The civil society sectormade up of millions of nonprofit organizations, associations, charitable institutions, and the volunteers and resources they mobilizehas long been the invisible subcontinent on the landscape of contemporary society. For the past twenty years, however, scholars under the umbrella of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project have worked with statisticians to assemble the first comprehensive, empirical picture of the size, structure, financing, and role of this increasingly important part of modern life.
What accounts for the enormous cross-national variations in the size and contours of the civil society sector around the world? Drawing on the project's data, Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, Megan A. Haddock, and their colleagues raise serious questions about the ability of the field's currently dominant preference and sentiment theories to account for these variations in civil society development. Instead, using statistical and comparative historical materials, the authors posit a novel social origins theory that roots the variations in civil society strength and composition in the relative power of different social groupings and institutions during the transition to modernity.
Drawing on the work of Barrington Moore, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and others, Explaining Civil Society Development provides insight into the nonprofit sector's ability to thrive and perform its distinctive roles. Combining solid data and analytical clarity, this pioneering volume offers a critically needed lens for viewing the evolution of civil society and the nonprofit sector throughout the world.
Acknowledgments 1. Introduction, by Lester M. Salamon Part One by Lester M. Salamon, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and Megan A. Haddock 2. What Is to Be Explained? 3. Explaining Civil Society Development I 4. Explaining Civil Society Development II 5. Testing the Social Origins Theory 6. Conclusion and Implications Part Two 7. Switzerland, by Bernd Helmig, Markus Gmur, Georg von Schnurbein, Bernard Degen, Michael Nollert, and Christoph Baerlocher 8. New Zealand 9. Australia 10. The Netherlands 11. Chile, by Ignacio Irarrazaval 12. Austria, by Michaela Neumayr, Ulrike Schneider, Michael Meyer, and Astrid Pennerstorfer 13. Denmark, by Thomas P. Boje, Bjarne Ibsen, Torben Fridberg, and Ulla Habermann 14. Russia, by Irina Mersianova and Olga Kononykhina 15. Mexico, by Jorge V. Villalobos, Lorena Cortes Vazquez, and Cynthia Martinez 16. Portugal, by Raquel Campos Franco Appendix A Appendix B Bibliography About the Authors List of Contributors Core Staff, Local Associates, Advisors, and Sponsors, 19912016 Index
""This volume is aimed at civil society researchers, scholars, and doctoral students. Interdisciplinary programs will find it of particular interest, as the social origins theory encompasses concepts from both social science and the humanities... Explaining Civil Society Development challenges the reader to think deeply about the context of power and how it shapes'for better or worse'the civil society sector in our world, now, and in the future.""
