Facing crises: Challenges and opportunities confronting the third sector and civil society

The ninth international conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) will respond to the expanding role of civil society over the past several decades. Whether in more open or more authoritarian environments, the third sector is playing an important role in providing social services, contributing to policy development, advocating for the rights of poor and oppressed people and for women's rights, contributing to livelihoods and reduction of poverty when the state and market cannot or will not do so, making international aid more effective, growing social capital, contributing to social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, and in many other ways.

There are also significant and growing challenges to the role of civil society as well - challenges posed by the economic and financial crisis that has spread across the world since early 2008, particularly for the poor and for women; ongoing global and local environmental crises; major wars, international and internal, and the related refugee crises; public health issues; global climate change; and many others. These new challenges exist alongside attempts to limit third sector organizations to largely charitable work and service delivery; tightening of legal and political controls on third sector organizations; physical threats to NGO workers, intellectuals, and others; cuts in funding and donations; viewing the third sector as an adjunct and conduit for terrorism and the resulting limitations on transnational philanthropy; the broader concerns for accountability and democracy in the third sector; and many other issues.Leading questions to be addressed at the conference include:

What challenges and opportunities are the third sector and civil society facing at the end of the  first decade of the new millennium?
How robust are our existing understandings and explanations of the third sector and civil society?
What new understandings and explanations are emerging?
What do the old and new offer as ways forward to meet these challenges and opportunities?
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