ABSTRACT
Voluntarism is the current fashion among welfare state analysts and politicians. A basic contrast is between an advocacy of voluntarism based on: ideological conviction; and pragmatic political and budgetary considerations. More pragmatic assessments of the voluntary sector voiced by analysts of various political persuasions suggest that the development of voluntarism offers numerous practical advantages. The voluntary sector has in effect become a shadow state: that is, a para-state apparatus with collective service responsibilities previously shouldered by the public sector, administered outside traditional democratic politics, but yet controlled in both formal and informal ways by the state. Neoconservative and liberal/left ideologies combined with pragmatic arguments for voluntarism have formed justifications for corporatism in general, and for various forms of privatization in particular. The Reagan and Thatcher governments have already used privatization within corporatist arrangements to accomplish the reorganization and retrenchment of the welfare state.
