Key issues for the third sector in Europe / Stephen P Osborne -- The third sector and civil society / Gyorgy Jenei and Eva Kuti -- Where does social capital come from? / Dag Wollebaek and Per Selle -- The rise of Romanian NGOs in the democratization process of the society after 1990 / Marton...

This Cambridge Element aims to advance theory by investigating the nature of participation in public service delivery. It situates itself under the theory of Public Service Logic to advocate for a strategic orientation to participation as an element of value creation in public services. It...

This article reports and evaluates the lessons of a comparative study of community involvement in rural regeneration partnerships in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It highlights the distinctive challenges that its rural context place upon such involvement and finds three elements to be...

Osborne S. P. and McLaughlin K. (2004) The cross-cutting review of the voluntary sector: where next for local government-voluntary sector relationships?, Reg. Studies 38, 573-582. This paper evaluates the impact of the recent 'cross- cutting review of the voluntary sector' by HM Treasury in the...

This paper reports on a recent pilot project by the English government aimed at introducing 'single pot' funding for local voluntary and community groups. It finds that implementation difficulties undermined the success of the scheme. Moreover, whilst local voluntary and community groups were...

The UK voluntary sector operates in an arguably enabling policy context. Yet, other external environmental influences have posed major challenges for charitable organizations within the wider voluntary sector. This paper aims to rectify the current lack of empirical research on how charitable...