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Civil Society

Research on civil society and the voluntary sector is a long-standing tradition at the Institute for Social Research. Today, this research topic covers Norwegian as well as international conditions.

Norway has a rich and vibrant civil society that is of huge social and economic value. The majority of the adult population engages in voluntary work each year. In recent years, the ISF’s long-term research in this field has been further developed and extended to include new topics, such as the role of non-profit organisations as welfare providers and the importance of civil society for community resilience.

Much of the research on Norwegian conditions has been added to the Centre for Research on Civil Society and Voluntary Sector, a centre operated in co-operation by the ISF and the NORCE Norwegian Research Centre. The Centre for Research on Civil Society and Voluntary Sector studies long-term trends in participation, organisation, and policy.

Civil society research has a strong international and comparative dimension, expressed through participation in a EU-COST-Action on social entrepreneurship (Empower-SE) in the Nordic network for co-creation (NOS-HS) and in the completed EU-FP7 project Third Sector Impact (2013–2017).