Explaining civil society development : a social origins approach /

Salamon, Sokolowski, and Haddock (all Johns Hopkins) grapple with questions about the nature of civil society/nonprofit sector and its vibrancy, variation, and forms within states. Why is civil society/nonprofit development so fundamentally different from state to state? Taking a novel approach to the question, the authors discard the prevailing theories that it depends on personality or culture and posit that the variation depends on a social origins theory embedded with a history of practice. That is, cross-national analysis uncovers identifiable patterns related to specific power relations between classes at critical junctures in national development. Once begun, these institutional and behavioral practices are reinforced and perpetuated into "normal" social behavior. The volume is divided in two. The first section is a rich examination of the authors' theory, providing a useful discussion of the literature of civil society development. Using a cross-national analysis, they test their hypothesis. The second part is an examination of ten states as prototypes of specific civil society models. The volume provides a great teaching tool for grad students on how to perform a study that does both broad and deep analysis. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students through faculty. --Robin A. Harper, York College