NGOs and Political Participation in Weak Democracies: Sub-National Evidence on Protest and Voting from Bolivia. Forthcoming at Journal of Politics (Accepted for publication August 2009).

Abstract
How do NGOs affect political participation in weakly democratic settings? We know that NGOs can be an important part of moderate civil society by building trust, facilitating collective action, and encouraging voter turnout. This paper explores these relationships in weakly democratic settings. NGOs stimulate political participation by providing resources and opportunities for association. Where voting is seen as ineffective, new participation can take the form of political protests and demonstrations. This paper presents results from an original local level dataset from Bolivia on NGO activity, voter turnout, and political protest, showing a strong relationship between NGO activity and political protest in weakly democratic contexts.

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Voice, Votes, and Resources: Evaluating the Effect of Participatory Democracy on Well-Being. (with Brian Wampler). Forthcoming at World Development. (Accepted for publication May 2009).

Abstract
Participatory governance is said to enhance governance, citizens’ empowerment, and the quality of democracy, creating a virtuous cycle to improve the well-being of the poor. However, there is limited empirical evidence for this relationship. Drawing from an original database of Brazil’s 220 largest cities, we assess whether the adoption of a participatory budgeting (PB) program is associated with changes in social spending or changes in several indicators of well-being. We find that PB municipalities spend a slightly higher share of their budget on health and education programs, but there is little evidence that this shift in budget priorities affects measurable outcomes.

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Supporters or Challengers? The Effects of Nongovernmental Organizations on Local Politics in Bolivia (with Clark C. Gibson) Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 42, No. 4, 479-500 (2009).

Abstract
How do non-governmental organizations (NGOs) affect local politics in developing democracies? Specifically, do NGOs have systematic effects on the fortunes of incumbent political parties in local elections? Existing work predicts starkly contradictory political effects: some scholars claim NGOs should help incumbents by providing services for which politicians can claim credit, while others believe that NGOs should hurt incumbents by facilitating political opposition. We argue that both these effects are possible, depending on the size of a jurisdiction's population. In smaller populations, we hypothesize that NGOs facilitate collective action and decrease the ability of an incumbent to claim credit for their projects; larger jurisdictions water down the effect of NGOs on collective action and permit incumbents' credit claiming. Using electoral, sociodemographic, and NGO data for all of 314 municipalities in Bolivia, we find strong support for our hypotheses.

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