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This article develops an interactive and relational conception of infrastructural state power for studying the capacity of authoritarian regimes to absorb popular protests. Based on an ethnography of the grassroots state in moments of unrest in China, the authors identify three microfoundations of Chinese authoritarianism: protest bargaining, legal-bureaucratic absorption, and patron-clientelism. Adopting, respectively, the logics of market exchange, rule-bound games, and interpersonal bonds, these mechanisms have the effect of depoliticizing social unrest and constitute a lived experience of authoritarian domination as a non-zero-sum situation, totalizing and transparent yet permissive of room for maneuvering and bargaining. This heuristic framework calls for bringing the subjective experience of subordination back into the theorizing of state domination. Adapted from the source document.

In the study of civil society, Tocqueville-inspired research has helped illuminate important connections between associations and democracy, while corporatism has provided a robust framework for understanding officially approved civil society organizations in authoritarian regimes. Yet neither approach accounts for the experiences of ostensibly illegal grassroots nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in an authoritarian state. Drawing on fieldwork in China, I argue that grassroots NGOs can survive in an authoritarian regime when the state is fragmented and when censorship keeps information local. Moreover, grassroots NGOs survive only insofar as they refrain from democratic claims-making and address social needs that might fuel grievances against the state. For its part, the state tolerates such groups as long as particular state agents can claim credit for any good works while avoiding blame for any problems. Grassroots NGOs and an authoritarian state can thus coexist in a \"contingent symbiosis\" that-far from pointing to an inevitable democratization-allows ostensibly illegal groups to operate openly while relieving the state of some of its social welfare obligations. Adapted from the source document.

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) pertains to the use of geographic information systems (GIS) to broaden public involvement in policymaking as well as to the value of GIS to promote the goals of nongovernmental organizations, grassroots groups, and community-based organizations. The article first traces the social history of PPGIS. It then argues that PPGIS has been socially constructed by a broad set of actors in research across disciplines and in practice across sectors. This produced and reproduced concept is then explicated through four major themes found across the breadth of the PPGIS literature: place and people, technology and data, process, and outcome and evaluation. The themes constitute a framework for evaluating current PPGIS activities and a roadmap for future PPGIS research and practice.

This article examines how nonprofit activist youth groups shape the civic and political trajectories of their adolescent members. Based on analyses of survey and semi-structured interview data gathered from low-income, racially diverse, and immigrant alumni members of grassroots youth organizing groups and from a comparison sample, findings suggest that adolescent activist groups foster high levels of civic and political participation in early adulthood. Similar to other public-oriented volunteer associations—such as student government—activist groups impart civic skills and experiences that facilitate later involvement. Yet activist groups may function as particularly intensive training grounds for future participation by developing members' political consciousness and engaging them in political processes. In spite of operating within a neoliberal context that sometimes inhibits the political activity of nonprofits, contemporary grassroots youth organizing groups, somewhat like the 1960s' civil rights groups decades earlier, can propel some young people toward ongoing engagement with social movements.

This article examines The Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC), assessing its achievements, challenges, and impact on transitional justice. Established in 2018 to investigate human rights abuses under Yahya Jammeh’s regime, the TRRC documented testimonies of torture, enforced disappearances, and systemic violence, creating a historical record and recommending reparative measures. However, its lack of prosecutorial power, political resistance, and structural limitations raise concerns about justice and accountability. Based on ethnographic research at the Women’s Association for Victims’ Empowerment (WAVE), this study explores how families of the disappeared navigate mourning and memory in the absence of closure. Drawing on Derrida, Ricœur, Foucault, and Arendt, it analyzes truth, power, and collective memory in shaping post-TRRC reconciliation efforts. While the TRRC provided a crucial platform for truth-telling, its legacy depends on sustained civil society advocacy and structural reform. This article argues that effective transitional justice requires grassroots activism, victim-centered approaches, and community-led initiatives beyond formal commissions.

A substantial section of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the global South depend on foreign funds to conduct their operations. This paper explores how the availability of foreign funding affects their downward accountability, abilities to effect social change, and their relative influence in relation to traditional grassroots, membership-based organizations (GROs), which tend not to receive such funding. Drawing on a case study of Nicaragua, we challenge the notion that foreign funding of domestic NGOs leads to the evolution of civil society organizations, which have incentives and abilities to organize the marginalized sections of society in ways to effect social change in their interests. Instead, we find that foreign funding and corresponding professionalization of the NGO sector creates dualism among domestic civil society organizations. Foreign funding enhances the visibility and prestige of the \"modern\" NGO sector over traditional GROs. This has grave policy implications because foreign-funded NGOs tend to be more accountable to donors than beneficiaries and are more focused on service delivery than social change-oriented advocacy. Une grande partie des organisations non-gouvernementales (ONG) de l'hémisphère sud dépendent de financements étrangers pour conduire leurs opérations. Cet article explore la façon dont les financements étrangers affectent la responsabilité au sein de ces organisations, leur capacité à amener des changements sociaux, et leur influence relative vis-à-vis des organisations de base traditionnelles fondées sur l'adhésion (ODB) qui ne reçoivent généralement pas de tels financements. En nous basant sur une étude de cas au Nicaragua, nous remettons en question l'idée que le financement étranger d'ONG locales amène à faire évoluer les organisations de la société civile, leur donnant la motivation et les moyens nécessaires pour organiser les groupes sociaux marginalisés dans le but d'améliorer leur condition. Nous constatons qu'au lieu de cela, le financement étranger et la professionnalisation du secteur des ONG qu'il entraîne crée une dichotomie entre organisations de la société civile locale. Le financement étranger améliore la visibilité et le prestige des ONG « modernes » au détriment des ODB traditionnelles. Ce fait a des conséquences politiques importantes car les ONG recevant des financements étrangers sont généralement plus responsables vis-à-vis de leur donateurs que de leur bénéficiaires et plus concentrées sur l'exécution de services que sur une action visant au changement social. Viele nicht-staatliche Organisationen auf der Südhalbkugel sind bei ihren Tätigkeiten auf Gelder aus dem Ausland angewiesen. Dieser Beitrag untersucht, wie sich die Verfügbarkeit ausländischer Mittel auf die vertikale Rechenschaftspflicht dieser Organisationen, ihre Fähigkeit, soziale Änderungen zu bewirken und ihren relativen Einfluss im Hinblick auf die traditionellen mitgliederbasierten Basisorganisationen, die in der Regel keine derartigen Gelder erhalten, auswirkt. Beruhend auf einer Fallstudie von Nicaragua hinterfragen wir die Auffassung, dass eine Finanzierung inländischer nicht-staatlicher Organisationen mit ausländischen Mitteln zu einer Entwicklung von Bürgergesellschaftsorganisationen führt, die daran interessiert und in der Lage sind, gesellschaftliche Randgruppen zu organisieren, um soziale Änderungen in ihrem Interesse zu bewirken. Stattdessen kommen wir zu dem Ergebnis, dass die Mittelbereitstellung aus dem Ausland und die entsprechende Professionalisierung des nicht-staatlichen Sektors einen Dualismus unter den inländischen Bürgergesellschaftsorganisationen schafft. Eine Finanzierung aus dem Ausland erhöht die Visibilität und das Ansehen des „modernen” nicht-staatlichen Sektors gegenüber traditionellen Basisorganisationen. Dies hat gravierende organisationspolitische Folgen, da sich nicht-staatliche Organisationen, die mit ausländischen Mitteln finanziert werden, in der Regel gegenüber ihren Spendern mehr verpflichtet fühlen als gegenüber ihren Leistungsempfängern und sich mehr auf die Leistungserbringung konzentrieren als auf eine Interessenvertretung, bei der soziale Änderungen im Vordergrund stehen. Una parte sustancial de las organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) en el Sur global dependen de fondos extranjeros para llevar a cabo sus operaciones. El presente documento explora cómo la disponibilidad de financiación extranjera afecta a su responsabilidad hacia abajo, a sus capacidades para efectuar el cambio social y a su influencia relativa en relación con las organizaciones tradicionales locales basadas en la afiliación de sus miembros (GRO, del inglés grassroots organizations), que tienden a no recibir dicha financiación. Basándonos en un estudio de caso de Nicaragua, cuestionamos la noción de que la financiación extranjera de ONG nacionales lleva a la evolución de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil, que tienen incentivos y capacidades para organizar las secciones marginadas de la sociedad de forma que efectúen el cambio social en su interés. En cambio, encontramos que la financiación extranjera y la correspondiente profesionalización del sector de las ONG crean dualismo entre las organizaciones nacionales de la sociedad civil. La financiación extranjera acentúa la visibilidad y el prestigio del sector moderno de las \"ONG\" sobre las organizaciones locales (GRO) tradicionales. Esto tiene graves implicaciones políticas porque las ONG que reciben financiación extranjera tienden a ser más responsables ante los donantes que beneficiarias y se centran más en la entrega de servicios que en la defensa orientada al cambio social.

While existing scholarship focuses attention on the impact of state control and repression on Chinese civil society, the increasingly independent role of the Communist Party has been largely overlooked. This article reviews the Party's drive to “comprehensively cover” grassroots society over the previous decade against the theoretical debate unfolding among Chinese scholars and Party theoreticians regarding the Party's role with respect to civil society. Focusing on greater Shanghai, frequently cited as a national model of Party-building, I describe the Party's advance and the emergence of Party-organized non-governmental organizations (PONGOs), a new hybrid form of social organization sponsored and supported by local Party committees. I argue that these developments invite a reconsideration of our understandings of the ongoing “associational revolution” and of the Party's relationship to China's flourishing “third realm.”

This study advances recent theorizing on causality and emergence by analyzing how new activist groups create a collective sense of plausible tactics. A comparative ethnographic approach is used to observe shifts in the discussions of four fledgling activist groups. In each group, implicit discursive rules, often set off by minor comments and events, authorize some options and silence others. Although such rules emerge without deliberation or explicit decision making, they shape the group's sense of possibility into the future. This study contributes both a new understanding of the role of contingency in collective activism and a method for using ethnographic observation to locate subtle causal mechanisms in social life. Adapted from the source document.

Collaboration involves stakeholders and the public in a process of consensus building to address some of the most difficult environmental management problems facing society today. Collaborative groups vary widely, ranging from small watershed councils to regional ecosystem collaboratives to groups addressing large-scale policy issues. While these collaboratives all match the common principles of collaboration, a closer examination reveals many differences. Using institutional theories about levels of decision making provides a way of classifying collaboratives along a spectrum from action level to organizational level to policy level. This typology is applied to thirty-six collaboration case studies in Australia and the United States that were investigated over a series of years through interviews, observation, document analysis, and surveys. The application reveals different tendencies among the case types in terms of population, size, problem significance, institutional setting, and focus of activities. The typology also reveals functional differences in the types of stakeholders involved, the management arrangements for implementation, and the approaches to implementing change. This typology can help practitioners better understand the challenges and appropriate types of collaborations for different settings. It helps highlight differences in the role of government and decentralization of power. It distinguishes the different theoretical foundations for different types of collaboratives. Finally, it elucidates the different evaluation approaches for different types of collaboratives.

Why do some Chinese cities take part in waves of nationalist protest but not others? Nationalist protest remains an important but understudied topic within the study of contentious politics in China, particularly at the subnational level. Relative to other protests, nationalist mobilization is more clustered in time and geographically widespread, uniting citizens in different cities against a common target. Although the literature has debated the degree of state-led and grassroots influence on Chinese nationalism, we argue that it is important to consider both the propensity of citizens to mobilize and local government fears of instability. Analysing an original dataset of 377 anti-Japanese protests across 208 of 287 Chinese prefectural cities, we find that both state-led patriotism and the availability of collective action resources were positively associated with nationalist protest, particularly “biographically available” populations of students and migrants. In addition, the government's role was not monolithically facilitative. Fears of social unrest shaped the local political opportunity structure, with anti-Japanese protests less likely in cities with larger populations of unemployed college graduates and ethnic minorities and more likely in cities with established leaders. 为何有的城市加入到民族主义抗议浪潮之中而有的城市却没有? 民族主义抗议, 特别是在地方层面上, 始终是一个在中国抗争性政治学领域重要却仍待探索的课题。与其他抗议相比, 民族主义的动员在时间上比较集中而在地域分布上也比较广泛, 将不同城市的公民朝着一个共同的目标联系起来。尽管现有文献已经对国家引导与民间力量对中国民族主义的影响程度进行过争论, 我们认为将公民的动员倾向与当地政府对不稳定的恐惧两者同时纳入考虑范围是很重要的。通过分析一组包含中国 287 个地级市中发生在 208 个市内的 377 次反日抗议的原创性数据, 我们发现国家引导下的爱国主义与集体行动资源的可利用性两者都与民族主义抗议呈正性关联, 特别是对于学生和流动人口等拥有比较充裕的时间的人群。此外, 政府的角色也不是一味的促进。对社会不安的忧虑塑造了当地的政治机会架构, 使得反日抗议在有很多未就业大学毕业生和少数民族人口的地方发生的可能性较小, 而在有地位巩固的领导者的城市发生的可能性较大。