This dissertation, "Government-nonprofits Collaborations: a Study of Linking Arrangements in Third-party Government" by Yiu-kai, Terence, Yuen, 阮耀啟, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled Government‐Nonprofits Collaborations: A Study of Linking Arrangements in Third‐Party Government Submitted by YUEN Yiu Kai Terence for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in February 2007 Abstract This inquiry sets out to examine the institutional decisions of the government in its policy choice towards collaborating with nonprofit organizations in public services provision. The significance of the research lies in the fact that successful state‐society collaborations not only could enhance the government's ability to tackle complex social problems, but the practice of third‐party government (the engagement of nonprofits in public services provision) also manifests a core aspect of public administration: it reveals the strategies and practices of the government in utilizing civic engagement as a tool to substantiate its governance functions. To address this crucial public sector institutional choice question, the study looks into three interrelated institutional decisions, including the state's underlying strategies in forging state‐society linkages, the institutional choice of the relevant linking structures, and the processes leading to the development of linking arrangements. In different ways, over the modern history of Hong Kong, nonprofit organizations in different service fields have been engaged in the provision of public services. The Hong Kong government has adopted diverse strategies and utilized different institutional arrangements to link up with the nonprofits. One way or another, these linking arrangements allow nonprofits to participate in policy processes and gain access to public resources, and the use of linking strategies also allows the state to work closely with some nonprofit groups while keeping apart from the others. As applied to the case of Hong Kong, the study aims to unveil how third‐party government arrangements have contributed to effective governance in a non‐democratic polity. The institutional analysis of this inquiry adopts the transaction cost theoretical approach to examine the related institutional choice decisions attended to by the state. It is argued that the political meaning of service provision as perceived by the ruling elites (which is derived relative to the nature of service and the transaction attributes inherent in service provision) would function as a key explanatory factor shaping the government's institutional decisions in relation to its linking strategies, the choice of linking structures, and the process of institutional development. Using the method of multiple narratives and supplemented by data analysis tools of pattern‐matching and process‐tracing, the case of Hong Kong over a six‐decade period (1946‐2005) was examined to unveil how the government interacted with nonprofits in three policy domains, viz. arts and culture, social welfare,