The Chinese government launched a nationwide policy campaign regarding neighborhood governance in the early 2010s. The state-led movement served both to strengthen state legitimacy and enhance community development. But how it contributed to community empowerment or disempowerment is little examined. This chapter attempts to review the extant literature on the campaign from a community empowerment perspective. Implications and suggestions for future research are also included.

Wilson articulates a theory of multilayered representation in which nonprofit organizations play an important role. Applying James Madison’s Federalist No. 10 to the nonprofit sector, the author maintains that nonprofits offer additional layers of representation outside of election cycles and party platforms. Nonprofit organizations enable multilayered representation by reflecting the multidimensional needs and aspirations of individuals and the communities to which they belong. This representation lessens the possibility of faction as nonprofits create a wide and varied range of opportunities for identity development at both the individual and community levels.

In this chapter, Mook and Whitman provide a critique of the dominant three-sector paradigm, which categorizes organizations into distinct public, private, and social sectors based on their legal status. The critique is inspired by the social economy perspective that focuses attention on the dynamic intersection of the sectors as part of a mixed economy. The social-economy model acknowledges the blending of sectoral elements and the evolution of different types of organizations in the political economy. The authors explain this perspective, contrast it with the three-sector paradigm, and provide an example of how it allows us to reexamine societies and better conceptualize the work of organizations with social objectives. The closing calls for a movement to balance the political economy in favor of humanity and the world.