This chapter critically considers the historic and contemporary entanglements of the nonprofit sector with the state and the market, and the implications of such entanglements on nonprofits, marginalized communities, and the possibility of social change. Interrogating what happens to the structural institutional form of the nonprofit when intertwined with the state and the economy in what some call the nonprofit industrial complex, Rojas assesses the fallout that leads to exacerbated policing and incarceration of women and communities of color, among other deleterious impacts. The work of naming these concerns and critiques is necessary for nonprofits to potentially become avenues for social transformation. The chapter concludes with practical interventions toward building organizations capable of creating more just futures.

For the last 5,000 years humans have been steadily transitioning to state/kingdom power structures. This chapter explains the demographic and political causes of the transition to institutional power, most frequently vested in lineages, and the ways in which institutional religions have supported institutional power in states and kingdoms. Personal and institutional power are inversely related in states and kingdoms, and this chapter explorea some examples of authoritarian and libertarian regimes, as well as the conflict within our own (US) society on these questions. Following on the idea of structural power, it reviews various aspects of institutional coercion (laws, taxes, conscription, slavery), as well as the ways institutions regulate the flow of information to control populations (the execution of William Tyndale, Spanish burning of Mayan texts, Nazi book burning, etc.). It finishes by discussing the expansion of empires and the resistance some populations show to externally imposed institutional authority.

Today we face a long-run crisis of democratic legitimacy. Our increasing human interdependence is steadily increasing the numbers of “collective action,” or “free-rider” problems. Those problems in turn require increasing amounts of state coercion. Yet, in part precisely because state coercion is growing, that coercion is becoming less legitimate. As the demand for legitimacy increases and the supply decreases, every ounce of legitimacy becomes more precious.

A long-run response to this crisis requires many changes, including major restructuring to decrease inequality.

A relatively modest, but perhaps practicable and far-reaching, change in our thinking would make recursivity, meaning mutually responsive and iterated communication between representatives and constituents, more central to both the ideals and the practices of the representative system. In the aspirational ideal of recursive representation, representatives in the legislative, administrative, and societal realms engage in ongoing back-and-forth communication with their constituents. That recursivity allows each party to listen and learn, facilitating mutual influence and mutual adjustment. Because the process is more respectful of each citizen than the current system, the outcomes are more likely to reflect citizens’ needs. The resulting coercion should be both more defensible normatively and experienced as more legitimate.