Professional Affiliation

Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of San Diego

Expert Bio

Dr. May Farid is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego. She studies the interaction between citizen groups and states, with a focus on policy influence under authoritarianism and, more recently, transnational advocacy. Her research explores how citizen groups shape state policies in a variety of contexts: grassroots NGO and INGO advocacy in China, cross-sector knowledge communities and local policy, and INGOs promoting global environmental governance in China's outbound aid and investment. Another branch of her research studies NGO interventions to empower citizens in the global South, such as fighting misinformation and promoting social cohesion in India. Her work has been published in International Affairs, World Development, Studies in Comparative International Development, Voluntas, and the Journal of Chinese Political Science. Before joining the Kroc School, Dr. Farid conducted research as a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and taught at the University of Hong Kong. She holds a DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford. Outside academia, Dr. Farid conducted an institutional capacity building program for rural grassroots NGOs in China for seven years, and carried out a four-year research project on development in ethnic minority regions for China’s leading government policy think-tank under the State Council. She is a U.S. citizen of Iranian descent who grew up in China. 

Wilson Center Project

Greening Global China

Project Summary

How do nongovernmental organizations shape the environmental practices of powerful actors? A body of research and practice has identified combinations of advocacy strategies and policy opportunities that effectively drove policy change in the latter half of the 20th century and primarily in the context of Western liberal democracies and the international institutions they led. Emerging scholarship, however, indicates that the standard policy advocacy toolkit is no longer able to win policy gains in a changing global order, and China scholars have long known that effective policy advocacy in authoritarian regimes takes a very different form. With the rise of South-South development, Chinese projects, enterprises and financers increasingly shape the development trajectory of countries across the Global South, but face increasing challenges and pushback with respect to the environmental and social impacts of these projects. 

With its immense domestic environmental impact, growing global footprint through the Belt and Road Initiative, and power to influence environmental standards and practices across the global South, identifying effective ways to green China’s global engagement is critical. This study examines how international NGOs are greening China’s overseas aid and investment. It draws on findings from over a hundred interviews with diverse stakeholders in ‘Global China’ and its environmental impacts, including international NGOs, Chinese NGOs, enterprises, government officials and government officials and NGOs in countries that host Chinese overseas projects. To zoom in on how these diverse actors collaborate and contest to shape the greening of Global China, it also includes in-country political ethnography in Turkey, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Findings shed light on how policy change is evolving in a shifting global landscape characterized by growing authoritarianism, multipolarity and challenges to established international norms and institutions.