There has been a flowering of interest in the third sector within social policy in the UK over the last decade or so. This has in part been driven by a policy agenda which, in the context of greater recognition of the importance of the mixed economy of welfare, has raised the profile of, and engagement with, the sector in policy discourse and policy practice – of which more shortly. It has also, however, been the product of an increase in academic research on, and analysis of, the sector. This has a number of dimensions, including the growth in participation in the main academic grouping of researchers in the field, the Voluntary Sector Studies Network (VSSN); the establishment of a new UK-based academic journal, Voluntary Sector Review (VSR, published by Policy Press); and the creation of a national research centre, the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) funded initially by the ESRC, the Cabinet Office and the Barrow Cadbury Trust. There are more academics working in the field now; they are producing more research and analysis; and inevitably, of course, they are engaging in contested debates about the nature of the object of their studies.

These books are two of the latest additions to this corpus of work, and they come from two active members of the VSSN, both of whom have long, and strong, records of work in the field – and both of whom have been keen to contribute to the contestation found within it. Contestation extends to the definition and description of the object of study itself. There is no agreed terminology for the sector. The previous government adopted the term ‘third sector’, whereas the Coalition have largely replaced this with reference to ‘civil society’, although, as Evers (Reference Evers2013) has argued in the VSR, this may open up a rather different field for study. In the US, it is the ‘non-profit sector’ and in much of the rest of the world the ‘non-government sector’. Both of these authors, however, prefer the term ‘voluntary sector’, and for both this is in part an attempt to focus our attention on the narrower, and for some more traditional, concern with voluntary action as an independent social sphere.

Indeed, it is the potential threats to the independence of voluntary organisations from recent incursions from the state and the market which is central to the analysis presented by both authors – although more stridently so for Rochester. The pressures on voluntary organisations from state policy (in particular the Labour government's commitments to partnership with and support for the sector) and from market pressures (in particular the encouragement for organisations to have robust business plans and income generation strategies) have been well-documented, and much criticised by many in the sector. Billis (Reference Billis2010) discussed how this had driven ‘hybridity’ within organisations which were no longer distinctively voluntary or community based, and many have drawn on the concept of ‘isomorphism’ developed by DiMaggio and Powell (Reference DiMaggio and Powell1983) to describe the process by which organisations are (re)shaped by the economic or policy context in which they are operating. Both Milbourne and Rochester take up these issues and develop them with new evidence and new arguments.

Milbourne's book was the first published. The key themes of her argument are well summarised in the title. She argues that the changes of the recent past have created a process of transition for the voluntary sector, which is still incomplete, and which offers both opportunities and threats. Her analysis is supported by evidence from qualitative case study research on (mainly small) voluntary organisations in three different localities in England. This research, and much of the analysis that flows from it, was carried out under the Labour government during the first decade of the new century; and, although she does take up some of the new challenges which have flowed from the political and policy changes of the Coalition regime, many of the concerns she explores are rooted in the legacy of Labour's heightened engagement with the sector and the implications which flowed from this.

The substantive chapters of the book cover most of the key themes identified in recent debates about the threats to the ethos and autonomy of voluntary organisations: the impact of competition and marketing, the role of performance and regulation in challenging trust-based relationships, the pressures for collaboration and ‘joined-up’ working in community-focused activity, the different responses to risk and resilience and the continued importance of advocacy and campaigning as an essential dimension of independent voluntary action. The final chapter provides a reprise to these issues in the light of the pressures being experienced under the Coalition government. Much of the state partnership and support provided by Labour has been withdrawn as a result of the new government's austerity programme, replaced by a ‘Big Society’ rhetoric that encourages bottom-up community action rather than top-down public support, although, as Milbourne concludes (p. 231), ‘It remains to be seen whether freedom from the strings attached to state resources will allow different opportunities despite the harsh new stage set.’

To those who were so critical of Labour's closer engagement with the sector, described by Kendall (Reference Kendall and Kendall2009) as ‘hyperactive mainstreaming’, the message from the public austerity of the Big Society may be – be careful what you wish for! For Rochester, however, this is less of challenge. For some time, like his former colleague Billis, Rochester has been concerned about the increasing, and unwelcome, incursions of state and market principles into the autonomy and distinctiveness of voluntary organisations, leading for example to increasing hybridity and isomorphism. Rochester has long and deep experience of voluntary action and analysis, and he employs this in his book to provide readers with insights into the historical context of current trends and extensive discussion of the arguments of the key protagonists and commentators.

Unlike Milbourne, Rochester does not draw directly on any empirical evidence to illustrate his argument. He does draw though on his extensive historical knowledge of the development of policy and practice in the UK over the last thirty years or more. For this reason, the book provides a fascinating and informative account of the development of the voluntary sector over this period. However, it is a very particular account, for it seeks to articulate Rochester's analysis of what has been going wrong in sector politics over this period. Rochester is very critical of some of the major changes in policy and practice, and their impact on voluntary action: too much top-down policy interference (reshaping organisations and threatening their independence), too much engagement in public service delivery (doing a job they were not intended for and leading to isomorphism) and too much embracement of market principles (importing unwanted professionalism and business practices into voluntary action). Rochester is rightly identifying some important challenges here, but his at times trenchant dismissal of their deleterious consequences in practice skates rather thinly over the complexity and contradictions of the world he is seeking to portray – or defend.

Rochester is a member of the National Coalition for Independent Action (NCIA) a group of academics and practitioners who are also critical of much of more mainstream academic research on the voluntary sector, in particular for concentrating too much on public policy and service delivery and too little on the smaller community-based organisations that make up a large part of the sector. He discusses NCIA and their alternative prescriptions for analysis in the book. In a sense, therefore, Rochester is inviting readers to ‘take sides’ in this debate, and (hopefully) to move to the different beat of NCIA's drum. Readers can choose to do this, but many may recognise also more complexity and contradiction in the pressures which Rochester is in practice describing. Of course, business planning and public service contracts are not appropriate for all voluntary organisations, and where they are taken on they will change those who embrace them, willingly or not. But for some they are an important aspect of organisational mission and practice, and this is not in itself a bad thing.

The point really is that these different pressures impact differently on different types of organisation in different circumstances, and Rochester recognises this diversity within the voluntary sector. Indeed, he argues that diversity means that in practice there can be no such thing as a voluntary (or third) sector, and that the underlying problem has been the attempts by policymakers and academic analysts to seek to create one – ‘sectorisation’ as he calls it in Chapter 14. This is an important point, and perhaps the most significant aspect of his argument. The sector that Kendall and Knapp (Reference Kendall, Knapp, Smith, Rochester and Hedley1995) once described as a ‘loose and baggy monster’, Rochester now wants us to stop seeking to capture at all. And he has got a point: diversity may be indeed the only unifying feature of the voluntary sector! However, that will not stop critics, protagonists and academics seeking to define, describe and measure it – in particular of course because, whatever it is, in policy terms it really matters.

There is one final point to make about the coverage and analysis presented in both books. In essence, they are discussing third sector policy and practice in England. Since the devolution of much social policy to the new administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland at the beginning of this century, different policy regimes have been developing in these countries which may or may not share some of the pressures and challenges described by Milbourne and Rochester (see Alcock, Reference Alcock2012). This is no criticism. The books both cover enough ground already, and will be informative and stimulating reading for those wanting to hear the authors accounts of what has been happening in England. It is up to others to begin some similar debates in the other countries of the UK too now.