Is civil society at risk? Analysis of increasing administrative and financial restrictions on civil society and nonprofit organizations

• In Event: Civil society in restrictive environments

Abstract

Since 1980s, civil society has played a prominent role as a geopolitical and economic force in transforming countries worldwide. This change was partly driven by tremendous growth in the number and capacity of nonprofit organizations (Salamon, 1993). Over the years, civil society organizations have fought human rights violations by the state, providing voices to the marginalized section of society and working towards promoting knowledge and respect for global equality and harmony. Overall, civil society, including of nongovernmental organizations, has played a significant role in global order and politics.

However, scholars note that the growing centrality of NGOs in global and domestic politics has led simultaneously to the decline of state power (Boli & Thomas, 1997; Chandhoke, 2005). Studies have suggested, states use two main strategics - violent or administrative to reduce centrality of NGOs and there increase of influence in domestic and international politics (Chaudhry, 2022). Administrative crackdown of NGOs in a non-violence tactics encompassing using legal restrictions or administrative burden on NGOs to create artificial barriers to entry, funding, operations, and advocacy (Bakke et al., 2020; Dupuy et al., 2015; Glasius et al., 2020). Chaudhry (2022) argued, “hampering foreign funding is the most insidious of these tactics because without adequate funds NGOs cannot continue to their operations in target countries. Both democracies and autocracies have used this tactic to repress NGOs” (p. 2). Further, since the end of cold war, more than 130 countries have engaged in NGO repression (Chaudhry, 2022). It is not surprising that many countries in the global south, especially in the Southeast Asia region namely, India, China, Thailand, and Vietnam, have highly restrictive environments for civil society (Sidel & Moore, 2020).

These concerns have heightened more during the COVID-19 pandemic (Youngs, 2020). Recent policy reports and articles suggest that governments are clamping down on independent civil society voices using emergency laws passed in the name of pandemic response and attempting to silence voices of dissent and criticism (Smith & Cheeseman, 2020; Youngs, 2021). At the same time, there are concerns about governments in low-and-middle-income countries in the Southeast Asia region attempting to reduce avenues of private and public funding to civil society by setting up government-run relief funds, often led by the head of the state such as the Prime Minister or President (Tandon & Aravind, 2021). National relief funds (also referred as government-run funds) are defined as “philanthropic funds that accept both public and private donations but are established and managed by governments, often for the purpose of meeting national disaster or humanitarian needs” (ICNL, 2022).

This paper seeks to understand the impact of government-run funds and how these funds have impacted civil society in countries in the South Asia region. Overall, analysis suggests motivation for creating these funds was developing a single corpus of funds that pools all the donations, global aid, and government money reallocation for COVID-19 into one account. We also find that national relief funds have taken resources away from civil society, although to what extent is difficult to quantify numerically.

References

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Author

• Abhishek Bhati, Bowling Green State University