This project’s starting point will be the extensive knowledge already possessed about the local organisational society, particularly in terms of social integration and democracy. Specific attention will be paid to changes since the turn of the century.

In the 1990s the organisational society went through significant changes; the gap between the central and local levels increased, organisations became less societally orientated and more orientated towards individuals and a declining number of organisations are conflict orientated or have intentions of changing fundamental social conditions and power structures.

The organisational society is becoming increasingly consensus orientated and apolitical. Will this trend continue, or will it go in a different direction? Perhaps entirely new kinds of clubs and associations will emerge? Or it may even be a tendency towards the return of a more politicised organisational society?

It is important to emphasise that in order to fully understand volunteerism we need extensive information about the conditions for volunteering and how these may change. The fact that the Norwegian data on volunteerism are unique in a world context needs to be pointed out. No-one else has the same time dimension in their data, and an additional study will only reinforce these data’s uniqueness for analysing the social importance of volunteerism. This project can therefore make extensive use of data from the ‘local level associations’-study and its timeframe as well as data generated by the survey on volunteerism.

The project will be particularly relevant for the key research areas ‘perspectives on participation’ and ‘transitional processes in the voluntary sector’.