| "Non-local chambers of commerce" (NCCs, for short) are a kind of NGO which started to emerge in the middle 1990s. It is the non-profit social group corporation with the name of original administrative region, which are initiated and established voluntarily and legally by the foreign invested enterprises (including individual industrialists and businessmen) from the same original region in the registration place. Unlike the official growth mode in which the state uses in Chinese economic associations, NCCs arise from the bottom-up as a driving force of civil society, accompanying the growing economic strength of civil society. Depending on their strong economic effects and organizational advantages, NCCs use all kinds of political strategies to participate in local governance publicly and impact on the public policy process. Taking NCCs as study object, the dissertation will analyze their growth mode and behavior strategy, and explore their influence in public policy making and implementation, based on describing their organizational system and developing status.Compared with other economic NGOs, the NCCs'specificity reads as follows: First, Special "dual-link" phenomenon. NCCs not only act as a link between enterprise and government, but also a bond links the local and non-local governments, so it is more concerned. Secondly, Special status. According to "Societies Registration Ordinance" promulgated by State Department, NCCs is illegal because they have no definite business unit in charge. But they have carried a very good development by lobbying, negotiation and grafting. Thirdly, Special features. NCCs have played the functions of general CCs, providing organized channels for interests expressing, setting up platform for dialogue between government and business. What is important, NCCs opened a new window for economic cooperation between local governments, and may become an effective mechanism of the economic cooperation among local governments. Fourthly, Behavior diversity. Because of the different dominant force, some of NCCs focus on providing public services and information support to members, and some focus on promoting economic cooperation between the governments, and others focus on using the political strategies to influence policy making.By the point of view on the growth mode, according to the different leading force in the growing process, NCCs can be divided into Government-led, Government-public, and Private-led. By the point of view on the behavior strategy, according to their different stages of development, NCCs use different strategies, which include:Servicing members, Servicing government and Influencing policy. Influencing policy is the most widely used strategy. Studies have demonstrated that there are five broad strategies for them to affect public policy:institutional participation, information consulting, interests representing, creating political effect, extensive use of social mobilization. This paper summarizes these strategies into three levels:Core strategy-act as policy-maker to involve in the policy making process directly, Centre strategy-to influence policy-maker; External strategy-to influence policy outside and affect the policy making indirectly.Based on the refined theory of the growth mode and behavior strategies of NCCs, this dissertation presents a core hypothesis-growth mode is the decisive factor of selection of behavior strategies, that is a different growth pattern determines the different behavior Strategy of NCCs. (1) They are good at using the most "near" resources to determine the choosing behavioral strategies:the government-led NCC is "diplomatic" means, the main strategy is to act as a platform and mechanism for horizontal cooperation among local governments; the NCCs of private type are "umbrellas" for private enterprises to develop in the remote location, the main strategy is to influence government decision-making behavior, to seek resources for the member enterprises and to provide them public services. (2) Starting from the growth mode, the NCCs in different places, according to their degree of development and size to determine the behavior of the external strategic focus, center strategy, or the core strategy. (3) NCCs'growth mode and behavior strategy have "mutually reinforcing" effect to each other, leading to NCCs to polarization. This paper selects typical NCCs in Tianjin as part of the study case to identify the hypotheses.However, due to some features of the way of Chinese transition, there are some problems about NCCs'power and capital formation in the combination of community officials and business interests. The lack of system constraints and legal interaction mechanism makes them useful to local economic development while also hurt the social equity. Therefore, this dissertation attempts to put up with some preliminary policy recommendations on the standpoint of public policy process, and seeks to promote its positive effects, and inhibit the emergence of its negative effects from the institutional level. |
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