American society has endured significant political, economic and technological change during the last decade of the twentieth century. These changes have left an indelible mark on the U.S. nonprofit sector. Most notably, fundamental changes in welfare policy, new competition from large corporations, increased contracting and accountability at the state and local levels, new expectations from a generation of new wealthy donors; a declining growth in government funding; difficulty in retaining well-trained employees, and keeping up with new technology have tested the sector’s capacity, its functions and the way it delivers services and advances causes. If the ‘past is prologue,’ the sector will survive, but it may take different forms. This paper assesses these challenges and predicts that in the next century, part of the sector will be highly professionalized and indistinguishable from the corporate sector while the rest of the sector will try to maintain its mission of service and continue to build civil society.

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This study looks at the process of introducing and defining the concept of social economy in Japan and Sweden — two countries with different conceptions of the third sector. Although the social economy concept was introduced into both countries at about the same time the diffusion of the concept varied. Pressure from the EU membership boosted the process in Sweden and led to the launch of a cross-ministerial working group which included representatives from the social economy organizations, researchers, and representatives from regional and local government authorities. Japan lacked a similar external stimulus and discussions on the concept were primarily limited to people with backgrounds in cooperative related research and activities. The conclusion argues that a further inclusion in the discussions on a unifying concept for a third sector would result in greater insight and recognition by government officials and by ordinary citizens of the great variety of forms and methods available to organizations that fall under the social economy label.

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Currently there are many unofficially sanctioned social organizations in China that are not register with the Ministry of Civil Affaires or its local departments. They are allowed to openly conduct activities and play increasingly active roles in various areas. These “bottom-up” organizations are created by private individuals and, by operating autonomously create a public space independent of the government. A study of these unofficial social organizations can shed light on elements of the evolving civil society in China. This paper examines the existing patterns of unofficial social organizations, analyzes the reasons of their emergence and the bases of their survival and growth. The discussion includes comments on the challenges to their future development.

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This paper presents an econometric analysis of participation density in local consumer cooperatives. Using prefecture data from 1997 and 1998, we conducted a logit analysis to identify factors associated with high participation rates in local consumer cooperatives. The analysis indicates several economic and political factors, e.g., per capita employer-income, monetary assets, population density, the engagement ratio of the tertiary industry, and the member ratio of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party, are associated with highercooperative participation density.

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This paper aims to illuminate how community currencies function as people’s credit in local community from two points of view, and the development of them in Japan. First, community currencies are explained by free money theory in 1930’s, three functions of money and so on. Second, they are classified into three systems from the distinction between the ways to create credits. Compared with community currencies in foreign countries, there are various kinds of systems in Japan earlier on. In foreign countries and Japan, they are mainly empowered to stimulate informal economy and work different mechanism from market mechanism.

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In an information society, NPOs play an important role in shaping social discourse and alternative policies by accumulating and disseminating information. Much of the information dissemination by NPOs comes in the form of social advocacy. The lack of an appropriate term for advocacy in the Japanese language has hindered the development and understanding of NPOs in Japan. In the United States, strong social advocacy by NPOs is linked to social change and social analyses of this linkage have a long history. This paper utilizes the ideas established in one of the early works in this field, C.H. Cooley’s Social Organization: A study of the larger mind (1909) to examine the advocacy activities of NPOs in Northern California. The analysis attempts to bring greater clarity to the meaning of advocacy.

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Applying O.E. Williamson’s transaction cost theory to nonprofit organizations (NPOs) (Krashinsky 1986) and using the concept of “trans-action,” defined as “actions between individuals,” as presented by J.R. Commons, we will demonstrate from the point of view of economics how an environmental NPO can be described organizationally as a bundle of trans-actions that is governed by an element of trust. (Our point of view is somewhat analogous to Williamson’s view of a corporate organization as an institution of governance rather than a provider of goods and services.)

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