From Jacobin tradition to Decentralization’, in

a quite sizable nonprofit sector that is heavily supported by the French state. In the case of France, however, this development is relatively new, in part the product of social policies introduced by the Mitterand govern-ment in the early 1980s. By contrast, for much of the period between the French Revolution and 1864, associations and other nonprofit organiza-tions were illegal in France and were viewed as undemocratic institutions that splintered the “general will ” represented by the democratic state. As in many Western European countries, the nonprofit sector in France traces back to the Middle Ages when the Roman Catholic Church and its congregations created charitable organizations and when guilds and brotherhoods established a system of mutual help on a professional basis. These two pillars of the nonprofit sector of the Ancient Regime were at-tacked by the French Revolution: Catholic charities and foundations were secularized and corporative organizations were suppressed, as the Jacobin government declared its social responsibility and stressed its monopoly over the common weal. In accordance with the Rousseauist principle, th