Lucia Boccacin

The title of this paper explains the reading key needed to analyse the Italian third sector, namely to verify its internal inclination to the realisation of social partnership. The study of the forms that the social partnership tends to assume is, as a matter of fact, object of a diffused interest, witnessing the growing pluralization of the social subjects involved in personal and intersubjective welfare actions. The route followed starts from the awareness of the internal differentiation characterising the Italian third sector, analyses it under the sociological profile, puts the theme of social differentiation in relation with the theme of social partnership, whose sociological character is highlighted, and finally it proposes to offer some empirical indications concerning the inclination to partnership of the subjects of the third sector with a particular insight on the organised voluntary service connoting itself as a strategic component of the Italian third sector.