How do public regulations shape the composition and behavior of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Because many NGOs advocate liberal causes, such as human rights, democracy, and gender equality, ...they upset the political status quo. At the same time, a large number of NGOs operating in the Global South rely on international funding. This sometimes disconnects from local publics and leads to the proliferation of sham or 'briefcase' NGOs. Seeking to rein in the politically inconvenient NGO sector, governments exploit the role of international funding and make the case for restricting the influence of NGOs that serve as foreign agents. To pursue this objective, states worldwide are enacting laws to restrict NGOs' access to foreign funding. We examine this regulatory offensive through an Ethiopian case study, where recent legislation prohibits foreign-funded NGOs from working on politically sensitive issues. We find that most briefcase NGOs and local human rights groups in Ethiopia have disappeared, while survivors have either 'rebranded' or switched their work from proscribed areas. This research note highlights how governments can and do shape the population ecology of the non-governmental sector. Because NGOs seek legitimacy via their claims of grassroots support, a reliance on external funding makes them politically vulnerable. Any study of the NGO sector must include governments as the key component of NGOs' institutional environment.
Laws that restrict foreign funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can depress voting through two mechanisms. First, they can signal a democracy recession. Consequently, citizens might fear ...rigged elections where their vote will not influence who forms the next government. Second, by denying funding to NGOs, these laws can undermine NGOs’ ability to generate social capital, which is crucial to mitigate collective action problems associated with voting. Since 1990, 13 of Africa’s 54 states have enacted laws restricting foreign funding for NGOs. Drawing on the 2016 Afrobarometer survey (36 countries, 53,936 respondents), we find support for the argument that restrictive NGO laws reduce citizens’ electoral participation in national elections probably by signaling democracy recession, and not by undermining social capital that foreign-funded NGOs are supposed to generate. In fully democratic countries, respondents are around 94% more likely to report having voted in a recent national election even after controlling for restrictive NGO laws.
Does more education lead to less political violence, and may education thus be a tool for peace? This article provides the first systematic review of the existing quantitative literature on education ...and political violence. Looking at arguments pertaining to levels, expansion, inequality, and content of education, we identify 42 quantitative studies from the time period 1996 to 2016 that test the relationship between various measures of education and political violence. An emerging scholarly consensus seems to be that education has a general pacifying effect. However, this general conclusion is challenged by recent evidence showing above-average levels of education among terrorists and genocide perpetrators. This, as well as other findings, underscore that the relationship between education and political violence is complex and multidimensional, depending on type of political violence, mediating factors, and level of analysis. We conclude with policy implications from our findings and discuss directions for future analysis.
High levels of faith and finance are being invested in REDD+ as a promising global climate change mitigation policy. Since its inception in 2007, corruption has been viewed as a potential impediment ...to the achievement of REDD+ goals, partly motivating 'safeguards' rolled out as part of national REDD+ readiness activities. We compare corruption mitigation measures adopted as part of REDD+ safeguards, drawing on qualitative case evidence from three Southeast Asian countries that have recently piloted the scheme: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We find that while REDD+ safeguards adopt a conventional principal-agent approach to tackling corruption in the schemes, our case evidence confirms our theoretical expectation that REDD+ corruption risks are perceived to arise not only from principal-agent type problems: they are also linked to embedded pro-corruption social norms. This implies that REDD+ safeguards are likely to be at best partially effective against corruption, and at worst will not mitigate corruption at all.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Many resource-strapped developing country governments seek international aid, but when that assistance is channeled through domestic civil society, it can threaten their political control. As a ...result, in the last two decades, 39 of the world’s 153 low- and middle-income countries have adopted laws restricting the inflow of foreign aid to domestically operating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Governments recognize that such laws harm their international reputations for supporting democracy and may invite donor punishment in terms of aid reductions. Yet, they perceive foreign aid to NGOs as supporting political opponents and threatening their grip on power. In the aftermath of competitive electoral victories, governments often take new legal steps to limit these groups’ funding. We test this argument on an original dataset of laws detailing the regulation of foreign aid inflows to domestically operating NGOs in 153 low- and middle-income countries for the period 1993–2012. Using an event history approach, we find that foreign aid flows are associated with an increased risk of restrictive law adoption; a log unit increase in foreign aid raises the probability of adoption by 6.7%. This risk is exacerbated after the holding of competitive elections: the interaction of foreign aid and competitive elections increases the probability of adoption by 11%.
Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) are an important analytic tool for identifying and potentially mitigating project risks and negative environmental and societal impacts. Their usefulness, ...however, depends on how they are implemented and on whether findings are used in public decision-making. Given the notorious vulnerability of public-private interactions to corrupt practices, we examine potential and actual corruption risks across four stages of a generic EIA process. Combined with case analysis of the EIA process in Albania, a Southeastern European context experiencing serious governance challenges, we reflect on the vulnerabilities of EIAs to various forms of corruption from a principal-agent perspective. We concur with earlier research suggesting that the fundamentally rationalist approach behind EIAs do not necessarily match the empirical realities of public environmental decision-making, particularly in less mature EIA systems. We conclude with suggestions for framing a future research agenda in this area and touch on tentative policy remedies.
The transfer of climate finance to developing countries is a key feature in global climate change agreements. This article examines how conflicting preferences between climate finance donors and ...domestic actors affect the diffusion of emerging international norms on climate finance coordination at national and subnational levels in Zambia. Informed by literature on norm localization we trace the diverging preferences and interactions among donors and domestic actors over a 12-year period as they shape climate finance coordination in Zambia with support from the global Climate Investment Funds. We find that this has been a highly conflictual and dynamic process with contestation centered on norm application rather than norm validity. While the World Bank have had a strong initial influence on the enactment of coordination norms, domestic actors have over time undermined and reconfigured coordination arrangements to align better with their own preferences. Our findings show (i) how emerging international norms on climate finance coordination may be localized and reshaped as they are enacted in developing countries; (ii) that preferences may differ significantly between and among donors and domestic actors in this regard, and (iii) that past relationships from development cooperation may be carried forward but also challenged in this process.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Access to clean electricity is fundamental for reducing the carbon footprint of industry, both for existing industrial operations and for producing new climate- and environmentally friendly goods and ...services. But the allocation of electricity as a limited resource hinges on institutional rules. In this article we examine how the process of electricity allocation impacts the establishment, growth and geographical location of new green industry firms. We examine how process impacts electricity access for green industrial firms in the context of Norway, a country with a seemingly well-functioning electricity grid sourced from renewable energy and clear political climate goals for greening industry. Through an exploratory study based on an extensive document review and in-depth qualitative interviews with key informants, we find that the management of the electrical grid, from the quantity of available electricity to the process by which firms access electricity, hinders green industry firms in accessing power. This is for three reasons: 1) regional variation in the absolute amount of available electricity; 2) unclear rules and queue systems for accessing the grid; and 3) a lengthy and potentially costly process for gaining access. These findings indicate that formal and informal rules determine the establishment of green industry firms in industrialized countries, and could hinder progress on climate goals.
Foreign aid contributes to about 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) of developing countries. To distribute aid in recipient countries, Western donors increasingly rely on nongovernmental ...organizations (NGOs). Yet, since the mid-1990s, 39 developing countries have adopted laws restricting the inflow of foreign aid to NGOs operating in their jurisdictions. In response to these restrictions, have bilateral donors reduced aid, either as a punishment or because they cannot find appropriate NGOs for aid delivery? We explore this question by examining a panel of 134 aid-receiving countries for the years 1993-2012. We find that all else equal, the adoption of a restrictive NGO finance law is associated with a 32% decline in bilateral aid inflows in subsequent years. These findings hold even after controlling for levels of democracy and civil liberties, which suggests that aid reduction responds to the removal of NGOs from aid delivery chains, and not to democracy recession.
War and Children Dupuy, Kendra E; Peters, Krijn; Beah, Ishmael
11/2009, Letnik:
1
eBook
War and Children: A Reference Handbook looks at one of the most wrenching aspects of armed conflict, ranging across the globe to examine the different ways armed conflict and postwar reconstructions ...affect children and young people, and how they have responded to both war and efforts to alleviate war's destruction.While war has always affected children, the nature of that impact has changed in the last half-century. Civil conflicts break out in mostly poor, developing countries with large populations of young people, and combatants are less hesitant to turn civilian areas into battlegrounds. War and Children explores these phenomena by focusing primarily on recent conflicts worldwide, with case studies dramatizing important issues and controversies-including the considerable number of children soldiers throughout the world.
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