Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2013

Independence or Autonomy: A Reflection on the Characteristics of Chinese Social Organizations

(Abstract)

Wang Shizong and Song Chengcheng

There are two perspectives on the characteristics of Chinese social organizations: the structure perspective and the agency perspective. Although they show huge differences in arguments, both perspectives have confused “independence” with “autonomy.” A scrutiny of existing theoretical achievements reveals that neither “independence” nor “autonomy” alone can provide a complete description of the characteristics of Chinese social organizations. Based on an integrated idea of structure and agency and the late modern achievements of neo-institutional theory, our study shows that the peculiar structure and practice of Chinese social organizations is an active “response” of the organizations to “institutional complexity”; this response has led to a complex and diverse combination of “independence” and “autonomy,” generally known as “dependent autonomy.” Meanwhile, a multi-level institutional analysis of Chinese social organizations from the perspective of institutional logic will generate a systematic description of the causes for the dependent autonomy of Chinese social organizations, and may lead to a new “research programme” of Chinese social organizations.