Foreign Donors, Domestic Activists: Democracy Aid during Togo’s Reform Crisis

• In Event: Networks and the Effects of Mergers, Joint Negotiations, and Multilateral Aid (Virtual Session)

Abstract

During constitutional reform episodes in non-democracies, democracy activists and protesters often seek support for democracy from powerful foreign states, particularly those that are crucial foreign aid donors like the US, France or Germany. Yet, research on the promotion of democracy suggests that foreign donor states often do not wish to engage with those opposition actors that demand democracy most powerful, namely social movements of activists and popular opposition parties. Instead, it seems that they rather focus their support on professionalized and apolitical non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that may lack ‘grass-roots’ legitimacy. However, empirical quantitative data on the relations between foreign donor states, domestic democracy activists and political opposition parties is lacking in the field.
The paper to be presented addresses this gap by presenting for the first time quantitative network data on the support and cooperation relations between foreign donor states, domestic democracy activists, and domestic opposition parties. In the paper and its presentation, I first use game theory to model the interactions between foreign donor states, the political regime, and domestic political party and civil society opposition. The model suggests that there are only narrow conditions under which foreign donor states will fully engage with democracy activists. I then investigate this conjecture in an inferential network analysis.
The data used for the analysis describes a cooperation network (N=80) between foreign donor states and domestic political opposition parties, NGOs, and social movement organizations during Togo’s constitutional reform crisis (2017-2019). It has been collected by me and a research assistant using respondent-based snowball sampling in 39 interviews during field research in Togo in 2019. The data is used to specify an Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) that tests the probability for support, cooperation, and alliance links between the different types of actors present in the network. The analysis is currently ongoing but is scheduled to be finalised by July.
The first preliminary results indicate that (i) intergovernmental donors like the European Union and transnational non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International engaged much more with domestic social movements and civil society than traditional bilateral foreign donor states; (ii) bilateral foreign donor states mainly engaged with well-established political opposition parties and much less with civil society organisations and grass-roots movements; (iii) political opposition parties formed a dense community within the larger network, connected to the other domestic nodes of the network only through a few civil society organisations that acted as hubs and bridges.
The findings may bear important implications for supporting and protecting democracy during reform episodes. First, the current preliminary findings suggest that bilateral donors indeed do not engage with local civil society that enjoys ‘grass-roots’ legitimacy sufficiently. The game theoretic model of the paper provides some conjectures why this may be the case and thus provides entry points for further research. Regardless of future research, the findings may suggest that bilateral foreign donor states need to find a way to remedy the current lack of supporting domestic pro-democracy civil society by, for instance, strengthening intergovernmental organizations as well as transnational non-governmental organizations, thereby ‘delegating’ a portion of their democracy support. Second, the ultimate findings may underline the need to protect the civic space in authoritarian countries. So far, the data show that a few civil society organisations act as hubs and bridges bringing together a larger front of civil society. Authoritarian regimes are able to easily target these central actors either through extra-legal or legal means like restricting the civic space. Foreign donor states, intergovernmental organizations and transnational NGOs need to call out such ‘shrinking of the civic space’ and, where possible, sanction it.

Author

• Daniel Nowack, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)