| Summary: | This thesis sheds light on how the nonprofit sector developed in Taiwan, from under an authoritarian regime (1950s to 1980s) to the democracy today. It does so by asking two fundamental questions: First, why and how did Taiwan’s nonprofit sector emerge? Second, what are the forces that are shaping its development?
In this study I advance four arguments. First, I argue that the nonprofit sector has passed through several distinct phases since democratization in the early 1980s. We will see that its transformation mirrors changing economic, social, and political developments in Taiwan. However, I also make three other related arguments about the nonprofit sector in Taiwan. My second argument is that the state and its institutions have profoundly shaped the nonprofit sector’s pattern of development. The state matters because political institutions and regulatory frameworks directly and indirectly structure the development of civil society, which is the organized non-state, non-market sphere in which nonprofits operate. To support this argument, I show how, in the 1980s and 1990s, the nonprofit sector was shaped by social movements, electoral competition, and privatization of social welfare. My third, or “third-party government,” argument—a concept first advanced by Lester Salamon—contends that, since the late 1990s, the nonprofit sector and state have become interdependent to make up for their corresponding institutional strengths and weaknesses. My fourth argument is that the current combination of economic downturn, social welfare devolution, and competition with for-profit enterprises has pushed nonprofits towards commercialization and marketization—a trend that offers significant benefits as well as pitfalls for the nonprofit sector.
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