Philanthropy in Democratic Societies

"[A] central point made in the text is that philanthropy is embedded in webs of interaction with various powers, policies, organizations, and cultural norms.... [U]rges us to deepen our thinking about the purpose and place of philanthropy while thought leadership by practitioners offers action strategies to make their field and practice more inclusive and democratic."--Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation "The Philanthropist" "The book is a cohesive integration of consistently well-developed chapters that take different routes to varying conclusions. The questions explored are not new, but the approaches to answering them reflect the influential arguments of those who know the United States can do better as well as the fresh eyes of new and emerging scholars...The work will be of great value in the classroom, as the basis for core readings in philanthropic studies and offers promise for achieving the editors' purpose of engaging imaginations to advance future philanthropy scholarship."--Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation "Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs" "This book asks how philanthropy relates to the state, to justice, to the law and the tax codes, and to its own history as a contested space between state and market. It wonders what we mean when we talk about philanthropy in democratic societies. . . . Its interdisciplinary focus is broad . . . and the essays are well integrated."--Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation "Economics and Philosophy" "Philanthropy involves private persons using power to influence the public realm. To what extent is the exercise of this power compatible with the values of a liberal democratic state? This is the fundamental question that runs through this important and absorbing volume. The authors are an interdisciplinary group of scholars including sociologists, political scientists, historians, political philosophers, and legal scholars. Their essays have a coherence that is unusual in a collection of this kind; well written and accessible, they avoid the trap of disciplinary inwardness that can make such collections indigestible to the lay reader." --Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewitt Foundation "Alliance Magazine" "An important contribution to this emerging debate. While most writing on this subject is breathless or cynical, the ten chapters that make up Philanthropy in Democratic Societies, edited by Stanford political scientist Rob Reich, along with Chiara Cordelli and Lucy Bernholz, present a balanced picture of the history, theory, and role of philanthropy."-- "Wall Street Journal"

Rob Reich is the faculty director of the Center for Ethics in Society, faculty codirector of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and professor of political science at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Education. He is the author or editor of many books, most recently Education, Justice, and Democracy, published by the University of Chicago Press. Lucy Bernholz is a senior scholar at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and codirector of the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University. She is the author of Creating Philanthropic Capital Markets. Chiara Cordelli is assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago.