This paper presents a comparative analysis of the findings of a 24 country study of the legal restrictions on the freedom of non-profit and charitable organisations to engage in public policy campaigning. The countries are divided into those which organise the legal status of non-profit bodies around the concept of a charity, and those that do not. The central finding is that all and only charity law countries have constraints on campaigning which are specific to non-profit bodies. The paper reviews a number of possible explanations for this, at the level of jurisprudential rationales which might show that it is necessary or at least rational for only the charity law countries to have developed such restrictions. To varying degrees, all are found wanting. It is suggested that no explanation based on an 'inner logic of the law" will serve to explain the phenomenon, and that future research might concentrate on comparative political history rather than on jurisprudence.
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