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The relationship between the family and civil society has always been complex, with the family often regarded as separate from, or even oppositional to, civil society. Taking a fresh empirical approach, this book reveals how such separation underestimates the important role the family plays in civil society. Considering the impact of family events, dinner table debates, intergenerational transmission of virtues and the role of the mother, this enlightening book draws on survey data from 1000 young people, a sample of their parents and grandparents, and extended family interviews, to uncover how civil engagement, activism and political participation are inherited and fostered within the home.

This edited collection explores the temporal dimensions of civil society through examining how different lifecourse stages and events trigger or hinder engagement with civil society. There is increasing concern about declining levels of participation, and fears that young people today are far less civically engaged than older generations. Some believe that an already-weakened civil society looks set to enter a phase of terminal decline. However, these gloomy predictions do not consider the possibility not only that the nature of civic engagement may be changing, but that participation may wax and wane over the lifecourse. Drawing on a range of empirical data, including cross-sectional analyses, longitudinal data and interviews, this book investigates not changing levels of engagement, and the shifting priorities of citizens as they manage the contingencies of career, family and old age. Largely chronological in organisation, this book explores civic participation over the lifecourse – from school to later life. The book includes chapters on young people’s civil and political participation and the role of universities in promoting civic engagement. It also examines the challenges of parenthood and grandparenthood – as well as the opportunities for volunteering in later life. Finally, the examines how older people balance the competing claims of charities and family when thinking about their legacy.

Deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) are gaining popularity as a way to engage ordinary citizens in policymaking. From climate assemblies to online citizen panels on Covid19, these initiatives raise questions about effective approaches to democratic reform as well as the future of democracy itself. Bringing together ten leading scholars in the field of deliberative democracy, this important book examines the features of a Deliberative Mini-Public (DMP) and considers how DMPs link into democratic systems. It examines the core design features of DMPs and their role in the broader policy process and takes stock of the characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of citizen participation. The book offers valuable insights into the contributions that DMPs can make not only to the policy process, but also to the broader agenda of revitalising democracy in contemporary times.

This book is about directly elected mayors; political leaders who are elected directly by citizens to head multi-functional local government authorities. The book examines the contexts, features and debates around the model, and how in practice political leadership is exercised through it. The book draws on examples from the Europe, the US, and Australasia to examine the impacts, practices, and debates of mayoral leadership in different cities and countries. Themes that recur throughout include the formal and informal powers that mayors exercise, their relationships with other actors in governance, both inside municipalities and in broader governance networks, and the advantages and disadvantages of the model. The work draws on a variety of sources, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches, to build a picture of views of and on mayors in different contexts from across the globe.

The Foundational Economy encompasses those goods and services, together with the economic and social relationships that underpin them, that provide the everyday infrastructure of civilized life. Policies that promote commodification, privatization and financialisation have incorporated many of these goods and services within market logics, with profound and damaging impacts on the daily lives of citizens. This edited collection extends theoretical and empirical work on the Foundational Economy to explore its relevance to the civil sphere and to civil repair. Our aim is to advance foundational thinking in three key areas. First, we set out detailed evidence on the impact of growth based and financialised solutions on local democracy, citizenship and civil society and explore alternative approaches to citizenship and social justice that are rooted in the Foundational Economy. Second, we provide, for the first time, important comparative perspectives on the development of foundational thinking. And third we document detailed and critical case studies in core areas of economic and social life. Addressing a range of substantive areas of concern, individual chapters use case studies at different national and regional levels to illustrate the arguments being developed. This unique collection demonstrates that there is clear evidence that The Foundational Economy is already influencing policy making at devolved nation and city region scales and is having international reach. In contrast to exclusively ‘bottom-up’ approaches however, we maintain that a Foundational Economy approach requires us to address the key institutions of our societies and the role of public action in those institutions.

This book interprets civil society both as a shifting horizon of action and as an ensemble of governance arrangements with diverse agents rather than as a fixed reality with a definite substance. Its focus is not so much on civil society as it is on governance, metagovernance, and their forms of failure. These phenomena are examined from a governance theoretical viewpoint concerned with the coordination through self-organizing networks, partnerships and other forms of reflexive collaboration and, relatedly, in terms of an alleged ‘shift from government to governance’ in the polity and similar shifts from hierarchical authority to networked or ‘heterarchical’ coordination in many other social fields. After exploring these themes, the book presents the two phases of the WISERD civil society research programme and locates it in terms of Marx, Gramsci, and Foucault. The book then presents Bob Jessop’s own case studies of the role of governance in tackling economic and social problems and the limits and failures of economic and social policy in various styles of governance. It concludes with remarks on the struggle to integrate civil society into governance, and the power of social networks and solidarity within civil society. It thereby provides a comprehensive review of the factors that influence their success and identifies lessons for future social innovation.

In recent years, social movements on the left have increasingly begun to make themselves felt in referendums. This has been seen throughout Europe: in votes regarding independence in Scotland and Catalonia, on water rights in Italy, on debt repayment in Iceland, and on the financial proposals of the troika in Greece. This book presents case studies of referendums from below and more to analyse the ways that social movements formed in the wake of the 2008 crash have affected referendums' development and outcomes. Looking at general issues of democracy, as well as the political effects of neoliberalism, this book is ideally suited to help us understand some of the issues around Brexit and will be read by a wide audience interested in social movements, referendums, and democratic innovation.

This book deals with the question of what should happen for communities to become more collaborative and resilient in devising solutions to the problems they face. It examines diverse ideas associated with attempts to strengthen community wellbeing, and points to how lessons that can be learnt from a range of community-based initiatives – community development, cooperative enterprise, community finance, co-production, community organising, deliberative democracy, etc. – should be applied strategically to support the necessary changes more widely. Tomorrow’s Communities brings together a team of experts with in-depth knowledge of and practical experience in how to work with communities to achieve sustainable improvement in their cohesiveness and quality of life. They draw on findings from experiences in the UK, the US, and elsewhere to review what works and what does not, and set out approaches that merit adoption in relation to three key aspects of community-based transformation, namely, the transformation of socio-economic relations in communities, of collaborative behaviour with communities, and of policy outcomes by communities. The book provides a one-stop shop to consider what can be achieved in collaboration with communities, and how to overcome obstacles to better outcomes and greater public satisfaction. It concludes with a 9-point policy agenda for taking the recommendations forward.