Panel:
Public Policy Frameworks and NGO Responses: Comparative Perspectives on NGO Regulation and Collaboration
(Public and Non-Profit Management and Finance)
Saturday, November 5, 2016: 10:15 AM-11:45 AM
Holmead West (Washington Hilton)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
Panel Organizers: Mary Kay Gugerty, University of Washington
Panel Chairs: George Mitchell, City University of New York
Discussants: Lily Hsueh, Arizona State University
The rise of nonprofits and NGOs as domestic public service providers and transnational advocates presents domestic policy makers with several challenges. While recognizing the importance of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations as providers of public services and advocates for marginalized populations, governments also struggle to develop policy frameworks governing these non-state actors. The rise of NGOs presents a clear policy challenge to governments who rely on these actors to govern, yet seek to regulate and constrain their activities to conform to government policy priorities. How do governments resolve these dilemmas? This panel takes up this question through a comparative examination of NGO-state relationships across countries and over time. The papers examine the emergence and diffusion of regulatory and collaborative systems across a range of countries and within the critical case of China. Two papers take a cross-national perspective, examining the relative importance of transnational versus domestic pressure in the emergence of regulatory frameworks. The first paper examines policy responses among corporatist and pluralist regimes and argues that traditional distinctions in responses may be eroding in the face of the common transnational threats of terrorism and social movements. The second paper examines the relative importance of domestic versus transnational pressures in the emergence and structure of self-regulation regimes, arguing that domestic regulatory threat continues to be a critical factor in the emergence of voluntary self-regulation regimes. The final paper explores the emergence of corporatist versus more pluralist forms of government-NGO collaboration in China and finds that social policy entrepreneurs play a pivotal role in expanding spaces for NGO-government collaboration.
