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17 - Nonprofits as Sources of Authoritarian Regime Stability

from Part III - New Directions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2024

Eva Witesman
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University, Utah
Curtis Child
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University, Utah
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Summary

This chapter discloses the functions of the nonprofit sector in non-Western democratic national contexts and argues that a state’s political regime is related to the hierarchy of functions performed by the nonprofit sector in that state. The authors focus on the function of legitimacy and the ways the nonprofit sector performs it in a non-democratic context, with Russia as an example. They construct a theoretical model that explains why nonprofits instead of other organizations fulfill certain functions in nondemocratic regimes. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the model’s relevance to other nondemocratic contexts.

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Reimagining Nonprofits
Sector Theory in the Twenty-First Century
, pp. 333 - 352
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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