This paper discusses the relationship between corporate volunteering and civic engagement outside the workplace in Russia, proceeding from a mixed-method approach. The quantitative findings are based on a comparison between employees in 37 Russian companies who participated in corporate volunteering (N = 399) and those who did not (N = 402). Using binary logistic regression analysis, we demonstrate that employee participation in corporate volunteering is positively related to four forms of civic engagement outside the workplace: informal volunteering, formal volunteering, formal monetary donation, and informal monetary donation. In addition, we draw on information obtained from interviews with 10 corporate volunteers, as well as with all 37 company corporate volunteering managers, to develop a general explanation for why corporate volunteering might lead to civic engagement. We identify three primary explanations. First, trust in companies can be converted into increased trust in social institutions. Second, corporate volunteering can expose employees to other realities, thereby leading them to rethink their priorities. Third, corporate volunteering socializes employees to volunteering, thus making them more likely to incorporate volunteering into their personal repertoires of activities. Corporate volunteering appears to be an effective mechanism for stimulating civic engagement and volunteering infrastructure in post-communist countries.

Civic participation among today’s youth is a topic of widespread concern for policy-makers, academics, and the publics of Western countries at large. Though scholars have increasingly become aware of deep-rooted social inequalities in access to volunteering in the adult population, differences in opportunity structures that facilitate participation among young people are rarely recognized. In this paper, I put forward a ‘life-track perspective’ on youth volunteerism that highlights crucial within-group differences among youths. I present empirical findings from a unique Danish national survey with multiple waves enriched with national register data. The study sheds light on the changing importance of longstanding dividing lines—gender, social class, and education—in volunteering trends among the young. While young people are seemingly more gender-equal in their volunteering behavior than older cohorts, higher education as a gateway to volunteering is of much greater importance among the young. This educational ‘elitism’ in volunteering has, furthermore, intensified among young people between 2004 and 2012.

After the fall of state-socialism, efforts were made to build democracy by creating civil society organizations (CSOs) and forming independent nonprofit sectors across Central and Eastern Europe. However, most of these efforts ignored the mass organizations, state-sponsored interest groups, and quasi-independent associations in existence for many years. To understand how the transition affected existing associations and the forms of volunteerism they promoted, this paper investigates changes in the Czech Union for Nature Protection (CSOP), an organization that has endured since 1979. Here, it is found that rather than retaining its emphasis on classical modes of voluntary action and participant interaction, CSOP favors professionally managed activities designed to attract financial support. The case suggests that some of the participatory practices and collectivist norms advanced by associations in socialist times are being weakened as these groups attempt to secure the resources necessary to survive.

Research on volunteering has emphasized the positive role played by individual religiosity on this type of civic engagement. There are fewer studies on the relation between contextual religiosity and volunteer work. Several of them have concluded that the higher the macro-contextual religiosity, the higher the propensity to get involved in volunteering. Thereby, researchers might be inclined to conclude that secularization is a threat to this social participation. This article shows that such a conclusion is unfounded. From a data set including the 27 countries of the European Union and using a multilevel analysis to control for the compositional effects of the national sample, we obtain a negative correlation between macro-contextual religiosity and volunteering. From these results, we suggest that the relationship between volunteering and contextual religiosity cannot be considered as deterministic but it has to be comprehended in a more global cultural context.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the potential link between religious participation and civic engagement in Sweden. Religious participation probably plays a different role in a secular context compared to a context where religion and politics are more intertwined. First, do those who regularly attend religious services in Sweden volunteer and participate in charitable giving more often compared with those who do not? Second, are those who regularly attend religious services more, or less, politically active between elections compared with those who do not in Sweden? Third, do those who regularly attend religious services in Sweden receive more requests to volunteer than those who do not? The study uses survey data on volunteering from random samples of individuals in Sweden. Results showed that volunteering was limited to a restricted group of organizations. There is a higher propensity among those who regularly attend religious services to volunteer within political parties. Those who frequently attend church were significantly more often requested to volunteer by someone else.

Since 2011, a new mobilization strategy has emerged in the Beijing anti-domestic violence (ADV) movement: performance art public interest advocacy, consisting of live performances in public places for public audiences (A CDB special report, 2013). Drawing on the social movement literature, particularly concepts of political opportunity and mobilizing structure, framing strategy, and tactical innovation (Political process and the development of black insurgency, 1930–1970, 2nd edn, 1999; Dynamics of contention, 2001), this article investigates the following questions: What was the rationale behind the introduction of performance art advocacy into the tactical repertoire of Beijing ADV organizations, and what impact has this tactic had on the Beijing ADV movement? Based on content analysis of 14 semi-structured interviews with ADV movement activists and media reports, it will illustrate that this innovative strategy relied heavily on professional Beijing ADV organizations; performance art public interest advocacy broadened and mobilized the Beijing ADV movement to work toward improved legal protections against DV, triggered nationwide responses, and improved citizens’ awareness of DV.

Voluntary organizations have been praised as “schools of democracy” that promote citizens’ political participation. The neo-Tocquevillian approach argues that civic engagement in voluntary organizations facilitates higher levels of political participation. However, empirical studies on the theory have been inconclusive. One possible reason for this is the heterogeneity of voluntary organizations and of political participation. This paper explores the relationship between the civic engagement and political participation of U.S. respondents to the World Values Survey. The results show that only certain types of voluntary organizations facilitate certain types of political participation. Voluntary organizations that pursue social missions are more likely to facilitate political participation. Active civic engagement is more strongly associated with political participation, but passive civic engagement can also promote political participation in some organizations.

Currently, we are facing a challenge in quality citizen participation from populism, which is bringing not renewal of democracy, but corrosion—and potentially its dismantling—from the inside. Many people are being misled by nationalist entrepreneurs who are not committed to democracy or solving the problems which the average person faces, but to their own power and personal egos. Whether the challenges come from the political left or right, democracy needs consistent and quality participation by all of its citizens. As a significant part of the citizenry fails to fight for democracy, factual evidence, and the rights of all of the people, I argue that political scientists must re-examine what we are doing inside and outside of the classroom to foster students’ and communities’ growth in political knowledge, democratic skills, and democratic values and habits. This essay explores three points—content, quality of information, and context—to demonstrate how we can improve teaching and learning in civic education. Collegiate-level educators can ensure that we are positively contributing to the preservation and advancement of our democracies and battling the forces that seek to undermine our democracies.

This paper presents an analysis of the relationships between intergenerational transmission of philanthropic values and prosocial behavior in three areas: monetary donation of money, volunteering, and civic engagement. Using a multivariable analysis for each area, while controlling for socio-demographic and social environment variables, this study found that the main intergenerational transmission variables are the family as the nuclear unit, the parents as role models, and discourse in the parents’ home. Together these create a family environment that supports philanthropic values of donating money and volunteering and at the same time engaging in civic activities. The relationships between the three areas reflecting prosocial behavior are complementary rather than substitutional. Explanations of these relationships are provided and discussed.

The current study uses the Wukan protest as a case study to assert that the Chinese farmers involved in the incident demonstrated “instrumental civil rights consciousness” in their protest. Civil rights is a means by which farmers strive for their economic rights and not an end in itself. Without real “rights consciousness,” the Wukan protests resemble “institutionalized participation” more than “rightful resistance.” The grassroots elections and self-governance that have resulted from the protest are not so much a harbinger of the emergence of bottom-up civil society as top-down initiatives by the central government. The central government has incorporated opposing powers into the existing institution to adjust state–society relations. By using bottom-up institutionalized participation, the central government has managed to strengthen its supervision over local governments, fight corruption, and stabilize its authority.

During the last three decades Dutch church attendance rates dropped considerably, while the relative share of volunteers in non-religious organizations decreased at a slower rate. This is an unexpected development given the positive association between religious involvement and volunteering. In this article, we try to account for this development by addressing the following question: Why has a massive and ongoing decline of church attendance in the Netherlands not resulted in a similar drop in the relative number of volunteers in non-religious voluntary organizations? In view of this question, we wonder if the negative effect of declining church attendance on volunteering is perhaps counterbalanced by a positive effect of educational expansion. Our findings reveal that this is indeed the case, but these counterbalancing effects are only modest.

Study abroad is cited commonly as a critical element of education for global civic engagement, but the significance of various programmatic features has not been well established. This study examines the relationships among three facets of study abroad programs—destination, type, and duration—and subsequent volunteerism through international development organizations. Survey responses were analyzed from 2,250 college alumni (71 % female, 14 % ethnic minority, M age = 27) who studied abroad between 1995 and 2005. The results of logistic regression indicated that studying abroad in a developing country and engaging in international service-learning were positively associated with the odds of development volunteerism. The number of months spent abroad also predicted development volunteerism, though duration did not moderate the effects of program destination and type. An interaction test demonstrated that program effects were not dependent on gender. The findings suggest that differences in the nature of study abroad programs influence the extent to which participants become actively engaged in global civil society.

Despite the normative origins of our discipline, political scientists often embrace our role as objective scholars, to the point of teaching our students to undertake research without also helping them to become public-spirited citizens. This essay argues that this restrained approach is inadequate to maintain political science’s relevance in an era characterized by heightened partisan polarization, rising authoritarianism, and democratic backsliding. To help our students sustain democratic systems of government going forward, political scientists must not only recognize our normative roots, but must also extend our normative agenda to a reinvigorated civic engagement pedagogy that is timely, intersectional, and internationalized. In short, how and what we teach our students is the key to our discipline’s relevance in difficult political times.

Inspired by Foucault’s genealogical approach, this paper examines the historical discourses of popular engagement in the USA—specifically how volunteering and civic action have been treated in relation to politics and public opinion over time. The paper describes that throughout US history, the relationship between volunteering and civic action has evolved from being more or less blurred in distinction—and has had different meanings for different groups of people. With the election and policies of the current president, we may be entering a new era of increased and politicized volunteering and civic action.

The link between extracurricular activities during childhood and adolescence and civic engagement in the subsequent stage of life is theoretically strong but empirically weak. This is due to the lack of longitudinal studies that account for this relationship and the absence of retrospective studies to confirm it. In this article, we investigate, through the participants’ memory, the essential aspects of the quality of group experiences by which children and adolescents learn to become responsible citizens committed to social issues. More specifically, we investigate whether young adults currently committed to volunteer social work also remember as children and adolescents successful experiences participating in diverse recreational groups. We analyzed the psychometric properties of an index designed to retrospectively assess the quality of these experiences. The results indicate that the unifactorial structure of the index remains stable in the two Italian samples used and in the cross-national comparison with a third Spanish sample.

The concept of citizenship is used both as a synonym of social action when referencing to an active form of citizenship as well as to indicate a form of civic obligation (formal citizenship). According to these premises, citizenship can be formalized in a large number of activities that contribute to building it in different ways. The aim of the present work is to explore how the concepts of citizenship and being a citizen are co-built by Italian young adults. Two groups of young adults are considered (engaged vs. not engaged). Eighty-nine young adults participants aged 18–36 completed a self-administered mixed-method questionnaire. A content and thematic analysis was conducted and a composite representation of citizenship emerged. Results of the present work can clarify the concept of citizenship by exploring how it is cognitively and socially represented in young adults and how this representation changes in engaged and not engaged young adults.

Diminishing civic vitality has been reported in numerous societies, irrespective of democratic maturity. Mandatory community service initiatives in schools have garnered attention as a strategy for fostering long-term civic engagement. However, methodological challenges such as selection bias and observation timing have led to inconsistent empirical results. This study leverages a unique natural experimental context where mandatory community service requirements were nationally implemented in middle and high schools in South Korea. Employing a non-parametric regression-discontinuity design, we provide robust evidence that such programs increase the likelihood of volunteering in adulthood among lower socioeconomic groups. We found no indications that these mandates increase or decrease the propensity for civic engagement among higher socioeconomic groups.

This article proposes a radical and normative approach to understanding governance as one of the core issues dealt with in nonprofit management. The radical component traces ideas of good governance through a series of historical transformations, from the governance of Italian city-states in the fourteenth century through the Enlightenment and on to the American Revolution. The normative component challenges the instrumental understanding of good governance as effective organizational behavior and puts the emphasis on the moral values underpinning managerial practices in the public sphere. In concluding, the radical and normative approaches are being integrated into a framework for nonprofit management education. Unlike existing curricula, the proposed model does not focus on preparing students for a particular type of organizations, but for the career of civic professionals engaged as intermediaries in the public sphere. In this respect, the article addresses both, researchers interested in overcoming the division that exists between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to understanding governance and faculty concerned about the relevance of nonprofit management in an increasingly complex organizational environment.

Ethical consumerism describes market transactions where consumers’ preferences stretch beyond immediate self-interest to prosocial objectives. How such activities relate to more traditional forms of civic engagement (such as giving or activism) remains unclear; as a market-situated activity, ethical consumerism is often omitted from accounts of civic engagement or predicted to erode commitment to civic action. This paper reports findings from an empirical study of the civic identity of the ethical consumer. Using an online survey instrument, the study explores statistical relationships between individuals’ actual participation in ethical consumerism at three sites (Fairtrade, TOMS Shoes and (RED)) and the extent of individuals’ wider civic engagement—both philanthropic (giving, volunteering) and activist (campaigning). It finds evidence of a consistent civic identity that stretches across traditional civic engagement activities and ethical consumerism: the greater an individual’s civic engagement, the more likely they are to engage in ethical consumerism. The current analytic separation of ethical consumerism and civic engagement, therefore, does not capture the experience of individuals who are expanding their prosocial repertoire from the civic sphere to the market sphere; civic engagement cuts across sectors.