This paper outlines the National Service legislation in the USA introduced by President Clinton in 1993. It summarises some of the reasons why national service has attracted widespread popular and political support and considers the claims made for national service. These include: the potential of service for helping to over-come growing socio-spatial segregation in the USA; its contribution to solving urgent social problems; and its value in reconstructing the welfare agenda, replacing entitlements with programmes which emphasise the reciprocal responsibilities of those receiving aid. Some pilot programmes are examined and the claims of proponents of national service are then examined, putting service legislation in the wider context of the challenges facing the American welfare state and drawing lessons which may be of wider applicability.
This chapter reviews existing research on attitudes to voluntary action. Despite the importance of this topic, public attitudes have received even less consistent consideration over time than voluntary action itself. This chapter summarises information from the National Survey of Volunteering (1981 and 1991) and the British Social Attitudes Surveys (from the 1990s) on the virtues of voluntarism, and the relationship between voluntary action and government policy. However, given the later gaps in the statistical record, the emphasis in the chapter is firmly upon two key Mass Observation Project directives, implemented 16 years apart, in 1996 and 2012. Writers have a strong sense of where the boundary should lie between statutory responsibility and voluntary initiative; and demonstrate particular concerns of and criticisms about the use of volunteers to substitute for paid staff, and to undercut the position of the lowest-paid members of society. Writers also discuss strong concerns about the ways in which governments take the contribution of volunteers for granted, leading to scepticism about individual and community capacities to take on further social responsibilities. We argue that the rationales on which appeals for greater voluntary effort are made are crucial to the success of these appeals.
This chapter analyses post-1979 changes in the British political and policy environment for volunteering and voluntary action. It distinguishes between government policy measures targeted at voluntary action by individuals, proposals to encourage the development of voluntary organisations, and the government’s institutionalisation of the voluntary sector by bringing the sector into public policy deliberation. The chapter demonstrates variations in the underlying motivations for government policy, showing how different government administrations have sought to solve certain problems through voluntary action. The chapter draws primarily upon public sources, but also upon archival records of central government deliberations. There has been strong continuity between governments, but there have also been significant differences in the emphasis these have placed on particular elements of policy. All post-1979 governments have supported voluntary action by individuals, at least rhetorically. This chapter identifies differences, however, in relation to how these various governments sought to promote voluntary action; and in how they engaged with voluntary organisations in supporting public policy.
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