Abstract
The idea of civil society represents a complex concept, which includes several different roles. Stating its nature and its goals in one definition is a challenge. Usually, civil society is described as a space, different from the market and the state, where citizens can be engaged with each other not under control of the state or the market. This definition includes the notion of community ties, and describes the civil society as a sphere of solidarity. Some other definitions talk about civil society, as a marketplace for negotiating social values and social relationships and where individuals associate for "common good". This notion is quite close to another one: the notion of non-profit sector that Frumklin (2006) defines as "the non-profit and voluntary sector is the contested arena between the state and the market where public and private concerns meet and where individual and social efforts are united". Indeed the goals of the civil society and the non-profit sector are quite similar: advocacy of values, innovation, service, and community building among others. Moreover these two sectors are seen as a means for resolving the problems of contemporary society (Powell and Guerin, 1997). As a consequence, they share a large number of links with the state. This reveals a central question: what are the results of this relationship for the civil society and non-profit sector, which is usually described as independent from the state?
