The restructuring of public welfare provision across Europe in recent decades has brought new actors into the governance of welfare and social work practice, including non-profit organizations. In Sweden, the role of non-profit organizations in social service provision has been less significant than that of profit-oriented enterprises. Despite a continuing shift towards greater welfare pluralism, non-profit organizations engaging in social work find themselves struggling to find their own spaces and legitimacy. This article examines two organizations engaging in community work at the peripheries of the Stockholm metropolitan area, focusing on how they understand, perform, and communicate their roles as both civil society actors and social work providers. Our data demonstrate that the organizations have developed different legitimation strategies related to their understanding of what type of organization they are and what type of work they do. Furthermore, despite some differences in their perceptions of the underpinnings of community work, both organizations make an important contribution to developing community work in Sweden as a collective practice binding local communities together with mutual support and the sharing of knowledge and identity.

This article is based on a survey carried out among 2,428 ninth-graders from 64 high-performing schools in St. Petersburg, Russia. In the study, we examine the relationships between socioeconomic background, extracurricular participation, and educational outcomes. The findings demonstrate high levels of participation in out-of-school, compared to school-based, extracurricular activities. Extracurricular participation was also shown to be associated with better grades and, to some extent, with higher levels of university aspirations. The relatively small estimate sizes indicate, however, that extracurricular participation is not a major factor in differences in educational outcomes. Nevertheless, since participation was higher among socioeconomically more advantaged students, and grades and/or levels of university aspirations were higher among those who participated, we argue that extracurricular participation should be understood as part of social reproduction in Russia.

This chapter presents the conceptual framework of resourcefulness that brings together the contributions to this volume; it also establishes Poland, Russia, and Sweden as particularly relevant cases for understanding transformation in the relationships between civil society, the state, and the market. Here, we explore the organizational realities of civil societies in the three countries and their shared history of a strong state. We posit resources as a contrast medium, allowing us to distinguish between different types of resourcefulness in civil society organizations’ responses to various pressures. Finally, the overall thematic structure of this book and each of its contributions are highlighted.

This chapter traces the transformation of volunteer work as an organizational resource in the context of the transformation of Russian civil society over the past 30 years. Utilized by voluntary associations as well as by professionalized NGOs, this type of resource can serve as a vehicle for building personal relationships and commitments with corporate partners while also eliciting individual work and financial contributions. By examining a charity organization and a community-based association and a charity organization operating in St. Petersburg since the late 1980s and early 1990s, respectively, this study links the structures and processes that integrate volunteering into the organizational fabric to an overall structure of resource mobilization patterns at the local, national, and transnational levels.

This chapter explores human rights organizations resisting the illiberal reconfiguration of Polish society that has been spearheaded by the country’s ruling political party since 2015. By decreasing financial support, launching smearing campaigns, and engaging in intimidation practices, the political regime aims to influence the scope of economic, symbolic, human, and social resources available to human rights organizations. Using data from representative surveys and in-depth interviews with representatives of human rights organizations and other civil society organizations, we systematically examine opportunities and limitations in navigating such institutional pressures. Our study demonstrates that organizations’ characteristics and environmental conditions determine the action repertoire, including diversification of resources, coalition building, and public campaigns, that sustains an organization’s legitimacy and (re)generates various forms of support.

Ekonomiskt stöd från det offentliga är i dag en central intäkt för såväl politiska partier som andra politiska aktörer. Sedan 2014 ska dessutom staten tillse att medborgarna har insyn i de politiska partiernas finansiering. Vad anser då medborgarna om det offentliga stödet till politiska aktörer och statens reglering av donationer till politiska partier – och på vilka sätt finansierar medborgarna själva olika politiska aktörer? Våra resultat visar på ett starkt stöd för regleringen av donationer till politiska partier och det offentliga stödet till ideella organisationer. Däremot är opinionen kring statens partistöd splittrad. Resultaten om medborgarnas egna donationer till politiska aktörer visar att drygt hälften skänkt till socialt och humanitärt inriktade organisationer och var fjärde till mer politiska organisationer i det civila samhället, men bara en av tjugo till ett politiskt parti.

During recent decades, the Swedish welfare state has weathered several crises, while its economy and public finances still perform strongly. However, the ways in which it is governed has transformed substantially since the 1990s. This chapter focuses on the processes of re-regulation and recalibration that Swedish social policies have undergone since 1995, focusing specifically on funding and administration and overall performance in such areas as pension policy, labour market and unemployment policy, education policy, healthcare and family policy, housing, social assistance, and migration policy. We argue that through mostly incremental implementation of privatisation, financialisation, and administrative overhaul, Sweden was led to the top rankings in inequality and segregation in the developed world.

Nonprofit organizations in Russia are introducing for-profit activities as a means of gaining autonomy from external donors, and as instruments of strategic planning and sustainable development. This study focuses on organizations that work with welfare provision and explores how they reconcile entrepreneurial activities with their social mission. More specifically, we interrogate how two institutional logics, business and nonprofit, are defined and reconciled in organizational identities, structures and hierarchies. Socially oriented nonprofits define their mission through service to beneficiaries, through personal and professional dedication to beneficiaries’ well-being, and through making an impact on public policies and the society at large. They mimic a business approach in strategic planning and meticulous reporting, but subordinate profit-seeking to social mission by integrating entrepreneurial activities into already existing organizational structures, or by separating them into independent entities.

This article examines the policies on drug control and regulation in Russia. We demonstrate that, although agencies involved in drug con-trol and regulation are important for the reproduction of differentiated practices of drug use, they formulate a rather homogeneous image of a drug user as an unhealthy deviant and criminal, and an unequivocal threat to society. At the same time, in the process of policy realization, the most vulnerable groups of users become the main target of public intervention. As a result, stigmatization and violence against these groups becomes institutionalized and legitimized. Moreover, drug control and regulation resonate with a broader range of public policies and spill over into parts of society not associated with illicit drug use.

This paper examines the challenges to the Swedish welfare state after the credit crunch of 2008 focusing on several major challenges: the government’s reaction to the fiscal and economic crisis and its outcomes, the (re)balance of welfare policies addressing risks and opportunities. While the situation is almost excellent from a purely fiscal point of view, the outstanding private debt, unemployment, especially among youth, pressures on the pension, health and education systems are prominent concerns. They have led to the revitalization of the social investment paradigm, strict budgetary policies, increased number of welfare-to-work programmes and focus on using tax reductions as a means of stimulating the labour market. In this context, the main demographic concerns and social integration have come to the fore to an unprecedented extent.

Dramatic fluctuations have occurred in population health in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although many factors have been examined in connection with this, there has been little focus on the role of the family, despite evidence from Western studies linking family functioning to individual health. Using data from 1,190 respondents collected during the Moscow Health Survey 2004 we examined the association between family relations and health outcomes. Poorer family functioning was strongly associated with worse self-rated physical health and mental health. Our results suggest that the proximal social environment of the family is important for understanding health outcomes in contemporary Russia.

The life course approach and, more specifically, the transition to adulthood have become important fields in social science. The creation of the family unit, finishing one's education, entering the labour market, accessing social security and progressing on the property ladder have all been the focus of systematic inquiries based on different theoretical paradigms that examine the backgrounds, trajectories and destinations of these transitions. This paper reviews debates in the contemporary field of transition research and argues that public policy outputs do not necessarily form coherent normative patterns. Nevertheless, they may provide an important reference framework for norms and expectations. This research has demonstrated systematic class, ethnic and gender differences in biographical pathways, despite the trend towards more deliberate biography construction. It is suggested here that the timing and sequence of the various stages of transition to adulthood depends on the compatibility existing between different life domains, i.e. the various societal and individual, structural and cultural levels. Such compatibility can be achieved by means of public policies that facilitate a "normal" transition through normative prescriptions and resource re-distribution.

This article compares current Russian and Swedish policy discourses on state commitment to facilitating young adults' access to housing by analyzing national, regional and municipal strategic documents. Both countries previously embraced the idea of housing as a commodified yet universal entitlement and exercised strong public regulation of housing redistribution, but are now establishing selective policies that support young people who comply with prescribed life-course norms. Thus, a life-course trajectory becomes integrated into the policy discourse, and a stable residential autonomy is considered a 'crowning biographical event', following a successful employment record and the establishment of a family unit. Notwithstanding important differences in policy formulation and realization, housing policies in Russia and Sweden are aimed to integrate emerging adults into market relations by increasing housing ownership through credit loans and stimulating individual responsibility for welfare provision.

This article analyzes representations of urban space by exploring city planning during the last half century in Stockholm and Leningrad/Saint Petersburg. City plans that constitute the empirical foundation of the article were enforced during the nodal points—1950s–1960s and early 2000s—of the historical development of both countries and reflect specificities of their ideological and sociopolitical heritage. Our study explores how representations of space—crystallized as ideas about goals and possibilities for spatial planning—have changed over time and how they reflect larger political, economic, and ideological transformations in Sweden and Russia. Two overarching themes are identified in our analysis. First, the ideal of equality, which dominated both the socialist and social democratic ideologies in the 1950s–1960s and provided opportunities for extensive normative control and manipulation of social life by means of a planned physical environment. Second, the ideal of the“European/global” city is distinguished in the early 2000s as a means of promoting economic development by incorporating new actors and shifting the focus to a more market-oriented approach to planning.

In this article, we explore the interaction between female and male employment, parenting responsibilities and family policy in Russia and Sweden. The study is based first on indicators of public social services, assistance for families and labour force data; and second, on the ISSP modules on Family and Changing Gender Roles ( years 1994, 2002). The results show that both Sweden and Russia facilitate the 'dual-earner' family model, but that Sweden places a greater emphasis on dual-caring and flexible work arrangements for women. The support for traditional gender roles was much higher and more uniform in Russia than in Sweden. The proportion of 'dual-earner' and female-led families was nevertheless higher in Russia than in Sweden, especially in 1994 when major restructuring in the social and economic sphere was occurring. The findings suggest that family policy is instrumental in facilitating female employment, but does not necessarily bring changes in gender-role attitudes.

The twentieth century has witnessed a revolution in the ways in which the social division of labour is organised, and in terms of how waged work and caring for children are reconciled. This study explores family policy from the perspective of its capacity to manage the socio-economic risks emanating from combining the roles of breadwinner and caregiver which many parents are beginning to do in contemporary society. This study is focused on Russia and Sweden, countries which have a large share of their female population in the labour force and an institutionalised public policy directed towards meeting the challenges of childrearing in dual-earner families.

In the first empirical stage of the study, I examine the establishment and development of family policies in these countries, and analyse their effects in terms of how they have attempted to reconcile the competing demands of work and family life in recent years, specifically, by focusing on three main components: parental leave regulations, the organisation of early childcare and education, and schemes of financial assistance and support for families with children (including their impact on poverty reduction, with the use of Luxemburg Income Survey data). The next stage, involved the exploration of the normative setting in which employment and parenting are realised. To do this I used survey data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), and its modules on Family and Gender Roles. In the final stage, by conducting in-depth interviews with families in Stockholm and St. Petersburg I was able to examine how decisions about using the available public means of assistance and support are negotiated within households, and which factors, other than public policy, influence such decisions. The results of these three empirical parts are juxtaposed in order to establish the relation between official inputs into family policy and the complex picture of its outcome in the two countries.

In this paper, we explore the interaction between the levels and forms of labour force participation and outputs of family policy realisation in Russia and Sweden. The study explores statistical indicators of public social services/assistance for families and labour force structure, as well as survey data obtained from International Social Survey Program, module 'Family and Changing Gender Roles' (1994, 2002). The results show that both Sweden and Russia facilitate the 'dual-earner' family model, but that Sweden places a greater emphasis on dual-caring and f lexible work arrangements for women. The support for traditional gender roles was much higher and more uniform in Russia than in Sweden. The proportion of 'dual-earner' and female led families was nevertheless higher in Russia than Sweden, especially in 1994, when major restructuring in the social and economic sphere was occurring. The findings suggest that family policy is instrumental in facilitating female employment, but does not necessarily bring changes in either family or gender-role attitudes.