Civil society and democratization: The role of service‐providing organizations amid closing civic spaces
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Author | Alisa Moldavanova,Tamaki Onishi,Stefan Toepler |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.2005 |
Received: 21 December 2022
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Accepted: 28 December 2022
DOI: 10.1002/pad.2005
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Civil society and democratization: The role of service‐
providing organizations amid closing civic spaces
Alisa Moldavanova
1
|Tamaki Onishi
2
|Stefan Toepler
3
1
The Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public
Policy & Administration, University of
Delaware, Newark, Delaware, USA
2
Department of Political Science, University of
North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro,
North Carolina, USA
3
Schar School of Policy and Government,
George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia,
USA
Correspondence
Stefan Toepler, Schar School of Policy and
Government, George Mason University,
Arlington, VA 22201, USA.
Email: stoepler@gmu.edu
Abstract
This article argues that current democracy promotion strategies relying on rights‐
claiming advocacy NGOs are falling short of their democratization goals, as
authoritarian regimes are closing the space through restrictions on the NGOs that
attempt to carry them out. In response, we suggest a reexamination of earlier ap-
proaches to involving civil society in democratization efforts by shifting the focus
back on service‐providing civil society organizations that have largely become side‐
lined in democracy‐building agendas. Specifically, service providers tend to be more
capable of functioning “under the radar” thus contributing to democracy in both
direct and indirect ways, and thus escaping closing space restrictions. The key
concerns about their independence from the state, as well as under what conditions
the state may be less successful in coopting the independent service‐providers,
however, remain unresolved and warrant future research.
KEYWORDS
civil society, closing space, democracy promotion, democratization, NGOs, service‐providing
civil society organizations
1
|
INTRODUCTION
In this introductory essay to the special issue, we expand on its
central theme of the interplay between civil society, democracy,
and service provision. The basic premise that has motivated the
special issue is the growing realization that the Western democ-
ratization strategies of the past two decades appear to be limited.
Across the Global South, there have been significant pushbacks
against democracy for a number of years (Carothers, 2002;
Diamond, 2008; Diamond et al., 2015) amid a cresting third wave
of authoritarianism (Lührmann & Lindberg, 2019). This wave has
been crashing over the West's efforts to expand democracy by
promoting liberal Western values and rights‐based agendas,
centered around human rights, democratic participation, and
environmental agendas. The lynchpin of the strategy was the use
of internationally supported advocacy NGOs to promote these
values and agendas (Ishkanian, 2007). The strategy, however, had a
significant weakness in the lack of domestic support and heavy
dependence of these NGOs on funding from abroad (Her-
rold, 2020): by cutting off foreign support, autocrats managed to
handicap NGOs sufficiently to derail their rights promoting work
(Dupuy & Prakash, 2020).
Arguably, given the heavy reliance of democratization stra-
tegies on Western‐funded, professional NGOs, the failure of the
strategies raises questions not only about the prospects for de-
mocracy, but also about the basic rationales for supporting civil
society and the third sector going forward. As democratization
scholar Sundstrom (2011, p. 231) put it: “If the result of recent
evolution in the third sector is not democratization, then what
other important developments should we expect? There must be
some overarching theoretical reason why it is important to
examine third sector development.” In other words, if NGOs are
not fostering democracy, then they are not more than third
sector service providers, not worthy of any analytic or policy
The author “Stefan Toepler” order is alphabetical
Public Admin Dev. 2023;43:3–13.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pad© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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