Independence at a Price: The relationship between nongovernment human service organisations and the polity in Texas and Tasmania

Modern society has traditionally been viewed as comprising of three sectors; government, market and civil society. The theoretical base of three pillars of government (or polity), commerce (or market) and civil society has historically been assumed to be a comprehensive structure of society. Many theorists have proposed different characteristics for the sectors but until recently none have proposed fundamental change to the structure. Debate over civil society has been a central element of political analysis for hundreds of years. Civil society has been variously theorised as subversive and detrimental to society at large, as the site of social action and as a category into which all human activity that is not market or government can be placed. In the late twentieth century civil society has been viewed as the site of social and community activity and more recently the activities of formal community organisations that have become increasingly involved in the delivery of human services.