European ISTR Regional Network

The Third Sector from a European Perspective
by Marilyn Taylor, Cities Research Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

In mid December 2002, 27 researchers from 17 countries across Europe met for a two-day seminar in Trento to discuss European approaches to third sector research. The seminar followed a larger conference in Trento on Social Enterprise: A Comparative Perspective.

The two-day workshop was organised around six papers, which discussed the contribution that different paradigms, traditions or approaches could make to third sector studies. The papers focused on:

• the welfare mix approach (Adalbert Evers and Jean-Louis Laville);
• the economics of the third sector (Carlo Borzaga);
• social movement analysis (Mario Diani);
• citizenship, civil society and governance (Nicholas Deakin and Marilyn Taylor);
• the third sector and service quality (Vicotr Pestoff); and
• the contribution a management perspective can make to the study of the third sector (Carmen Marcuello).

Each paper had two discussants, one from Western Europe and one from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This provided an opportunity to explore the relevance of the approaches discussed in different settings and/or to challenge the analysis from a different perspective. A seventh paper explored the particular experience of transition in CEE countries and the relationship between the third sector and the processes of democratisation there. A final presentation focused on network theory and we finished with a 'response from the South' drawing the parallels between the discussions at this European seminar and debates in the development studies community.

The seminar gave us the opportunity to bring together disciplinary perspectives that are too rarely discussed in the same setting, but also to bring to the surface some of the tensions between different approaches. There was a debate over the need to develop a distinctive European paradigm on third sector research. Some felt this was needed to counterbalance the dominance of US approaches. Others agreed with the need to give a stronger profile to the issues that emerge in a European context, but argued that this should provide a foundation for dialogue and cross-fertilisation, rather than promoting a European paradigm at the expense of paradigms emerging from the US or elsewhere. Particularly important in the European context were concepts of mutuality and the social economy but at the same time, the seminar highlighted the diversity of approaches within Europe and, indeed, within parts of Europe - discussion of on CEE countries demonstrated that there were also important differences here.

A recurrent theme was the need to focus on understanding processes, linkages and relationships across sectoral and organisational boundaries as much as within them, and to take a dynamic view of sectoral and organisational evolution. This was a particularly strong theme in both the paper on the economics of the third sector and the paper on social movements, as well as the presentation on network theory. But of course, the need for a dynamic approach was also highlighted in the discussion of transition in Central/Eastern Europe and of changing patterns of government/governance in other countries. Whether sector matters and how also emerged as a theme in the paper on service quality which emphasized the role of the third sector in the labour market and in the paper on management. Overall, there was a sense of studying a phenomenon which was not clearly bounded, but which nonetheless provided an important focus or space for studying the changing relationships and the shifting balances within society - political, social and economic.

The main papers are:

Carlo Borzaga, The Economics of the Third Sector: Towards a More Comprehensive Approach

Nicholas Deakin And Marilyn Taylor, Citizenship, Civil Society and Governance

Mario Diani, Social Movement Analysis And Voluntary Action Analysis: An Idiosyncratic View

Jean-Louis Laville, Carlo Borzaga, Jacques Defourny, Adalbert Evers, J. Lewis, Marthe Nyssens And Victor Pestoff, Third System: A European Definition

Ewa Les, In Search of Perspectives on Development of the Third Sector in CEE Countries

Carmen Marcuello, Approaching the Third Sector from a Management Perspective: What Does this Offer?

Victor Pestoff, The Third Sector and Service Quality: Meeting The Challenges of the 21st Century - A Swedish Perspective

Carlo Borzaga's paper will be published in Helmut Anheier and Avner Ben-Ner (eds.), Theory of Non-Profit Enterprise, Kluwer/Plenum Books, forthcoming, and is reproduced here by permission of the editors.

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