Why do some communities have vibrant civic participation, whereas others are only tepidly involved? Why do some communities become involved in organizations with close ties to the government, whereas others choose groups that are more removed? These are some of the most pressing questions in the study of politics and political behavior. This book examined these questions by looking at a diversity of patterns of volunteer participation around the world, but it began its inquiry from an unusual starting point – with volunteer firefighters at a community festival in Japan. This unusual starting point opened up the possibility of developing a theory of civic participation and a robust model that seeks to explain both the types and the rates of volunteer participation in communities around the world.

Although I have made many arguments throughout this book, they can be distilled into one large empirical claim, one methodological claim with theoretical implications, and two theoretical claims. I discuss each in turn, highlighting how my findings give us new insight and help us ask new questions about civil society, civic participation, and democracy.

My main empirical claim is that, contrary to most of what has been written, civil society in Japan is vibrant and thriving. Furthermore, voluntarism in Japan is not a new phenomenon; it has been active for centuries. The reason this fact has been largely ignored is because most Japanese are involved in what I call embedded organizations, organizations that have close, ongoing relationships with the government, rather than the nonembedded organizations that are more common in the United States, which have been the focus of most studies of voluntarism and the nonprofit sector.