Mark Sidel

Regulatory Waves: Comparative Perspectives on State Regulation and Self-Regulation Policies in the Nonprofit Sector

This proposal is for the second of two interlinked panels (Regulatory Waves 1 & 2: each with 4 papers) which, as a whole, will provide a multi-country analysis of the drivers for and relationships between statutory and non-statutory intervention in nonprofit regulatory frameworks. These Panels come out of a project conceived at ISTR’s Siena conference in 2012 and which seeks to fill a gap in existing comparative nonprofit regulatory literature. Both Panels seek to test a thesis of whether regulatory intervention in the nonprofit sector occurs in ‘waves’, alternating between state regulation and self-regulatory initiatives. Two Panels are required to allow a diverse range of country approaches, contexts and perspectives to be analyzed and so provide comparative sampling of a significant empirical base. Country approaches include Canada, China, England and Wales, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, USA. These two Panels will complement other papers on legal and regulatory themes that will be presented at the 2014 ISTR International Conference and will help towards providing an extensive picture of current, emerging and developing trends in legal and governance frameworks for nonprofit organizations across many countries and regions.