ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the following questions: What do we know about civil society and non-profit organizations (NPO) in the region thus far? And what impact has on civil society in these diverse countries with their common totalitarian past? And why did the seeming growth in the quantity of formal NPOs not bring about the much-anticipated qualitative democratic and civil society/non-profit sector (NPS) outcomes? The chapter aims to answer these questions by reviewing previous scholarship about the region produced by Western scholars. Understandably, civil society/NPS developments in these independent countries have likewise taken different turns along those trajectories, showcasing varied levels and kinds of non-profit institutionalization, civic engagement, and citizens’ collective influence on their states. Non-profit scholarship produced in the Western context is, without a doubt, potentially very useful in guiding the development of the NPS in the Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia region.
