The ability of nonprofits to weather hard times is a popular theme in the literature, yet most of the research is spent on predicting organizational closure. Unfortunately, this offers little guidance to nonprofits attempting to both survive and deliver services during crises. We use the lived experiences of 31 nonprofits—a mix of umbrella groups and direct human service providers—during the Illinois state budget impasse to understand nonprofit organization resilience in times of crisis. We establish the Nonprofit Resiliency Framework using qualitative analysis, mapping tactics in five areas: financial, human resources, outreach, program and services, and management and leadership. This study not only provides further empirical investigation of organizational resilience, but also useful advice for nonprofits on how to weather a complex financial crisis.

The United States places great emphasis on the public administration–politics dichotomy, but what happens to public management when the dichotomy breaks down? The authors critically evaluate the public management frameworks, New Public Management and New Public Governance, in the context of two major public management failures: the U.S. State of Illinois Budget Impasse during 2015–2017 and the COVID-19 Pandemic. A definition of public management failure is proffered, and both public management frameworks are found to have polarized and opposing views on whether process or outcome should have priority in crisis. We question whether the two major seminal theories in our field are still generalizable when their assumptions about the dichotomy and political neutrality are challenged in times of crises. The polarized perspectives were found to contribute to the public management failures. Ultimately, both frameworks were found to minimize the political influences that public administration and public management operate under, leaving a need for a more holistic and realistic framework.

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Unlike most other countries, in the United States, subnational governments (states) have substantial authority over collective bargaining and union organization laws. Because states compete for business investment and union (dis)organization likely has spillover effects beyond state borders, weak unions in one state may affect union organization in other states. We examine how union decline in one state is associated with union decline in neighboring states, and whether the presence of prounion (left-leaning) governments may limit the spread of union decline. Examining a period of major union decline (1983–2014), we find that union weakness in one state is associated with union weakness in nearby states. We observe that Democratic power in Congress is associated with higher unionization rates, but that liberal state governments have been relatively powerless to stop union decline in this period. These findings have important implications for understanding the historical and contemporary weakness of American unions and for the future of union strength in the United States.

Langer found that the supply-side (locational) development policy increased income inequality in the American states, while demand-side (entrepreneurial) policy decreased inequality. Recent scholarship emphasizes the impact of unionization on state inequality. This analysis examines economic development policy and unionization in the same model. Using time series data (1983–2004) with an error correction model, it finds that entrepreneurial activism is associated with rising state inequality, while locational activism has no significant relationship. Additionally, entrepreneurial policy exerts a positive impact on inequality as union density rises, contrary to expectations. Skills-biased technical change is proposed to explain these findings.