May Farid

Stanford University | SU

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are increasingly important players in global politics and development. However, they are undergoing significant adaptations as governments worldwide have instituted restrictions to regulate their activities. What explains the various ways in which they respond to these institutional pressures? In...

How do citizen groups influence policy, particularly in political contexts thought to lack grassroots inputs into the policymaking process? Predominant explanations focus on bargaining and mobilization around interests and identities, neglecting the role of ideas. Emerging scholarship shows how knowledge-or epistemic power-shapes political decision...

China's ascendancy as a global development actor has significant implications for geostrategic dynamics and international development. While the push to ‘go out’ has been seen as a major strategy of the Chinese state, the actors are increasingly diversifying, including Chinese state agencies, businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). We...

While existing literature has conceptualized the multiple, complex ways in which NGOs might relate to the state, it has paid limited attention to how NGO–government collaboration leads to NGO policy influence. This study examines small, indigenous grassroots NGOs and their interactions with the local state in China. Using a grounded theory approach...

While existing literature has conceptualized the multiple, complex ways in which NGOs might relate to the state, it has paid limited attention to how NGO-government collaboration leads to NGO policy influence. This study examines small, indigenous grassroots NGOs and their interactions with the local state in China. Using a grounded theory approach...

While the moniker non-governmental organization (NGO) connotes distance from the state, it is widely recognized that civil society in a range of political contexts is in fact characterized by close ties across the public-private divide. Scholars of Chinese social organizations have noted that proximity between the state and NGOs is even more pronou...

How do small, grassroots NGOs influence a powerful authoritarian state and its policies? This paper presents data on instances of interaction between China’s grassroots NGOs and party-state agencies through which NGOs are able to exert influence on policymaking and implementation by modeling innovations in action. The analysis begins by painting th...

This chapter proposes that grassroots nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can act as agents of policy influence, innovation, and diffusion through their interaction with the local state, and presents a number of mechanisms through which NGOs influence policy change when engaged in reciprocal or collaborative relationships with local government age...