Recruiting civil society elites: Comparing recruitment actors, practices and criteria in Sweden, UK and Poland

"European civil societies have undergone extensive changes leading to a concentration of power and resources into the hands of a few large civil society organizations and their leaders. These large civil society organizations are key players in national and international arenas of policy-making. They are recognized brands with millions of members, generous donors, extensive turnover, and extraordinary access to corridors of power. Their central position allows civil society leaders to engage in shaping decisions that affect not only their members and beneficiaries, but also society more generally. While we have extensive knowledge of how recruitment of leaders occurs across political, administrative and corporate sectors, we have limited knowledge on the significance of recruitment actors, practices and criteria in leadership selection for prestigious positions in civil societies. This paper fills this gap by comparing how civil society leaders are searched for, evaluated and selected for top positions in three different civil society regimes: Poland, Sweden and UK. The paper utilizes Jenkins (1986) distinction between suitability (formal merits and professional experiences) and acceptability criteria (personal qualities and cultural fit) to identify whether there is an overlap in the promotion of a preferred type of ‘civil society leader’ across regime divides. We draw on interviews with recruiters, HR professionals and civil society leaders in each context. Our findings point at national styles of recruitment patterns ranging from high informality in Poland and high formality in the UK, with Sweden in the middle. The paper contributes to research on political careers by looking at an under-studied category of political elites and how they are recruited for elite positions."