Abstract:
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including charitable foundations, domestic grassroots NGOs and overseas NGOs, have increased considerably in China since the market reform in 1978 and have played an essential role in relieving social problems such as poverty, pollution and educational inequality. Partnerships between NGOs and the government have been seen to address social challenges together, but these NGO–government partnerships vary considerably both in the forms they take and in their effectiveness. An effective partnership with the government, which is one of the critical stakeholders of NGOs, is essential for NGOs to attain their goals in addressing social issues. Therefore, this study aims to examine the variations in the NGO–government partnerships and the approaches NGOs can actively adapt to form an effective partnership with the government in China. Potential factors associated with different partnerships are mainly distilled from two streams of theories: 1) the theories focus on the micro level individual organisation’s behaviours, such as resource dependence theory and institutionalism, which explore how resources or external environment affect an individual origination’s behaviours, and 2) macro level theories such as civil society and corporatism which analyses the state–society dynamics as a whole. Through the case study of 13 NGOs covering six issue areas and thematic analysis, this study identifies the features of an effective partnership as joint efforts from both NGOs and the government aiming to alleviate social problems and to meet people’s needs, while keeping NGOs’ autonomy. The key findings of this study are four themes as main approaches NGOs can adopt: professionalisation, participation, formal networks and informal interpersonal relationships (guanxi). These themes are elaborated in detail by describing and analysing NGOs’ practice in China. This thesis concludes by discussing the power difference between NGOs and the government and how to avoid the negative consequences of partnering with the government.
