Does Nonprofit Marketization Facilitate or Inhibit the Development of Civil Society? A Comparative Study of China and the USA

Abstract With the rise of the global associational revolution and the expansion of neoliberalism across the world, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have increasingly tended to adopt market values and approaches in many countries. A recent debate has concerned the impacts of nonprofit marketization on the civil society sector. A primary concern among Western scholars is the potential harm that marketization may cause to the traditional roles of NPOs, especially in their ability to create and maintain a strong civil society. This article joins the debate by engaging in a comparative analysis of China and the USA to answer the following question: Are the same concerns in the West applicable to non-Western countries, particularly those gradually liberalizing but still highly controlled authoritarian countries? By exploring the variations in objectives, models, and effects associated with the marketization taking place under different political–social systems, we find that unlike the nonprofit marketization in the USA, the similar yet distinct process in China is facilitating rather than inhibiting the development of civil society. On the other hand, our findings also provide nonprofit practitioners with a contextual guideline to help them devise more effective service strategies tailored to fit diverse sociocultural settings.