Guest editorial: Civil society and crises: co-creating societal value with or without the government

Guest editorial: Civil society and crises: co-creating societal value with or without the government IntroductionThis special issue on civil society and crises: co-creating societal value with or without the government seeks to understand how civil society responds to and proactively tackles societal crises.We live in a diverse and ever-changing environment that creates opportunities for communities, organisations and individuals but also poses significant challenges, including natural disasters, pandemics, climate change, economic recessions, military conflicts and cyberattacks.Complex, transboundary crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, transcend geographic, time and functional boundaries (Boin, 2009;Smith and Fischbacher, 2009) and cause unpredictable societal changes (Boyne and Meier, 2009).Some crises are immediately visible due to their instant damage, whilst others develop gradually over years, causing huge cumulative damage due to insufficient social and political attention (Boin et al., 2020).Here, the role of civil society is increasingly important, as governments seek collaborative ways to solve social problems in the face of economic and political pressures on welfare states (Kabatas ¸ and Vogel, 2025).Civil society is a term commonly used by academics and practitioners, but as a concept, remains elastic and widely debated (Edwards, 2011).Civil society covers a diverse range of formally incorporated entities, such as nonprofits, charities, cooperatives, social enterprises, trade unions, as well as informal associations, such as community groups, online Facebook groups, sports clubs and so forth.In the most simplistic sense, the term could refer to the gathering of private individuals beyond pure familial or state relationships (Tester, 2014).While it is out of scope for this editorial to provide a thorough conceptualisation of civil society, Walzer's (1998) definition of civil society as "an uncoerced human association to undertake collective action independent of the state and market" stands as a suitable starting point.The dynamic, innovative and efficient characteristics of civil society are argued to make it a valuable resource during times of societal crisis (Saban, 2013).While we recognise that civil society theorisation differs from, for instance, social movement studies, our aim is to highlight their role and value in addressing societal crises -whether through strategic action or service provision -and their contribution to broader societal well-being and inclusion (Della Porta, 2020).Civil society contributes to the creation of societal value on various levels of service ecosystems, operating far beyond service delivery, offering advocacy, service system improvement and community connection (Tuurnas et al., 2025).Through their humancentered approaches, civil society organisations can be well placed to address the needs of disadvantaged citizens, helping them participate in value-creation (e.g.Arslan et al., 2022;Eriksson, 2019;Dhungana, 2020;Haug, 2024;Trasciani et al., 2026;Tuurnas et al., 2023).Civil society organisations can act as community anchor institutions that bridge the needs and language of disparate stakeholders to facilitate co-creation and increase democratic legitimacy (Collell and Marques, 2025;Steiner and Farmer, 2018) and offer direct help in times of crisis (Garcia et al., 2023).Civil society can also initiate and enact ecosystems of different actors from the public and private sectors to create and nurture social innovation and service coproduction (Perikangas et al., 2024), both preparing for and responding to different types of crises.Overall, the strong role of civil society to lead or support in creating solutions to social problems can provide an alternative approach to government-led interventions, providing that such solutions are organically and collectively developed with the public International