Civic capital and support for the welfare state

We model the way the interplay between tax surveillance institutions and civic capital shapes taxpayers' support for welfare state. We show that, when tax surveillance is tight, rational civic-minded individuals express greater support for welfare spending than uncivic ones. We provide empirical evidence of these preferences using data from Italy, a country that has long posed a puzzle for public economists for its limited civic capital and large welfare state

Five-country Study on Service and Volunteering in Southern Africa

In the context of globalization, civic service and volunteering is emerging as a growing social phenomenon and a field of inquiry internationally. This research was done to strengthen knowledge and understanding of service and to build research capacity in order to develop service as a field of inquiry and to strengthen its knowledge base and practice

The Macro-Social Benefits of Education, Training and Skills in Comparative Perspective [Wider Benefits of Learning Research Report No. 9]

This report, the second from the Centre's strand of comparative research, complements an earlier WBL research report (Education, Equity and Social Cohesion: A Distributional Model) in exploring further themes of societal comparison and the distributional effects of education systems. Despite generally high levels of educational attainment there is huge diversity amongst Western Societies in terms of crime, tolerance, trust and social cohesion. In this report, we take a comparative approach to investigating relationships between education and these outcomes at a societal level. Through an interdisciplinary review of literatures from sociology, history, economics and psychology we examine the role of education systems from a number of countries in influencing trends in, and levels of, these variables. Whilst the importance of country and historical context is stressed throughout we arrive at some general conclusions concerning the role of education systems in the development of various forms of social cohesion. This report will be of interest to policy makers, researchers and practitioners who are interested in the social impact of education systems. In particular, we examine implications for current UK policy targeted at increasing national educational attainment

Aligning Capital With Mission: Lessons from the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Social Investment Program

The Annie E. Casey Foundation engaged InSight at Pacific Community Ventures to conduct the first comprehensive third-party evaluation of the SI Program, with research support from the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. The evaluation focused on the social impact of the SI Program and its impact measurement practices, and had the following objectives: ? Provide a comprehensive review of the social impact that has been achieved to date through the SI Program. ? Assess the systems and processes used by the SI Program to measure and report on its impact, identifying the SI Program's strengths in impact measurement and areas for improvement. ? Surface evidence-based findings and lessons that can assist the Foundation and other investors in rigorously examining and enhancing the social impact of their investments, in order to support the continued development of the impact investing field

Third way urban policy and the new moral politics of community: a comparative analysis of Ballymun in Dublin and the Gorbals in Glasgow

Whilst Third Way Urban Policy (TWUP) often associates itself with a kind of anarchic vision of self-regulating and self-reproducing local communities, it can in fact be thought of as a thinly veiled moral crusade targeted towards vulnerable residents in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Sustainable communities are defined as those who can stand on their own two feet within the terms set down by neo-liberal market economics. When these morally charged crusades fail to connect locally, they have the potential to stir local conflict over who has the authority to judge forms of community life. As third way urban regeneration rolls out across capitalist cities, mapping and accounting for the uneven development of moral conflicts over community is a pressing concern. Focusing upon the ongoing regeneration of two of Europe's most famous social housing estates- Ballymun in north Dublin and the Gorbals in central Glasgow - this paper presents a comparative analysis of the different ways in which moral disputes over community have surfaced in these two neighbourhoods. On the bases of an analyses of both the localisation of TWUP and the prior biographies of both estates, the nature of conflict is shown to be contingent upon who has ownership of the local social capital agenda

The Muted Vibrancy of Roman Catholicism in Contemporary Portugal: Corporal Works of Mercy in a Time of Austerity. CES Open Forum Series #25 2018-2019

This paper concerns the role and function of religious-based organizations in strengthening associational life. Taking Portugal as a case study, it asks whether the concept of muted vibrancy provides theoretical understanding to the role of Catholicism in contemporary Portuguese society. That is, how might a church in a newly consolidated democratic regime, in a time of economic crisis, with a past relationship to a fascist regime, and with declining numbers of adherents, contribute to the deepening of democracy

A Philadelphia Story: Building Civic Capacity for School Reform in a Privatizing System

Following the 2001 state takeover of the School District of Philadelphia, a new governance structure was established and an ambitious set of reforms went into effect, generating renewed public confidence in the district. Despite this, maintaining reform momentum continues to be difficult in Philadelphia. This can be traced to on-going challenges to civic capacity around education. Defined by Stone et al (2001), civic capacity involves collaboration and mobilization of the city's civic and community sectors to pursue the collective good of educational improvement. Using interviews conducted with over 65 local civic actors and district administrators, and case studies of local organizations involved with education, the authors examine civic capacity in the context of Philadelphia. The authors find that while many individuals and organizations are actively involved with the schools, there are several factors that present unique challenges to the development of civic capacity in Philadelphia. Despite these challenges, the authors conclude that there are many reasons to be optimistic and offer several recommendations for generating civic capacity -- the kind that creates and sustains genuine educational change

A remedy for all sins? Introducing a special issue on social enterprises and welfare regimes in Europe

The paper serves as an introduction to a special issue discussing social enterprises historical development and functions against welfare regimes across six European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Scotland, Serbia). While discussing convergences and diversities among them, the introduction proposes a comparative analytical framework for understanding social enterprises and welfare state as contingent phenomena developed at different point in time, within a broader political-institutional framework regulating states-peoples’ relationships