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The purpose of this paper is to examine motivations of social activists in informal initiatives and to understand why they opt for this more spontaneous and self-organized activism while openly defying the hitherto established way of founding non-governmental organizations.

On the basis of a case study of Poland, which had one of the most vibrant civil societies in the socialist region, it is argued that the characteristics ascribed to the functioning of civil society after the toppling of socialism are not reflected in its more recent state. A broader definition of civil society and social activism is suggested to include new types of informal activism, which tend to be over-looked and under-studied. The analysis is built on qualitative and quantitative data gathered in 2014-2015.

The argument put forward is that un-institutionalized engagement is qualitatively different from its formal and institutionalized counterpart. The recent growth of informal activism is indicative of a rebirth of communitarian engagement in Polish civil society and a reaction to the underside of its institutionalization.

In spite of the seminal role played by societal self-organization in the overturning of the socialist system in Eastern European countries, the development of civil society in the region after 1989 has been repeatedly described as passive and characterized by distrustful or individualist attitudes. However, these civil societies have been changing since, and these more recent developments have been neglected by scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of local entrepreneurs, embedded in both the civil and the business arena, in creating public value by establishing strategic collaboration around smart technologies.

The paper suggests a novel – the local entrepreneurial – type of smart bottom-up initiative between civil grassroots and market-based initiatives. This idea is further evolved in the paper to define the patterns of this alternative type of smart bottom-up initiative. For this purpose, the paper conducts a case study of a community-based sustainable energy and mobility system launched by a local entrepreneur in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

The local entrepreneur has played a catalyzing role in public value creation by initiating and upscaling cooperative practices around smart technologies. This success has mainly been achieved due to the entrepreneurial attitudes of pioneering and risk-taking as well as the capability to bridge between the state, the market and society to accelerate urban sustainability transition.

This paper offers a practical illustration of the potential of local entrepreneurs to evolve cooperative practices with smart technologies for societal change. It also shows the vital role of local governments in the achievement of bottom-up initiatives contributing to urban smartness. However, in the case of commercializing initiatives, governments also need to take a balancing role to safeguard the needs of all citizens based on fairness and equity, which is at the core of public value creation.

The study adds to the citizen participation literature by revealing a novel type of active citizen grasping technological opportunities to mobilize networks to cooperate for the collective good. The research also contributes to a better understanding of the bottom-up smart city as a form of governance, and its advantages as well as drawbacks concerning public value creation.

Direct democracy by citizen initiatives is often heralded as the avenue for the true will of the people to be heard. While scholars have debated whether this leads to a form of Madison's “tyranny of the majority,” the debate over the concrete impact of such initiatives on racially marginalized groups remains unsettled. We examine a different question about racially marginalized groups' interests in this process: the symbolic assertion of white supremacy expressed through this mechanism of majority will. We develop the concept of “racial spectacles” to describe the narrative vehicles that serve to symbolically reassert and reinforce real existing racial hierarchies and inequalities. We explore the creation of these spectacles through the initiative process because it is a state-sanctioned vehicle that enables white dominance. Paradoxically, these campaigns that purport to be colorblind depend on the enactment of these racial spectacles. Through an analysis of five statewide anti-affirmative action initiative campaigns from 1996 to 2008, we explore both macro and micro political dynamics: public displays of these campaigns as well as individual, private agency expressed in the public and private act of voting; court decisions in initiative litigation as well as individual and interest group participation in these cases. Ultimately, we argue that this form of racial spectacle further inculcates the public in the postracial ideology of colorblindness.

Social entrepreneurial initiatives are often ascribed innovative roles for the public good. However, it is also argued that the same initiatives react to conditions in different contexts as well as to local or global trends. But, what roles and values are brought into practice by initiatives today and how can these be conceptualised as innovative? The aim of this paper is to empirically describe and analyse social entrepreneurship initiatives and contribute to the understanding of their role in the development of society.

The paper is based on a framework focusing on entrepreneurial dynamics, organisations and institutions. Empirically, it is grounded in four studies of social enterprises and their entrepreneurial initiatives in Sweden. Findings – The results reveal an intricate interplay between innovative challenges and institutional inertia as well as a combined role for social entrepreneurship initiatives in which innovative aspects can be more or less extensive.

The study contributes to problemising and nuancing the understanding of social entrepreneurship and social enterprises in relation to innovation in society.

The purpose of the paper is to address the question of the influence of the administrative tradition and the politico‐administrative context on the formulation and implementation of public management reform in Portugal.

The paper is based on empirical evidence collected from various sources. It reflects the personal experience of the author, who was personally involved in the reform process, and is also the result of a wide‐ranging review of literature on public administration and public management reform in Portugal and other European countries.

The paper identifies different phases of reform, and acknowledges the existence of a recurrent problem with public expenditure and increasing public employment. It concludes that there has been no lack of great reforms, and suggests a different approach – one that does not require special speeches or special doctrine, but is based on discreet work by politicians and managers seeking to fulfil the traditional values of the public service.

Mainly due to a lack of both studies and evaluation practices – make it difficult to assess the actual impact of the different waves of reforms. However, administration has managed to cope with the process of change while maintaining a key orientation towards the citizen and society.

The value of the paper is that it is the first time the whole cycle of reforms, from 1974 until 2007, has been covered and also related to the politico‐administrative tradition. It contains summarised but complete information and suggests a new approach based on the ethical values of the public service.

In September 2015, Germany witnessed an unanticipated migration of refugees toward the European Union. The government established an open-border policy that meant Germany would harbor all refugee arrivals. In large, the civil society joined efforts to create a so-called Willkommenskultur (welcome culture) during the “summer of welcome.”

This chapter will introduce the project “Start ins Deutsche” (German language kick-off) of Goethe University Frankfurt as an ambitious example of civil society initiatives. Start ins Deutsche was founded on the premise of “integration by language learning.” Within Start ins Deutsche, university students volunteer to teach German to refugees. In many cases these refugees have a realistic perspective to enroll into fulltime studies at Goethe University at a later stage to pursue academic degrees.

In this chapter, the authors outline the project and its main aims. Based on this, the authors thereafter analyze evaluation data about Start ins Deutsche with regard to the perceptions of German language teachers and their language learners, respectively. The evaluation data of Start ins Deutsche reveal that the German language teachers interpret their role beyond being just teachers, while the learners appreciate the effort of their teachers in every aspect. Hence, the authors believe the project serves as a best-practice example for a civil society project toward establishing a Willkommenskultur in Germany.

This article starts from the theoretical assumption that successful multicultural integration of immigrants and ethnic minorities is critically dependent on providing them with opportunities to engage in public debate and in policy‐making. Empowering cultural groups is important in particular to the traditionally vulnerable individuals in these groups, such as women. The argument is applied to Canada, a country whose turn to multicultural policies and an accompanying ethos of appreciating cultural diversity have created new opportunities for immigrant and minority groups to advocate for a pluri‐cultural opening of the health care system. These opportunities can be found in state‐monitored forms of community outreach and partial inclusion in the policy process, as well as in grassroots initiatives from immigrant or minority associations or professional networks. Promoting cultural diversity in the Canadian health care sector and empowering minorities in the system are depicted as challenging and, in spite of considerable progress over the last decade, successful primarily with respect to some exemplary practices and initiatives. Examples are drawn from the complex political fight of women with an immigrant or minority background for inclusion, diversity and social justice in the health care system.

The purpose of this study was to explore the innovative and proactive practices adopted by subsistence businesses under the COVID-19 health contingency. Evidence of the current situation and the contingency practices that businesses have implemented in dealing with the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was collected through a literature review of secondary information sources: bibliographic and hemerographic, as well as in-depth interviews with five owners of artisanal and agricultural subsistence businesses.

Faced with uncertainty, artisanal and agricultural subsistence businesses have adopted innovative and proactive survival practices. The closure of markets, the absence of tourism, the suspension of non-essential activities, the lack of mobility and transportation, and the closure of access in rural communities are some of the realities these businesses are experiencing. Subsistence businesses in marginalised areas are a long way from accessing information technologies for online sales and home deliveries, which are implemented by most businesses in urban areas. In contrast, they revert to ancestral marketing practices such as bartering and low prices to earn an income for family food. Despite the loss of over 50% of subsistence businesses in urban and semi-urban areas, online sales through social media and websites, socially responsible initiatives, along with government support programmes, have helped others stay in business.

Fighting the drought. Based on this idea, for almost two centuries now the Brazilian State has elaborated policies and programmes intended to stimulate rural development in the semiarid region of the country. It is this idea which has nourished the illusion that immense infrastructures need to be built to capture, store and transport large volumes of water in order to supply production activities in the region. Associated with this proposal is the attempt to reproduce the same pattern of development adopted in other Brazilian biomes, the main characteristic of which is the use of monoculture practices on large properties managed according to entrepreneurial modes of production. However the rich social experience promoted by rural worker organizations in the region has challenged this model by proposing living with the semiarid (Convivência com o Semiárido) as the guiding principle for alternative trajectories of development. Inspired by the experience of territorial development under way in the Agreste da Borborema region of Paraíba state, the chapter shows that the evolution of these new paths of development depends on revitalizing and mobilizing locally available resources, such as ecological potentials, social mechanisms for organizing labour and for producing and sharing knowledge, local forms of connecting food production to consumption and so on. The text concludes by emphasizing the need to design and implant institutional frameworks that enable a more balanced distribution of power between the State and civil society organizations, thereby allowing the latter to assume a more substantial role in identifying and managing endogenous resources that underpin self-centred development strategies.

This commentary aims to provide an overview of how innovation in community mobilisation and collaboration can help address natural disasters quickly and more effectively. This is done using the example of the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria and caused considerable damage, the full extent of which cannot yet be assessed.

This commentary was prepared by two researchers who collected a number of examples and assessed their contribution to earthquake mitigation.

This commentary confirms that applying digital technologies and other innovative approaches to disaster management can mobilise people and contribute to more effective disaster management, especially in disasters where every minute counts.

This commentary explains the role of active mobilisation of civil society using digital technologies and other innovative approaches during one of humanity's largest earthquakes. As far as the authors are aware, this issue has not yet been discussed in this way in contemporary literature.