Expanding the role of civil society in Britain and beyond

Monaghan, Elizabeth

Abstract

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2012. The social, political and economic changes that indicate a withering of the welfare state have, as well as changing the relationship between the state and the economy, also brought the role and boundaries of civil society into sharp focus. The migration of authority upwards to supranational and downwards to sub-national level - as well as outwards to executive agencies - constitutive of a ‘hollowing out’ (Rhodes, 1994) of the state; the rise of ‘critical citizens’ (Norris, 1999); and the proliferation and increasing importance of non-state actors in governance (Rhodes, 1996) have had important implications for ideas about how welfare is provided across society. Over the last 50 years the emphasis has shifted from the dominant assumption between 1945 and the mid 1970s that states have the responsibility for providing welfare, moving to an emphasis on market-based solutions taking hold from the late 1970s to the 1990s, and finally to a new approach emerging in the early 1990s which addresses state and market failures by incorporating both these earlier approaches alongside the voluntary or third sector (Edwards, 2009, p. 11). That civil society is or ought to be involved in welfare provision, implying an ‘expanded role’, is a possibility that has been increasingly raised in this context in Europe and elsewhere.

Citation

Monaghan, E. (2012). Expanding the role of civil society in Britain and beyond. In J. Connelly, & J. Hayward (Eds.), The Withering of the Welfare State : Regression (37-51). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230349230_3

• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2012
• Deposit Date: Dec 19, 2014
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 37-51
• Book Title: The Withering of the Welfare State : Regression
• Chapter Number: 3
• ISBN: 9781349340750; 9780230337145
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230349230_3
• Keywords: REF 2014 submission
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/370988
• Contract Date: Dec 19, 2014