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This research explores the implications of nonprofit leaders' government ties for nonprofit operations and functions. Based on 81 survey questionnaires completed by civic environmental NGOs (eNGOs) in China and interviews with executives from 33 eNGOs, the authors examine the personal backgrounds of eNGO leaders and find that most Chinese civic eNGOs are connected with the government in one or more of three ways: political ties, service organization ties, or personal ties. Personal ties, or good guanxi with government officials, are positively associated with a higher level of funding stability and a more developed management system. Environmental NGOs with leaders who are current government officials or legislative body members are more likely to be engaged in policy advocacy. Service organization ties facilitate eNGOs' efforts to be engaged in legal services and to scale up to work on environmental issues at the national level. Moreover, an eNGO's policy advocacy engagement is associated with its ties with the nonprofit community.

Despite the increasing volume and significance of research on nonprofit advocacy, most studies have focused on the phenomenon only in Western countries. This article expands the scope of the literature by examining the advocacy activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in authoritarian China. This article focuses on three aspects of advocacy behavior: advocacy investment and use of insider and outsider tactics. Data analyses of an original nationwide survey of 267 environmental NGOs and semistructured interviews with 30 highlight how resource and institutional factors—government funding, government affiliation, foundation funding, and peer collaborations—shape NGO advocacy in China. The findings also suggest ways in which institutional actors may enhance NGOs' capacity for policy advocacy.

This article analyzes local government fiscal sustainability as a common-pool resource (CPR) problem. Comparing the experiences of Los Angeles County, San Bernardino City, and San Bernardino County, California, the analysis applies a framework developed from three decades of CPR research to show the importance of six micro-situational variables—communications with the full set of participants, known reputations of participants, high marginal per capita return, entry or exit capabilities, longer time horizon, and agreed-upon sanctioning capabilities—in shaping collective action dynamics and building the trust and reciprocity among stakeholders needed to achieve fiscal sustainability. The underlying contextual conditions for these micro-situational variables vary based on specific socioeconomic and political settings, but the findings suggest that institutions and processes can be designed based on several well-tested principles in CPR governance to encourage stakeholders to look beyond their immediate self-interests and make decisions that account for the community's long-term fiscal sustainability.

Public governance often involves policy tools and stakeholders from multiple sectors. How different policy tools are used may affect the chances that the values and interests of diverse stakeholders can be aligned in mutually supportive ways. Drawing on insights from behavioral and cognitive economics, this article uses the case of land and ecological conservation in Twin Lake, Taiwan, to illustrate how various interactive dynamics—hierarchical exclusion and preemptive effects—may affect efforts in land and ecological conservation involving stakeholders from multiple sectors. Such illustrations may inform the choice and sequencing of policy tools for facilitating collaborative governance.

As a result of multiple waves of administrative reforms in the past three decades, China’s civil service has become more professionalized. Yet public employees appear to have become increasingly dissatisfied in recent years. Based on questionnaire surveys and interviews with environmental enforcement officials in a southern city, this paper traces changes in the job satisfaction levels of these officials between 2000 and 2014. It shows that satisfaction with the extrinsic rewards received and overall job satisfaction declined during this period. These downward trends partly reflected the increasingly challenging institutional environments faced by the officials: rising political and societal demands, inadequate fiscal and personnel resources, and limited enforcement authority. In addition, as the officials became more highly educated and professionalized, mission match became a stronger antecedent of job satisfaction. These findings suggest the importance of meeting the motivational needs of a more professionalized workforce. 在过往的三十余年里，中国行政管理体制经历了数轮改革。其所带来的显著成果之一，便是公务员队伍整体专业化程度的提升。然而,伴随这一上升趋势的是似乎与之相左的另一现象：即公职人员近年来对自身工 作愈发地不满。通过对于G市各区环保局环境执法大队队员的问卷调查及深度访谈，此文管中窥豹，追踪中国公职人员在2000年至2014年间，工作满意度上的系统性变化。我们的调查结果显示，中国公务员对于自身工作，尤其是所获薪酬的满意程度，在这一时段显著下降。这般下行走势部分映射了中国公职人员目前所处于的极具挑战性的制度环境，包括：不断拔高的政治及社会性期望、相对匮乏的财政及人力资源、以及极其有限的执法权限和手段。此外，随着公职人员整体教育背景及专业性技能储 备的不断优化，“使命性匹配”这一要素对当下中国公职人员工作满意度的影响今非昔比。此文种种结论，最终旨在提醒相关决策者在设法提升公务员专业素质之余，需同时注重对其个体工作动机的掌握及满足。

Traditional institutional rules, values, and beliefs help support conservation regimes of natural resources in many indigenous communities. Such traditional conservation regimes may break down as a result of influences from the outside world. This paper examines two cases in Taiwan—the Tao communities on Orchid Island and the Atayal community in Smangus. The former illustrates a process in which traditional institutions supporting local conservation broke down as a result of external influences, leading to the loss of the local community's ability to govern the use of a coastal fishery. The latter, in contrast, demonstrates how local people are able to adapt their traditional institutions to meet the challenges from the outside world while preserving a local forest. The paper concludes by examining factors that affect institutional adaptation in community-based conservation of natural resources.

What drives regulatees' behaviors when the institution of law is weak? This study seeks to answer the question by examining environmental regulation enforcement in China. Based on survey and interview data on Hong Kong-owned manufacturing enterprises in the Pearl River Delta Region, Guangdong Province, we found that their decisions to adopt basic and proactive environmental management practices were less driven by concerns for legality than by their perceptions of the regulators' actions and gestures. Enterprises adopted basic environmental practices to avoid potential punishment and more proactive practices to avoid potentially arbitrary impositions from regulatory officials. Regulated enterprises were more likely to adopt both basic and proactive environmental practices if they had less difficulties in understanding the enforced regulations. These findings suggest important ways in which regulatory compliance behaviors in a developmental context may differ from those in Western countries.

This article develops a conceptual framework that connects contextual factors with work situations, enforcement strategies, and self-assessment of street-level bureaucrats. Based on two rounds of surveys of environmental enforcement officials in the City of Guangzhou in 2000 and 2006 and subsequent interviews with enforcement officials and enterprise executives, the article traces the transformation of China's policy implementation process from one that is premised primarily on vertical support coming from the central government to one that is also premised on horizontal support from local stakeholders. The changing contexts of environmental policy implementation include increased support from the central government and the public, but not the local government and regulated industries. We have also observed heightened perceptions of inadequate administrative authority and resource scarcity among enforcement officials, who had developed a more formalistic and collaborative approach to regulatory enforcement and a feeling of increasing stress. Yet, enforcement effectiveness as perceived by the enforcement officials has remained virtually unchanged. In the 2000 survey, central government support was positively associated with perceived enforcement effectiveness. In the more recent 2006 survey, central government support was no longer a significant factor; instead, local government support and collaboration with other government units were associated positively and significantly with perceived enforcement effectiveness. These empirical results help explain the continuing implementation gap in China and call for more attention to horizontal support mechanisms to ensure effective environmental policy implementation. Our research also suggests the need to contextualize the study of policy implementation in more dynamic and diversified settings.

In China, service organizations refer to many semi-governmental organizations that perform social or public functions, partly or fully on a self-financing basis. A key item on China's governance reform agenda is about which service organizations should be integrated into the core government bureaucracy and which should be turned into self-financing enterprises units or private, nonprofit organizations. By examining 12 organizations affiliated with the Guangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau using an institutional choice perspective, our analysis suggests that although various political and institutional factors have remained key constraints, such transaction cost concerns as probity, accountability, legitimacy, efficiency, and reliability have increasingly been raised as criteria in deliberating institutional choices in China's governance reform, paving the way for the gradual development of a more rational and accountable governance system.

The article reviews three major controversies in the microfinance field: vehicles, technologies, and performance assessments for financial service delivery. Then it proposes that these controversies be resolved by a perspective emphasizing institutional plurality and external and internal efficiencies for individual programs. Questions for further research are discussed in the conclusion.