Third sector support infrastructure: towards a comparative framework

• In Event: Comparative civil society research

Abstract

How is the nonprofit or third sector supported and coordinated in different national contexts, and what might explain different approaches? This question draws attention to the third sector’s infrastructure, the ‘hidden wiring’ which seeks to support, develop, connect, represent and promote ordinary ‘frontline’ groups and organisations in civil society (Macmillan, 2021). In the UK, much of this work is carried out by dedicated infrastructure organisations working nationally and locally, but other approaches and terminology are used elsewhere, such as umbrella organisations, associations of nonprofits, intermediaries and peak bodies. The position of infrastructure can be highly contested, often acting as a focal point for wider debates on the different roles, ethos and stability of the third sector as a whole.

In its articulation of distinct, embedded and relatively enduring civil society regimes, social origins theory could offer a helpful lens for exploring the third sector’s support infrastructure in specific national contexts (Salamon and Anheier, 1998; Salamon et al, 2017). It might explore how, for example, such infrastructure acts simultaneously as a reflection or product of a particular regime, but also as a means of reinforcing it. Although social origins theory has become a highly influential and powerful framework for comparative analysis, it has been seen as rather high-level, reductionist and static (Kendall, 2003), and in need of greater sub-national differentiation (Arvidson et al, 2018).

In this paper, we respond to these criticisms by exploring the changing position of third sector infrastructure in the UK, characterised broadly as a liberal civil society regime with social democratic elements (Salamon and Anheier, 1998: 228-229). In particular we compare the changing fields of local third sector infrastructure in England and Scotland, the two largest of the four UK nations (Cullingworth, 2020; Macmillan, 2021). To enable a more dynamic, differentiated and politically shaped account of civil society regimes, we follow a path from the early 1990s through to the 2020s to examine the recent development of local third sector infrastructure in England and Scotland. We highlight how similar approaches to local third sector infrastructure in the two nations began to diverge, first through the 1998 devolution settlement and subsequent political developments in Scotland, and secondly after 2010 when the UK’s Conservative-led coalition government pursued an austerity programme coupled with a small-state promotion of the ‘Big Society’.

As well as augmenting the existing literature by recasting social origins theory in a more dynamic and politically embedded direction, the paper contributes to understandings of third sector infrastructure by setting out a tentative comparative coordination framework. The divergence between England and Scotland, ostensibly within a single liberal civil society regime, can be characterised in terms of adopting a more or less coordinated approach to infrastructure. While in Scotland the attempt to develop a coordinated field of local infrastructure was developed through the 2010s, in England it was abandoned in favour of a discoordinated approach (Bode, 2006). The framework can be embellished, tested and amended in further research on third sector infrastructure in different contexts.

References

Arvidson, M., Johansson, H., Johansson, S. and Nordfeldt, M. (2018) ‘Local civil society regimes: liberal, corporatist and social democratic civil society regimes in Swedish metropolitan cities’, Voluntary Sector Review, 9(1), 3–20.

Bode, I. (2006) ‘Disorganized welfare mixes: voluntary agencies and new governance regimes in Western Europe’, Journal of European Social Policy, 16(4), 346-359.

Cullingworth, J. (2020) Democratic governance through intermediary bodies: A case study of third sector interfaces in Scotland, PhD thesis, Glasgow, University of Glasgow.

Kendall, J. (2003) The Voluntary Sector: Comparative Perspectives in the UK, London, Routledge.

Macmillan, R. (2021) ‘A surprising turn of events - episodes towards a renaissance of civil society infrastructure in England’, People, Place and Policy, 15(2), 57-71.

Salamon, L. and Anheier, H. (1998) ‘Social Origins of Civil Society: Explaining the Nonprofit Sector Cross-Nationally’, Voluntas, 9(3), 213-48.

Salamon, L., Haddock, M.A. and Sokolowski, S.W. (2017) Explaining Civil Society Development: A Social Origins Approach, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Authors

• Jane Cullingworth

• Rob Macmillan, Sheffield Hallam University