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