Civil society - Topics

Faith-based charities deliver welfare in places the state never reaches Religion lost legal power in most of Europe and kept its social functions Unions were the largest civil society organizations of the twentieth century Volunteering tracks education and income more closely than goodwill Do international NGOs answer to anyone Tocqueville thought American democracy ran on voluntary associations What happens to a neighborhood program when the funding cycle ends and the staff leave? Civic engagement surveys count memberships and miss everything people do informally Families were the welfare system long before there was a welfare state Putnam's bowling alone thesis and the decline of civic association Trust in institutions has fallen while demand for what they deliver has risen Welfare institutions were built around a family model that no longer fits most households The third sector is asked to do state work without state money Volunteering through an NGO is not the same as helping a neighbor Religion as an institution is measured by attendance and that measure is collapsing Trusting strangers is the cheapest form of social insurance How do you measure social cohesion when every index defines it differently? Crowdsourced directories of NGOs fail on verification rather than on contributions Capacity building sounds empowering until you ask who decided which capacity was missing Community development grants reward whichever group writes the best application Does a shared enemy create cohesion or just postpone the argument? Mutual aid groups appeared faster than nonprofits in the first lockdown 'Community' has become the vaguest word in policy documents Cohesion and conflict are not opposites because some conflicts build solidarity Volunteering keeps a routine going when paid work disappears Chinatowns outlived the immigration wave that created them The role of transnational NGOs in filling governance gaps Who decides what counts as a matter of public concern? Charities end up copying the organizations that fund them Civic space closes through paperwork more often than through bans Habermas located the public sphere in coffee houses and newspapers Can civil society survive a government that decides which associations are legitimate?