From the sunny spring day that the Wangâs son was born in Tianjin , the whole family started searching for treatment for his developmental disabilities . A few years later, they were exhausted financially and psychologically. Looking at his despairing son and patient grandson, the grandfather reflected: âI finally realized that, if my disabled grandson was to live as a person, there must be an adult who does not live as one tooâ, because they must devote all their time to care for him. Instead of giving up, he established the Qizhi Child Rehabilitation and Care Home with the support of Tianjin Disabled Personsâ Federation in a rundown, small shed, to provide services to children with developmental disabilities and their families. Six years later, as he lay dying, the grandfather held his sonâs hand and unable to speak, used the other hand to point to his grandson. His son agreed, âIâll do it, Iâll take care of the children at the care home for the rest of my lifeâ.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) often start from citizens â initiatives such as the example of the grandfather in Tianjin , even in authoritarian states like China. These citizens experience or observe gaps in state provision and sometimes are driven to remedy them by setting up NGOs . It is often argued that authoritarian regimes provide public welfare services as a means to enhance their legitimacy in the eyes of citizens and maintain their rule (Cassani 2017; Dukalskis and Gerschewski 2017; Huang 2015; Gandhi 2008; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003, pp. 29â30; Wintrobe 1998). In capitalist authoritarian regimes, the state is not the sole provider of welfare services; rather there is a mixed welfare system where the private sector and non-governmental sector play a complementary role. In authoritarian contexts where there are tight restrictions over civil society groups, service-delivery NGOs are subject to strict controls and monitoring which can hamper their approach to service delivery, the scale of services provided and their organisational development . For authoritarian regimes, there is the perennial risk that service-delivery NGOs serve as fronts for political opposition groups and that their very existence could stimulate the development of more politically oriented civil society groups demanding rights and political change. Such regimes often look with suspicion upon service-delivery NGOs that adopt a rights -based approach to their work and that seek to influence government policy. Added to this, authoritarian governments fear that external agents working on behalf of foreign powers seek to bring about regime change through their support to civil society groups. These perceptions of regime threat can limit the potential role of NGOs in delivering welfare services and shaping the direction of welfare policy, not least by fostering a restrictive regulatory, political and social environment for NGOs .
Post-socialist authoritarian states, such as China, Vietnam, and the former Soviet Republics face particular challenges in reforming their welfare systems. Under the political economy of planning, markets were virtually eliminated and civil society groups were sharply curtailed. Though some welfare -oriented civil society organisations may have been incorporated into the planning system, they were limited in number, served mainly as intermediary conduits between generic groups of citizens and the Party, and had minimal room for innovation. Following the collapse of state-planned socialist systems and their respective welfare structures in the early and late 1980s, reforming post-socialist states have moved towards mixed welfare systems for the financing and delivery of welfare services. However, they do not preside over a pre-existing supply of private and non-governmental service providers that could be harnessed in welfare reform. These have to be grown by creating incentives, building their capacity, and developing an enabling regulatory environment of relevant laws, policies, and regulations , and fostering public confidence in their work. Whilst laws, policies, and regulations may endow alternative welfare providers with legal legitimacy , the provision of adequate, quality welfare services entails much more than this. Competencies, responsiveness to user needs, professionalism, efficient management, effective governance , and financial and moral probity are vital ingredients for an adequate, quality mixed welfare system . Ensuring that welfare service providers have these crucial components hinges on putting in place effective institutions of accountability that can facilitate their broader legitimacy as legal, professional, and responsive providers of services. Accountability and legitimacy thus go hand in hand.
However, in authoritarian regimes, ensuring accountability of government officials , bureaucrats, and welfare services providers, whether state, private, or non-governmental, becomes much more difficult than in liberal democratic mixed welfare systems. This is especially so in post-socialist ones, where a robust legal system , an independent civil society , media , independent watchdogs, independent courts are constrained and weakly developed, These governments are moving towards mixed welfare systems where NGOs play a role. They can put in place legal processes of accountability such as registration and licencing, but NGOs too have to invest in creating institutions of accountability. This is not just to satisfy government requirements for accountability but also to gain public trust and confidence in their operations, without which it would be hard to attract funds and clients. The process of âmaking accountabilityâ is an essential part of building their legitimacy , which in turn can facilitate their scaling-up and organisational development . This involves navigating relations with an often fragmented state serviced by suspicious local state officials and riven by the contending goals and interests of different departments. It also entails changing the sometimes negative public perceptions of non-governmental service-delivery providers.
The politics of how service-delivery NGOs in post-socialist states craft accountability and legitimacy is thus the central theme of this book. We explore this through the case of post-socialist , authoritarian China which has been gradually reforming its welfare provision towards a mixed system involving non-governmental providers and the private sector . A key dilemma facing the Chinese government was that the regulating environment for NGOs was overly restrictive, resulting in very few NGOs actually registering as social organisations . If the government sought to subcontract services to NGOs and expand the supply of non-governmental service providers , then NGOs needed to be legal entities registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA) as ...