Social Origins of Civil Society:

PREFACE This is one in a series of Working Papers produced by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, a collaborative effort by scholars in over twenty countries to understand the scope, structure, and role of the nonprofit sector using a common framework and approach. The Working Papers provide a vehicle for the initial dissemination of the work of the Project to an international audience of scholars, practitioners and policy analysts interested in the social and economic role played by nonprofit organizations in different countries, and in the comparative analysis of these important, but often neglected, institutions. Working Papers are intermediary products, and they are released in the interest of timely distribution of Project results to stimulate scholarly discussion, and to inform policy debates. A full list of these papers is provided on the inside of the back cover. The production of these Working Papers owes much to the devoted efforts of our project staff, in particular Regina Rippetoe, as the program manager, and Wendell Phipps, the project's secretary. We also want to express our deep gratitude to our colleagues on this project, to the International Advisory Committee that is helping to guide our work, and to the many sponsors of the project listed at the end of this paper. The views and opinions expressed in these papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of The Johns Hopkins University, its Institute for Policy Studies, any of its officers or supporters, or the series' editors. We are delighted to be able to make the early results of this project available in this form and welcome comments and inquiries either about this paper or the project as a whole.