Civil Society, Advocacy and Social Services in Partly Free Countries: The Anti-Rape Movement in South Asia

• In Event: Civil society in non-democracies

Abstract

Introduction: Nongovernmental organizations in partially free countries face a challenge in their interactions with the government. Repressive governments want to benefit from the services provided by nonprofits while minimizing the risk that nonprofits pose to their power. Governments therefore pressure NGOs to turn away from political advocacy and concentrate on social service provision. This paper examines this process by focusing on the anti-rape movement in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. It seeks to answer the question of how nonprofits respond to government repression and what explains variation in nonprofit strategies.
Literature review: Repressive governments view the nonprofit sector as both an opportunity and a threat. On the one hand, governments want to benefit from the services that nonprofits provide, especially if they can create a perception that those services are coming due to the actions of the government. On the other hand, repressive governments often find nonprofits to be a threat, both because they can organize individuals to protest government policies, and because their provision of services can delegitimize the government by providing public goods. To benefit from services while minimizing the risks of political dissent, states often use strategies of exclusion to limit the activities of nonprofits or strategies of cooptation to control them (Buyse 2018; Chaudry 2022; Heiss 2019; Heurlin 2010; Lewis 2013).
Hypotheses: Existing theory, and the experience of the Global North (Armstrong, Gleckman-Krut, and Johnson, 2018; Baker and Bevacqua, 2017), predicts that the anti-rape movement would begin as an informal social movement and then coalesce into formal nonprofit organizations. These organizations would then come into conflict with the state, which would pressure and attempt to coopt them into doing more social service provision and less advocacy.
Methods: This paper examines the anti-rape movement in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The anti-rape movement was chosen because it can organize itself both as an informal social movement and as a formal effort led by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and because it can devote itself to both service provision and advocacy. Bangladesh, India and Pakistan were chosen because they share a colonial history, are geographically close, and share aspects of their culture, while they are different in terms of governmental organization, governmental response to the nonprofit sector, and religion. We will conduct oral history interviews with present day advocates to reconstruct the story of the development of the anti-rape movement in each country. Interviews will be supplemented by research into websites and newspaper archives.
Findings: We have begun collecting data and will have results to present by the time ISTR meets in 2024.
Relevance: Most literature on the anti-rape movement focuses on the United States and Europe, with very little written about the Global South. The anti-rape movement has not been previously studied in terms of the relations between civil society and government. The results of this paper will therefore provide a new case of interest to scholars of civil society and nonprofits, and will be relevant to an international audience.

References

Armstrong, Elizabeth A., Miriam Gleckman-Krut, and Lanora Johnson. 2018. “Silence, Power, and Inequality: An Intersectional Approach to Sexual Violence.” Annual Review of Sociology 44:99-122.
Baker, Carrie N., and Maria Bevacqua. 2017. “Challenging Narratives of the Anti-Rape Movement’s Decline.” Violence Against Women 24(3): 350-376.
Buyse, Antoine. 2018. “Squeezing Civic Space: Restrictions on Civil Society Organizations and the Linkages with Human Rights.” The International Journal of Human Rights 22(8): 966-988.
Chaudry, Suparna. 2022. “The Assault on Civil Society: Explaining State Crackdown on NGOs.” International Organization 76: 549-590.
Heiss, Andrew. 2019. “NGOs and Authoritarianism.” Pp. 557-572 in Thomas Davies (ed.), Routledge Handbook of NGOs and International Relations. New York: Routledge.
Heurlin, Christopher. 2010. “Governing Civil Society: The Political Logic of NGO-State Relations Under Dictatorship.” Voluntas 21: 220-239.
Lewis, David. 2013. “Civil Society and the Authoritarian State: Cooperation, Contestation and Discourse.” Journal of Civil Society 9(3): 325-340.

Authors

• Christopher Einolf, Northern Illinois University

• Ibtida Nishat, Northern Illinois University