The third sector and political ideologies: unpacking relations between organized civil society and the state

摘要

In talking about ideologies, an outside view of Germany will commonly resort to Nazism and/or Communism. However, in discussing the third sector, neither of these will offer adequate reasoning for the present-day embeddedness of the sector. On the contrary, since both were destined to be historically surpassed, the former after only 12 years, they can present interesting case studies on the relationship between an independent sector and a totalitarian regime rather than put the sector in historical and societal perspective. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to show that present-day analyses of civil society in Germany that do not embrace a longer term historical viewpoint of German society will not achieve an adequate explanation for the complex relationship between organized civil society and the state. This approach reflects a basic unhappiness with a ‘boxing approach’, i.e. the attempt to reach a ‘one nation-one civil society tradition’ system, and therefore attempts to differentiate by using a critical historical methodology based on political theory rather than an empirical approach that would tend to blend out an historical viewpoint. Our central argument is that while at first sight corporatist embeddedness seems to exist, in fact, widely divergent role models and traditions of third sector organizations can be distinguished.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2010.513868