Third Sector Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The term third sector refers to a set of social relations’ organizations and networks distinct from the public and the market sector, as well as from private households and neighborhoods. Voluntary activities carried out in public in an organized form, with self-governed structures for societal instead of profit goals, characterize a positive definition of the third sector. However, many third sector organizations also rely on paid staff.

Charity, philanthropy, and voluntary help have a long standing tradition in the third sector, but a self-consciousness of such relations as a distinct sector only emerged in the early 1970s. Reports of the Filer Commission in the United States or the Wolfenden Committee in England triggered a new perspective on the diverse set of activities and stressed common features of organizations outside government and business enterprise. Related overlapping and competing notions refer to the nonprofit sector emphasis on private provision of services devoid of the profit motive; some include the nongovernmental sector, which sets third sector apart from governmental services and stresses advocacy of groups of citizens; while other notions refer to the voluntary sector, which puts emphasis on the type of resources provided by these organizations. Other related concepts are the independent, the intermediate, or the civic sector. These concepts share interest in the emergence from, or an orientation toward, civil society. Typical organizational forms for active citizens are associations and foundations. While the American understanding stresses the nondistribution constraint on profits, and therefore excludes mutuals and cooperatives, the European understanding centers upon a limitation of returns and includes limited self-serving economic activities and social enterprises.

Significance And Policy

The third sector has gained attention of policy makers because of assumed positive effects on welfare, democracy, economy, and community integration. The provision of welfare services by third sector organizations promises closeness to people’s needs and, by mobilizing third-party resources of time and money, disburdens governments of establishing public agencies. As a vehicle of self-organization and interest representation, the sector contributes to the development of civic skills and democratic participation. Further, the third sector influences economics in producing services and providing employment and meaning in times of decreasing full employment. Finally, it fosters community integration by creating bonds and social capital among citizens through shared activities.

Many countries have initiated third sector policies, with the goal to regulate activities and enhance its role. These policies include legal measures (e.g., nonprofit and tax law); financial measures (e.g., funding schemes and tax exemption); symbolic activities including speeches and public recognition for civic engagement (e.g., certificates and medals) and the provision of information as well as organizational measures such as the creation of supportive agencies or the reorganization of ministerial portfolios and governmental bodies.

Research

The establishment of networking and research institutions, such as the International Society for Third Sector Research, indicate increased significance for the third sector. Next to research on conceptual issues and micro level studies of single organizations, efforts to produce a comparative overview of the third sector have advanced the knowledge on scope and crucial factors that shape third sectors in different countries. Research on third sector policy is a new field searching for a common framework.

Critical issues for research are particularism and accountability of third sector organizations; co-optation, dependence, and distortion of missions through governmental funding, contracting, and commercialization as well as their threatened civic character due to bureaucratization and professionalization.

Insight into limitations of the concept has grown over decades of research. Great internal diversity—human services, sports, culture, professional organizations—together with substantial similarities across sectoral boundaries in certain fields (e.g., commonalities between public, commercial, and nonprofit hospitals) have raised doubts whether form of ownership is central at all. The concept of the third sector suggests clear-cut distinctions, while in reality, blurred boundaries and hybrid forms of organization work in an intermediate sphere among the governmental, the market, and the household sectors.

Bibliography:

Etzioni, Amitai. “The Third Sector and Domestic Missions.” Public Administration Review 33, no. 4 (1973): 314–323.
Evers, Adalbert, and Jean-Louis Laville, eds. The Third Sector in Europe. Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 2004.
Kendall, Jeremy. “The Mainstreaming of the Third Sector into Public Policy in England in the Late 1990s:Whys and Wherefores.” Policy and Politics 28, no. 4 (2000): 541–562.
Kendall, Jeremy, and Helmut K. Anheier, eds. Third Sector Policy at the Crossroads: An International Non-Profit Analysis. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Kramer, Ralph M. . “A Third Sector in the Third Millennium?” Voluntas 11, no. 1 (2000): 1–23.
Salamon, Lester M., Helmut K. Anheier, Regina List, Stefan Toepler, S. Wojciech Sokolowski, et al. Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector. Baltimore: John Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, 1999.
Van Til, Jon. Mapping the Third Sector:Voluntarism in a Changing Social Economy. New York: Foundation Center, 1988.

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