According to the relevant literature, the relationship between government and the private foundation sector in Germany is marked by a “paradigm of conflict” very similar to the one that has often dominated the U.S. discussion of government/ nonprofit relationships in the past. More specifically, scholars often hold that the development of foundations in Germany is largely hampered by an administrative and regulatory climate that weakens rather than strengthens the foundation community. Two main arguments are brought forth in this context: First, the expansion of the state bureaucracy into traditional activity fields of foundations “crowds out” the foundation sector, second, the structure of tax regulations is detrimental to a “sound” development of foundations. However, while these arguments figure prominently in the policy debate, they have neither empirically nor analytically been substantiated as of yet. Borrowing from organizational theory, this article critically evaluates the arguments in the light of available evidence in an effort to contribute to a better understanding of foundations in an international context.

Over the last two decades, nonprofit organizations in the United Kingdom (UK) have faced increased pressure to measure their activities in order to demonstrate their competency, to achieve legitimacy, and to obtain funding. This paper draws from recent literature in the sociology of science to examine quantification in the British voluntary sector as a historically situated and socially constructed process. Using archival and secondary documents, I find that quantification is not a new practice for charities in the UK; moreover, while they have employed metrication in the past, what activities nonprofits have measured, and the importance of measurement for their organizational success, has altered over the course of the century.

Six psychographic segments of volunteers in Australia are constructed on the basis of their volunteering motivations. The resulting segments include “classic volunteers,” whose motivations are threefold: doing something worthwhile; personal satisfaction; and helping others. “Dedicated volunteers” perceive each one of the motives for volunteering as relevant, while “personally involved volunteers” donate time because of someone they know in the organization, most likely their child. “Volunteers for personal satisfaction” and “altruists” primarily wish to help others, and finally, “niche volunteers” typically have fewer and more specific drivers motivating them to donate time, for example, to gain work experience. The segments are externally validated and demonstrate significantly different socio-demographic profiles. Consequently, it seems that motivation-based data-driven market segmentation represents a useful way of gaining insight into heterogeneity amongst volunteers. Such insight can be used by volunteering organizations to more effectively target segments with customized messages.

The research aimed to identify the structure of social capital within Christian churches in Australia. The focus is the social capital that exists within the congregation as opposed to its connections to the wider community or society, that is, to use Woolcock and Narayan (2000) terminology, the bonding rather than the bridging social capital. A total of 3363 church attendees were surveyed to identify the different ways that social capital can be generated such as through participation, informal friendships or congregational projects in any sphere of church activity including questions about both the respondents’ own actions and their perceptions of the congregation and demographic questions including denomination. The dimensions of Bonding were identified through exploratory factor analysis and then refined and confirmed through structural equation modelling. The three factors related to an underlying Bonding construct were Collective Agency, Congregational Unity and Personal Connections. A fourth factor in the model was the desire for Homogeneity, which was related to CongregationalUnity but not significantly related to Bonding.

This paper investigates how community racial composition affects types of organizations people of color volunteer for. Specifically, we explore which type of nonprofits (religious and secular, and club-type and collective-type) people of color (Blacks and Hispanics) are likely to volunteer for as the percentages of their racial in-groups in the community increase. Using the current population survey volunteering supplements and county-level census data from 2002 to 2014, we find that community racial composition does matter for people of color’ decisions regarding where they choose to volunteer, particularly for Hispanics. As the percentage of Hispanics in the county increases, Hispanics start to volunteer more for collective-type organizations, moving beyond volunteering for religious organizations. The findings from this study suggest the importance of efforts to engage diverse groups of population in the civic sphere, especially people of color who might have not been welcomed to various forms of community engagement. Such endeavors will contribute to making and sustaining a healthy democracy.

The term linguistic emancipation embraces various interpretations. One relates to occasions where linguists have helped people overcome problems that are attributable to various linguistic calamities. Another pertinent vector relates to methodological innovations that extricate linguistic research from methodological confinement and that embrace new technologies to help advance our collective scientific mission. These alternative perspectives are illustrated here in small measure through studies of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and gender modification in the speech of a trans woman. The legacy of inventive methodological advances in linguistics is celebrated by emphasizing some liberating linguistic research trajectories in which experimental, self-generated data and descriptive investigations of endangered and underrepresented languages or dialects stand side by side, serving a comprehensive linguistic science in which alternative analytical procedures abound in harmonious complementarity.

This article examines the evolving pattern of government–nonprofit relations in China and assesses how this relationship seems likely to evolve in the years ahead. To do so, it documents the diverse types of institutions this sector contains, the considerable scale of institutions it already includes, and the significant shifts that have occurred as the state seeks to take advantage of the important contributions the nonprofit sector is making, while seeking to retain a degree of control over nonprofit operations. Of particular note is the variety of tools the government has deployed to support the nonprofit sector and the remaining issues the sector faces as it finds its way in the highly constrained atmosphere of this biggest remaining socialist country.

This paper examines the relationship between macroeconomic performance and party popularity for the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher in Britain from 1983 to 1987. A popularity function is estimated which shows that government support was significantly influenced by inflation and unemployment; perceptions and expectations of economic performance; and a variety of non-economic variables and political shocks. A monetary policy reaction function is also estimated which shows that the Conservative government manipulated the money supply in order to stimulate the economy in the election year. Finally, an outcome function is estimated showing that monetary policy had a significant influence on inflation and unemployment. The results demonstrate that the Conservatives pursued a strategy of manipulating the economy for political profit, in a way consistent with the political business cycle.

Previous research has shown that citizens tend to be more satisfied with the functioning of democracy when their ideological positions are more proximate to representatives'. This article argues that congruence in policy priorities between citizens and political elites should have a similar effect: citizens whose concerns are shared by elites should perceive them to be more attentive and responsive to public concerns and societal needs. Yet, the relationship might vary with differences in expectations towards democracy and representation. Specifically, it should be stronger in more democratic countries and older democracies. The hypotheses are empirically tested in a multilevel regression framework, where voter survey data from the 2009 European Election Study is linked with candidate survey data. The results indicate that citizens are indeed more satisfied with democracy if elites share their concerns, and the effect increases with democratic experience.

The goal of this article is to provide a balanced assessment of the significance autism has for the scientific study of language. While linguistic profiles in autism vary greatly, spanning from a total absence of functional language to verbal levels within the typical range, the entire autism spectrum is robustly characterized by lifelong disabilities in intersubjective communication and persistent difficulties in adopting the perspective of other people. In that sense, autism constitutes a unique profile in which linguistic competence is dissociated from communication skills. Somewhat paradoxically, autism is often mentioned to underscore the importance of mind reading for language use and of intersubjective communication for the emergence of language. Yet experimental studies on pragmatics in autism indicate that many pragmatic processes unfold without adopting one's conversational partner's perspective. Moreover, the patterns of language acquisition and learning in autism represent a strong challenge to the central role constructionist theories assign to socio-communicative skills. Data on autism thus force a reconsideration of the a priori conceptual boundaries on language learnability that shape the foundational debates between constructionist and nativist linguistic theories.