Correction to: When Did They Protest? Beyond Co-optation or Channeling: Effects of EU Funding on Czech Romani NGOs and Civil Society

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - The acknowledgment in the published paper should be amended to read.     

Interest Groups,NGOs or Civil Society Organisations? The Framing of Non-State Actors in the EU

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Scholars have used varying terminology for describing non-state entities seeking to influence public policy or work with...     

Deliberate or Emancipate? Civil Society Participation in Trade Policy: The Case of the CARIFORUM–EU EPA

At both the multilateral and regional levels, there have been efforts to address the democratic deficit in trade negotiations. One such example is the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries where civil society participation was enshrined in the Cotonou Agreement. Yet, the CARIFORUM–EU EPA attracted much criticism from civil society. The paper argues that civil society failed to affect the outcome of the EPA because they participated in the process within a deliberative democratic framework which did not allow for emancipation or a challenge to global economic power and structural considerations in the negotiations; neither did it achieve citizen empowerment and ownership. We advocate the practice of participatory democracy in trade policy decision making—an ideal space for citizen participation—the former holding greater promise for influencing the trade policy agenda.     

Tokens or Stakeholders in Global Migration Governance? The Role of Affected Communities and Civil Society in the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees

Focussing on the inclusion of those primarily affected as stakeholders (refugees and other migrants), this article addresses a key ambition of the compacts themselves. We employ an ‘inside‐outside’ perspective and firstly ask: which groups participated in the consultative processes, what agenda did they set ‘inside’ the meetings, what alliances did they establish and how did they influence the outcomes? Secondly, we investigate what kind of advocacy took place ‘outside’ of these formalized spaces and what impact it had? By this, we not only contribute to an evaluation of the processes themselves, but also advance current academic debates on strategies, spaces and political opportunity structures for civil society and particularly migrant involvement in global migration governance from below and the larger debate on democratizing global institutions.     

Does Nonprofit Marketization Facilitate or Inhibit the Development of Civil Society? A Comparative Study of China and the USA

With the rise of the global associational revolution and the expansion of neoliberalism across the world, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have increasingly tended to adopt market values and approaches in many countries. A recent debate has concerned the impacts of nonprofit marketization on the civil society sector. A primary concern among Western scholars is the potential harm that marketization may cause to the traditional roles of NPOs, especially in their ability to create and maintain a strong civil society. This article joins the debate by engaging in a comparative analysis of China and the USA to answer the following question: Are the same concerns in the West applicable to non-Western countries, particularly those gradually liberalizing but still highly controlled authoritarian countries? By exploring the variations in objectives, models, and effects associated with the marketization taking place under different political–social systems, we find that unlike the nonprofit marketization in the USA, the similar yet distinct process in China is facilitating rather than inhibiting the development of civil society. On the other hand, our findings also provide nonprofit practitioners with a contextual guideline to help them devise more effective service strategies tailored to fit diverse sociocultural settings.     

Desired Characteristics of Spouses and Best Friends: Do They Differ by Sex and/or Gender?

In view of the salutary effects that having one's spouse as one's best friend are said to impart (G. R. Lee 1988; Schwartz 1994), we investigated the relationship between desired characteristics of a best friend and of a spouse. Consistent with earlier scholarship in this area, we found that desired characteristics overlap considerably for those two roles. We also found that men's and women's selection of characteristics are highly similar and that having a current same-sex or cross-sex best friend did not modify the characteristics chosen for either best friends or spouses. We discuss these findings in terms of the trend toward nontraditional gender role identities and expectations in close relationships.     

One of a Kind,or All of One Kind? Groups of Political Participants and Their Distinctive Outlook on Society

Political participation can take shape in many types of participation, between which the overlap is low. However, the similarities and differences between various types of participants are surprisingly understudied. In this article, I propose to differentiate between four types of participants: institutional political participants, non-institutional political participants, civic participants, and political consumers. These types differ from each other on two dimensions: whether they are political or publicly oriented and whether they are formally or informally organized. Building on the matching hypothesis, I argue that we should differentiate those four types of participants by their outlook on society (societal pessimism, political trust, and social trust). Using data from the European Social Survey 2006, including participants from 19 countries, logistic regressions show that institutional political participants trust politics rather than people, non-institutional political participants are societal pessimists who trust other people, civic participants are societal optimists who trust other people, and political consumers are pessimists who do not trust politics.     

The World Bank,INGOs, and Civil Society: Converging Agendas? The Case of Universal Basic Education in Niger

This paper explores, through a case study of the World Bank's pursuit of universal basic education, the gulf between the Bank's dialogue with international civil society elites and its treatment of grassroots civil society in its development practice. It argues that the World Bank is pursuing a conscious program to build a global elite governance system similar to Bank vice-president J. F. Rischard's concept of global issues networks, in which experts from business, government, and civil society will set globally binding social and economic policies. There is a risk of co-optation of international NGOs into this autocratic global managerial system.     

Fair or Foul?: The Effects of External, Internal, and Employee Equity on Changes in Performance of Major League Baseball Players

We propose six hypotheses that relate employee,internal, and external inequities to changes inperformance. We test these hypotheses with a sample of362 Major League Baseball players. The findings showed that overpayment (as measured by actualemployee and external inequities) is a significantpredictor of positive performance changes, underpaymentis a significant predictor of negative performancechanges, and employee equity is a greater predictor ofchange in performance than internal equity.     

Why Did the Communists Win or Lose? A Comparative Analysis of the Revolutionary Civil Wars in Russia,Finland, Spain,and China

According to classic interpretations of the communist revolutions, political mobilization of peasantry was critical for the success of the revolutionary forces. This article, which reexamines the experience of civil wars in Russia, Finland, Spain, and China, argues that peasants’ contribution to the revolutions in Russia and later in China became possible under two historical conditions: breakdown of state authorities during the mass mobilization wars and existence of an unresolved agrarian problem in the countryside. Neither of these conditions alone, as the experience of other countries has shown, was sufficient for a success of the revolutionaries. The Spanish civil war of 1936–1939, for instance, was not preceded by a major international war. Because institutions of the traditional social order had not been undermined by war, Franco was able to defeat the Popular Front government, despite the peasants’ support of the revolution. In the Finnish civil war of 1918, which broke out in the wake of World War I and the Russian Revolution, state institutions did not collapse completely and the peasantry was divided in their responses to the revolution; the rural smallholders, for example, aligned with the Mannerheim's White army, not with the urban revolutionaries.     

Deviant Peer Behavior and Adolescent Delinquency: Protective Effects of Inhibitory Control,Planning, or Decision Making?

We examined relations between adolescent perceptions of deviant peer behavior and delinquency as moderated by inhibitory control, planning, and decision making in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development at age 15 (N = 991). Adolescents reported perceptions of deviant peer behavior. Inhibitory control, planning, and decision making were assessed behaviorally. Delinquency was evaluated with a latent variable comprised of parent‐guardian perceptions of adolescent delinquency and adolescent self‐reports. Only inhibitory control moderated the relationship between deviant peer behavior and delinquency, showing that better inhibition protected against delinquency in contexts of high levels of adolescent perceptions of deviant peer behavior. Findings are discussed in the context of theories of adolescent delinquency and risk taking.     

Churches: Lasting Sources of Civic Engagement? Effects of Secularization and Educational Expansion on Non-religious Volunteering in the Netherlands, 1988 and 2006

During the last three decades Dutch church attendance rates dropped considerably, while the relative share of volunteers in non-religious organizations decreased at a slower rate. This is an unexpected development given the positive association between religious involvement and volunteering. In this article, we try to account for this development by addressing the following question: Why has a massive and ongoing decline of church attendance in the Netherlands not resulted in a similar drop in the relative number of volunteers in non-religious voluntary organizations? In view of this question, we wonder if the negative effect of declining church attendance on volunteering is perhaps counterbalanced by a positive effect of educational expansion. Our findings reveal that this is indeed the case, but these counterbalancing effects are only modest.     

When Nonverbal Greetings “Make It or Break It”: The Role of Ethnicity and Gender in the Effect of Handshake on Social Appraisals

Despite previous evidence identifying the role of ethnic and gender differences in nonverbal communication, few studies have comprehensively investigated the role of these factors in the effect of handshake on appraisals of social interactions. Here, 88 young adults (with equal proportions of Caucasians and East Asians, and women and men) observed and evaluated a series of movies illustrating guest–host interactions in a business setting. Each interaction started with a greeting protocol initiated by the host, which, in half of the trials, involved a handshake. The greeting was followed by a display of behaviors either encouraging (approach) or discouraging (avoidance) further interaction. Ethnicity and gender of the hosts were manipulated to depict the same categories represented by participants. First, the effect of handshake on appraisals of social interactions was more positive in Caucasian than in East Asian participants. Second, the effect of handshake on appraisals of social interactions was more positive for male than for female hosts in male participants, whereas such differences were not observed in female participants. Third, appraisals of social interactions involving approach and avoidance behaviors were more positive in Caucasian than in East Asian participants. Finally, appraisals of social interactions involving approach behaviors were more positive in female than in male participants. Overall, these findings shed light on the role of ethnic and gender differences in the appraisal of nonverbal behaviors, and extend our understanding of factors that may lead to successful social interaction in the context of growing diversity in our society.     

C. Lange,S. Nakagawa,J. Onyx,and C. Schwabenland (eds.), Women’s Emancipation and Civil Society Organisations: Challenging or Maintaining the Status Quo?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Does Higher Education Cause Religious Decline?: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Within‐ and Between‐Person Effects of Higher Education on Religiosity

Although there is ample empirical evidence of the associations between higher education and various aspects of religiosity, the causal mechanisms producing these associations remain unclear. I use four waves of longitudinal data, with respondents ranging in age from 13 to 29, to model the within‐ and between‐person effects of higher education on several measures of religiosity. The results show that earning a bachelor's degree is associated with within‐person declines in some but not all measured aspects of religiosity, which partially supports the argument that higher education causes religious decline. The results also suggest that those predisposed to attending religious services self‐select into higher education, that relatively religious youth in general self‐select into nonelite colleges, and that those with low levels of religious belief self‐select into elite universities. These findings further understanding of the associations between social class and religion, particularly the causal effects of higher education.