The contested role of foreign and domestic foundations in the PR China

Location
A19 Trent Building
Date(s)
Thursday 10th November 2016 (16:00-17:30)
Contact
For more information, please contact Ailsa Mitchell
Description

Andreas Fulda from the School of Politics and International Relations will present to IAPS on 10 November on the contested role of foreign and domestic foundations in the PR China: policies, positions, paradigms, power.

All are welcome!

The contested role of foreign and domestic foundations in the PR China: policies, positions, paradigms, power

In this talk, Dr Andreas Fulda examines how foundations – foreign and domestic, public and private, operating and grant making – engage with Chinese civil society organizations (CSOs) in an authoritarian political context. Following a discussion of conceptual caveats in current foundation research, he investigates how China’s evolving policy framework has influenced the development trajectories, legal statuses and modes of operation of both foreign and domestic foundations. He then discusses foundation positions, paradigms and power. Based on 12 interviews conducted in 2014 with foundation representatives and CSO leaders, Dr Fulda will determine how foreign and domestic foundations position themselves vis-à-vis the party-state, market and civil society; understand philanthropy; and deal with the power imbalance in the relationship between grant maker and grantee. His research findings reveal that, in the case of the PRC, there is considerable paradigmatic convergence and divergence between foreign and domestic foundations.

About the speaker

As a trained social and political scientist Dr Fulda is research active in the fields of EU-China relations as well as philanthropy and civil society in Greater China. He received his PhD from Free University of Berlin in 2009. His PhD supervisor was Professor Eberhard Sandschneider, former Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). In his published PhD thesis Förderung partizipativer Entwicklung in der VR China he critiqued Germany’s foreign and development policy towards China and examined new approaches for civil society assistance (VS Verlag fuer Sozialwissenschaften, 2009).

He wrote his PhD thesis whilst working in Beijing as a development practitioner. As a consultant he has helped design and implement three major capacity building initiatives for Chinese civil society organisations: the Participatory Urban Governance Programme for Migrant Integration (2006-07), the Social Policy Advocacy Coalition for Healthy and Sustainable Communities (2009-11) and the EU-China Civil Society Dialogue Programme on Participatory Public Policy (2011-14).

His consultancy work over the past ten years has led to two additional publications: a Chinese-language Policy Advocacy Manual on Environment and Health for NPOs (Zhongguo Huanjing Chubanshe, 2013) and the book Civil Society Contributions to Policy Innovation in the PR China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For both book projects he enlisted twenty-eight leading scholars and civil society practitioners from around the world. Both publications are testament to his highly collaborative working style.

Dr Fulda is currently providing consultancy services for Geneva Global, a leading philanthropic consulting firm based in Philadelphia, USA. His commissioned research is instrumental to the China Social Sector Pioneers programme (CSSP). CSSP is a strategic initiative funded by the Legatum Foundation and managed by Geneva Global.

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