Date of Award

8-23-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Political Science

Advisor(s)

Dimitar Gueorguiev

Keywords

China;civil society;NGOs;policy influence;social organizations;state-society relations

Subject Categories

Political Science | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

The growth of Chinese social organizations has attracted attention from researchers and practitioners because it reflects the changing state-society relations in post-Mao China and has profound implications for the country’s political development. As a mediating structure between the state and citizens, they are supposed to represent their constituencies in the policy arena. The existing research records many social organizations’ policy activities. However, do all social organizations engage in such activities? If not, what organizations are active, less active, or inactive? Furthermore, what factors shape their different behaviors and determine different levels of policy influence? Regarding organizations with policy engagement, what strategies do they employ to influence policies? The scholarship on Chinese social organizations concentrated on state-organization relations over an extended period. What are the impacts of state-organization relations on organizations’ policy influence? Do these impacts change with state leadership succession? This research addresses these questions by investigating whether and how Chinese social organizations influence public policies and exploring the factors shaping their policy influence. Combining deductive and inductive methods, this research develops an analytical framework after investigating the women’s and health fields and tests it in five other organizational fields—migrant workers, disability, minors, seniors, and the environment. This framework is adequately valid because no organizations operate outside the six modes of policy (non)influence defined in the framework: active state corporatism, passive state corporatism, symbolic state corporatism, embedded pluralism, critical pluralism, and silent pluralism. It applies the civil society/state corporatism approaches to analyzing social organizations’ policy influence in China, stitching academic traditions of state-society relations and social organizations’ policy influence. Using quantitative data collected from original surveys, this research explores multiple factors shaping organizations’ policy influence and tests three leading theories in the existing body of literature—resource mobilization theory, institutional theory, and resource dependence theory. The empirical evidence supports the former two but fails to verify the latter. It fills the gap in the existing literature by testing two underexamined or unexplored factors—formalization and professionalization of organizations and international connections—and finds their significantly positive effects on policy influence. Furthermore, qualitative data show that the size of organizational constituencies and descriptive representation do not impact organizations’ policy influence. Encompassing and comparing seven fields of social organizations, this research draws a panoramic picture of and provides more comprehensive insights into the policy influence of Chinese social organizations. It is the first comparative study on the policy influence of China’s top-down social organizations and both engagement and non-engagement in the policy process. In addition to collaborative strategies, this research discloses that many organizations adopt(ed) non-collaborative strategies to influence policies and names this policy influence mode critical pluralism. In the Xi Jinping era, critical pluralism disappeared from all fields except the environmental field. This research applies institutional theory and the theory of political opportunity structures to explain this unique finding. Overall, this research discloses the dynamics of state-society relations in contemporary China. On the one hand, the Xi Jinping administration cracked down on many social organizations, especially those embracing critical pluralism. On the other hand, it selectively encourages the development of certain types of social organizations and takes a relatively mild attitude toward those adopting embedded pluralism and silent pluralism. In the Xi era, the space to influence policies is not completely closed although the political environment has become more restrictive. To carve out more space and achieve more influence in the policy process, social organizations in China must learn how to dance well in chains.

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