CARING SECTOR OR CARING SOCIETY?

'Caring Sector or Caring Society' a working paper by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project challenges conventional U.S. rhetoric of voluntarism which equates the size and visibility of the nonprofit sector with the presence of a "caring tradition" in a society. It argues that large nonprofit sectors may actually signify the weakness rather than the strength of a caring tradition elsewhere in society. Based on cross-national analysis it found that the very concept of the nonprofit sector does not exist in many countries, but this does not seem to bear any relation to the extent of "caring" evident in the society. Rather, a variety of other factors seem to be involved, including the legal framework in use, the level of development and degree of social differentiation, and the extent of centralization of social and political control. These factors help explain under what condition and in what form the nonprofit sector may supplement "caring," and when it compensates for the lack of such a tradition.