Research on the Participation Mechanism of Social Organization in

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Research on the Participation Mechanism of Social Organization in
the Disaster Relief∗
WANG Feng
School of Law, Shandong Institute of Business and Technology, China, 264005
[email protected]
Abstract: Facing natural disasters which occurs frequently, government alone is not enough power;
Social organizations also play an important role. They mobilize all the people through their high
managerial effectiveness to raise the disaster risk awareness, and transfer in every way the resources in
achieving a multiplier effect. However, there still exist some problems, such as some government
officials’ ideological recognition is insufficient, the law and system lags, social organizations’ capacity is
insufficient, lacking the interactive mechanism between government and social organization and so on.
Therefore, we should do the following to cultivate and support the social organization to participate
positively in the disaster Relief. Such as transform the official thought, consummate legal regime,
strengthen social organization own ability construction, construct positive interaction of participation
mechanism and so on.
Keywords: Disaster Relief, Social Organization, Participation Mechanism
1 Introduction
In recent years, natural disasters occurred frequently in our country. When we have not completely gone
out from the shadow of the earthquake in Wenchuan since 2008, our country had suffered the severe
drought in southwest, a strong earthquake in Yushu of Qinghai Province, large storms in Jiangsu
Province and others, mudslide in Chouqu of Gansu Province and so on in 2010.And these serious
disasters had caused the huge economic losses and casualties. In today's increasingly serious natural
disasters, besides government’s efforts to attack to disasters, whether it should also be using the power
of social organization or not? How to coordinate the relationship between the government and social
organizations to minimize the losses caused by disasters? These problems have been the constant
attention of the government and academia. Disaster relief refers as a social assistance system to the
citizens affected by natural disasters caused by living in difficult circumstances, to obtain assistance
from the government and social organizations to meet their basic living needs. Its goal lies in to help the
poor through the disaster relief to alleviate the stricken citizen's survival crisis for the safeguard social
order stability. With the transfer of government functions, the dominant role of government in disaster
relief is gradually weakening. Combined with a pluralistic society, the continued emergence of citizen
self-government, the role of social organizations in disaster relief is growing. Therefore, it is necessary
to explore the participation mechanism of social organization in the disaster relief to ensure stability and
continuity disaster relief, and thus to maintain the sustainable development of society.
2 The Meaning of Promoting Social Organization to Participate in the Disaster
Rescues
Along with new public administration principle's starting, our government has taken “the small
government, the big society” as the goal of administration reform direction. And as a developing country,
the successive years’ disasters attack and the international finance crisis's influence causes our country
finance faced with the stern test, also affects the work timeliness and the validity of the disaster rescues.
∗
This article is gradual research achievement for Research on Social Organization Theory for MCA in 2008 (project
No. 2008MZACR001-027) and Soft Sciences Project in Shandong Province (2009RKB408).
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Obviously the work of the disaster rescues in our country cannot only rely on the government regardless
of practically or theoretically. Mobilizes all the people through it high managerial effectiveness to raise
the disaster risk awareness, and transfers in every way the resources, thus in the disaster rescues makes
the twice the result with half the effort progress. Need more extensive participation of the whole society.
Especially, display the social organization fully in unique superiority. The social organization has higher
management efficiency to raise national awareness of disaster risk, and to mobilize various resources to
obtain the multiplier effect in disaster relief.
According to the experience of Western countries in disaster relief, social organizations play an
increasingly important role in dealing with repeated outbreaks of various natural disasters. Society
organizations replace the government as the core of power in disaster relief nearly in the western
developed countries. Meanwhile, under the background of globalization, the massive transnational
social organization starts to pay attention to the international social affair, and goes to the vision China.
They implement in China’s disaster relief, poverty alleviation and other related items which all
humanities face on. In this process, they urgently need to get a positive response from domestic society
organizations. It will undoubtedly provide a broad development of space and great development
opportunities to domestic society organizations. Therefore, in today's increasingly serious natural
disasters, to build good and effective mechanism of social organizations , to promote to seize the
opportunity of the internationalization and to better play its role in emergency response and disaster
relief are very important..
3 The Problems in the Participation of Social Organization in the Disaster Relief
At present the government has been taken as the main body and the Social organization has been taken
as auxiliary strength participation in the work of disaster relief in our country. But some questions also
gradually expose, along with social organization's function appearing gradually.
3.1 The question of partial officials in the ideological recognition
Since the reform and opening up, our government's understanding of social organizations in general
have changed, but there are still some officials in their minds remaining remnants of the bureaucracy.
Their ideas still stays in the traditional concept of government administration. They take social
organizations as subsidiaries or idle personnel placement agencies and neglect of their unique advantage
and role.
Government considers that even the government should be at the absolute strong dominance in the event
of disasters, but people power is weak, fragmented and unable to rely on. What is more, some officials
try to keep their official position, vigorously pursue “achievement projects ", glossy. The problem of
ideology and understanding is a fundamental factor which led to social organizations in China difficult
to function effectively in disaster relief.
On the one hand this causes many social organizations compelled to withstand the dual pressures of “the
rules and regulations for government” and “the extrusion of market”. And social organizations face more
difficulties in coordinating in the relations, gaining resources, operating organization and so on. On the
other hand this causes that government fight the huge disaster single-handedly. But it has not notified to
the entire society in the first time and seeks the help social organizations including all the community.
The public is unable from authority's channel to obtain the information right, definitely will be given
credence to rumors no matter what and its agitation the people. This result in greater social panic
ultimately and adversely affected the opportunity so that the losses of disaster relief will be added.
3.2 The law and system lagged which restricted the social organization's establishment and the
development in the disaster relief
The authority of law is the assurance to the smooth work for any organization. But it is because the
problem of some officials in thought and understanding that the law to foster and support social
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organizations lag behind, which affected the timeliness and effectiveness in disaster relief. Specifically
speaking, there are mainly following several aspects of the questions.
3.2.1 The laws and regulations related the establishment of social organizations is unreasonable.
According to China's current "Regulations of Administration and Registration for Social Groups", the
establishment of community organizations definitely need to find a government department as its head,
and must have a certain amount of money. For example, national associations need more than 100,000
RMB of registered capital; local communities and community across administrative regions need more
than 30,000 RMB of registered capital. This leads that because many social organizations can not find
the unit in charge of them or enough registered capital so they can not legally exist.
So many "Grass Roots Organization" in China abound, they can not registered without the business unit
in charge of them. They can not participate in disaster relief without legitimate status. In addition, our
government introduced a series of regulations to limit competition between social organizations. For
example, the application for social organizations and private non-enterprise units which has the same or
similar business in the same administrative region will not be approved. Although it can control the
number of social organizations, but it is not conducive to healthy competition among community
organizations, not to stimulate creativity of their organizations, not to improve the levels of management
and service, and ultimately to result in lack of capacity-building power to many social organizations.
3.2.2 The dual management system limits the development of social organization.
According to China's present laws, the establishment of social organizations is subjected to the dual
management system. In China, civil affairs departments at all levels are the statutory registration
authorities of social organizations. The party and government organs and the agencies commissioned by
them are qualified to act as its business unit in charge of them. On the one hand, this dual management
system complex the program of the establishment of social organization and restrict the scale of social
organizations. On the other hand, the dual management system has actually made social organization to
become the subsidiary bodies of a unit in charge. In practice, there has been that the competent
authorities had no energy or dislike to supervise and manage to affiliated social organizations.
3.2.3 Lack of the legal rules related rights protection for social organizations.
The volunteers’ rights and interests can not be effectively guaranteed by law when they participate in
emergency relief activities.1For example, some volunteer, who rescued the calamity, got killed in
disaster relief, but there is unexpectedly no law to provide protection for him at the compensation aspect
in practice. There are no such rules in present volunteer service rules in many places. Even if there are
some rules that only ask to provide assistance or purchase insurance for the volunteers. For example, the
11th and 12th in Chengdu Volunteer Services Ordinance provides that: "Volunteers organization should
provide the necessary assistance and the corresponding Life Insurance for volunteers to participate in
volunteer service ". However, insurance is not compulsory provisions in the law.
In addition, the current laws and legislation of social organizations is not high level. Most of those are
administrative regulations. And the state laws are less. Legal system of public, property and other
important legal system in activities of social organizations is not perfect. Tax credit system is not fully
implemented and so on. In short, a lot of the current laws or systems are very vague, so the state of
many social organizations involving in disaster relief is disordered.
3.3 Insufficient capacities in resources for social organization cause insufficient in disaster relief
Lacks of resources for social organization mainly manifest the following two aspects:
Firstly, there is a serious shortage of funds. In the present most of our social organizations are in the
transition period from the area of state domain to the area of public domain. On the one hand, the
government's fiscal balance of payments situation has changed, and it can provide a substantial decline
in funding. NGO Research Institute in Tsinghua University showed a survey that 41.4% of the social
organizations consider that lack of funding is the most prominent difficulties to organizations in current
income, and the financial grants and subsidies provided by government is 49.97% of total capital. 2 On
the other hand, the government also encourages social organizations for financial independence and
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self-financing. However, as there are shortcomings in the financing and operational capacity for some
social organizations, make quite a part of social organizations serious lack of funding .So the normal
disaster relief and rescue activities can not be carried out.
Secondly, the human resources are scarce. On the one hand, although along with the reform and opening
up, the number of social organizations rapid grows in China. But no matter the number of agencies and
volunteer or in the proportion in comparison with the Western developed countries are all far apart. In
addition, the number of social organizations disaster relief directly involving in is very limited in China.
The number of the social organization, such as the Red Cross in China, China Charity Federation, China
Youth Development Foundation and so on, participating directly in disaster relief accounted for only
about 10%. On the other hand, participation of volunteers in the social organization in disaster relief is
very small. The volunteer’s personnel are mix, and their educational level is low. The volunteer are short
of professional knowledge and skills and mobility. These shortages make the internal management of
social organization and resource mobilization capacity weak. Lack of capacity to social organizations is
not only to limit their capabilities in disaster relief, but also a bottleneck in the development of social
organizations.
3.4 The interactive mechanism between government and social organization is lacking
The lack of the interactive mechanism between government and social organization is impeded in three
aspects such as no smooth in the communication mechanism, limited in the participation domain and
lack of the cooperation mechanism.
Firstly, the communication mechanism between government and social organization is not smooth.
Government has a strict hierarchy of the pyramid organization and has sufficient information. Social
organizations and the public in the bottom of the pyramid are lack of information. And the gap between
them and government in possession of significant information is huge. The civil information of our
government is not public or semi-public, and some of it is considered to be sensitive used to not open.
Meanwhile, at present there are problems such as some media taking the ratings as guide and inaccuracy,
etc. So there is lack of effective communication platform between media and public. This resulted in
poor communication of information in disaster relief, increased misunderstanding and friction between
government and society.
Secondly, the areas that social organizations involved in disaster relief are limited in scope. At present,
the work that our social organizations involved in disaster relief is mainly in initiatively helping the
government to raise private charitable. But according to international experience, social organization is
fully capable of covering the entire the process in disaster relief such as prevention, response, and relief
and reconstruction process, playing a greater role. For example, there are the training of public safety
awareness, the construction in the diversification of resource supply to improve disaster relief
mechanisms, the investigation and assessment of reconstruction, performance appraisal and so on. But
theses are relevant with lack of professional ability in self-assessment with the social organization and
decision-making or lack of effective participation in ways and mean. Society organizations have no full
channels of involved in disaster relief, which gives a direct impact on the effective of their participation
in disaster relief.
Thirdly, there is lack of coordination mechanism between government and social organizations. At
present, most of the work of social organizations involved in disaster relief is non-systematic and
temporary, or the work participation in disaster relief is more mobile and fragmented. This indicates that
the lack of guidance, coordination and inspection for government to social organizations in the
construction of contingency plans in disaster relief, which makes lack of mutual coordination to develop
contingency planning.
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4 Suggestions on Perfecting the Participation Mechanism of Social Organization
in the Disaster Relief
4.1 Transforming thought of the partial official and correctly understanding the necessity in the
participation of social organizations in the disaster rescues
The Social organizations are independent department or the social group which take the social services
as the goal. They are closer to the populace comparison with government. This is helpful in the
mobilization attention and raising consciousness in reduction the disaster for public, in studying the
knowledge and the method in disaster escapes and rescues and seeping and strengthening the philosophy
of public service. Although the social organization is not a pure public organization, but non-beneficial
is consistent with the value orientation by which the official organization serves for the people. What’s
more, the social organizations enter the domain in disaster rescue which unfolds the multiplicity in
service and the superiority in supplies. This is not only to help lightening the financial burden of
government, but also to form the relations of interactive supplementary with the government. Therefore,
the related officials should transform the thought, embark all from “the national interest” and “the public
benefit” and correctly understand the development of social organizations.
We should admit that the social organization is the important main body to social self-government. The
realization of social autonomous depends on society's independence and autonomous, depends on
citizen's positive participation, and depends on the appearance of many government main body. But the
society autonomous is conforming to the social management pattern of “the small government, the big
society” to our government. The practice also has been proved that the social organizations play a very
vital role in the disaster rescues. Therefore, cultivating and guiding social organization's healthy
development is advantageous to construct the resource between government and society, enhance the
ability in disaster rescue, and maintain stability between social and nation.
4.2 Improve the legal system and positively cultivate and support the social organization
In the registration management aspect, China should break the "dual management system” to reduce the
access threshold for social organizations, and to remove restrictions on competition rules. In this regard,
we can learn from more international experience, especially the Japanese model. Registration will be
lost meaning, if civil affairs departments unable to examination and approval schools, hospitals and
other entities of public services and welfare agencies. Such modus operandi is often not recognized by
other departments.
Therefore, we may assign Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and such related institution to
manage the registration. And we may cancel the procedure in which Ministry of Civil Affairs are
assigned as “the ministry of registration”. Regarding the general social organizations, make the Civil
Social Organization Administrative Bureau independent from Ministry of Civil Affairs. So CSOAB is
responsible for registration management of these organizations specially. This has not only broken the
restriction of dual management systems, but also strengthens the management effect. Along with the
smooth of management system, some restrictive management principle may also let loose gradually. So
give a bigger survival and development opportunities to Non-governmental organizations. 3 In addition,
we must fill the blank to perfect the legal rule related the rights and interests safeguard in the operation
of social organizations to relieve the extra worries for volunteer and his family members.
4.3 The social organizations should strengthen their own capacity-building, enhance foreign
exchange and improve the capacity of community organizations in the enhancement foreign
exchange to enhance the ability in disaster rescue to social organization and the
internationalization level
On the one hand, in view of the common problem of inadequate funding to social organization, China
should provide financial support for social organizations through financial subsidies, preferential tax
policies, projects guide and international cooperation to have the full material base to social
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organizations in the disaster relief. On the other hand, our social organizations themselves should keep
on the basis of past experiences, and further integration of human, finance and other resources, study on
the effective ways in fund-raising, volunteer recruitment, humanitarian relief, education, publicity and
other aspects combined with practical features of their own relief efforts; strengthen international
cooperation and exchanges, promote broad participation in disaster relief, strengthen the personnel
building and training in disaster relief, improve material reserves and transportation systems in disaster
relief and improve their capabilities in disaster relief.
4.4 Construct the benign and interactive participation mechanism of social organization in the
disaster relief
4.4.1 Construct smooth communication mechanism between government and social organizations.
Firstly, the government should pay great attention to the information disclosure and open the
information to social organization and public with the aid the communication platform at the first time
when the disaster happen to enhance the information transparency and mobilize all forces involved in
the disaster rescue.
Secondly, we should construct the fixed communication and the cooperation platform between the
government and the social organizations and among the social organizations to impel the establishment
of the cooperation and persistent effect mechanism in the disaster rescue.
4.4.2 We should expand the domain and scope in which social organizations participate in the disaster
rescues.
Unceasingly enhance their personnel quality and the service skill through the fore-mentioned ability
construction to social organization. Actively expanding their ability to participate in publicizing the
knowledge of disaster relief to the public, raise funds and materials by universal and multiple channels,
attract and train volunteers, reasonably and timely arrange disaster relief, the investigation and
assessment in the reconstruction and appraise performance and so on.
4.4.3 Perfect the benign and interactive cooperation mechanism between government and social
organizations.
First of all, we should cultivate a wide range, reasonable structure and balanced development of the
social organization system. Second, a coordination agency between the government and social
organizations should be established. Dispatch the liaison officers to the social organization to transmit
the government the intention and the disaster information and promptly accurately give the government
feedback information regularly or when the disaster occurs. Finally, we should strengthen the instruction,
the coordination and the inspection in the contingency plan formulation to the social organization in
disaster rescues. And make it to link up mutually with government's contingency rescue plan. At the
same time, prevent the coming apart crack or the unclear responsibility.
5 Conclusion
In summary, it is not only essential that the social organizations participate in the disaster rescue, but
also that they play more and more vital role. However, there are still many problems in the participation
in the disaster rescue to social organizations at present. But social organizations will play an
increasingly important role in disaster relief in China along with the growth and maturation of civil
society, the enhancement in the ability of social organizations, the construction of the benign and
interactive participation mechanism to the social organization as well as the prevention of disaster
reduction project system and so on. Therefore, some officials from the government level must change
their thinking, correctly understand the necessity in the participation of social organizations in the
disaster rescues; improve the legal system and positively cultivate and support the social organization
from the legal system to build level. The social organizations should strengthen their own
capacity-building, enhance foreign exchange and improve the capacity of community organizations in
the enhancement foreign exchange to enhance the ability in disaster rescue to social organization and the
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internationalization level. Integrated construct smooth communication mechanism between government
and social organization to expand the participation domain for social organization in the disaster rescues
to perfect government and social organization's benign interaction cooperation mechanism. Build the
idea environment, law environment and the organization system environment, which have benefit to
rescue the social organization in the participation mechanism in disaster relief, to realize the sustainable
development in participation of the mechanism for social organization in the disaster relief.
Author in brief:
WANG Feng (1977-), male, Zaozhuang, Shandong, Law school of Shandong institute of business and
technology, lecturer, master, the main research directions for the Constitutional and Administrative Law
E-mail: sdwf1000@ yahoo.com.cn
References
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Public Events: Problems and Countermeasures——Taking Wenchuan Earthquake For Example,
Journal of Social Work, 9(2008), p38-40(in Chinese).
[2]. Wang Ming, Introduction to Non-Profit Organization Management, China Renmin University Press,
2002: 211(in Chinese)
[3]. Wang Ming, Jia Xijin: China Non-profit Organization: Definition, Development and Policy
Suggestion: Shanghai Renmin Press, 2003:280(in Chinese).
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