Legitimation Issues in the State-Nonprofit Relationship

Abstract

Current theories on the origin of the nonprofit sector do not adequately explain changes in the relative scale of social welfare service provision by the state versus private nonprofit entities. French and Japanese experiences illustrate that nations can undergo significant change, cycling through periods of expansion then restriction of the legal status and role of the nonprofit sector. This article considers the potential for legitimation strategies to explain the shifts in nonprofit status in France and Japan. The article concludes that although some theoretical foundation exists on legitimation concepts, additional work needs to be done to derive a sufficient theory of how legitimation issues affect change in the nonprofit sector.

What Encourages Nonprofits' Adoption of Good Governance Policies?

“…Despite the federal and state law provisions designed to ensure good governance in the nonprofit sector, scholars have pointed out that current laws have had only limited effects on nonprofit accountability (Irvin ; Moore ). Dirusso (, 61, italics added by the author), for instance, states that the government regulation of nonprofits in the United States, and especially of public charities, is “mainly structured to support the role of charities with some protections against abuse.” Nonprofit professionals and researchers tend to agree that neither the state nor the IRS has the capacity to analyze and manage the information of nonprofit organizations (Reiser ).…”

Civil Society Organizations’ Experiences of Participative Environmental Mainstreaming: A Political Systems Perspective of a Regional European Polity

“…A further aspect to the findings was interviewees’ view that EM was in part to be understood in the context of performativity and as a form of legitimation. As noted, Moore (: 712) explains the latter term: ‘legitimation involves communicative actions aimed at managing the public's perception that government actions are effective in promoting their desired ends, whether that is in fact true’. These strands of theory can be used to question whether the structures and practices of participative EM are about genuine engagement and knowledge‐sharing in a context where power elites are willing to modify their policies in light of critical input from exogenous groups – or, as some interviewees’ comments suggest, EM is more about government being seen to engage CSOs.…”

“…Parties’ propensity to engage with exogenous interests can also be understood in the context of performativity and legitimation: in order words whether there is genuine commitment to civil society input to policy making or whether a process of legitimation applies. This denotes ‘communicative actions aimed at managing the public's perception that government actions are effective in promoting their desired ends, whether that is in fact true’ (Moore, : 712). It is also captured by the term ‘performativity’.…”

Civil society, human rights and religious freedom in the People’s Republic of China: analysis of CSOs’ Universal Periodic Review discourse

“…This refers to 'communicative actions aimed at managing the public's perception that government actions are effective in promoting their desired ends, whether that is in fact true'. 122 Furthermore, analysis of the state discourse reveals instrumentalism and institutional decoupling to characterise the CCP's UPR submissions. In short, the ruling elite espouses the upholding of religious freedoms but acts to the contrary.…”