Abstract
Although violence has always been in governments’ toolkit against civil society organizations (CSOs), there has been a global trend where governments set legal and logistical barriers to non-violently repress CSOs, especially INGOs (International Non-Governmental Organizations) since the mid-2000s. During this period, states present variations in CSO repression, ranging from moderate regulation to violent expulsion. Why do countries vary the repression? I argue that different levels of repression are based on governments’ perceived repression effectiveness in reducing INGOs’ threats. For better illustration, I propose the effectiveness-perception framework, where repression effectiveness comes from the interaction between regime type and local trust in INGOs, while the perception of effectiveness is rooted in the domestic political structure. To conduct empirical tests, I create a latent variable, local trust, to measure threats of INGOs conditional on local communities. Relying on the sample from 1996 to 2012, I find that consolidated democracies and autocracies, compared to middling countries, are more likely to adjust the repression levels based on local trust in INGOs. I expect the finding to produce some strategy-relevant insights for INGOs’ survival in the current political environment.
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Replication files for this article may be found at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-023-00681-9.
Notes
I identify CSO as organized entities in civil society which include organized groups and individuals. CSOs are not-profit, non-party, voluntary, legal, and independent from government control. In most cases, CSO is often taken as synonymous with NGO. Hence, domestic NGOs and INGOs are the two main types of CSOs.
The official report of Russia’s “foreign agents” law can be found at http://duma.gov.ru/en/news/54760/. Accessed 6 November 2022.
One example is INGO’s corruption in the humanitarian sector. More information can be found at https://alternatives-humanitaires.org/en/2016/11/23/corruption-a-challenge-that-doesnt-escape-the-humanitarian-sector/. Accessed 7 November 2022.
Amnesty International specifies different repressive tactics legitimized by CSO repression laws. The report can be found at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/global-assault-on-ngos-reaches-crisis-point/. Accessed 7 November 2022.
More information about the successful resistance to civil society repression can be found in this report: https://www.external-democracy-promotion.eu/preventing-civic-space-restrictions-an-exploratory-study-of-successful-resistance-against-ngo-laws/. Accessed 8 November 2022.
Davenport and Armstrong (2004) summarize three explanations for states’ repressive activities. The variation of state repression in terms of human rights violation, first, can be linearly visualized based on democratic levels. Specifically, the more democratic a country is, the more protection of human rights is conducted. Second, some scholars believe that middling countries are more likely to be repressive since the lack of systemic coherence, which is measured by the effectiveness of domestic political structure and local participation. Third, there exists a threshold for state repressive behaviors. In the case of human rights, governments tend to significantly reduce repression when growing to a certain level of democracy. In this project, I apply the MMM model, the second theory, to discuss CSO repression.
More information about the V-Dem dataset is on the website: https://www.v-dem.net. Access on November 11, 2022.
The polity scores, ranging from − 10 and 10, for Algeria and Kazakhstan are 2 and − 6, respectively. The higher the value is, the more democratic a country is. And the CSO repression, from 0 to 4, for Algeria and Kazakhstan are 2.1 and 1.77, respectively. Smaller value indicates less CSO repression.
The cooperation between local NGOs and INGOs in the humanitarian sector can be found here: https://www.orange.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/rethinkingtherelationshipofinternationalngoslocalpartners.pdf. Accessed 7 November 2022.
More information about the V-Dem dataset is on the website: https://www.v-dem.net
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Lian, S. More Murder in the Middle: How Local Trust Conditions Repression Towards INGOs. Hum Rights Rev 24, 97–120 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-023-00681-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-023-00681-9