Policy Initiatives Towards the Third Sector in International Perspective. Edited by Benjamin Gidron and Michal Bar

The third sector has come to play an increasingly significant role, not only for international development assistance policies in developing countries, but also in developed countries as part of everyday domestic politics.It is to these national processes of policy initiatives that this new book, edited by Benjamin Gidron and Michael Bar, is devoted.Policy Initiatives Towards the Third Sector in International Perspective helps us understand a policy actor, the third sector, that has become increasingly visible and influential, yet has been subject to multiple interpretations and misguided assessments.Overall, the third sector has been viewed in a sort of dual manner: either through a paternalist, condescending lens, which has prevailed mostly in poor countries or whenever the sector is rather incipient, or through a "managerialist" lens, pretending to be an apolitical and socially neutral force, concerned more with the private sector standards and trends.Challenging these biased and incomplete approaches, Gidron and Bar present us with this new book that compiles policy initiatives toward the third sector in eight countries (Canada, the U.S., Germany, Japan, Ireland, Hungary, Israel, and the U.K.) over the last three decades.This research addresses the political processes aimed at third sector organizations, based on the analytical framework laid down by Kingdon (1995) and that of Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1999), to refute conventional models of policy design and implementation.The main issues addressed in each case study are the conditions under which policy change took place, the "windows of opportunity" that opened up, and how different policy players exploited these opportunities with various degrees of success.The key argument throughout the book is that these policy initiatives are complex, uncertain, and unforeseeable, resulting in unanticipated and/or undesired outcomes.Such initiatives are developed in processes that are permanently affected by disputed leadership and interpretations, and thus do not fit the usual approaches for policy analysis.Building on an actor-identification exercise, not only collective actors but also individuals-epitomized in the figure of the "policy entrepreneur"-recurring dilemmas and conflicts are highlighted between the third sector and government and private sector players.The ensuing lack of confidence, divergent expectations, and lack of commitment between various agencies are dealt with using the tools of organizational theory and discourse analysis.At the end of the volume, these theoretical approaches and the observations from each chapter form the basis of six theses on the evolution of policies and politics of the third sector.Vol. 2, No 1 Spring / Printemps 2011

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