Achievement

Two trainees, Tim Hildebrandt and John Zinda, are examining how relationships among NGOs, state organs, and international donors create very different dynamics in China from what models predict. China is the epitome of a country where citizens lack access to decision-making arenas, and it is the target of a number of transnational organizations concerned with a host of problems, including environmental degradation, HIV/AIDS, and human rights. On many of these issues, domestic groups have linked up with transnational advocacy organizations. However, the strong cross-sectoral linkages so frequently cited in the literature on ‘transnational advocacy networks’ have seldom materialized. Their research suggests three factors for properly predicting the existence of cooperation among these actors: the role of funding; the interests and capacities of different scales of government; and diverging interests of transnational advocacy organizations and domestic civil society.