HONG KONG
There adapts the ‘social origins theory’ by and did argue that the nonprofit regime in Hong Kong can be characterized as statist–corporatist. As the statist–corporatist regime displays the hybrid character of both a statist and a corporatist regime: its statist character can be seen in the high degree of autonomy of the state, its tendency to limit freedom of association and the low commitment to social provision. (2005) Its corporatist character is evident in the high level of participation by designated nonprofit organizations in selected areas of social provision under state funding. It is shown how the development of this nonprofit regime was historically shaped by four factors; namely, the interest of the colonial state in maintaining domination, economic and public financial policy, the historical formation of the welfare system and political regime change. The was distinct historical forces and the path of development in an Asian state that might affect nonprofit development. (2005) Aside, Yun-wing Sung argues that Hong Kong needs to redefine its strategy of being a service center for manufacturing on the Asian mainland and look to broader business services and high technology. And echoes the point that Hong Kong must improve its technology infrastructure and invest in technology research and development. According to , global economic changes pressure Asian firms to redefine their approach to national business systems and integrate themselves more fully into global networks.
Thus, the recent and projected growth of cities and the increasing share of Asia's population living in urban areas, at the same time as the region becomes more integrated with the global economy will pose challenges for leaders. Development issues are approached broadly and technology chiefly enters the discussion as technology policy and infrastructure in Hong Kong. Domestic and international business appears indirectly, mostly as commentary on Thailand's small business enterprises, reference to Hong Kong's industrial restructuring and general observations on business networks. Political analysis receives the most attention, particularly the debate over democratization at the intranational scale; multinational relations are given secondary importance. (2003) The emerging nonprofit service regimes have operated within the social contexts and the nonprofit law in Asia is evolving out of a national security context rather than a civil liberties context. Existing laws and regulations throughout the region reflect the security concerns of former colonial regimes, the social control orientation of various types of authoritarian regimes and the historical tradition of state dominance over the economy and society like the ‘engaging in acts that harm the public interest’ (South Korea); ‘engaging in activities detrimental to the national interest’ (Hong Kong); for ‘being managed in a manner contrary to public order, good morals, or the security of the state’ (Thailand) to allude to some continuing problems in the nonprofit enabling environment and suggested the need for greatly increased public understanding and support for the regimes that will affect the future development of the non-profit services in strengthening management and better systems of governance. (2003)
The regimes often referred to as civil society and in some countries are beginning to receive substantial support from their own citizens and governments. Furthermore, a vibrant nonprofit social regimes, requires and emerges from a society that values pluralism, autonomy and innovation and acknowledges the legitimate role of private actors to participate in the formulation and implementation of public policy. ( 2003)
THAILAND
Moreover, Thailand's nonprofit regimes have long viewed by the country's various military governments as a potential if not actual competitor for power, is increasingly recognized as essential to the nation's economic and social development efforts. (1991) The distrust of the state and the wariness of its administration have by no means disappeared, as many grassroots development and advocacy organizations continue to be suspected of harboring communist or other political sentiments that the state deems hostile. Nevertheless, recent long-range plans issued by the government openly call for cooperation with a wide array of nonprofit organizations, including those active in rural development. The nonprofit regimes in Thailand, has its origins in religion. From its earliest times, Buddhism has been a significant source of philanthropy and social service, and remains so today. (1991) Buddhism also served as a source of political stability, which is why its treatment under various regimes has been notably different from that accorded other nonprofits.
During the post-World War II era, non-religious organizations came to the fore, particularly advocacy and development groups. In spite of periods of suppression, such groups continue to grow in number and type of activity in relation to the evolution of its nonprofit organizations, describes the types of Thai nonprofit organizations and relations among the state, this suppression of non-governmental and nonprofit activity lasted until the latter part of the 1980s. The unregistered groups began to revive their activities, and new groups formed, slowly assuming an increasingly active role in the development of Thai society. (1991) Today, most of the public oriented organizations devoted to development were founded during the late 1980s. Since the fall of Saigon and Phnom Penh in 1975, Thailand has experienced an influx of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian refugees, most of which have been placed in refugee camps just inside the Thai border, the situation has influenced the composition of the Thai nonprofit services. Ideally, only three types of nonprofit regimes are recognized and registered by the Thai government: associations, labor unions and federations, and foundations. Other terms exist, such as councils and leagues, but to acquire legal status they must register under one of the three legally acceptable terms. All registered nonprofits are non-political; they must, in fact, declare themselves non-political under their written statement of objectives. Political parties are, on the other hand, registered separately and, of course, allowed to have political objectives. Unregistered organizations, including development and religious groups, may or may not be recognized by the government, but do relate to Thailand's nonprofit sector, either as component or borderline entities (1991).
Grassroots organizations and advocacy groups usually do not register with government agencies, often because of burdensome endowment or membership requirements. (1985) Beyond development and advocacy groups, various unregistered centers and institutions in Thailand operate action projects and/or research programs. Many religious organizations are also unregistered. Every village has a temple or what engaged in religious philanthropic activities. Umbrella groups that do not register are those that coordinate a variety of types of organizations working on particular projects. (1985) Thus, in modern times, the Thai society has been vigorously indoctrinated with nationalistic sentiments that were supposed to serve as a "psychological foundation" for the Thai (1985 ). After the reign of Rama VI, the government started the process of democratization. However, the constitutional government that came to power after the 1932 coup d'etat shifted its priorities away from the questions of ethnicity and nationality. Since the government did not support the nonprofit sector, international nonprofit organizations provided a substantial contribution to the development of the Thai nonprofit regime. (1985) The Thai nonprofit sector comprises associations and foundations engaged in philanthropy, economic and social development, health and social services, advocacy, and cultural and recreational activities. In general, these organizations meet the criteria of the structural/operational definition of the nonprofit sector suggested by and (1992), they are formally organized, they are separate from the government and operate primarily or largely for the public at large, they do not distribute income in excess of expenses among their own members, they are self-governing and they include a meaningful degree of voluntarism. (1992)
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea’s nonprofit regime has been invisible in the country’s institutional landscape mainly due to the deep-rooted tradition of state-centered society. Thus, any statistics on the sector as a whole do not exist. Despite this, several components of the nonprofit regime, such as religious organizations, membership organizations, private educational institutions, and welfare organizations, have grown since the early part of the 20th century. These developments were joined by labor movements and the rise of civil society organizations in the mid-1980s. (1994) Aside, the South Korean nonprofit sector has been shaped and has developed as a comparable entity to the state and business sector. South Korean society has evolved dramatically since the 19th century. To cope with the new challenges posed by the Western powers in the 19th century, Korea had to adopt an open-door policy in order to achieve a new standard of civilization. Although the Korean government made belated efforts to pursue open-door policies, it could not successfully survive in the new East Asian international order of the early 20th century. The end of Japanese colonial rule (1909-1945) and the building of the Republic of Korea in 1948 brought about a liberal democratic political system and modern social life. Since then an abundance of political groups, voluntary associations and social movements have been founded, though this situation has experienced disjunctive moments, such as the Korean War of 1950-53, the military coups of 1961 and 1980, and authoritarian rule. (1994) These associations and movements are closely related to the role and characteristics of the South Korean state.
Aside, definitions and concepts concerning the institutions and associations located in the area between the state and business reflect a distinct Korean history and social formations. Such conceptualizations are closely tied to the ways that societies have developed to define and provide public goods and social services and to resolve social and political conflicts. In South Korea, the area between the state and business has not been commonly understood as a single institutional regime. (1994) Traditional Confucian culture and successive authoritarian regimes have retarded development of an autonomous and independent nonprofit sector in South Korea. It is imperative to clarify and analyze these factors considering that numerous nonprofit organizations have recently emerged and that their influence is growing ever stronger. It is not easy to outline the boundaries of the nonprofit sector in South Korea, since historically there has been no obvious distinction between the state and civil society. (1997) The familiar conceptual ambiguities that surround the subject of civil society have generated a scholarly debate on whether or not South Korea can be said to have a civil society. While civil society in the sense of a non-state arena is well developed in South Korea, civil society in the sense of associational groups is not. Before 1945, the nonprofit sector was dependent on the state and as a result it built no indigenous capacity. Kinship-based and centralized agrarian social systems did not develop into a civil society with diversity and dynamics. (1997)
Therefore, kinship or village-based voluntary organizations dominated over any emergence of an independent civil society. Even though the rural gentry class had formed their own autonomous social boundaries, ordinary people could not form any kind of civil organizations, with the exception of self-help organizations and many service-oriented religious groups and charity or enlightening institutions were also founded during this period. Korea has been increasingly influenced by nongovernmental civil organizations since liberation in 1945. (1999) The Korean experience of the nonprofit sector in the post-Liberation period can be roughly divided into three stages. The first stage encompasses the period before the early 1960s when the primary goal of the state was to maintain national security. Most nonprofit organizations in those days were service-oriented, providing welfare services or implementing development projects for the poor, and were mostly supported, if not established, by foreign aid. In this period Korean society was still agrarian, and community and blood-based associations were popular. (1999) The realm of civil society in an agrarian society was in one’s neighbors, communities and religious activities. Nevertheless, many political groups and social movements appeared in the changing Korean society, expanding the social sphere dramatically. They were ideologically diverse and successful in mobilizing people. Shortly after the liberation there were strong labor and peasant movements that resisted military rule by the United States and the right.
Consequently, the revolutionary movement broke out in April of 1960 when students and intellectuals revolted against the undemocratic state. The second stage began with the authoritarian developmental state. It lasted from the early 1960s until 1987 when the authoritarian regime fell under the Great Democratic Movement. Rapid growth of the economy resulted in the differentiation of society and the development of a middle class. (1992) Civil society organizations are new actors in South Korean society especially after the economic crisis of 1997. Sometimes they influence the behavior of the state and business. The reason the role of civil society organizations is highlighted in the reform process is that political parties cannot serve as a leading force of the reform. In South Korea, it is much easier for civic engagement and citizens’ participation in politics to contact civil society organizations than political parties. Under these circumstances, civil society organizations assume the role of monitoring the government and the law-making process. (1997) Furthermore, the pressure they exert on the government and parties to adapt their policy alternatives intensified. Major civil society organizations have equipped themselves with research institutes and policy commissions to strengthen their policy-presenting capacity. Groups of civil society organizations have been emerging in South Korean society since democratization started in earnest in 1987. South Korean civil society was very much dependent on the state and had little indigenous capacity as a result. In this sense there is no true civil society in South Korea. (1992)
In South Korea it seems that most NGOs have five crucial characteristics of the structural-operational definition of nonprofit organizations used by the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project (1999). This means that most NGOs are organized, private, self-governing, non-profit-distributing, and voluntary. Some NGOs exhibit these five characteristics more clearly than others. There are some NGOs that do not fit well into this definition. In South Korea there are many incorporated foundations that are established by the government under special laws. They are on the borderline between the private and the public. These specially incorporated foundations are prevalent in the fields of research and education, culture and art, and international exchange and cooperation. The growth of civil society organizations in South Korea reflects their increasing role and capacity. Growing awareness of the need for popular participation in governance, combined with disenchantment with the performance of the government and recognition of its limited capabilities, has contributed to the growth of civil society. (1999) Socio-economic factors, such as economic development and differentiation of society, have also contributed to the growth of South Korean civil society. Civic organizations have attained impressive legitimacy in South Korean society during the last decade. However, the role of other actors should be emphasized, such as the media, trade unions, service-providers, and professional organizations that have been involved in the development of civil society. South Korean political circles are also keenly aware of the rising tide of these civic organizations. It seems that bureaucrats and chaebols (big business) still remain suspicious of civil organizations, but they could not ignore the influence and strength of civil and labor groups. Civic groups and labor unions are now important powerful players in the governance of South Korean society. (1999)
Social origins theory
The particular constellations of social, economic and historical developments that lead to these different regimes can differ from place to place. Each nonprofit regime is a byproduct of a complex set of historical forces with distinctive patterns that can be analyzed and compared.
Types of nonprofit regimes
Type of nonprofit regimes
Government spending
Size of nonprofit sector
Forms of financing
Some distinctive features
1. liberal
Low
Large
private giving
a strong middle-class
2. corporatist
High
Large
government support
state entering into collaboration with key social elites
3. social democratic
High
Small
private giving
A strong working-class
4. statist
Low
Small
fees and service charge
An authoritarian state
Nonprofit Regimes According to the Social Origins Theory
Government Social Nonprofit Scale
Welfare Spending Low High
Low Statist Liberal
High Social democratic Corporatist
Source: (1998).
The understanding of nonprofit organizations in a comparative context has been framed by the pioneering work of (1998). In data collected through the (JHCNSP), they propose a new theoretical approach to explaining patterns of nonprofit development internationally. Their “social origins” theory constitutes a valuable new perspective in comparative third-sector research. Nonetheless, it still rests on a two-sector view of society and the assumptions of the prevailing government failure approach in understanding the role of nonprofit organizations. Salamon and Anheier tested existing nonprofit theories against data assembled on eight countries as part of the JHCNSP (1998). Finding none of the theories adequate to explain the variations among countries in the size, the composition, the financing of the respective nonprofit regimes, they proposed the social origins approach. In contrast to the single-factor explanations advanced in the context of neoclassical government market failure models, the social origins theory focuses on a broad range of societal, political, and economic factors in explaining the nonprofit phenomenon in a comparative perspective. (1998) There emphasizes that institutional choices about whether to rely on market, nonprofit, or state provision of social and other key services are heavily constrained by historical development and evolving societal patterns (1998). Moreover, the social origins theory (1998) identifies four more or less distinct routes of nonprofit development or four types of nonprofit regimes building on earlier work (1990) that each of the four regimes is characterized by two key dimensions: the extent of government social welfare spending and the scale of the nonprofit sector. In the so-called liberal regime, low government social welfare spending is associated with a relatively large nonprofit sector. At the opposite extreme is the social democratic regime. (1998) The state has assumed the task of sheltering the working class against social risks so that little room is left for service-providing nonprofit organizations. High government social welfare spending therefore goes together with a relatively small part of the nonprofit sector. In between these two models are two additional regimes characterized as the corporatist regime and the statist regime. In the former, the state has made common cause with nonprofit institutions, so that the scale of the nonprofit sector increases with the growth of government social welfare spending. In the second one, the state retains control of social welfare related activities so that both government social welfare spending and nonprofit development remain highly constrained. (1998) The social origins approach is a good illustration of how observation sentences can be made only in the light of a conceptual framework or a categorical system that gives them meaning. As based on a static dichotomy between government and nonprofit service providers, the social origins approach fails to take into account the evolutionary character and the time dimension of the nonprofit phenomenon. Nonprofit organizations are vital components of local human service delivery systems, often providing an important link between the reliance of individuals on public assistance and their transition to economic self-sufficiency and practitioners that nonprofits represent a viable alternative to the direct government provision of social services. In addition, accompanying the devolution of social services and welfare reform in the 1990s, nonprofits were expected to assume an increasingly larger role in building the human capital of local communities. Even now, as Congress debates the reauthorization of the 1996 federal welfare reform bill, nonprofits continue to serve as the mediating institutions that move clients from welfare to work. ( 1987)
The status of human service nonprofits as key elements of local service delivery systems often overshadows their competition with other groups for financial support and political legitimacy. Indeed, like most organizations, human service nonprofits operate in competitive environments, where financial and political resources can be scarce and groups often must be entrepreneurial to attract funding and clients. In these competitive structures, some human service nonprofits thrive and succeed, expanding their funding and client bases and even their political influence ( 1987). Moreover, in the past few decades, the availability of government funding from grants, contracts, and other payments grew substantially as a percentage of the budgets of these groups (1995). More recently, the devolution and privatization of social service programs under welfare reform further changed this mix, as states and localities experimented with different service delivery mechanisms. Local social service systems are embedded in the larger sociopolitical environment. Social service systems composed of a constellation of organizations, including secular human service nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and for-profit enterprises exist within and across jurisdictions. Government plays a significant role in these systems by providing substantial financial resources, regulations and the articulation of public goals (1995). Although government is a prominent player, the nonprofit human service sector historically has been crucial in these service delivery systems. Also, in an environment characterized by an increasing emphasis on market forces to allocate public goods, nonprofit providers find themselves in direct competition with other sectors over funding, legitimacy in the public domain, and even clients and staff (1998).
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