Profile
Professor Wagner was trained as an economist at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and at the Center for Research in Economic Development at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (USA). In addition to his doctorate in economics, he also holds a Masters in Theology from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He has taught Social Policy at the University of Zurich and served as the Dean of the School of Social Work from 1975 to 1999. In the spring term of 2000, Wagner was affiliated to the faculty of Milano The New School for International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy in New York.
From 1996 to 2000, he was the President of the International Society for Third Sector Research, the leading scholarly institution in the nonprofit field. He has served as a consultant on social security related issues to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office and the World Bank in Washington D.C. Wagner is a member of the editorial board of several international journals and has widely published on the welfare state and civil society in English, German and French.
Recent Publications
Decentralization, Privatization and Deprofessionalization; Is Small Always Beautiful?, in: Education for Social Work Practice: Selected International Models, edited by Ch. Guzetta etc., New York and Vienna, 1984, 9-17.
Resocializing Social Policy: A Strategy for Survival of the Modern Welfare State and Its Impact on Social Work Education, in: International Social Work, 29:2, 1986, 123-134.
Trade Unions between "Exit" and "Voice": A New Portrait of Swiss Unionism, in: Trade Unions today and tomorrow, Vol. I, edited by G. Spyropopoulos, Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes, Maastricht, 1987, 95-108.
The Nonprofit Sector in Switzerland: Taxonomy and Dimensi¬ons, in: The Third Sector: Comparative Studies of Nonprofit Organisations, edited by H. K. Anheier and W. Seibel, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 1990, 303-312.
On Sharing, Preface to an Economic Theory of Voluntary Action, in: Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 20:4, 1991, 359-370.
The Interrelationship Between the Public and the Voluntary Sectors in Switzerland: Unmixing the Mixed-Up Economy, in: Government and the Third Sector, Emerging Relationships in Welfare States, edited by B. Gidron, R.M. Kramer and L.M. Salamon, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1992, 100-119.
Social Work Education in an Integrated Europe: Plea for a Global Perspective, in: Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 6:2, 1992, 115-130.
Which Kind of Europe? An Exhortation to Act Locally and Think Globally, in: Scandinavian Journal of Social Welfare, 2, 1993, 2-9.
Review of Wofgang Seibel, Functional Dilettantism, in: Voluntas, 4:1 (1993), 122-126.
The Significance and Function of Social Welfare Associations in Switzerland, in: Delivering Welfare: repositioning non-profit and co-operative action in western European welfare states, edited by Perri 6 and Isabel Vidal, Centre d'Iniciatives de l'Economia Social, Barcelona 1994.
Towards Third-Sector Research: Developing a Scientific Paradigm, International Society for Third-Sector Research, Pécs, Hungary, 1994
Reassessing Welfare Capitalism. Community-Based Approaches to Social Policy in Switzerland and the United States, in: Journal of Community Practice, 2:3, 1995, 45-63.
Communitarianism: A New Paradigm of Socioeconomic Analysis, in: Journal of Socio-Economics, 24:4, 1995, 593-605.
Social Rights in a Civil Society: The Case of Constitutional Reform in Switzerland, Paper presented at the 1996 Communitarian Summit, Geneva, Switzerland, July 12-14, 1996.
Methodology and Communitarianism. Joint review of Amitai Etzioni (ed.), New Communitarian Thinking: Persons, Virtues, Institutions, and Communities, University Press of Virginia, 1995, in: Voluntas, 8:1, 1997, 64-70.
Satellite Accounting: How to Improve Reporting on the Third Sector Nationally and Cross-nationally: A Swiss Case Study, Paper presented at the Silver Anniversary Conference, Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA), New York, November 7-9, 1996.
Social Sciences and Third Sector Research: Plea for a Truly Interdisciplinary Perspective, Paper presented at the International Meeting,Third Sector, State and Market in the Transformation of Social Politics in Europe, November 25-26, Catholic University, Milan, 1996, also published in Italian in: Terzo Settore, Stato e Mercato nella transformazione delle politiche sociali in Europa, Franco Angeli, Milano, 1997, 229-236.
Profiling the Civil Society in Switzerland, in: The New Civic Atlas, Profiles of Civil Society in 60 Countries, CIVICUS, Washington DC, 1997.
Social Work and the Global Economy: Opportunities and Challenges, in: Issues in International Social Work: Global Challenges for a New Century, edited by M.C. Hokenstad and J. Midgley, NASW Press, Washington DC, 1997.
Social Work as a Human Rights Profession, in: Human Rights and Social Work Education, European Association of Schools of Social Work, Lisboa, 1997.
Presidential Columns, in: Inside ISTR, Vol. 4,5,6,7,8 (1996 – 2000). Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.
Social Work as a Social Science Discipline – Some Methodological Considerations, in: European Dimensions in Training and Practice of the Social Professions, ed. by E. Marynowicz-Hetka, A. Wagner and J. Piekarski, Slask, Katowice (Poland), 1999.
Reframing "Social Origins" Theorie: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, in: Voluntary and Nonprofit Sector Quaterly, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2000, 541-553
Consolidating a Multi-Pillar Pension System: The Swiss Case, in: Soziale Sicherung im Alter – Probleme und Informationsbedarf aus der Sicht der Statistik, ed. by R. Fluder, M. Nolde and A. Wagner, Federal Statistical Office, Neuchâtel, 2001.
City, Citizen, Citizenship, in: Milano Review, 3, 2003, 7-13.
Redefining Citizenship for the 21st Century: From the National Welfare State to the UN Global Compact, in: International Social Welfare, 2004, 13: 3, 278-286.
Creating a Platform to Negotiate Meaning, in: Celebrating ISTR's Tenth Anniversary, edited by E. Werner, International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR), Baltimore, 2002, 1-23.
Volunteerism, Voluntary Action and the Modern Welfare State, in: Social Work Education and Practice in Today’s Europe, edited by C. Labonte, E. Marynowicz-Hetka, J. Szmagalski, Social Work Library, Katowice, 2003, 245-256
Teaching with a Global Awareness: From Universal to Critical Understandings of Nonprofit Management, Paper presented at 2003 Conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action, Denver, Col., 2003(together with N. Srinivas)
Wagner, A. (2008). Citizenship through education. A comment on Social exclusion in Europe, some conceptual issues, in: International Journal of Social Welfare, 17, 93-97.
Wagner, A. (2008). Religion and civil society: A critical reappraisal of America's civic engagement Debate, in: Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly (forthcoming, also available online as DOI:10.1177/0899764007312718.
Wagner, A. (2009). Social Work as a Social Science Discipline: Some Methodological Considerations, in: Die Sozialarbeitswissenschaft und ihre Theorie(en), Positionen, Kontroversen, Perspektiven, hrsg. von Bernd Birgmeier und Eric Mührel, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden.
Wagner, A. (2009). Back to the roots of the modern welfare state: Citizenship and education in postindustrial societies, in: The welfare state in postindustrial societies – A global perspective, ed. by J. Powell and J. Hendricks, Springer, New York 2009.
Citizenship and Education in Post-industrial Societies, in: The Welfare State in Post-industrial Societies, ed. by J. Powell and J. Hendricks, Springer, New York, 2009, 201-215.
Book Review: Wealth & Welfare States – Is America a Laggard or Leader? by Irvin Garfinkel, Lee Rainwater and Timothy Smeeding, Oxford University Press, New York 2010, in: International Journal of Social Welfare, 20, 1, April 2011.
What Management Professionals Can Learn from Immanuel Kant about Critical Thinking, Purposiveness and Design, in M. Gmür, R. Schauer, L. Theuvsen (eds.) Performance-Management in Nonprofit-Organisationen, Bern, Stuttgart, Wien: Haupt Verlag, 238–48.
‘Third Sector’ and/or ‘Civil Society’: A Critical Discourse about Scholarship Relating to Intermediate Organizations, in: Voluntary Sector Review, 3, 3, 2012, 299-328.
Plea for More Integrative Scholarship about Intermediate organisations, in: Voluntary Sector Review, 4, 3, 2013 (forthcoming).
Good Governance: A Radical and Normative Approach to Nonprofit Management, published online as DOI 10.1007/s11266-0134-9370-9, forthcoming in: Voluntas, 2014.