Abstract
The literature suggests that international actors, including big philanthropies from the Global North, have influenced China's social policies during the country's transition from a Leninist state to a market-based economy. Yet, few empirical studies have revealed substantive mechanisms through which such influences were exerted. We propose that big philanthropists' policy influence in the Global South is often mediated by a process that we call " epistemic community cultivation " — purposeful programming to recruit local actors, train them in domain-specific knowledge and instil in them the normative ideas undergirding such knowledge. We unpack this process by tracing two programs implemented by the Ford Foundation's China Office in the 1990s and the 2000s, respectively. We reveal two layers of the process: 1) support in establishing an external linkage to international epistemic communities; and 2) assistance with building cohesion and solidarity within the newly created epistemic network. Local epistemic communities, once cultivated into existence, self-mobilize for policy influence. We contribute to a deeper understanding of policy transfer mechanisms, especially those of big philanthropies operating in the Global South.