Substantive Legitimacy: Action Strategy of Grassroots Organizations

Abstract

Over recent years, grassroots organizations develop rapidly in China and have aroused attention of the academia. Given the lack of their legal legitimacy, how the grassroots organizations endeavor to survive and develop by leveraging relevant activity strategies is a subject worth in-depth research. This article, through a case study of a bird protection union in D City, finds that the grassroots organizations pursue substantive legitimacy via strategies targeting two aspects, namely, the entity that endows the legitimacy and the value judgment. Such strategies that arise from the interaction between the grassroots organizations and the government as well as society hold a non-negligible significance for social governance in China.