Filip Wijkström

The Swedish nonprofit sector in international comparison

The previous picture of the nonprofit sector in Sweden has been biased by a narrow US perspective. Mainstream nonprofit literature seems to neglect work carried out in the important but more comple ...

Policy Tools or Mirrors of Politics. Government-Voluntary Sector Compacts in the Post-Welfare State Age

Abstract Government-voluntary sector “compacts” have emerged in the recent years as an innovative nonprofit policy practice in many industrialized countries around the world. Originating in England in the late 1990s, the compact phenomenon has today spread to societies with relatively different tracks of inter-sectorial relations and different civil society regimes. This introductory article seeks to chart out the diverse functions that the compact solution seems to perform in different institutional surroundings, and it also opens up for a comparative discussion of the broader socio-political contexts in which this policy instrument has developed.

Comparing Swedish Foundations: A Carefully Negotiated Space of Existence:

Foundations and philanthropy currently play a very limited role in the Swedish welfare. The same is true in fields like Culture and Recreation or International Activities. Only in the case of funding of research do Swedish foundations exhibit a role possible to define in terms of substitution rather than weak complementarity in relation to government. Despite marginal positions for philanthropy, Sweden displays a wealthy as well as growing foundation population, which seems like a paradox, at least in comparison to the situation in Germany and the United States where foundations traditionally play a more visible and pronounced role in society. A striking difference between the Swedish foundations and their U.S. or German counterparts is their weak bonds to religious communities or causes. Instead, we can identify in our new data set a growing segment of the Swedish foundation world that is affiliated with other parts of civil society. The same is true for the category of independent foundations, which points toward the U.S. model. We find in the article some limited support for a “philanthropic turn” in Sweden, but overall the foundation world is still deeply embedded in the social contract and strong Social-Democratic regime of the 20th century. In comparison to neighboring Scandinavian or Nordic countries, both similarities and differences are identified where, for example, the Norwegian case display a much larger segment of operating foundations, closely affiliated with government, while in Denmark, on the other hand, the corporate-owning foundation seems to be a much more important form than in Sweden.

Who Calls the Shots? The Real Normative Power of Civil Society

What is the nature of the political agency of civil society organizations? As the research community concerned with civil society is a multidisciplinary and diverse one, it is not surprising that there is a lack of a common understanding of the concept of civil society, as well as of a common theoretical framework that would allow us to understand the place and role of civil society organisations in wider society. In mainstream political science, in particular, this situation has led to an analytical confusion, where the concept of civil society is infused with all kinds of normative meanings, while at the same time being altogether rejected as irrelevant by those scholars who are put off by that very normativity. So how can we under- stand the relationship between civil society and norms, values and ideas, and what does this relationship tell us about the role of this sphere in the society as such? In this conceptual chapter, we explore what we see as a useful way of understanding the political agency of civil society organizations. Inspired by the new institutionalism in organization theory, we suggest that such understanding needs to take into account the institutional logic of civil society, and to recognize this sphere as the institutional habitat of those actors who provide politics with normative and ideational content.

Commentary on Erik Amnå's “Still a Trustworthy Ally?”

Far too often, the Nordic or Scandinavian societies in northern Europe are lumped together as one with no, or unclear, reference to what it is that makes them similar or in what respect they might possibly differ from each other. The current contribution by Erik Amnå: “Still a Trustworthy Ally? Civil Society and the Transformation of Scandinavian Democracy”, offers an interesting departure from this tradition, where instead he chisels out an argument, claiming and highlighting some important civil society differences between the countries, based on the most recent democracy audits in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. In his article, Amnå also points to a possibly more general trend in the future role and importance of civil society organizations in other highly developed and welfare-state dominated societies. The development in question could be described as an on-going shift in civil society character “from voice to service” (for a similar and current argument for the situation in Sweden, see also Wijkström, 2004). One most well-formulated thesis in the article is when the author describes an important side of the current development in Scandinavian civil society as if “Civil society returns as a welfare state back-up society” (p. 9). He is presenting it as if civil society is once again volunteering to play the role of a social service provider (see Wijkström & Einarsson, 2006, for recent Swedish data on this development), a role the voluntary or nonprofit organizations are understood to have left to welfare-state arrangements a long time ago, according to the grand narrative or dominating gospel of the Scandinavian socialdemocratic regimes (see Esping-Andersen, 1990). “In other words, it goes retro”, as Amnå so succinctly puts it (p. 8). Nevertheless, despite his important contributions in highlighting both the common and the diverging civil society developments in the three countries, in his text Amnå also tends Journal of Civil Society Vol. 2, No. 2, 169–172, September 2006

Trust Contextualized: Confidence in Theory and Practice

What is the role of social trust in society and in organizational life? Does trust, as many imagine, function as a sort of a web that holds together the entire machinery of society, as a lubricant that oils the wheels of exchange and transactions? Or is it, in reality, a loose but sticky glue that produces inertia and slowness of reaction, hampering mobility and change? What mechanisms have developed in modern society to create, manage, maintain, and convey trust, not only in such different organizational settings as corporations, agencies of public administration, and civil society organizations, but also across these boundaries and other settings? What happens in the transition zone between different societal contexts, when trust is being recontextualized in diverse institutions and cultures? And—perhaps of particular importance today—what can we learn from the logic of de- and recontextualization of trust, in situations where public confidence is shattered?