359 Social Entrepreneurship in Serbia: The State of Play DRAGAN GOLUBOVIĆ ∗ Review paper BELA MUHI UDK: 36:65.012(497.11) Educons University doi: 10.3935/rsp.v26i3.1564 Sremska Kamenica Received: June 2018 Vojvodina, Serbia This paper takes stock at key policy issues underpinning the development of social entrepreneurship in the Republic of Serbia. It consists of four chap- ters. Chapter 1 provides the general context of the paper. It sets out the general policy context and discusses the roots of social entrepreneurship in Serbia, as well as the perceived policy factors which have facilitated its development in the last decade. The general findings of the first official survey on social en- terprises in Serbia are also discussed in this chapter. Chapter 2 examines the legal framework governing or impacting on social entrepreneurship. It first provides a critical overview of the framework regulation for enterprises for employment and professional rehabilitation of persons with disabilities, civil society organisations (CSOs) and social cooperatives, respectively. Thereafter, it proceeds with the analyses of pertinent tax law and the legal framework for public financing of CSOs, as well as the legal and policy framework for social service provision. An analysis of the legal framework for volunteers concludes this chapter. Chapter 3 presents the results of the first pilot survey on social enterprises in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (Vajdaság Autonóm Tar- tomány), which was conducted in 2016. Conclusions on the state of play of so- cial entrepreneurship in Serbia, including measures which could conceivably facilitate its further development, are presented in Chapter 4. Keywords: social entrepreneurship, social enterprises, civil society organ- isations, enabling legal environment, survey on social enterprises. * Dragan Golubović, Educons University / Univerzitet Educons, Vojvode Putnika 85-87, 21208 Sremska Kamenica, Vojvodina, Serbia / Srbija, dragan.golubovic@educons.edu.rs GENERAL CONTEXT The concept of social entrepreneurship has been the subject of vigorous scholarly debate for the last several decades. This debate was largely sparked by the crises of the welfare state and a failure of the private sector to fill in the resulting gap in social service provision, in particular for the un- derprivileged (Joppke, 1987; Sandmo, 1995; Castles, 2004). This development prompted scholars and policy makers to revisit the relationship between the voluntary (not-for- profit) sector and the state; it also facilitated the emergence of new institutional tools of choice to pursue economic activities with social goals (Borzaga, Defourny, 2001; brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk