Associationism, citizenship and social welfare

Abstract

The last two decades of the XX century have produced a historical change in what concerns Spanish associationism, which not only takes place in the creation of associations and in associative participation but also in the institutionalization (volunteering and association laws, etc.) and academic interest which the phenomenon provokes. This change has been interpreted in three different ways: a utopian one which considers it as an expression of participatory radicalization; a critical one which believes that the change is a subterfuge to dilute the privatization of the Welfare State, and an integrated one which speaks in terms of the appearance of a third sector together with the market and the State. Each of them is evocative but clearly insufficient. They all have partial validity. We here revise these interpretations, by means of a study proposal of the associative phenomenon from an omniencompassing perspective, by means of an analysis of its internal heterogeneity and by means of the qualitative inquiry on the existence or the non-existence of the project and political meaning within associations.