The context conditions for third sector organizations (TSOs) in Europe have changed significantly over the past two decades. This changing policy environment has not only affected the availability of public and private funding for TSOs, but also altered the modes of their cooperation with the state and shifted societal discourses and expectations towards the third sector. In many EU member states, the effects of the global economic crisis and subsequent austerity policies aggravated the challenges TSOs are confronted with. The most direct consequences of austerity are a decrease in the availability of funding resources. More long-term effects of austerity include the impact on the internal structure of the third sector, its alignment towards external stakeholders and its interrelations with state and society.
Policy changes associated with austerity do not stand alone, but take place against the background of broader societal developments which can be observed in many European countries as a major impact on third sector development. As a consequence to increasing external pressures, TSOs have introduced professionalized management systems and other governance measures that are meant to strengthen output efficiency. The activities of TSOs are more and more geared towards a higher service orientation to keep up with the increased attractiveness of commercial competitors. These broader changes can be observed to different degrees in all European countries. They are also reflected in societal discourses, which demand higher levels of accountability and legitimacy from the third sector.
Despite a common policy context and similar social transformations, third sector evolution, however, has not been the same across Europe. Context conditions for third sector development significantly vary among EU member states. This also holds true for the responses the sector has been able to formulate with regard to the changing environment.
This article aims to identify commonalities and differences between the third sector development in eight EU member states by focusing on barriers and opportunities for TSOs in social services delivery. The country case studies include Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The article looks both into external factors (context conditions for TSOs) and internal factors (third sector responses).
This paper builds upon the policy fields approach, as developed by Fligstein and McAdam (Fligstein, 2001; Fligstein & McAdam 2011 and 2012). For the field of third sector studies, this analytical framework has been applied by Stone and Sandfort (2009). The policy fields framework contains several theoretical ‘building blocks’, including (1) policy domains, (2) societal sectors, (3) the structuration of fields, (4) policy networks, and (5) the social skill (Stone & Sandfort, 2009). Policy domains establish the general boundaries of the construct; the concept of societal sectors expands the types of organizations relevant within a policy field and points to both vertical and horizontal relationships that cross policy domains. This framework can be used to better understand the influence of the environment and institutional context on third sector organizations, as done, for instance, by Macmillan et al. (2013) for an analysis of third sector development in the UK. This framework “steps beyond a managerial account of individual organizations, at the same time, it gets underneath a rather general ‘whole third sector’ horizontal account” (Macmillan et al. 2013: 19). The third sector is understood as a ‘strategic action field’ constituting of organizations that are themselves fields and are part of ‘vertical fields’ in policy domains, e.g. health and housing.
This article is based on empirical research on third sector development in eight European countries. In each country, three different types of data were gathered. First, the research teams gathered general evidence on the scope and size of the third sector from statistical data and secondary information sources. Second, the research team conducted between 20 and 30 in-depth interview with representatives of umbrella organizations and with policy experts. The in-depth interviews focused on barriers and opportunities of third sector development. Third, the research team conducted an online survey among TSO representatives on the same topics as the in-depth interviews.
References
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Fligstein, N. & McAdam (2011), Toward a general theory of strategic action fields, Sociological Theory, 29,1, pp. 1-26.
Fligstein, N. & McAdam, D. (2012). A theory of fields, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Macmillan, R., Taylor, R. Arvidson, M., Soteri-Proctor, A & Teasdale, S. (2013). The third sector in unsettled times: a field guide, Working Paper 109, Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC), available at http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/ge... (accessed 13 January 2017).
Stone M. & Sandfort J. (2009), Building a Policy Fields Framework to Inform Research on Nonprofit Organizations, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Vol. 38, N°6, December 2009, p. 1054-1075.
Zimmer A. & Pahl B. (2016), Learning from Europe: Report on third sector enabling and disabling factors, Comparative report, 1/2016, TSI project.
6. Institutionalization, scaling up and public policies
EMES_Transforming_policy_environments_and_third_sector_development_in_Europe.pdf 