Using a Historical InstitutionalismPerspective to Examine ChineseFoundations’ DevelopmentCharacteristics From the 1980s to 2017
Min Ji
School of Political Science and Public Administration, Henan NormalUniversity, Xinxiang, Henan, China
Abstract
This paper adopted a historical institutionalist framework to identify the major developmental stages of Chinese foundationsthat were established from the 1980s onward and examined their emergence and evolution. By examining primary andsecondary data, and conducing statistical analysis results, this study demonstrates Chinese foundations’ developmentalcharacteristics from 2008 to 2017. The emergence of public fundraising foundations (PFFs) has followed in the wake of the
developmental path of such foundations; the government’s intention has been to use them to supplement the functions ofadministrative departments. Subsequent developments demonstrate that there was a stronger relationship between theworking model of each PFF and the developmental direction of the entire foundation in relationship to previous developmentsregarding the state. Such foundations have increased rapidly since 2004, and interactions of foundations with grassrootsNGOs started in 2008. However, later interactions with grassroots NGOs did not have a transformative effect on theoperation of these foundations. This study’s findings reveal that, in China, government-affiliated foundations formulatedtheir own approaches for fundraising and for creating and using operating models; furthermore, right from the early stages,Chinese foundations excluded grassroots NGOs from their operating mechanisms.
Keywords
foundations, grassroots NGOs, interaction, development characteristics, 1980s
（政治与公共管理学院李广宇）
