Civil Society Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in China: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

• In Event: Covid Impact on the Third Sector

Abstract

Non-state actors contribute to enhancing social resilience to cope with extreme events. In the face of COVID-19, although governments have taken the initiative in fighting the pandemic, civil society engagement has been essential in providing social services during this extreme event (Cai et al., 2021). While pandemics, natural disasters, and human-caused disasters differ in their characteristics, they share similar uncertainties that demand contributions from a wide range of individuals and organizations. The concept of “social resilience” underlines the societal effort to respond to and recover from extreme events. The “transboundary nature of modern threats” calls for a multisector approach, where different sectors of the society—public, private, and nonprofit—all leverage their strengths in responding to extreme events (Comfort et al., 2010; Kapucu and Van Wart, 2006). Experts have advocated for a bottom-up community approach accentuating the civil society sector, which is considered more motivated, flexible, and creative than governmental agencies and conventional businesses (Kapucu, 2008).

Previous studies have identified that the number of registered civil society organizations (CSOs) and volunteers help reduce economic damage and human losses in natural disasters (Yoon et al., 2016), yet little is known about the factors explaining NGOs’ different levels of participation in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on a qualitative comparative analysis of 42 NGOs in China, this study examines the roles played by civil society sectors in China during extreme events, and aims to explore the following research question: What factors facilitate NGOs’ participation in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic?

To address the research questions mentioned above, this study employs the research method of fuzzy-set comparative qualitative analysis (fsQCA). This study selects 42 NGOs in China as the empirical focus. We examine these social organizations in great detail to map out the scope and different forms of civil society responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in enhancing social resilience in China. Primary data comes from semi-structured interviews with NGO leaders and secondary sources obtained from the Internet and media to construct an original case database. Building on the database, we codes the key variables (e.g., organizational capacity, institutional factors, previous collaborations with government or other CSOs, and transnational engagement) to facilitate fsQCA.

The results of fsQCA suggest that organizational capacity, past experience, political connection, internet and communication technology, and international and domestic social networks are the key conditions associated with NGOs' high-level participation in fighting COVID-19. Moreover, there are four configurations of NGOs’ high-level participation in the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be further categorized into two different types, namely political connection, grassroots orientation.

This study not only provides a timely explanation of civil society response to mitigate the damage of COVID-19, but also shows how the historical-contextual factors (political environment, funding structure, social stability, etc.) shape the particular outcomes of civil society response to the pandemic. This study enhances our understanding of social origins theory (Salamon and Anheier, 1998), with the empirical evidence from China.

References

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Author

• Qihai Cai, Macau University of Science and Technology