The Path To Realizing The Autonomy Of Industry Associations In Public Governance

Industry associations who participate in public affair governance need to obtain autonomy relative to the government in the effective interaction with it, in order to restain and balance the overexpansion of state power. Also the autonomy relative to their members is required when serving their members so as to avoid excessive control by their members and behaving as a simple transmission belt to transfer benefits from their members. Besides, when industry associations have diverse sources of resources and enhance their abilities by commercializing, they are supposed to avoid disorienting the organization target because of commercialization. Therefore, industry associations should extricate themselves from the status of political dependency, member manipulation and corporatization to achieve multiple autonomies relative to the government, their members and their commercialization tendency.If the autonomy relative to these three parties is built on the basis of the estrangement logic, the governance capacity of industry associations will be weakened due to the loss of the supportive resources. When industry associations participate in public governance, it is possible to achieve these goals simultaneously by building the network of mutual support grounded on the logic of dependence. Industry associations can develop a balanced existential status by properly relying on the three supporters:members, government and commercialization. In this balanced status, support and influence, which industry associations obtain by depending on two of them, is the basis of the autonomy relative to the third party. Thus, industry associations can develop the autonomy relative to all of the three in the close relationship. And the participation in public governance is the factor to push industry associations into equilibrium.The empirical results indicate that commercialized industry associations are not common and they cannot benefit much from commercialization. Their participation in public governance mainly promotes their operation relying on the support from their members and government, which develops the balance between these two supporters. In this balanced status, industry associations depend on the support and influence of one party and obtain autonomy relative to another party in some extent. However, this balanced status still can be optimized. Industry associations can optimize their financial condition and human resource, as well as enhance the power of administration staff through moderate commercialization. Consequently, first of all, the balanced status among members, government and administration office can be formed and industry associations may improve their goals in the holistic and long-term perspective. Secondly, the balanced status with strong support from the three parties will push industry associations to optimize their participation in public governance and their performance in it. Thirdly, as a result, autonomy relative to members and government can be improved. Meanwhile, with the restraint of members and government, excessive commercialization can be restricted effectively.At last, the system which industry associations might change will lead to the evolution of their autonomy and the reconstruction of their existential status. In the new system, the alteration of operational logic of industry associations might cause excessive control by members, which will result in the loss of autonomy relative to their members in some degree. Also the tendency to club federations will become a big challenge when industry associations build the balanced status. Hence industry associations should structure their internal mechanism and develop the balanced status among club federations to restrict the influences of members and improve the dependency relative to members, so that fragmentation of interest of industry associations can be avoided and the overall level of governance of industry can be improved.