Mechanisms of Civil Society Policy Diffusion Worldwide, 1994-2014

• In Event: Repression to Regulation: The State & Civil Society Around the Globe

Abstract

Civil society is not an unstoppable and independent force. Like other societal actors, a government's policies can determine civil society’s scope and efficacy. Undermining civil society is thus one strategy a government can use to autocracize its regime. The question becomes does a government erect and enforce such restrictive practices all at once, or does it do so incrementally? Do governments ever unwind the restrictions currently in use? If so, why do they remove them? Despite the relevance of these questions, scholarship studying state-led hostility towards civil society organizations (CSOs) has sought to explain such behavior without considering the international system as a factor, without recognizing that governments add and remove restrictions, and without acknowledging that democratic governments also use such undemocratic practices. In this paper, we study the international system’s influence on governments’ de facto policies towards local CSOs. To do so, we propose a set of hypotheses that relies on network measures of policy diffusion: learning, emulation, and competition. We test our empirical predictions by applying a directed-dyad analysis to data from the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and the Varieties of Democracy Project for all countries between 1994 and 2014. Our study has important implications for understanding how policy diffusion, international diplomacy, and economic sanctions shape and reshape the government-CSO relationship in a country. Our work also speaks directly to the ongoing global phenomenon that has raised critical concerns about governments openly attacking human rights defenders and restricting the civic space.

Authors

• Anthony James DeMattee, Emory University

• Luke Martin Shimek