Triggered by the climate strike of Greta Thunberg, the Fridays for Future campaign for the climate crisis is gathering momentum both and influence both worldwide and in Japan. In mid-September 2019, this campaign succeeded in mobilizing more than 7.6 million young people globally. This paper analyzes this movement's major characteristics and driving motivations from a social movements perspective focusing on cultural framing, mobilizing resources and political opportunity. Data is sourced from documents, news clippings and participant observations of the protest activities.

The name "Fridays for Future" provides an effective framing to appeal to young generations. It can be regarded as a typical example of "experience movements" where an "affinity group exists for the period of action, and then dissolves, only to come together at the next action" (McDonald 2004: 585). Lacking an organizational structure, participants occur across friends and experience the thrill of the unexpected interaction with others. Timing of the year 2019 is also critical as the Paris Agreement began the following year while we face increasing extreme weather events caused by high temperatures. Finally, especially in Japan's situation, sustaining these activities is still a tough challenge due to the limited mobilization effect and conservative political culture.

This study aims to explore the context of the data revealed by a social survey regarding the widespread distrust of NPOs in Japan. The study posits two hypotheses about the reasons for the citizenry's aversion to NPOs based on previous studies: their apparent politics and partisanship and an impression of their hypocrisy. The present study conducted a secondary analysis of the JGSS 〈2012〉 data, and performed a quantitative text analysis and content analysis of newspaper to verify the abovementioned hypotheses. The results did not adequately support the first hypothesis; rather, the scrutiny of newspaper articles revealed a weakened link between the term NPO and words relating to politics, social movements, and citizens. However, the second hypothesis about hypocrisy was upheld by both analyses. The analysis of newspaper evinced an increase in the proportion of articles on NPO-committed frauds despite the decrease of the total number of articles on NPOs. Such information could reinforce the public's impression about the hypocrisy of NPOs. Many instances of fraud resulted from neoliberal institutional conditions; it is hence reasonable to suggest that an improvement in organizational circumstances could yield to civic accord with NPOs.

This paper explores the regeneration policy and the social enterprise promotion policy in the UK since the late 1990s, and aims to clarify how these policies have had an influence on civil society and what kind of counterplan they have. Firstly, the paper has an overview of the trend of these policies under the Labour government (1997–2010), and refers to the theory of local governance as an important issue. Secondly, the paper analyses how neoliberalism, which is a dominant policy thought at this time, has an impact on participation and solidarity within civil society. It also focuses on the policies related to civil society and public services under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government (2010–2015), especially the influence of its austerity policy. Finally, the paper introduces two alternatives to neoliberalism from civil society. One is called governance of resistance in local politics, the other is called FairShares Model on the practice of social enterprise. These attempts try to overcome the impact of neoliberal policies. The paper points out how the new challenge has potential on participation and solidarity from civil society.

This paper aims to reveal the characteristics and the significance of community organizing (CO) of Citizens UK, which is a technique of solidarity used in the many community development practices in East London. The essence of CO is to build relationships between people, that is, relationships of trust and cooperation by revealing the self-interest of people and constructing collective interests that can be shared in different actors in order to build the power to enable social change. Then, in the actual action, after breaking down the abstract and ambiguous problem into concrete issues which have clarified targets, CO strategically plans effective social action that can get reaction from the target people. CO's process is continuing learning and trial and error for social change. Such CO can be an important technique of solidarity for Japanese civil society, which is not good at creating cooperation between different actors. Also, with the prevalence of "political alienation" today, CO can contribute to the formation of a true "democratic populism" beyond the "populism of separation".