ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the transformation of the Norwegian voluntary sector, which includes all types of voluntary organizations, from the largest sports and welfare associations to the smallest hobby clubs or self-help groups. It is primarily empirical in that the main objective is to give a view of the deep ongoing changes in the voluntary sector. However, these changes definitely relate to the renewed interest in the importance of civil society (e.g. Cohen and Arato 1992), to the new rise in communitarian thinking (e.g. Etzioni 1988), and not the least to empirical informed democratic theory, in the neo-Tocquevillian tradition.
