Civil Society Aid to Post-communist Countries
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.12081 |
| Author | Nicholas Spina,Christopher Raymond |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Civil Society Aid to Post-communist Countries
Nicholas Spina
American University in Bulgaria
Christopher Raymond
University of New Orleans
A major debate within foreign aid literature is whether civil society can be‘purchased’ through outside assistance.We
test this proposition by exploring the influence of aid provided by the United States Agency for International
Development on post-communist civil rights environments.A review of research critical of international assistance
highlights the risk of unsustainability,polarization and dependence among recipient civic organizations.We argue that
a more effective stimulant is socio-economic growth, which stimulates committed constituencies, higher citizen
expectations and pressure on the state to protect civil freedoms. Using cross-sectional, time-series data from 27
post-communist countries, we find no evidence that aid independently promotes stronger civil rights environments
but that economic growth produces substantial improvements.Fur ther, any aid effectiveness appears to be conditional
on economic strength.We conclude that developmental organizations should reassess how and where civil society aid
is targeted.
Keywords: civil society; foreign aid; post-communism; economic development
A major debate within foreign aid literature is whether civil society can be ‘purchased’
through outside assistance (Adamson, 2002; Henderson, 2002). It is a subject of interest
both for scholars and for development practitioners due to the perceived bond between
civil society – or the arena of social interaction independent of the state that fosters social
capital and articulates public demands – and democracy. The conviction that this bond can
be established and sustained with external assistance has been a mainstay of foreign aid
strategies for decades. As Thomas Carothers (2004, p. 115) notes,‘In the political domain,
civil society development is now deemed crucial to stimulating the public pressure and
participation necessary to force poorly functioning state institutions to become more
responsive and accountable’.
Recent budget crises in the United States and elsewhere have revived the debate over aid
effectiveness and necessitate a reassessment of aid policy (Sirleaf, 2011). To date,case study
research has revealed much about foreign aid and civil society (Henderson, 2002; 2003;
Sundstrom, 2006), but cross-national generalizations remain limited.We address this gap by
providing an empirical test of civil aid’s effectiveness in 27 post-communist countries that
have been the recipients of substantial foreign assistance since 1990.We examine whether
the civil rights environments of these countries benefited from foreign assistance, internal
development in the form of socio-economic growth, or both.We focus our analysis on aid
from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest
bilateral Western donor in post-communist Europe.
To help shed light on this important debate, we first explore the various civil society
objectives of USAID funding. USAID has dispersed aid to parties, labor unions, human
rights groups and many other civic organizations with the goal of improving and consoli-
dating laws that protect civil rights and safeguard against government intrusion. A subse-
quent review of extant research, however, highlights many deficiencies in international
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doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12081
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014 VOL 62, 878–894
© 2013The Authors. Political Studies © 2013 Political StudiesAssociation
support. As we discuss, aid to civic associations can contribute to unsustainable activities,
encourage polarization among groups and promote organizational dependence. These
dynamics hinder the impact of organizations and, in turn, under mine the influence of
foreign aid in improving states’ civil rights environments. We instead argue that, ceter is
paribus, the determinants of strong civil rights are largely domestic.Socio-economic devel-
opment endows civic sectors with sustainable resources,popular constituencies and higher
expectations of the state. We hypothesize that these factors allow civic organizations to
pressure the state effectively to develop strong and sustainable civil society environments.
Using cross-sectional, time-series data on the civil rights environments of 27 post-
communist countries, wetest the effect of civil society aid, socio-economic growth and their
interaction. We find no evidence that USAID aid independently promotes stronger civil
rights environments. However, economic growth produces substantial improvements.We
also find that any aid effectiveness is largely conditional on economic strength, indicating
that aid is often the most helpful in relatively affluent states that do not necessarily need the
assistance.The models also reveal an important division between states in Central and Eastern
Europe (CEE) and former Soviet republics (FSRs),sub-regions with divergent legacies and
post-communist developmental trajectories.There is substantial evidence that the effects of
both USAID aid and economic growth are weaker in FSRs than in CEE countries. In sum,
our results reveal serious limitations to civil society aid and highlight the importance of
domestic economic conditions in shaping countries’ civil rights environments.
USAID and Civil Society Promotion
At the end of the Cold War, private and bilateral Western donors made civil society
development a priority in post-communist Europe (Encarnación, 2002). Overcoming the
communist experience through community engagement, volunteerism and political par-
ticipation was deemed essential to the success of democratic transitions (Bernhard and
Karakoç, 2007). The United States, working through USAID, was one of the largest
contributors to this objective (Carothers and Ottaway, 2000). Today, the agency contributes
over $1 billion annually to programs aimed at strengthening democratic institutions, law
and justice,elections and civil society development.1Within the Democracy, Human Rights
and Governance sector budget,civil society aid compr ises 41 per cent and includes support
for mass media, civic education and labor rights. In 2011 and 2012,USAID allocated nearly
$343 million to civil society programs globally.2
In order to test the effectiveness of these investments over the past two decades, it is
necessary to clarify what exactly USAID promotes with foreign civil society assistance.
This is a rather difficult task because of the lack of consensus on a definition of civil society,
which some claim leads to poor use of funds by Wester n donors (Encarnación, 2006;
Narozhna, 2004). USAID defines civil society as ‘non-state organizations that can or have
the potential to champion democratic/governance reforms’ (Hansen, 1996, p. 3). The
agency expects its grants to ‘provide suppor t for activities which: increase the public
awareness and knowledge of laws and legal procedures; help citizens organize to advocate
changes in the legal system; help citizens protect their individual and property rights, and
activities which help citizens utilize the legal system for the adjudication of conflicts’
(USAID New Independent States Task Force, 1993, p. 20).
AID TO POST-COMMUNIST COUNTRIES 879
© 2013The Authors. Political Studies © 2013 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2014, 62(4)
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