Although education and other quasi-public services are financed by the government in both Holland and Sweden, the public/private division of finance and provision of these services that exists in Holland has no counterpart in Sweden, where provision of services is delegated to local governments and the private nonprofit sector is negligible. Nevertheless, nonprofit organizations play a crucial intermediary role in the Swedish political process. Accordingly, the experience of these two countries is compared in order to analyze the socioeconomic determinants and consequences of the two divergent systems. Part 1 examines data on Sweden in light of three predictive hypotheses specifying the political and cultural conditions conducive to a large nongovernmental nonprofit sector. Part 2 examines the behavior and the problems of private institutions providing educational services in Sweden, both currently and historically. Part 3 compares the behavior of Swedish and Dutch nonprofit organizations. Despite vast differences in the sizes and roles of the private sectors in the two countries, their nonprofit institutions behave in strikingly similar ways. A cross-sectional comparison of these and other countries suggests that the division of responsibilities between governments and nonprofit sectors tends to be complementary rather than competitive in nature. Statistical tables are provided. (TE)