Systemic approach to volunteering as a reflection of participatory governance in civil security - comparative analysis of nine EU countries

Abstrakt

The increasing complexity of disasters and the expanding scope of non-military challenges call for an increased heterogeneity of core actors and for more participatory governance. Also the shift toward resilience emphasises voluntary participation of local actors and the need to incorporate these into the governance framework of the national civil security systems.

In order to effectively link the non-governmental and governmental elements into a coordinated system, a facilitating legal framework provided by the government is needed. While the EU countries seem all to embrace the cooperation with voluntary organizations when a disaster strikes, differences exist in the official role of volunteering within the security systems.

The paper examines the involvement of volunteers and their organisations in the national civil security systems of nine EU countries. In particular, legislative frameworks are compared to assess whether and how the shift towards civil security governance is reflected in the national legislation.

The question addressed by the paper is: How systemic is the voluntary engagement within the civil security systems and how does it correspond with the increasing need for participatory governance? To cover different geographical parts of Europe, the states brought into analysis are France and Italy (Southern Europe); Finland and Sweden (Northern Europe); Germany and the Netherlands (Western Europe); Czech Republic and Slovakia (Central Europe) and finally Ireland. Methodologically, qualitative document analysis is employed as the most suitable procedure for reviewing the legislation and other official documents while treating these as the so-called social facts.