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AbstractThis article explores how the Chinese government aims to maintain social stability by encouraging citizens to become volunteers. We propose that a new type of governance, namely, "state-enlisted voluntarism," is being deployed in which public security volunteers are mobilized and monitored by the state. Analysis based on ten-year nationwide empirical data gathered from local areas in China suggests that the government intentionally enlists citizens into its hierarchical system to strengthen its administrative capacity and maintain a stable society without the risk of domestic threats. We find that direct enlistment approaches empower citizens as state proxies, and that indirect enlistment approaches ensure that various social stakeholders are comprehensively controlled. In general, the Chinese government has four reasons to institutionalize the state enlistment of voluntarism: to increase human resources at the grassroots; transform social organizations into subordinates; frame policy innovations as political credits; and to avoid blame. Our findings also suggest that China's party-state system mobilizes citizens into implementation-oriented activities rather than engages them in policymaking to maintain social stability at the grassroots.

This article explores how the Chinese government aims to maintain social stability by encouraging citizens to become volunteers. We propose that a new type of governance, namely, "state-enlisted voluntarism," is being deployed in which public security volunteers are mobilized and monitored by the state. Analysis based on ten-year nationwide empirical data gathered from local areas in China suggests that the government intentionally enlists citizens into its hierarchical system to strengthen its administrative capacity and maintain a stable society without the risk of domestic threats. We find that direct enlistment approaches empower citizens as state proxies, and that indirect enlistment approaches ensure that various social stakeholders are comprehensively controlled. In general, the Chinese government has four reasons to institutionalize the state enlistment of voluntarism: to increase human resources at the grassroots; transform social organizations into subordinates; frame policy innovations as political credits; and to avoid blame. Our findings also suggest that China's party-state system mobilizes citizens into implementation-oriented activities rather than engages them in policymaking to maintain social stability at the grassroots. (China Q/GIGA)

This article draws on the social network embeddedness perspective to construct a multilevel analytical framework through which relations between non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in China and the government are examined. The following arguments presented are based on a comparative case study of two social service NGOs: First, "top-down" and "bottom-up" types of NGOs alike can achieve some degree of autonomy in both internal management and external relations. Second, NGOs may undertake very different strategies to gain autonomy, even in the face of very similar external conditions. Third, under current conditions, whether NGO leaders are embedded in particular political networks, i.e. the political connections of an NGO, will constrain the strategies that NGOs would pursue to achieve autonomy. Finally, a multilevel approach reveals the complexity of NGO-government relations and helps to move the analysis beyond a zero-sum approach to state-society relations in China. (China/GIGA)