Multilevel political connections and nonprofit revenues under authoritarianism: Evidence from Chinese foundations

Abstract

AbstractUnder authoritarianism, nonprofits establish formal political connections at the organizational level when they are affiliated with the state or at the individual level when they have government officials assume managerial positions. From the perspective of multilevel interorganizational relations, this article uses a sample of Chinese foundations to investigate the association of the two levels of political connections and their interactions with a wide range of nonprofit revenues. The results report no positive relationship between individual political connections and nonprofit revenues and quite limited evidence that above relationship is positively moderated by organizational political connections. At the organizational level, politically connected foundations may receive more government grants and domestic and overseas donations than civic foundations, depending on which type of agencies they are affiliated with—government or quasi‐government. The results imply authoritarian states may shift toward institutionalized measures to manage nonprofits and reduce the involvement of government officials to ensure policy consolidation.