Civic groups refer to various organizational forms and their networks spontaneously established by citizens from all walks of society and to some extent they are usually of non-profit, non-governmental, self-governance, organizational and voluntary features.1 The words “civic groups” were of the same origin with other names such as “NGO” “NPO” “civil society organization”. They all belong to the civil society sector or tertiary sector that is independent from party and government departments of state system or enterprises or other profit-oriented organizations of market system. In China, they are usually collectively called civic groups or social organizations. Across the world, in many different countries, NGOs as a whole all play important roles in international cultural exchange in their own countries. Taking France for example, it brought the job of cultural exchange conducted by NGOs into the overall national cultural diplomatic system and took it as an indispensable sector of diplomacy.

 

Boasting a long history and affluent national cultural heritage, France was one of the renowned cultural powers across the world. As early as the Louis XIII and Louis XIV era in the 17th century, promoting the prosperity of culture had already become a national policy of France. Thanks to the measures such as unified planning, management and sponsoring of cultural development via the supreme power of the state, setting up specialized agencies for promoting the development of culture, France, as the then most powerful country in Europe, rapidly became the center of literary and artistic creation of Europe, which not only entrenched the status of France as a great cultural power, but also created the political tradition of France in taking advantage of culture in improving national influence, seeking strategic advantage and strategic interests. Till now, France still leads the world in terms of attaching weight to culture and culture conservation. In comparison with other western powers, French government was more direct in participating in the process of cultural development and its role was also more prominent. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean civic organizations play no role in the domain of culture. Instead, France boasted its own distinctive features in conducting foreign exchange and cultural activities via civic groups.

 

1. The unique management system in which government takes the lead while NGOs remained their independence

 

NGOs are the forerunners of international cultural exchange in France. The earliest international cultural exchange began with the promotion of the French language at abroad, and Alliance Francaise, the largest and most influential overseas cultural exchange agency of France, was a non-governmental organization. Born in 1883, the purpose of establishing Alliance Francaise was to promote the linguistic culture in areas which religious and official institutions were unable to enter due to political reasons. Now, Alliance Francaise has established over 1070 branches in 133 countries, with 450,000 registered students and attracted the participation of more than six million people via diversified cultural activities.2 In addition, other civic groups, such as Secular Missionary (established in 1902, with the purpose of conducting non-religious education at abroad) and Office National (established in 1910, devoted in exchange programs between schools include universities) also work to systematically and targetedly train French-teaching talents and send them to all over the world, so as to improve the organization of overseas education and improve its quality.

 

Organizations and institutions with their roots in civil society are good at catching new social demands and making quick reactions, however, they cannot work well without the support and coordination from the government. Therefore, the relationship with government is very important for NGOs. The relationship between NGOs or NPOs and government or states is of many different models. According to the theory of government-NPO relationship types proposed by Gidron, Kramer and Salamon, there are four types of basic models, in which the first is government-dominant model. In this model, the government plays a dominant role in fund raising and service delivery. It is not only the major financial contributor, but also the major provider of welfare service. The government raise fund via its tax system, and deliver the necessary service via its employees. In the domain of cultural exchange, the relationship between NGOs and French government could be attributed to the government-dominant model the government integrated the job of civic groups such as Alliance Francaise into its overall diplomatic system. The Foreign Ministry of France established the “office of overseas affairs and schools” in 1910, making France the world first country to coordinate and organize cultural affairs via an administrative unit of the government. In 1945, the Foreign Ministry of France set up the “department of international cultural relations and French-related affairs” for dealing with related affairs, and the French central government established a cross-sectional “committee of international cooperation and development”. For promoting international cultural exchange, improve the popularity and affinity of French culture in international community, the Foreign Ministry of France announced in 2006 that the Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Culture jointly set up an “agency of French culture”, so as to further integrate related resources of the two ministries. For the promotion and exchange of French culture at abroad, France invested a huge amount of fund as well as human resources normally the budget of international cultural activities account for 30 to 40 percent of the total budget of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in some years the number is even as high as 50 to 60 percent.3

 

Although the international cultural dissemination and exchange of France adopted the government-dominant model, the NGOs participating in it attached great importance to maintaining their independence. NGOs such as Alliance Francaise remained their “non-governmental” feature in all countries and strove to downplay their political and ideological colors. They usually set up their non-profit organizations under the framework of local laws, employ local people to serve as the board president, and refrain from involving in local political, religious or ethnical disputes. These practice facilitated these NGOs in playing their advantages and improved their efficiency in terms of international cultural dissemination and exchange. However, as the tasks they shouldered were closely related with national long-term interests, French government will offer them financial support and directional guidance, so as to keep their activities in line with the overall objective of international cultural policy set by the government. We can say that this unique management system kept a balance between fulfilling demands and creativeness of civil society and implementing the policy intention of the government.

 

2. Governments offer all-round support for NGOs and attach importance to the combination with international aid

 

Since the end of World War, France began to adjust its international cultural strategy from solely promoting French culture to paying more attention to cultural cooperation with target countries showing a more open and active stance in the domain of culture. French government believed that international cultural dissemination and exchange was a systematic and comprehensive project, which called for the coordination of different departments such as diplomacy, culture, education and finance, and only the government has such ability of integrating and mobilizing resources. Therefore, by integrating resources of different departments to form a coordinated and systematic official diplomatic network, French government offered NGOs with stronger guidance and support, so as to guarantee the efficiency of their job, thus making them the most dynamic and brilliant section in the French diplomatic network. In 2010, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France proposed the legislative draft of National External Action Law, which integrated three major institutions, namely Campus France, International Exchange Reception Center and France International Cooperation Center, respectively responsible for higher education international promotion, international exchange reception and international cooperation, into one profit-oriented public institution specialized in international cooperation and exchange in terms of professional knowledge. In 2012, all the French Cultural Centers across the world converted their name into French Academy. By 2013, France had established French Academy in 109 countries, thus successfully forming its own cultural diplomatic network.4 It is worth mentioning that France creatively founded an international organization named IFO specially for the promotion of French at abroad. IFO was updated from the original organization named ACTC. ACTC was founded in Nigeria in 1970 and changed its name to IFO in 1997. Over the past more than 40 years, member countries and regions of IFO have surged from 21 to 55, which cover 5 continents, and account for 10 percent of the world total population, 12 percent of the world total industrial output, and 15 percent of the total volume of world trade, thus playing a significant role in strengthening the centripetal force of French linguistic culture with France at the core.

 

For strengthening its contact with former colonies, since 1950s, French government has been focused on areas such as assistance and technological cooperation. DG, the department in charge of international cultural affairs, launched a series of scientific and technological exchange programs with former French colonies, mainly French-speaking countries and most of them were located in Africa. These former colonies are the “backyard” of France. In order to prevent its “backyard” from catching fire or being robbed, France adopted the means of cultural development aid, or in other words “scientific and technological aid and cooperation”. The major form of cooperation was to sign contract and conduct cultural and scientific program together, which at the same time facilitated the promotion of French, thus killing two birds with one stone.

 

3. “Umbrella-shaped” management platform strengthened the internal cohesion and external influence of NGOs.

 

In the 21st century, for attracting the attention of the society and strengthening influence, there was a new trend of forming all kinds of “coalitions”, among which the “umbrella-shaped” structure was the most powerful form. The so-called “umbrella-shaped” structure means NGOs spontaneously build institutionalized joint management body so as to coordinate their activities, share information and resources, and establish cooperative relationship in achieving policy support on organizational and institutional level. NGOs can also offer support in terms of fund, equipment and technology to each other via the “umbrella-shaped” structure management platform. Under the “umbrella-shaped” structure, NGOs can still remain their independence and self-governance. The reason of building joint management body and forming coalition was due to their similar ideas and behavior model. Besides “umbrella-shaped” structure, other coalition forms of NGOs include “issue alliance” and “network structure”, however, these two forms are relatively weak. For “issue alliance”, “its operation process was usually when confronted with one topic waiting to be expressed, one or more NGOs, being authorized or agreed by other NGOs, with the names of many different NGOs together to express their opinions or ideas, for the purpose of drawing more attention or strengthening influence”.5 However, “issue alliance” usually does not have an institutionalized managing body or form a long-term interactive platform on the topic they initiated. The linkage among NGOs under “network structure” was stronger than that of “issue alliance”. Under the “network structure”, NGOs usually form a relatively long-term exchange platform and could jointly organize some activities, such as launching initiatives together, holding seminars, workshops or joint actions regularly. However, cooperative relationship among NGOs is relatively loose and there’s no institutionalized joint management agency.

 

The coalition among NGOs of France began with “issue alliance”. For instance, on issues such as environmental protection or upholding world peace, NGOs at different regions of France jointly formed alliances to improve their strength and influence for achieving their objectives. Some topics, drawing the interest of different types of NGOs, will attract the participation of a wide variety of NGOs. For example, when pursuing for revising related laws for the reason of human right protection, if NGOs working in other areas such as education, culture, health care, or environmental protection deem that this topic was indirectly related with them, they will take part in the joint action and make the action of single organization becoming collective action, thus improving the influence exponentially. On the ground of “issue alliance”, social organizations of France, with their huge quantities, gradually formed different types of communities according to their functions, and different communities will further form associations. By this way, the coalition model of “umbrella-shaped” structure was eventually formed. “This “umbrella-shaped” structure was the most distinctive feature of the tertiary sector of France, and viewing from the scope of the whole world, the structuralized degree of the tertiary sector of France was the highest”6, said Henry Rouyer Dolevoye, President of Federation of French Consolidation, Rescuing and Development Organizations.

 

In the end, there is another aspect worth to be learned by China France was fond of proposing its own concepts in international cultural exchange. In October 2003, led by France and Canada, about 60 countries proposed to reach a United Nations convention on cultural diversity and launch a new round of battles on culture conservation across the world. Related parties commenced negotiation on one proposed United Nations agreement, which aimed to help other countries protect their national culture and prevent it from being “assimilated” by Hollywood. When delivering speech on the conference of UNESCO, former French President Chirac said that if this convention was passed, nations and ethnic groups which worried about losing their own identities would open their doors to the rest of the world with more confidence.7 Although the policy of culture protectionism of France led to the stagnation of French cultural industries, and to some extent this policy was not successful. However, in the aspect of international cultural exchange, the practice of upholding the flag of protecting “cultural diversity” won the support and recognition from a wide variety of countries and was very beneficial for France to “consolidate different forces” in conducting international cultural exchange activities, and at the level of values, it is even favorable for France in winning the recognition and sympathy from the public of foreign countries.

 

Notes
1. Liu Qiushi, Wang Ming, The Development of Civic Groups in China since Reform and Opening up and Their Social Foundations, [J] Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 3, 2009: 151.
2. Tang Hong, NGOs and International Cultural Exchange Taking the Example of the United Kingdom, France and Germany, [J] Chinese Journal of European Studies, Vol. 2, 2009: 52.
3. Peng Shuyi, On the Cultural Diplomacy of France, [J] Chinese Journal of European Studies, Vol. 4, 2009: 121.
4. Yang Na, The Cultural Diplomacy of France and Its Implications, [J] Journal of Nankai University (Edition of Philosophy and Social Sciences), Vol. 4, 2004: 24.
5. Tong Zhifeng, The Development of Mobilizing Structure and Spontaneous Conservation Movement Taking the Example of Anti-Dam-Building Movement in Nujiang River, [J] Open Times, Vol. 9, 2009: 117.
6. Wang Jin, “Umbrella-Shaped Structure” and Professionalization Based on It Implications of Experience of Tertiary Sector of France to Chinese NGO Development, [J] Administrative Forum, Vol. 2, 2012: 64.
7. Zhang Fan, Interpreting Cultural Soft Power: the Cultural Policy of French Government, [N] Chinese Social Sciences Today, Oct. 21, 2010, Edition 015.

(Zhang Shengjun, Professor, School of Government Administration, Director, Institute of International Relations, Beijing Normal University)