Forging a new commons: Self-help associations in Slovenia and Croatia

Nonprofit Leadership Development in the Post-Socialist Context: The Case of Croatia

“…Even the oldest of the NGOs included here were operating under new mandates and environmental conditions, having been transformed from public-or quasi-public services into NGOs facing the same opportunities and challenges as those newly minted. At the same time, registration requirements compressed the development of newer organizations by mandating a formal structure and set of operational procedures (Dill & Coury, 2008); hence, it is not surprising that we found no thematic differences in the responses of representatives from organizations that had been part of the old regime, those formed during the '90s, and those established since 2000.…”

Self-help groups challenge health care systems in the US and UK

“…Dill and Coury (2008) in ''Forging a new Commons:Self Help Associations in Slovenia and Croatia'' in this volume found that SHGs/SHOs in post-Communist Yugoslavia (now Slovenia and Croatia) were not only less independent from the state but they also cultivated this dependence, among other differences, from their equivalents in US and Europe which were attributed to the societal context of transition to capitalism with an emerging voluntary sector.…”

“…People that share a common health condition find through their participation in SHGs/SHOs a voice to challenge the prevailing medical or popular view of their condition when their lived experience does not match the model presented by medicine or the culture. Retaining the emphasis on collective community activities (the wellspring of many national movements) reminds us of the importance of grassroots peer led collective action that gives participants the opportunity to be both providers as well as consumers of services (see Greenspan & Handy, 2008;Staples & Stein, 2008, in this book In summary, we have preliminary evidence from this chapter and from Dill and Coury's (2008) chapter in this volume that the health care system and the voluntary sector of a country constitute a context that impacts the activities and outcomes of SHGs/SHOs and of consumer participation in policy making. Despite many similarities in SHGs in the UK and US, there are major differences in consumer participation in health care policy and we suggest that analysts who write in universalistic terms as if the country and its health care system were irrelevant are on shaky ground.…”

Reciprocal Relationships and Well-Being

“…Mutual support as voluntary action has always been part of human society in one form or another, including with Peter Kropotkin's (1914) empirical observations that mutual aid is as prevalent in the animal world as 'survival of the fittest' -a feature he theorised and applied to human societies. The form that mutual aid takes is linked to the economic, social, and political conditions in which it appears (Gidron and Chesler 1994;Dill and Coury 2008;Matzat 2010;Oka 2013).…”

“…Important national differences have been identified: For example, in the Nordic countries with extensive health and welfare systems, many MAGs are supported by the state welfare system and can include a staff member as organiser (Stokken and Munn-Giddings 2012). In previously communist countries, such as contemporary Croatia, the state may still 'own' many health and welfare groups, including MAGs (Dill and Coury 2008). Some civil society organisations in japan are legally required to have professional social workers provide services, thereby precluding certain kinds of peer-led mutual aid activities (Laratta 2013).…”