Voluntary Sector Organizations and the State
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Rachel Laforest
About this book
In the early 1990s, voluntary organizations garnered little attention in Canadian policy circles, even though the federal government was simultaneously offloading its responsibility for essential services to the sector and cutting back their funding. Two decades later, the voluntary sector is a key public policy player in federal, provincial, and municipal politics.
Rachel Laforest shows why this turnaround represents a significant shift in the way citizens and policy makers view the place of voluntary organizations in public policy. Members of voluntary organizations have struggled for a stronger voice in policy making and redefined their relationship to the federal government through key collaborations such as the Voluntary Sector Initiative. This deft account of how a loose coalition of voluntary organizations was transformed into a distinct sector offers a new conceptual framework for explaining dynamic state-voluntary sector relations at all levels of government.
Author / Editor information
Reviews
After years of disparaging most non-state actors as pesky “special interest groups,” the Liberal government embraced certain “third sector” organizations as useful state “partners.” Laforest carefully details how and why this shift in state-voluntary sector relations took place. Her book offers important empirical and analytical insights into this period in Canadian politics and perceptively suggests why it contrasts with, but also lays the foundation for, the subsequent Conservative government’s approach to the voluntary sector.
Caroline Andrew, co-editor of Electing a Diverse Canada: The Representation of Immigrants, Minorities, and Women:
Laforest’s book makes a major contribution to the study of state-voluntary sector relations, linking the work on public policy and civil society. It gives a true sense of the dynamics of the voluntary sector, bringing together policy sectors, internal organizational shifts, and federal government processes. In addition, the author tells a Canadian story in ways that make clear its relation to worldwide shifts in governance.
Topics
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Front Matter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Illustrations
ix -
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Acknowledgments
x -
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Abbreviations
xi -
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The Changing Relationship between the State and the Voluntary Sector
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Theorizing the Relationship between the State and the Voluntary Sector
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Laying the Foundation for Collaboration: The Canadian Case
26 -
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Building Identity and Agency in the Voluntary Sector: From Strategy to Action
49 -
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Designing a Blueprint for Collaboration: Looking at the Big Picture
73 -
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Organizational Dynamics and the Impact of Collaboration
96 -
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Conclusions
124 -
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Appendix 1
133 -
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Appendix 2
136 -
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Appendix 3
138 -
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Appendix 4
140 -
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Appendix 5
142 -
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Notes
144 -
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References
148 -
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Index
161
