yet, we conclude our argument by exploring a little deeper as to what this new social realm between the state and the citizen may look like.

Increasingly, contemporary social problems have global antecedents and local manifestations. Crucial developments and critical events in global economic networks impact upon employment and migration issues everywhere in the world, but in a different way in Berlin than in Hamburg or in Munich, or in Amsterdam. This trend points at two political vacuums, respectively, on a transnational and local level. While these are the levels on which new public problems develop – from financial crises to welfare, security and integration issues in neighbourhoods – the political apparatus of the nation-state seems unable to reach these levels adequately. It can be argued that the lack of ‘community’ at transnational and local levels underlies this political incapacity. However, one may also theorize that the new challenges for political action in ‘glocalized’ contexts function as a driver behind the emergence of new forms of social (and political) community, both at transnational and local levels (a trend also noted in the policy learning literature; see Radaelli, 1995; Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993). Consider the following example. The growth of economic interdependencies within global value chains, for instance, through processes of outsourcing and transferring work, brings together a variety of actors sharing a particular interest in crafting a rudimentary form of social security (and thus stability) within the value chain. That is, employers, representatives of international unions, local public authorities, anthropologists and insurance companies may work together in an effort to arrange transnational welfare transfers (cf. Bannink et al., 2011). At the local level, one can observe a similar mechanism: actors from different spheres (politics, management, civil society, professions) are increasingly willing to share their knowledge and skills for the sake of problem-solving outside the domain of formal political decision-making. Thus, at both levels – transnational and local – one can observe community-like activity oriented at developing public policies, though not in formalized institutional contexts.

In at least four respects, the emergence of these problem-oriented communities points at new directions in which civil society may develop. First, ‘affinity to the public domain’ seems to establish a new motivational complex behind community development, next to traditional (religious, ideological or cultural) motives. Second, such communities may share a sense of ‘togetherness’ or even solidarity, but not necessarily in a durable and/or fixed manner. Over time, communities may change in terms of members, social ties, scope and problem focus. This flexibility, enabled and supported by contemporary social technologies, may be referred to as ‘electronic solidarity’ (Trommel, 2013). Third, the focus on public problem-solving involves a turn to ‘pragmatism’ and practical knowledge. In the pursuit of ideological motives, trial-and-error approaches and careful crafting seem to replace blueprint politics and policy solutions. Following Sennett (2008), it may be argued that the virtues of craftsmanship establish a new common ground for collective action in which established rules for institutional and/or professional conduct are linked to innovative social experiments. Among these virtues are modesty, patience, devotion to practical wisdom and knowledge-sharing. Finally, one could assume that these crafting communities are eventually capable of building bridges into a post-national political future. Due to the tentative nature of crafting practices, though, it is hard to tell what this future will look like. The turn to localism or other forms of socio-economic isolationism and NIMBY (‘not in my back yard’) behaviour is a risk, but also the resort to mere technocratic policymaking. However, if crafting communities succeed in organizing spaces in which social innovators cooperate with representatives of democratic institutions and professional associations, then they may smartly govern a true renewal of our socio-political landscapes.

In sum, a new future for civil society seems plausible, though not through spontaneous revival and neither as a ‘product’ of institutional manufacturing. Rather, it seems that a distinct mix of negative drivers (the erosion of national political institutions; professional inabilities) and positive drivers (the rearrangement of global–local interdependencies; the rapid growth of information technology networks) underlies the emergence of communities that seek to find pragmatic answers to the public problems of our time. It is impossible to tell whether crafting communities will continue to exist as the means of post-national policymaking in the longer run. One cannot exclude a gradual growth of new and sustainable governance structures in which ‘electronic solidarity’ will be embedded as only one of the binding mechanisms in society. However, in the short run, crafting communities are likely to increasingly occupy the political vacuums at the local and transnational levels as the vehicles potentially able to connect the institutional architecture of the ‘modern’ nation-state to the emerging realm of local and transnational politics.

Conclusion: implications for the research agenda

In the years to come, civil society revitalization is likely to be a hot issue on the political and social research agendas. Although we have primarily discussed the European situation, it is a trend that is also visible in other parts of the world (for examples in this journal, see Birner and Wittmer, 2006; Rosenbaum, 2006). This article has argued that two perspectives dominate the current debates and practices in this area: one drawing on the assumption that revitalization is a matter of institutional ‘production’; the other revolving around the idea of new social dynamics, driven by the problems that follow from a novel (‘glocalized’ and ‘post-national’) social order. Both perspectives relate to civil society patterns that are inherently problematic, at least in their ideal-typical forms. Attempts to manufacture civil society may easily undermine the very essence of civil self-organization. On the other hand, embracing every bottom-up initiative as a useful contribution to public governance practices may yield a degree of ‘localism’ that is destructive to established public values. The question is where that leads. In a worst-case scenario, civil society will be ground between a state aiming at reshaping traditional organizations that have lost inspiration and stability, and a new civil society emerging in the shape of ‘gated communities’ developing outside the public sphere.

New research efforts are needed to understand how the complex relationship between governments and civil society organizations is currently unfolding. What exactly is the logic of this ambitious ‘manufacturing project’: how does it work, which (side) effects occur, and what sense does it make in terms of ‘revitalization’? Furthermore, what is the logic of these new social dynamics: to what extent do they feed the establishment of isolated communities and a related decline of collective solidarity, and how do they contribute to public governance? More and better knowledge on these issues may help public authorities to develop smarter civil society policies, whereas civil actors may get inspired to innovate their practices in such a way that they better fit the concerns of public governance agendas. A challenging research question is whether new socio-political communities are emerging that connect the institutional traditions of the national and local welfare systems to newly developing initiatives at the local level. If so, it is an exciting development that will bring together research agendas in public management, social policy and civil society research.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Taco Brandsen is Professor of Public Administration at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His research covers public services, innovation and the interplay of civil society and the state, including the co-production of citizens in the delivery of public services. He is editor of the journal Voluntas (2016) and board member of the research networks EMES, EGPA, IRSPM and the International Society for Third-Sector Research.

Willem Trommel is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His research focuses on the reform of public governance systems, particularly in the field of local welfare. Trommel is chairing the Dutch/Flemish division of the European network Espa-net (European Group for Public Administration).

Bram Verschuere is Professor of Public Management at Ghent University, Belgium. His research covers the management of public and non-profit organizations, state–civil society relations and the co-production of public services. He is co-chair of the EGPA Study Group on Public Governance of Societal Sectors.

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