(Meegan et al, 2014; VONNE, 2016; Clifford, 2017) and staff redundancies. The effects are variable depending on their size, activity and location, with those more reliant on state funding and operating in disadvantaged areas experiencing a larger fall in their income (Jones et al, 2016), as is the case in the North East (Chapman and Hunter, 2017). Here, smaller charities in poorer areas also lack confidence, resources and skills to apply for grants from national bodies (Pharoah et al, 2014). While the COVID-19 lockdown has further increased demand and reduced their resources, the majority of the sector have continued their support. Some of the increased pressures have been driven from the government’s attempts to redirect demand away from the public sector towards them, as is the case in the referral of patients to an already-stretched voluntary sector (NCVO, 2019).
The problem of the government offloading its responsibility onto civil society organisations’ shoulders and overburdening them with what ought to be the responsibility of the public sector came to the surface during the outbreak of COVID-19, as reported by a volunteer in an independent food bank:
The majority of our volunteers are retired. Some are not in good health because it’s hard to be when you’re over 70 ... We’ve given them the option of dropping out and obeying the government guidelines. But it does leave a hole. Now, if a family member coughs, people are gone at the drop of a hat. (Quoted in McGee, 2020)
Added to the reduced supply of volunteers was the limited amount of donated food as for the ‘people who use the food bank, it’s quite a hand-to-mouth existence. And now that food just isn’t there’ (quoted in McGee, 2020).
In response to neoliberal austerity measures, civil society organisations have stepped in to compensate for the loss of a safety net, creating a juxtaposition between the expression of solidarity (‘the best of times’) and the state’s abdication of responsibility (‘the worst of times’). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the growth of food banks in response to growing food poverty (HRW, 2019), as articulated by the Chief Executive of the Trussell Trust:
Food banks have tried to stem the tide, but no charity can replace the dignity of people having enough money to afford a decent standard of living. The failure to tackle the structural problems at both a national and local level has left people with nowhere else to turn. We have the power to tackle these structural problems as a nation. (Quoted in HRW, 2019: 9)
These accounts highlight the limit to the perceived adaptability of civil society – compared with the state and the market – and its ability to align its core activities and values to maintain integrity and mission (Corner, 2014).
Transferring what were previously government services and assets to the charitable sector undermines democratic accountability. Instead of these organisations complementing state provision, they are increasingly operating ‘as substitute for the provision of services by public sector professionals’ (Lyall and Bua, 2015: 33, original emphasis). This risks undermining the relationship between citizens and the state, and between citizens and voluntary sector organisations, increasing the stigma and shame that many people feel. The sector is also changing through undertaking target-driven, performance-managed services where the government has set the agenda. The encroachment of ‘new public management’ approaches in the voluntary sector may bring with it the neoliberal discourses of responsibilisation (Powell et al, 2017), through which benefit recipients are denigrated. Such a discourse became commonplace through popular media and television programmes such as ‘Benefits Street’ in England and ‘The Scheme’ in Scotland (Mooney and Hancock, 2010; Marriott, 2017). As Clarke and Elgenuis (2014) argue, the Coalition government’s ‘skivers v strivers message is inflaming resentments between those affected by the economic slump’, while ‘benefit crackdown leads to divide and rule within poor communities’, essentially breaking down civil society. Furthermore, the new public management approaches are changing the nature of volunteering, with negative effects on attracting and retaining volunteers, who become subject to the culture of performance indicators and an emphasis on competing with other civil society organisations to win contracts. The concept of ‘joyless volunteering’ (Dunn, 2017) has emerged, whereby volunteers are often expected to participate in strategic decisions concerning service provision and staff redundancies, and to be on the front line of hard-pressed services for citizens, bearing the brunt of expressed frustration.
Finally, we return to the idea of civil society as the ‘public sphere’, which goes beyond service delivery and focuses on the role of civil society in critiquing and shaping public policy (Williams and Goodman, 2011). This is where tensions arise in civil society organisations, whereby their role as the voice of the disempowered may contradict with their dependence on state funding and the delivery of services that are commissioned by the government. Both of these may hamper their willingness to confront and question government policy (Alcock, 2010), and compromise their autonomy and advocacy role, especially for disadvantaged communities. As a study by Hemmings (2017: 59) shows, austerity, the shift to the ‘contract culture’ (Bode, 2006), competition, professionalisation and ‘self-muzzling’ has restricted the ability of the voluntary sector to advocate for disadvantaged groups, and to challenge government policy – a role that was further curtailed by recent legislation.2
In many ways, the aforementioned empirical cases reflect the theoretical critiques of the public sphere as a static, essentialised and neutral space. Instead, scholars (notably, Chantal Mouffe) consider the public sphere as a contested space. Here, ‘passive observance of moralist comprehensive doctrines’ that underpin the liberal views of the public sphere is replaced with ‘proactive engagement and sifting of ideas and actions’ by political actors, who have ‘their own visions and versions of the common good’ (Baker, 2018: 258). This dynamic and relational perspective combines political values of agonistic pluralism with ethical values of shared civil imaginaries, which are ‘mediated through rules and norms of conduct that help create a common bond and public concern’ (Baker, 2018: 259). For us, it is this understanding of civil society as a contested ‘public sphere’ that presents hope in the dark (see also Davoudi and Ormerod, 2021).
Concluding reflections
This chapter comes to a conclusion at a time of a global health crisis – the COVID-19 pandemic. We, the authors, are self-isolated in our homes. Businesses are shut down. Shops and schools are closed. Cities are eerily empty, quiet and locked