Center for Civil Society Studies

The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies seeks to improve understanding and the effective functioning of not-for-profit, philanthropic, or “civil society” organizations in the United States and throughout the world in order to enhance the contribution these organizations can make to democracy and the quality of human life. The Center is part of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies and carries out its work through a combination of research, training, and information-sharing both domestically and internationally.

Lester M. Salamon is a leading expert on alternative tools of government action and on the nonprofit sector in the U.S. and around the world. He is currently a professor at the Johns Hopkins University and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. He previously served as the director of the Center for Governance and Management Research at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., and as deputy associate director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Before that he taught at Duke, Vanderbilt, and Harvard Universities and at Tougaloo College in Mississippi.

Dr. Salamon holds a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University and a B.A. in economics and policy studies from Princeton University. He has written or edited over 20 books; and his articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Voluntas, and numerous other publications. His recent books include: The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance (Oxford University Press, 2002); The State of Nonprofit America (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); and Global Civil Society: Dimensions of the Nonprofit Sector (Kumarian Press, 2004).

For more information about the Center for Civil Society Studies, visit their website: www.jhu.edu/~ccss/