The Swedish nonprofit sector in international comparison

The previous picture of the nonprofit sector in Sweden has been biased by a narrow US perspective. Mainstream nonprofit literature seems to neglect work carried out in the important but more complex tradition of the civil society. In this article, recent cross‐national data reflecting both these paradigms are presented. This gives us a better picture of the Swedish sector and highlights limitations of earlier approaches, not only for our understanding of the Swedish sector but also of the sector elsewhere. To continue the quest for the raison d’être of the sector, not only are more cross‐national data needed but we must also develop a multidisciplinary framework in which to understand the data.