Coercive and mimetic isomorphic mechanisms for service provision: The creation of nonprofit organizations in Mexico before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Nonprofit organizations represent diverse efforts of collective action and service provision, and have for some time been collaborators to public governance systems in developed and developing economies. In this article, we contribute to the limited empirical and analytical study in the field of public policy and administration about the operational environments that enable or constrain nonprofits in the provision of public goods and services. The operational environment for organized civil society, namely for nonprofits, includes the combination of their regulatory, political, and funding contexts. By analyzing the purposes of 296 new nonprofits registered between 2016 to 2020 in Mexico, the empirical context of our inquiry, we find that as resources have declined, new nonprofits adopt isomorphic mechanisms by resembling their purposes to the services the government intends to support. Nonprofits have also responded to the pandemic by focusing more than before on areas related to health, social assistance, and funeral services. The study contributes to bigger questions about the relationships between and balance across the responsibilities of governments and nonprofits, including during the COVID pandemic, and to the understanding of nonprofits as service providers in public governance.