Band 7, Heft 2 - Special Issue on International Comparative Nonprofit Public Policy, Guest Editor: Michal Bar

This article provides an overview of the changing balance of state and third sector relations in the UK over the last decade or so. It briefly sets this in the broader context of the changing nature of these relations over a longer historical perspective, and it develops the notion of interdependence as a framework for understanding how these relations have become established in the country. Recent political discourses and policy publications are drawn on to explain the shifts in policy regime under the Labour and Coalition governments in the UK in the early twenty-first century, emphasising the differences and similarities in these. The conclusion situates these regimes in a broader context of state and third sector analysis and the contested conceptualisation of civil society. Since 1999 third sector policy in the UK has been devolved to the separate administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; and this article focuses largely on developments in England only.

Sovereign nations have the right to regulate the activities and operations of civil society organizations (CSOs) within their jurisdiction. The nature of official policy controls bears important implications for the breath and health of associational life, to the degree that they are relaxed, restrictive, or intrusive. Since nations in Africa have often been seen to subvert the growth and impact of CSOs, this article traces the policy controls that govern CSOs in Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Within the context of policy change, the article employs the Advocacy Coalition Framework in an effort to trace the policy process in these two countries. It particularly focuses on CSOs-focused policies and on clarifying the role and influence of non-state actors. Although political elites continue to dominate the policy process, non-state actors increasingly permeate the process through various formal and informal strategies, including the use of venues and influencing public opinion. Overall, CSOs-focused policies reflect distorted beliefs originating from the West’s preoccupations with a homogeneous, governance-focused African civil society.

There has been a large growth in nonprofits in Australia over the past 30 years. This paper will chart some of the key current policy trends that have helped shape the sector. The huge investment in the nonprofit sector by government, particularly since the mid 1990s coincided with a strong ideological shift to a neoliberal economic agenda. There was a concerted effort to bring nonprofits under the control of government policy. This has lead to greater competition among nonprofits, the growth of large charities at the expense of small local organisations, and a greater emphasis on adopting business models. Those nonprofit organisations that provide a community development role have been particularly under threat. However while much of the nonprofit world in Australia is increasingly driven by neoliberal, business oriented demands, another alternative phenomenon is emerging, particularly among young people and largely out of the gaze of public scrutiny. As fast as the state finds a way of controlling the productive energy of the nonprofit sector, the sector itself finds a way of curtailing that control, or of creating new ways of operating that go beyond existing structures and rules of operating.

This article examines the Egyptian government’s evolving policy toward Egypt’s NGO sector and its effects on organizations’ efforts to support democratic political reform. The January 25, 2011 uprisings that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak seemed to present an opportunity for Egypt’s NGO sector to break free from decades of government co-optation and repression and lead Egyptian civil society’s political reform efforts. NGOs did initiate democracy promotion projects immediately following the uprisings, and for a few months it seemed that NGOs would be torchbearers of political reform. By the summer of 2014, however, NGO employees were predicting the looming “death of civil society” in Egypt. Drawing upon data from over 90 interviews, this article analyzes the ways in which authoritarian adaptation, through both discourse and policy toward the NGO sector, constrained NGOs’ capacities to advance political reform efforts.

After decades of strict charitable solicitation regulation, the Chinese government has recently begun to experiment with fundraising policy reforms in some local jurisdictions. In this comparative study of two metropolitan cities, Shanghai and Guangzhou, we examine the nature, content, and scope of the reform and its impact on nonprofit organizations. Our archival analysis indicates that the new policies in both cities helped create a more supportive regulatory environment for the nonprofit sector, though they differed in the extent to which policy change departed from the status quo. Yet somewhat surprisingly, the reform elicited a lukewarm reaction from the nonprofit sector: only a very small fraction of nonprofit organizations actually fundraised under the new policies, and their performance varied remarkably. Our field work further reveals that many nonprofit leaders had reservations about the policy initiatives. Possible reasons for such reservations include fragmented policies on nonprofit registration and taxation, discretionary authorization system, and the weak fundraising capacity of nonprofits.

The article aims to describe and analyze the main processes of policy initiatives towards the nonprofit sector in Israel since 2000, and their implications for the nonprofit sector and civil society. The process started with a review of policies regarding the sector, its roles and relationship with the government conducted by an ad hoc Review Committee established in February 2000. This then developed into few policy initiatives: in the Ministry of Social Welfare; by a governmental committee to review allocations to the nonprofit sector, and another project by the Prime Minister’s Office that attempted to change the relations between nonprofit organizations and the government. These initiatives are analyzed, focusing on the actors and the politics of the process, as well as subsequent changes and their impact on the government and civil society in Israel. The analysis reveals that, while the policy initiatives have created new forms and forums for dialogue and joint work between main-stream nonprofit organizations and the government, it has neither developed nor strengthened such organizations and civil society as an alternative public sphere. The insights obtained from the Israeli case of policy development towards the nonprofit sector points to a need for a more nuanced consideration of partnership policies between the government and the nonprofit sector, and their implications for nonprofit organizations and civil society.

The nonprofit sector is a vital part of U.S. society with roots deep in the country’s history. In light of the nonprofit sector’s favored place in American society, it is perhaps not surprising that nonprofit leaders have had some important successes in advancing sector-interests in federal policymaking since 2000, which is the focus of this paper. Nonprofit sector advocates have secured some significant new sector-wide benefits (e. g., the recently established mandate that nonprofit contractors paid with federal funds be reimbursed reasonable indirect costs) and, perhaps just as importantly, have fended off numerous attacks on sector interests (e. g., efforts to cap the value of itemized deductions for upper-income taxpayers). However, while nonprofit sector leaders have won some notable policy victories in recent decades, especially in defending sector interests, they have also been somewhat frustrated in efforts to advance the sector even further by a variety of structural and other constraints that weaken the nonprofit sector (and some other industries) in federal policymaking. Importantly, almost all interests typically win many more “defensive” than “offensive” policy victories. At the same time, nonprofit sector advocates have also been weakened by free riders (who limit advocacy in other industries as well), the subsector orientation of many nonprofits, limits on nonprofit lobbying and electoral activity, the disconnect of national sector advocates from local nonprofit leaders, and other reasons. Suggestions for overcoming these challenges include: strengthening links between local and national sector advocates, connecting sector and subsector advocacy efforts, perhaps relaxing restrictions on nonprofit lobbying and electoral activity, better resourcing national sector advocates, and finding and communicating the “big idea” behind the sector that will persuade policymakers to be more supportive.