Dissertation Title: Protest, Voting, and Political Change: The Effects of NGOs on Politics in Developing Democracies

Dissertation Committee: Paul Drake (Chair), Clark Gibson, Stephan Haggard, Peter Gourevitch, Scott Desposato, Richard Feinberg (Economist, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies)

Dissertation Abstract:
My dissertation examines the political effects of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing democracies. I argue that NGOs have systematic effects on politics in two realms: participation and voting behavior. Challenging conventional assumptions that NGOs are the bulwark of moderate civil society and should encourage traditional democratic methods of participation, I argue that instead NGOs (particularly in less democratic settings) mobilize unconventional participation such as protests and demonstrations. Using a new sub-national dataset comparing municipalities in Bolivia, I find that increases in NGOs are significantly associated with increases in protest between 1999 and 2004. On the other hand, evidence that NGOs increase voter turnout is very weak.

I also find that increases in NGOs are also associated with systematic changes in the fortunes of incumbent political parties in local elections. Existing work predicts starkly contradictory political effects: some claim NGOs should help incumbents by providing services politicians can claim credit for, while others claim they should hurt incumbents by facilitating opposition. I argue that both these effects are possible, but in different contexts. In very small jurisdictions (very small towns), NGOs are more likely to facilitate opposition, and their impact will be relatively large. In larger areas, however, the more impersonal setting facilitates credit-claiming, to the advantage of incumbents. This argument is supported by sub-national statistical analyses comparing changes in vote share in municipal elections with changes in NGOs.

Full Text of Dissertation:
Boulding_Dissertation_Final_31May2007