Contents and Abstracts 1What Is the Nonprofit Sector? Walter W. Powell 2A History of Associational Life and the Nonprofit Sector in the United States Benjamin Soskis chapter abstract This chapter offers a broad historical survey of voluntarism in the United States, from early settlement to the present day. It underscores the shifting relationships between associational activity and the organizational structures that have been established to contain, sustain, and promote it. The chapter charts those structures'' consolidation into a formal nonprofit sector. Its presiding theme is the embrace of associational life as a means of amassing power--often by those denied it in political or economic realms, but also by those responsible for such denial. Because power is central to the story, so too are suspicions about power and its associational and organizational expression. This chapter sheds light on how Americans have understood voluntarist action and organizations to be both in harmony and in tension with democratic norms and institutions. Among the other themes addressed are the entanglement of the growth of voluntary associations and the nonprofit sector with the development of capitalism and the corporate order; the formation and subsequent blurring of conceptual, legal, and institutional boundaries between the market, government, and voluntary sectors; the ways in which the transatlantic exchange of ideas has shaped American voluntarism; and the contests between mass and elite funding of associational activity.

This chapter also highlights the extent to which those who consider themselves stewards of voluntary life have frequently characterized this sector as exhibiting novelty, often imbuing these descriptions with a sense of crisis. Paradoxically, such claims of discontinuity function as a key through-lines of the narrative. 3Seeing Like a Philanthropist: From the Business of Benevolence to the Benevolence of Business Aaron Horvath and Walter W. Powell chapter abstract Over the course of American history, philanthropists have been both praised and pilloried, depicted as redeemers of democracy and a threat to it. Despite the shifting social terrain in which they have operated, philanthropists--and the organizations they create--have grown in number and influence, acting as a catalytic force in the genesis and development of the modern nonprofit sector. Philanthropic largesse has also played a powerful role in shaping civic life and political affairs. This chapter argues that it is important to understand not only how philanthropists are seen, but also how they see. In narrating the development of American philanthropy from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries, our aim is to capture changes in what it means to "see like a philanthropist"--that is, to illuminate the meanings and ends of philanthropic wealth.

We focus on three core influences on philanthropic visions: (1) the sources of philanthropic wealth, (2) its organizational embodiments, and (3) the criticisms leveled at its outsized influence. We examine the reciprocal dynamic between political challenges to elite power and philanthropic visions. We show that philanthropists have transposed the practices they used to earn their great fortunes into the organizational routines of their philanthropies and turned these into requirements for those who receive their funding. The actions of past philanthropists weigh heavily on future philanthropists. Consequently, the political might of philanthropy both channels and enables the critiques to which its influence is subjected. In narrating this long arc of history, we show how the super-rich''s perceptions of themselves and their role in public life have evolved as well as the myriad ways philanthropy has altered civic and political discourse. 4The Organizational Transformation of Civil Society Patricia Bromley chapter abstract Starting in the early 1960s, economic explanations for nonprofits'' existence gained momentum, developing into a dominant account of collective social action. The voluntary sector, it was argued, emerged as a result of gaps left by market and government failures.

Implicitly or explicitly, these "failure" assumptions underpin a great deal of research, practice, and policy. Although these ideas remain influential, dramatic changes in recent scholarship drive home the need to reevaluate our theories about the structural origin and nature of the nonprofit sector. In particular, there is reason to question theories predicting sharp divisions of labor between government, market, and voluntary actors in light of now-commonplace observations of extensive blurring and cooperation between the sectors, increasing professionalization of public good organizations, and expectations of social responsibility within commercial firms. Existing theories also have difficulty explaining the massive explosion of formal nonprofit organizations across vastly different political, economic, and historical contexts. This chapter develops an alternative account for why the nonprofit sector expands in its contemporary form, drawing from sociological theories of formal organization. Specifically, I argue that the nature of the contemporary sector is in part a reflection of the rise and globalization of liberal and neoliberal cultural ideologies. An implication of these arguments is that formal nonprofit organization as we know it is a social structural manifestation of specific cultural ideologies and is therefore likely to be undercut if the current world order dissolves. 5Tangled Up in Tax: The Nonprofit Sector and the Federal Tax System Daniel J.

Hemel chapter abstract Although the relationship between the U.S. federal tax system and nonprofit organizations is often described as one of "exemption," the tax system in fact comes into contact with and shapes the nonprofit sector in myriad ways. This chapter provides an overview of the U.S. federal tax provisions affecting nonprofit organizations, with "entanglement" rather than "exemption" as the overarching theme. It identifies three types of entanglement with which the federal tax system is concerned: (1) administrative entanglement, referring to the intervention of tax authorities into the lives of nonprofit organizations; (2) political entanglement, concerning the involvement of nonprofit organizations in the political sphere; and (3) market entanglement, relating to the interaction of nonprofit organizations with for-profit firms and the participation of nonprofit organizations in profit-seeking activities. Key provisions of federal tax law can be understood as attempts to manage all three forms of entanglement while at the same time supporting the nonprofit sector and defending the tax base.

The December 2017 tax law leaves in place the basic structures of the federal tax regime for nonprofit organizations but alters the details in important ways, providing less support with more strings attached. The chapter concludes with reflections on entanglement''s future in light of these recent statutory changes and the political environment from which they sprang. 6Political Theory and the Nonprofit Sector Ted Lechterman and Rob Reich chapter abstract Political theory aims to examine social and political arrangements and asks how these arrangements can be appraised and justified. The goal is normative (to evaluate or prescribe) rather than positive (to explain or predict). This chapter begins by arguing that political theory has essential resources to contribute to the study of associational life and what this volume refers to as the nonprofit sector. These are not identical concepts, and political theory can help clarify why the difference is important. The chapter moves on to contend that normative appraisal of the nonprofit sector benefits from combining philosophical and empirical analysis, illustrating this point with a discussion of the nonprofit sector''s responsibilities for poverty relief. The third section of the chapter defends a family of political theories that enjoy the broadest theoretical support today: the set of ideas we call liberal democracy.

It then explores what liberal democratic commitments have to say about the regulative ideals and institutional architecture of the nonprofit sector. The penultimate section draws attention to emerging challenges--specifically pervasive inequality; the erosion of traditional boundaries between market, state, and nonprofit operations; and the globalization of nonprofit activity--that unsettle conventional thinking about the ethics of nonprofit en.