Abstract
In modern democracies, nonprofit organizations and social enterprises have a relevant political role that may be threatened by the entry into the market of services. This risk increases in time of economic crisis, when the competition grows stronger and the economic needs become more urgent. Starting from this assumption, the article analyzes the relationship between the managerial strategies and the political role of the Italian third sector, focusing on the implications of the management models put in place in order to “survive” the 2008 economic crisis. Two ideal-typical strategies will be outlined, labelled respectively “entrepreneurial turn” and “hyper-embeddedness”, which seem to have effects both in terms of the manner in which the political role is realized, and in terms of the degree of politicization of the organizations. Since such strategies can both increase or decrease nonprofits’ political ambitions, it is not possible to give an interpretation in terms of a tout court distancing from politics. However, it will be argued that a trait common to all the trajectories is the withdrawal from what Mouffe defines “the political”, referring specifically to the dimension of conflict and antagonism.
Highlights
The awareness that the role of associations and social enterprises in contemporary society goes far beyond the sole provision of services has spread long ago, well before that terms such as nonprofit or third sector became part of the common language.The Italian case is no exception, since the third sector was born at the end of the 70s with a strong political purpose and in close connection with the experiences of social movements of the preceding decades
The article analyzes the relationship between the managerial strategies and the political role of the Italian third sector, using empirical material collected in 2016, consisting of interviews with managers of different nonprofit organizations and social enterprises acting in the field of social policies in the north of Italy
Several researches focusing mainly—though not exclusively—on the US case (Weisbrod 2000; Eikenberry and Kluver 2004; Skocpol 1997, 2013; Eliasoph 1998) have shown that the processes of professionalization and marketization have brought nonprofits closer to the model of the firm, weakening their political role and the ability to generate social capital, as stated in this illustrative quote by Nickel and Eikenberry: We argue that emerging forms of marketized philanthropy depoliticize discourse by collapsing the distance between the market and the negative impacts it has on human well-being, thereby stripping philanthropy of its transformative potential
Summary
The awareness that the role of associations and social enterprises in contemporary society goes far beyond the sole provision of services has spread long ago, well before that terms such as nonprofit or third sector became part of the common language.The Italian case is no exception, since the third sector was born at the end of the 70s with a strong political purpose and in close connection with the experiences of social movements of the preceding decades. The article analyzes the relationship between the managerial strategies and the political role of the Italian third sector, using empirical material collected in 2016, consisting of interviews with managers of different nonprofit organizations and social enterprises acting in the field of social policies in the north of Italy (see Section 3).
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