Nonprofit Organizations and Consolidation of a Civil Society

The manuscript provides study of the role of nonprofit organizations in consolidation of a civil society and support for the democracy. Key social and economic theories on the third sector are considered and various methodological approaches to studying classifying and comparing trends associated with activities of civic society organizations are represented. The study provides outcomes of the research on nonprofit organizations and people’s attitudes towards them in several countries of Europe with secondarily European Social Survey (ESS) and World Values Survey (WVS) database. Finally it compares perspectives for consolidation of a civil society in the EU and the Eastern European countries.