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Global versus National Determinants of Nonprofit Sector Density: A Comparative Approach

Thu, July 18, 4:30 to 6:00pm, TBA

Abstract

Helmut Anheier’s keynote “Mapping the Nonprofit World: The Global Comparative Project” at the 15th Biennial ISTR Conference in Montreal (now published in Voluntas) has prompted a renewed interest in understanding the relative size of nonprofit sectors in countries around the world (Anheier 2023). Previous work on NGO location and density has examined individual countries (from the United States to Nepal), separate regions (East Asia, Europe, Latin America), and subsets of the world (about 10%) using market failure (demand) (Brass 2012; Lecy and Van Slyke 2013; Grønbjerg and Paarlberg 2001; Kim 2015; Matsunaga and Yamauchi 2004; Matsunaga, Yamauchi, and Okuyama 2010), resource availability (supply) (Mitchell and Schmitz 2014; Brass 2012; Steinberg 2003; Pfeffer and Salanick 2003; Jegers 2008; Young 1983), political opportunity structures (DeMattee 2019; Smith and Wiest 2005; Kamstra et al. 2016), government interdependence (Salamon and Anheier 1998; Matsunaga, Yamauchi, and Okuyama 2010; Weisbrod 1994; Hansmann 1980; Kingma 1997; Ortmann and Schlesinger 1997; Anheier and Ben-Ner 2003), and produced mixed conclusions as to which factors are the most influential. This paper builds on previous work done independently by two of the authors (KC on Nepal (K C 2019) and Van Puyvelde on Texas (Van Puyvelde and Brown 2016)) in order to expand their analysis to a larger set of countries (n=80) and incorporate the effects of international political and economic forces with domestic economic and political factors. Additionally, this paper usefully connects research on nonprofit studies with international relations (Bush and Hadden 2019; Abbott, Green, and Keohane 2016) to build richer and more systematic theory to explain NGO location and density for both literatures. We test the argument that supply and demand factors, namely demand heterogeneity and resource availability, are both necessary but not sufficient to explain NGO density. Political factors, namely regulatory environment, and population clustering and competition are also at play. We test this argument using data from the GlobalGiving Atlas and OpenCorporates as well as the World Bank Development Indicators and Quality of Governance database answering the challenge of Anheier to incorporate and apply these international datasets. Our findings suggest that all of the main theories of NGO location and growth are important and merit continued development. Additionally, our findings challenge the notion that the social origins of nonprofit/civil society sectors necessarily have lasting effects on NGO density, particularly as competition grows from not just for-profit but also alternative forms of nonprofit organization in a constrained but dynamic philanthropic and legal environment post-pandemic.

References

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