Regulatory Waves: Comparative Perspectives on State Regulation and Self-Regulation Policies in the Nonprofit Sector

All governments, in various ways, regulate and control nonprofit organizations. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), while hopeful of supportive regulatory environments, are simultaneously seeking greater autonomy both to provide services and to advocate for policy change. In part to counter increasing statutory regulation, there is a global nonprofit sector movement towards greater grassroots regulation - what the authors call self-regulation - through codes of conduct and self-accreditation processes. This book drills down to the country level to study both sides of this equation, examining how state regulation and nonprofit self-regulation affect each other and investigating the causal nature of this interaction. Exploring these issues from historical, cultural, political, and environmental perspectives, and in sixteen jurisdictions (Australia, China, Brazil, Ecuador, England and Wales, Ethiopia, Ireland, Israel, Kenya, Malawi, Mexico, Tanzania, Uganda, Scotland, United States, and Vietnam), the authors analyze the interplay between state control and nonprofit self-regulation to better understand broader emerging trends.

Oonagh B. Breen is a Senior Lecturer at the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin where she teaches NGO law. Her research focuses on comparative charity law regulation and governance and the development of more structured legal relationships between the state and the non-profit sector. She has been a Research Fellow at Harvard University's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations (2009), an Ian Potter Foundation Fellow at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies (2016) and serves on the Boards of both the International Society for Third-Sector Research and the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law.

Alison Dunn is an independent researcher, having recently retired from the position of Senior Lecturer at Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University. Her research interests are in charity law and the law relating to nonprofits, particularly governance and the regulation of political activities of charities and nonprofit organizations, on which she has published widely. She is editor of The Voluntary Sector, The State and the Law (2000) and is an Honorary Fellow of the Charity Law and Policy Unit, University of Liverpool.

Mark Sidel is Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2016 he is also serving as the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Visiting Chair in Community Foundations at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. Sidel has served as president of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) and as visiting professor of law at Harvard University, Massachusetts, the University of Melbourne, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), and other institutions.