Shifts from direct implementation to advocacy-based programming have been documented across many non-governmental organisation (NGO) sectors, including animal welfare. Semi-structured interviews with 32 staff from different positions within animal welfare NGOs explored recent programming changes. Maintaining a balance between direct implementation and advocacy-based activities emerged as a strong theme. The findings suggest that risks are associated with both the direct implementation status quo and transitioning to an advocacy-based focus. Risks of the former include treating symptoms rather than root causes of welfare problems. Organisational change can be disruptive and necessitates realignment of core competences, in turn influencing NGO mission. Identified risks of transition include loss of individuals whose values fail to align with new programming directions, increased upwards accountability requirements for accessing institutional donors and difficulties when phasing out direct implementation approaches. Whilst having to be dynamic, NGOs need to evaluate the risks associated with programming decisions, considering their vision, mission and staff identity in order to ensure that welfare programming is as effective as possible.

This article seeks to extend the theoretical discussion of interstitial emergence to an authoritarian context. An interstitial space is a space whose relations with the dominant power structure are not yet institutionalized. In analyzing interstitial emergence in an authoritarian context, it is necessary to examine the interaction between interstitial space and the state as an institutionalizing force and recognize that 1) institutionalization is an ongoing process that spans over a period and 2) a state’s intervention may induce unintended consequences. The rise and fall of labor NGO activism in China between 1996 and 2020 are used as a case to illustrate the theoretical discussion. Labor NGOs emerged out of the interstices of state control since the 1990s. Although the state started to regulate these organizations since the late 2000s, its intervention lacked consistency. Before the state finally gained the capacity to enforce rules, which was around 2015, labor NGOs had already launched a series of advocacy activism and cultivated a group of activists who identified with the value of social movement. Hence, although the activism was eventually incorporated, it had successfully thematized labor issues and produced enduring impact on the culture of public discussion.

Although the Chinese state has an outsized influence on shaping civil society in China, extant literature has generally overlooked the increasing role of the market in its non-governmental organization (NGO) development. This paper examines the marketization of Chinese civil society through an ethnographic investigation of funding relationships between domestic Chinese philanthropic foundations and grassroots NGOs. Two case studies of foundation venture philanthropy projects show that businesspeople, through their intensive involvement in foundation-led funding programmes, are introducing strong market influences to the non-profit sector. Notwithstanding the attraction of foundation funding, many NGOs decry the negative side effects of non-profit marketization. We argue that NGOs in this context risk being transformed into social product providers and resource-chasing machines, detracting from the self-directed social missions that many NGO leaders see as their original calling. These observations on emergent NGO–foundation relationships also reflect participants’ increasing uncertainty about the direction of Chinese civil society development.

To examine the early development of humanitarian norm cascades, the author focuses on the processes that led to the adoption of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. Even though major military powers like the United States, Russia, and China opposed these initiatives, the latter set in motion quick norm cascades that brought about international legal norms stigmatizing land mines and cluster munitions. It is conventionally asserted that international norms emerge either due to great power backing or despite great power opposition, but the author argues that new norms can also take off because of great power opposition. When ngos and leading states actively foster normative change, a particular type of norm cascade is engineered—one generated by different mechanisms and starting earlier than postulated in the literature. Early norm cascading is driven not by emulation of peers and ngo naming and shaming of laggard states, but rather by leadership aspirations and naming and praising.

This article analyzes the restoration of Jordan's UN Dana Biosphere Reserve cottages for ecotourism and home building in the neighboring village of Qadisiyya as competing land projects. Whereas a multimillion-dollar endowment from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) restores Dana's houses as a “heritage” village for a tourist economy, families in Qadisiyya build houses with income from provisional labor to shore up a familial future. Each act of home building articulates a political claim to land. This article argues for attention to the architecture of the environment in the comparison of two, once-related villages. A comparative analysis of Dana and Qadisiyya reveals the competing socio-political objectives of home building for the future of Jordan and the implications of environment in that struggle.

Disarmament and non-proliferation education is a key tool in curbing the spread of nuclear weapons, with a view to their elimination. This article examines the remarkable story of the International School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts (ISODARCO) on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary of continuous engagement in educational and training activities. ISODARCO offers a unique forum where nuclear experts from different backgrounds and approaches can meet, debate, and promote action as a transnational knowledge-based network of experts and, equally important, pass on their expertise to the ‘next generation of non-proliferation specialists’. The contribution of this small Italian NGO is indeed noteworthy, highly praised at the national and especially international level, and worth the attention of an audience broader than just non-proliferation and security experts.

This article uses a case study to analyse the fissures between human rights advocates and NGO practitioners. Since 2009, the Open Constitution Initiative, an organization run by human rights advocates, has been campaigning for migrant children's right to attend local schools. While fragmented resistance on the same issue has long existed in activities organized by migrant community NGOs, there has been almost no cooperation between the two parties during the campaign. Based on ethnographic research, I elaborate on how these two groups of activists differ in their strategies and goals, and how their choices are related to their understanding of political struggle and political transformation. I contend that this case provides a new lens through which to view the recent decline in some human rights activism in China, and illustrates the importance of investigating the internal structure of civil society.

As ‘emerging donors' push alternative paradigms of development cooperation ‘beyond aid' onto the global agenda, some scholars discuss those from Asia as presenting culturally specific approaches. These observations echo the claims that aid practitioners and policy makers themselves make about, for example, Japanese forms of development. In this article, I caution against scholars repeating these culturally essentialising arguments that promote certain political interests. Instead, I propose that we ‘take seriously' these aid actors’ instrumental culturalist views as ethnographic artefacts—that is, as logics and practices that our interlocutors use. By taking what I call instrumental culturalism as the object of study, rather than the analytical frame, this article shows that the work of comparisons plays a central role in producing culturalist worldviews. In short, culturalism is performative, creating that which it names. If we are to understand the “beyond aid” agenda, we need to attend to the ways that the production of culturalisms through the work of comparisons informs development actors’ understandings of social organisation and global interaction.

Chinese NGOs face strong coercive pressures and limitations yet have still emerged as notable actors in several issue areas. This article studies why and explains how a group of NGOs working on AIDS-related issues have been able to progress into relatively large and vibrant operations. It documents how NGO leaders have learned to navigate opportunities and risks, circumvent formal restrictions and broker pragmatic and largely informal arrangements that have enabled their organizations to grow and advance within China's authoritarian settings. The article contributes to the literature on Chinese NGO development and new institutionalism theory, and introduces a framework for studying NGOs based on their organizational forms and activities.