The Institutional Analysis Of Social Work’s Professionalism In China

A new kind of institution is always slowly carrying out in a mode which is from top to bottom in China. However, it is obvious to most of us that the development and implementation of some policies should have been performed quickly by the coercive power of the government. But in the recent years, although both the central and local governments are promoting and encouraging the development of the Chinese Social Work’s Professionalism, its actual course is developed slowly in Chinese Mainland. The profound mechanism of this problem will be explained in this paper. The article holds that there are some reasons that is the old Chinese system, the lacking autonomy in the Chinese social work itself, the regional differences about the Chinese politics, economy and culture, the formal policies, and the limits coming from the Chinese traditions. All these reasons make the Chinese Social Work’s Professionalism trap into a dilemma. According to the analysis above, the article decide to discuss the deep mechanism about this dilemma by an analytical framework of the historical institutionalism. The paper shows that the institutional increasing returns, the interest group under the old system, and the concept framework in people’s mind will lead to the old system go to a lock-in effect. Further, these things will make the Chinese social work, as a new system form, adapt to and rely on this system pattern. Finally, the paper points out that the process of the Chinese social work tends to be an incremental transformation, which needs an extended period to achieve it.