Path Dependence, Critical Junctures, and Political Contestation

Abstract

The nonprofit sector has become an arena of increased political contestation. Rather than being shaped passively by global trends and broader power relationships among social classes and organizations, the nonprofit sector and the larger civil society have increasingly become forces shaping social and political developments. To account for how these forces unfold in different countries, one needs to go beyond social origins theory, the power-distributional account, and sociological institutionalism and draw on concepts from historical institutionalism that explicitly consider how dynamic interactions between institutional forces and long-term historical changes shape patterns of political contestation. By examining the developmental trajectories of environmental NGOs in South Korea, this article explains how political contestation—embedded within institutional and historical processes of critical junctures and path dependence—may shape developmental trajectories of the nonprofit sector.