Social Organizations and the Authoritarian State in China

ISBN-13: 9781107021310 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 234 str.

Timothy Hildebrandt

Opis

Received wisdom suggests that social organizations (such as non-government organizations, NGOs) have the power to upend the political status quo. However, in many authoritarian contexts, such as China, NGO emergence has not resulted in this expected regime change. In this book, Timothy Hildebrandt shows how NGOs adapt to the changing interests of central and local governments, working in service of the state to address social problems. In doing so, the nature of NGO emergence in China effectively strengthens the state, rather than weakens it. This book offers a groundbreaking comparative analysis of Chinese social organizations across the country in three different issue areas: environmental protection, HIV/AIDS prevention, and gay and lesbian rights. It suggests a new way of thinking about state society relations in authoritarian countries, one that is distinctly co-dependent in nature: governments require the assistance of NGOs to govern while NGOs need governments to extend political, economic, and personal opportunities to exist."

Recenzje

"This is an outstanding study, highly recommended for a wide variety of audiences. For China scholars, the book provides valuable and original primary data on various kinds of social organizations within the PRC; for specialists in comparative politics, it sheds new light on the persistence of authoritarian rule and the role of civil society; for students of social movements, it lays out a clear, useful and novel framework for understanding "opportunity structures"; for new researchers, it includes a detailed discussion of data collection and research methodology; and for practitioners, it reveals important and often counter-intuitive information regarding the specific and nuanced ways in which foreign funding can have both good and ill effects. The book is a pleasure to read, from start to finish. It is carefully researched, exceptionally well-organized, convincingly argued, and written in clear and engaging prose."
Teresa Wright, Pacific Affairs

Spis treści

1. Self-limiting organizations and co-dependent state-society relations: environmental, HIV/AIDS, and gay and lesbian NGOs in China; 2. Political opportunities, by accident and design; 3. Central policies, local priorities: regional variation of the political opportunity structure; 4. Proximate solutions to insoluble problems: adaption to the political opportunity structure; 5. More money, more problems: struggling with economic opportunities; 6. Forever the twain shall meet: economic and political opportunities converge; 7. Strong individual relationships, weak institutional ties: the double-edged pursuit of personal opportunities; 8. Social organizations and the future of Chinese civil society.