Delicate Dances: Public Policy and the Nonprofit Sector (Queen's Policy Studies Series) (Volume 79)

The authors of this book look at the relationships in different provincial settings, focusing on Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan, examining the defining influence of government welfare programmes on the lives of two local religious orders in Atlantic Canada. The authors argue that both the public and the nonprofit sectors are changing. In the public sector, the traditional dominance of central governments has given way to a governance system that interweaves action at the global, national, regional and local levels. In the nonprofit sector, groups are assuming new organizational forms and engaging in public policy more centrally, both as advocates and service providers. Not surprisingly, relations between these two sectors involve a complex series of delicate dances, in which mis-steps by either partner can produce tangled confusion.