Community Development and Social Enterprise: Can Taiwanese Community Escape from the Fate of "Iron Cage"?

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationship between government funding, community development and social enterprise. The main research question is asking whether traditional community organizations in Taiwan still rely on government grant and therefore lose their independency. In the beginning of this argument, the author tries to identify briefly the local welfare history of community development and particular legal forms in the United Kingdom and Taiwan, namely Community Investment Company (CIC) and Community Development Associations (CDAs). Simply put, empirical community development in Taiwan during the past decade cannot escape from central government’ iron cage in terms of funding and grants of the dataset from the fiscal year 2001 to 2009, therefore the Community Development Association basically loses the financial independency and probably the spirit of voluntarism. Due to some historical explanation such as blurring of social sector boundaries, government budget deficit, economic instability, and social heterogeneity in the local arena, one possible way to revitalize Taiwanese community and gain its self-governing capability is to introduce the idea of social enterprise. In the future, the government is still a vital role to promote the social enterprise models into different local community. In the conclusion, however, some limitations of social enterprise development experiences from the U.K. and other OECD countries still need to be re-considered in advance in Taiwanese social policy agenda setting.