Abstract
This chapter contributes to the on-going discussion about societal changes from a civil society perspective. By exploring and discussing attitudes among the populations in the Scandinavian countries towards the societal role of volunteering and its relationship to government, public services and the business sector, the chapter offers an inventory of opinions concerning the division of responsibility for welfare in society and the moral justifications and concerns underpinning these opinions. The analysis unfolds a significant pattern: First, it is important that welfare services have sufficient quality and are efficiently produced. Second, it is important that welfare is fairly distributed, as everyone is equally entitled to welfare. Third, it is important that welfare is human and genuine. However, since volunteering is perceived as an opportunity for the provision of welfare in society, it creates moral dilemmas as it challenges the traditional welfare state. This has bearing on the future legitimacy of the Scandinavian universal welfare state tradition, demanding a balance between the engagement of volunteers and the welfare state as a guarantor of quality and equality.
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Notes
- 1.
‘The state’ is used as an emblematic expression of public welfare, even though public welfare services are most often produced in municipalities or regions.
- 2.
See also Chap. 1 in this volume.
- 3.
We refer to the Methods Appendix in this book for an extensive presentation of the surveys in Denmark and Sweden, including data on the number of respondents, response rates, year, etc. The data from Norway come from the sixth wave of the Norwegian Citizen Panel, collected in March 2016. The Norwegian Citizen Panel is a researcher-driven web-based survey, administered from the University of Bergen. The panel is based on a probability sample of the Norwegian population above the age of 18, who is invited to answer a web-survey two to three times each year. In wave 6, 4.859 of the 10.193 panel members answered the questionnaire, and of these, 1.190 were asked the questions that are analysed in this chapter.
- 4.
Chapter 1 in this book provides an overview of similarities and differences between Denmark, Norway and Sweden, including different welfare state arrangements and the volunteer sector traditions. Thus, this is not discussed at length in the present chapter.
- 5.
The data were collected in different contexts, and the formulation of statements was built on a Swedish study that was translated into Danish and Norwegian. The five statements were posed similarly in Sweden and Norway, although in different surveys, but the Danish material included only three of the five statements.
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von Essen, J., Frederiksen, M., Loga, J. (2019). The Ambiguities of Volunteering. In: Henriksen, L.S., Strømsnes, K., Svedberg, L. (eds) Civic Engagement in Scandinavia. Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98717-0_8
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