Abstract
In The Third Sector: Community Organizations, NGOs, and Nonprofits, Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Terry Nichols Clark write about the nonprofit organizations (NPOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), and other similar formal and informal associations that have exploded in number in many countries around the world in recent decades. These various organizations, which the authors collectively call third sector organizations, are “self-governing, do not distribute profit, are primarily private and nongovernmental in basic structure, and are meaningfully voluntary, thus likely to engage constituents on the basis of shared interest” (3).
The heart of The Third Sector is chapters describing the third sector in six countries: United States, France, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. The six country chapters are preceded by two chapters that provide historical and theoretical context for understanding the third sector and are followed by two chapters that discuss the relationship between associational activity and trust and describe several global themes related to the third sector.
In more detail, the introductory chapter conveys that Kallman and Nichols’s examination of the third sector is motivated by “questions of legitimacy and trust that have affected leadership in recent decades” (2). Leaders have turned to third sector organizations as an important vehicle for engaging citizens in civic affairs and thereby enhancing state responsiveness and legitimacy.
The introduction describes the framework of five “institutional logics” that the authors employ to analyze the third sectors in the six case study countries (11–22). The institutional logics include: clientelism, paternalism, bureaucracy, activism, and professionalization. The last three especially are featured in the subsequent country analyses. The logic of bureaucracy is important for third sector organizations, particularly when the state has a significant influence on their activities. Activism is often a feature of small, grassroots, volunteer-driven organizations that seek to influence government policy. Professionalization involves the establishment in third sector organizations of “accepted qualifications, professional norms, industry standards, professional bodies, and training programs” (16).
In addition to laying out the study’s analytic framework, the first two chapters also cite Tocqueville’s ([1835, 1840] 1969) well-known classic, Democracy in America, originally published in the early 1800s, on the importance of associations—or third sector organizations—to the practice of democracy in the United States. Citizens engaged in associational activity learn how to work with and trust their neighbors, compromise, and lead, all important building blocks for democracy.
Kallman and Nichols also interestingly discuss the impact of the religious tradition of Calvinism on the development of associations. They point to the Calvinist tradition of bottom-up, grassroots organizing as critical to the historical development of associationalism in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and elsewhere, suggesting that while “associationalism has been labeled American, . . . it was more fundamentally Calvinist and not uniquely or even most powerfully American” (9).
To explain the more recent growth of the third sector, Kallman and Nichols cite the growing affluence and increasing education levels of citizens in many parts of the world in recent decades. According to the authors, these socioeconomic changes led to the coming of the “New Political Culture” of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism in many countries in the 1970s and after as well as the expansion of the third sector. Governments turned to third sector organizations to deliver services to achieve more effective service delivery, bring policies closer to the people, and save money.
The six country chapters are organized around discussions of the dominant institutional logics of each country’s third sector and the sector’s legal structure, funding, historical development, and current challenges. Each of the country profiles ends with short case studies of individual third sector organizations. The country profiles especially emphasize the relationship of the third sector and the state. Weak states (e.g., United States) are generally associated with stronger third sectors and strong states (e.g., France, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China) with weaker third sectors.
The US chapter observes that “with its history of weak central government, the third sector is seen as playing an essential role in providing services, as well as in organizing and generating political diversity and engendering social capital” (68). Moreover, along the lines of Tocqueville’s analysis, the authors note that “third sector organizations in the United States are understood as a basic building block of the country’s democratic participation” (76). Other interesting observations are that there is more emphasis on self-policing in the United States, with nonprofits monitoring themselves rather than the government doing all of the policing. The authors also suggest that many small organizations in the United States do not officially register as charities with the government because they perceive the costs of registering and financial reporting—which might include paying lawyers and accountants—as too high. In terms of their framework of institutional logics, Kallman and Nichols find that the activist US third sector has taken on more features of professionalization in recent decades.
More briefly, in the other country profiles, the third sector in France is commonly referred to as the “social economy.” The strong state in France suppressed the country’s social economy until the law was changed in 1901 to allow the establishment of third party organizations. Now, government funding is important for these organizations that are also evincing increasing activism. As in France, the state in Japan long resisted the development of independent third sector organizations. Today, there are two kinds of third sector organizations in Japan, service providers linked to the state and grassroots advocates. Natural disasters in Japan played a critical role in highlighting the weakness of service delivery by government and encouraging a turn to third sector organizations for a quicker, more effective response. Today, there is a tension in the Japanese third sector between the logics of bureaucracy, activism, and professionalism. The third sectors in both South Korea and Taiwan have expanded significantly in recent decades, with similar tensions between bureaucracy, activism, and professionalism. In China, the third sector is rooted in its relationship to the state, which still restricts activism around human rights, religion, and labor issues. At the same time, the government has opened up to more NGO activity, which has become more professionalized and activism-oriented. Like some other Asian countries, there is a strong tradition of informal organizations in China, with an increasing number of unregistered NGOs now emerging.
After the country profiles, chapter eight is an interesting essay on the relationship between associationalism and trust. Following Tocqueville, the standard view is that associational activity builds trust and advances democratic participation and values. However, Kallman and Nichols usefully complicate the relationship between associationalism and trust. Using data from the World Values Survey, they find evidence of three different patterns in which associations foster trust, associations do not foster trust, and associations create distrust. Key to their analysis is a distinction they make between social and political trust. The authors conclude that “different types of voluntary associations may have very different implications for [different kinds of] trust” (197). For example, participation in political groups seems to have a positive influence on trust in government. The authors point out that “even the same type of organization has very different impacts on trust across different countries” (211).
The concluding chapter discusses four themes that emerge from the preceding chapters in the book. Theme one relates to the interaction between the third sector and the state. The authors find that there is a broad range of ways in which the third sector and state interact, with the third sector not always anti-state and the state not always anti–third sector. Kallman and Nichols point out that in Asian countries where the third sector was once kept in close check by government, third sector organizations are now becoming more autonomous. In the United States, the trend is in the opposite direction with the third sector and the state coming to be more intertwined and complementary. Finally, in many countries, the independence of the third sector from the state is an issue.
Theme two focuses on participation. Based on the US experience, the expectation is that associationalism contributes to higher levels of civic participation. At the same time, the authors describe the emergence of more diffuse forms of associationalism, or what they refer to as “New, New Social Movements.” Overall, the nuanced analysis suggests that in any country, the third sector interacts with other social dynamics to influence participation.
Theme three takes up legitimacy. Governments around the world partner with third sector organizations to more effectively meet citizen demands and thereby advance the legitimacy of the state. Moreover, the third sector “can offer powerfully positive solutions for political and social life, including service, innovation, expressiveness, and community building” (221). Theme four is about institutional logics. The authors’ six-country analysis finds evidence especially for increases in professionalization in many countries, with rising tension between professionalism and activism.
Kallman and Nichols intend their book to be useful to a variety of audiences, including policymakers, academics, and third sector practitioners. However, the book’s academic tone may result in its being mostly read by scholars. Policymakers and practitioners will undoubtedly find some parts of the book readable and useful (e.g., the six country profiles), but they are likely to feel challenged in working through other, more academic parts of the book (e.g., the introduction and chapter one).
For academics, the book is valuable for the comparative approach it takes to examining the third sector, and it joins a relatively small number of other comparative studies, including, for example, several volumes by Lester Salamon and his associates at Johns Hopkins University (e.g., Salamon, Sokolowski, and Haddock 2017) and a book by John Casey (Casey 2016). Kallman and Nichols’s The Third Sector also brings a bit more theory to its analysis than many of the other more descriptive studies in the nonprofit research field.
On the downside, some of the key concepts in the book lack clear definitions (e.g., the five institutional logics introduced on pp. 11–22), and the writing is sometimes hard to follow (e.g., parts of introduction and chapter one). The organizational profiles that conclude the country chapters provide nice examples of third sector organizations in different countries, but it is unclear how the specific organizations were chosen. Moreover, one can imagine the authors drawing out some larger points from the organizational case studies. However, even with some shortcomings, the book is a useful addition to a growing body of research on the third sector that is expanding around the world.