# Players in the Public Policy Process: Nonprofits as Social Capital and Agents

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2013/04/07/players-in-the-public-policy-process-nonprofits-as-social-capital-and-agents/
- Published: 2013-04-07T21:50:52+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

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Winner of the 2005 Charles Levine Prize for the Best Book in
Comparative Policy and Administration, this book focuses on the nonprofit organisation
as a social capital asset and agent in all phases of the public policy process –
from influencing political parties, platforms, and choice of candidates to the formulation
and implementation of public policy including the facilitation of transactions.

 

 

 

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This book demonstrates the universal utility of the principal-agent paradigm for
analysing nonprofits in foreign or domestic policy, sectarian or faith-based, scientific
or social as well as the regulatory (not just participatory) powers of these organisations
over market and nonmarket actions as a matter of public, collective policy.

 

 

 

Placing the nonprofit in a principal-agent framework, the book emphasises such topics
as sources of conflict in public expectations and organisational performance, the
moral hazard and benefits of organisational self-interest, tax exemption as compensation
or a reservation price rather than just a subsidy, the role of social service organisations
as managers of adverse social risks, and their inherent competitive advantage (even
when faith-based) over firms as agents of choice for social service contracts from
a strictly business perspective.

 

 

 

It also deals with the role of nonprofits in governance such as over common pool
resources, the moral hazard of policy, and the probability that the nonprofit could
be an agent of distortions. This book goes beyond the economics of market failure
and adds political, policy and administrative sciences, economic sociology, and 
the theory of contracts to encapsulate these organisations as agents and essential
players in any open and democratic public policy process.

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