This article seeks to explain why different types of volunteer organizations are prevalent in different countries. It hypothesizes that patterns of volunteer participation are a function of citizen attitudes toward governmental and individual responsibility for caring for society. Those countries (e.g., Japan)—where citizens think that governments should be responsible for dealing with social problems—will tend to have higher participation in embedded volunteer organizations, such as parent-teacher associations. Those countries (e.g., the United States)—where citizens think that individuals should take responsibility for dealing with social problems—will tend to have more participation in nonembedded, organizations, such as Greenpeace. These hypotheses are tested statistically using membership data from eight organizations in 68 countries. Alternative explanations, such as levels of income, education, urbanization, and prevalence of working women, are also tested. Citizen attitudes about individual and governmental responsibility are best able to explain the prevalence of different types of volunteer organizations found in different countries.

Why are some communities more civically engaged than others? Why do some communities provide services with volunteer labor whereas others rely primarily on government provision? When communities provide both volunteer and paid labor for the same service, how do they motivate and organize those volunteers? This article addresses these questions through quantitative tests of prevailing explanations for levels of civic engagement (e.g., education, TV viewing, urbanization) and qualitative analyses of case studies of three medium-sized cities in Japan, focusing particularly on the service areas of firefighting and elder care. The statistical analyses demonstrate that current explanations that rely on individual characteristics cannot predict or explain volunteer participation at the community level of analysis. Using the case study data, a model is developed to predict the rate of volunteer participation in a community. It is concluded that the practices of governmental and social institutions-how well they legitimize, fund, and organize volunteers-determine the rate of volunteer participation in a community.

Japan's civil society is being transformed as more people volunteer for advocacy and professional nonprofit organizations. In the US context, this trend has been accompanied by a decline in participation in traditional organizations. Does the rise in new types of nonprofit groups herald a decline of traditional volunteering in Japan? This article argues that while changes in civil rights, political opportunity structure, and technology have also taken place in Japan, they have contributed to the rise of new groups without causing traditional organizations to decline, because Japanese attitudes about civic responsibility have continued to support traditional volunteering.

This article uses the case of Japan to advocate for a new theoretical approach to the study of the nonprofit sector. In particular, it examines how theoretical models based on the European and North American experiences have difficulty explaining the relationship between the nonprofit sector and the state in Japan, and argues that a state-in-society approach is better suited to explaining complex state-society relations in diverse cultural contexts. It does this by examining the evolution of social welfare service provision in Japan. This article is motivated to explain an apparent paradox: Japan's recent efforts toward greater government decentralization and privatization of services have empowered and enlarged the nonprofit sector even as they have also expanded the scope of state authority and enhanced its legitimacy.Résumé le présent article prend l'exemple du Japon pour préconiser une nouvelle approche théorique dans l'étude du secteur sans but lucratif. Il examine, notamment, comment les modèles théoriques qui reposent sur les expériences en Europe et en Amérique du Nord ont des difficultés à expliquer le lien entre le secteur non lucratif et l'É tat du Japon; en outre, il fait valoir que l'approche de l' «É tat dans la société» est mieux adaptée pour expliquer les relations complexes entre l'É tat et la société dans des contextes culturels différents. Son argumentation repose sur l'étude de l'évolution des services sociaux au Japon. Cet article s'efforce d'expliquer un paradoxe apparent: les efforts récents du Japon en faveur d'une décentralisation plus poussée de l'É tat, ainsi que la privatisation des services, ont développé et accru l'influence du secteur non lucratif, comme ils ont également étendu les limites de l'autorité de l'É tat et renforcé sa légitimité.

How do undemocratic civic organizations become compatible with democratic civil society? How do local organizations merge older patriarchal, hierarchical values and practices with newer more egalitarian, democratic ones? This article tells the story of how volunteer fire departments have done this in Japan. Their transformation from centralized war instruments of an authoritarian regime to local community safety organizations of a full-fledged democracy did not happen overnight. A slow process of demographic and value changes helped the organizations adjust to more democratic social values and practices. The way in which these organizations have made the transition offers important lessons for emerging democracies around the world.