In a unique study of this area of the British and American economy, Alan Ware provides a rigorously analytical and historical account of the relationship of intermediate organizations to both the state and the ‘for profit'' sector. Among other issues, the author considers the disappearance of nineteenth century working class ‘mutual'' organizations, the growth of profit-making activities by non-profit distributing bodies and the growth and change in voluntarism. He argues that the boundaries between intermediate organizations and the other two ‘sectors'' are becoming more blurred in a variety of ways and that intermediate organizations do not constitute a separate ‘sector'' of society.
The book also examines the problems of regulating such organizations and explains the consequences of the British and American practice of having relatively little state intervention in the affairs of such organizations. Finally the author discusses the activities of these organizations in relation to pluralist accounts of the working of liberal democratic states.
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