Paper short abstract:

This paper offers a conceptualisation of government-organised non-governmental organisations. It identifies how they are qualitatively different from NGO and theorises how their increasing presence in development can change state-society relations and international politics.

Paper long abstract:

The role of non-governmental organisations in local and global governance has continued to grow, widening in terms of issue areas and across contexts. Nowhere has this growth been more notable, and for some puzzling, than in authoritarian states like China. Since the presence of NGOs has long been seen as a marker of civil society and antecedent to democracy, the growth of these organisations in authoritarian polities can be surprising. At the very least, this growth suggests a changing character of state-society relations. But, it has also brought about the rise of a new organisational type: the paradoxical government-organised non-governmental organisation (GONGO). Although these organisations have proved to be an academic curiosity, they have heretofore not been properly conceptualised. In this paper we carefully identify how they are qualitatively different from NGOs, and we theorise how the growth of these organisations can change state-society relations and international politics, both in authoritarian and democratic contexts.