The voluntary or third sector in England is now receiving more sustained attention from policy makers than ever before. This paper claims that this situation, particularly as given tangible expression through the development of a Compact between the Government and representatives of the third...

This paper charts the economic contribution of the third sector in the UK, noting its significant presence in core welfare state fields, and setting it in comparative international context. It then offers a conceptual framework, the “production of welfare” approach, for analysing how the...

This paper represents a first attempt to examine empirically the comparative extensiveness of low pay in the third sector against the theoretical backdrop of both the generic labour market literature and the newly emerging specialist third sector literature. It shows that the third sector...

In the Europeanisation literature, the example of European Structural funds, and EU-sponsored programmes in general, have often been used to discuss the impact of EU policy on domestic and local governance. Whilst in earlier scholarship the focus was nearly exclusively on the download of...

The proposal for a European Statute of association is a pioneering example of an attempt to find space for the third sector in European Union policy. It was first put forward some twenty years ago, but has failed to generate significant interest outside a small circle of promoters and objectors....

This paper uses pooled data from the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) to identify patterns and trends in paid employment in the self-defined (employee defined) voluntary sector between 1995 and 1998. It takes a comparative perspective by comparing these trends in absolute and relative...