Abstract
The development and viability of the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector varies across the post-communist world. We explore the impact of corruption on NGO sustainability—the overall enabling environment and activities of the NGO sector—in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union from 1998 to 2007. To test hypotheses about the relationship between corruption and NGO sustainability, we employ time-series cross-sectional analyses of 27 post-communist states, controlling for domestic factors such as economic development, government expenditure, and democracy, and international factors such as levels of trade, foreign direct investment, and foreign aid, as well as a country’s status vis-à-vis the European Union. We conclude that corruption is consistently and strongly associated with lower levels of NGO sustainability. In particular, our analyses suggest that corruption is likely to degrade the legal environment and fiscal viability of the NGO sector greater than other aspects related to NGO activities such as advocacy or organizational capacity.
Résumé
Dans les pays à l’ère post-communiste, le secteur des organisations non gouvernementales (ONG) connaît une réussite variable en termes de développement et de viabilité. Nous explorons ici les effets de la corruption sur la pérennité des ONG (environnement global favorable et activité du secteur des ONG) en Europe de l’Est et dans l’ex Union Soviétique entre 1998 et 2007. Pour tester les hypothèses concernant les relations entre la corruption et la pérennité des ONG, nous procédons à des analyses transversales de séries temporelles pour 27 états post-communistes, en observant des facteurs (variables ?) nationaux (domestiques ?) tels que le développement économique, les dépenses gouvernementales et la démocratie, ainsi que des facteurs internationaux tels que les quantités d’échanges, les investissements directs provenant de l’étranger, l’aide internationale et le statut (la position ?) du pays vis-à-vis de l’Union européenne. Nous concluons que la corruption est systématiquement et fortement associée à une faible pérennité des ONG. Nos analyses suggèrent plus particulièrement que la corruption est susceptible de dégrader l’environnement juridique et la viabilité fiscale du secteur des ONG davantage que les autres aspects des activités des ONG tels que la promotion d’une cause ou leur capacité organisationnelle.
Zusammenfassung
Nicht-staatliche Organisationen in der post-kommunistischen Welt variieren in ihrer Entwicklung und Überlebensfähigkeit. Wir untersuchen die Auswirkungen von Korruption auf die Nachhaltigkeit nicht-staatlicher Organisationen, d. h. die günstigen Rahmenbedingungen und Aktivitäten des Sektors insgesamt, in Osteuropa und der ehemaligen Sowjetunion über den Zeitraum von 1998 bis 2007. Um die Hypothesen über das Verhältnis zwischen Korruption und der Nachhaltigkeit nicht-staatlicher Organisationen zu testen, wenden wir Zeitreihen-Querschnitt-Analysen (Time-Series-Cross-Section-Analysen) von 27 ehemals kommunistischen Ländern an und überprüfen inländische Faktoren, wie beispielsweise die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, staatliche Ausgaben und Demokratie, und internationale Faktoren, z. B. Handelsumfang, ausländische Direktinvestitionen und Auslandshilfe, sowie den Status eines jeden Landes mit Hinblick auf die Europäische Union. Wir kommen zu dem Schluss, dass Korruption durchweg eng mit einer niedrigeren Nachhaltigkeit nicht-staatlicher Organisationen in Verbindung steht. Unsere Analysen weisen insbesondere darauf hin, dass Korruption mit aller Wahrscheinlichkeit die rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen und die finanzielle Überlebensfähigkeit des Sektors mehr schwächt als andere Aspekte im Zusammenhang mit den Aktivitäten nicht-staatlicher Organisationen, wie beispielsweise die Interessenvertretung oder die organisationale Fähigkeit.
Resumen
El desarrollo y la viabilidad del sector de las organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) varían en el mundo post-comunista. Exploramos el impacto de la corrupción sobre la sostenibilidad de las ONG – el entorno propicio global y las actividades del sector de las ONG - en Europa del Este y en la antigua Unión Soviética desde 1998 a 2007. Para probar la hipótesis sobre la relación entre la corrupción y la sostenibilidad de las ONG, empleamos análisis transversales de series temporales de 27 estados post-comunistas, controlando factores internos tales como el desarrollo económico, el gasto gubernamental y la democracia, y factores internacionales, tales como los niveles de comercio, la inversión directa extranjera y la ayuda externa, así como también el estatus del país frente a la Unión Europea. Concluimos que la corrupción está invariable y fuertemente asociada a menores niveles de sostenibilidad de las ONG. En particular, nuestro análisis sugieren que es probable que la corrupción degrade el entorno legal y la viabilidad fiscal del sector de las ONG en mayor medida que otros aspectos relacionados con las actividades de las ONG, tales como la defensa o la capacidad organizativa.
摘要
后共产主义各国的非政府组织(NGO)部门的发展和生存力存在差异。我们研究了从1998-2007年期间在东欧和前苏联内腐败对NGO可持续性(NGO部门的总体有利环境和活动)的影响。为了验证关于腐败与NGO可持续性之间关系的假说,我们对27个后共产主义州开展时间序列典型分析,不考虑经济发展、政府支出和民主等国内因素,贸易水平、外国直接投资和外国援助等国际因素,以及国家与欧盟关系状态等因素。我们的研究表明,腐败与NGO可持续性的降低有着连贯和密切的关系。尤其要指出的是,我们的分析显示,腐败很可能对NGO部门的法律环境和财政活力的负面影响,比对倡导或组织能力等NGO活动的其他方面更大。
ملخص
تطوير وقابلية نمو قطاع المنظمات الغير حكومية (NGO) يختلف في جميع أنحاء عالم ما بعد الشيوعية. نحن نستطلع أثر الفساد على إستدامة المنظمات الغير حكومية (NGO)- تمكين البيئة وأنشطة قطاع المنظمات الغير حكومية (NGO) العام - في أوروبا الشرقية والإتحاد السوفيتي السابق 1998-2007. لاختبار الفرضيات حول العلاقة بين الفساد والإستدامة للمنظمات الغير حكومية (NGO)، نحن نستخدم السلاسل الزمنية لتحليلات مقطعية من 27 دولة فيما بعد الشيوعية، السيطرة على العوامل الداخلية مثل التنمية الإقتصادية والإنفاق الحكومي، والديمقراطية، وعوامل دولية مثل مستويات التجارة والإستثمار الأجنبي المباشر، والمساعدات الخارجية، فضلا عن وضع البلد وجها لوجه مع الإتحاد الأوروبي. فإننا نستنتج أن الفساد مستمر ويرتبط بقوة بمستويات أقل من الإستدامة للمنظمات الغير حكومية (NGO). على وجه الخصوص، تحليلاتنا تشير أن الفساد من المرجح أن يؤدي إلى تدهور البيئة القانونية والجدوى المالية لقطاع المنظمات الغير حكومية (NGO) أكبر من الجوانب الأخرى المتعلقة بأنشطة المنظمات الغير حكومية (NGO) مثل التأييد أو القدرة التنظيمية.
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Notes
Unfortunately, due to having an N of only 25, Petrova aggregates the macro-level variables, including the number of international NGOs. That local NGO development may drive state involvement in international NGOs is not considered. Neither is the possibility that similar factors drive domestic and NGO strength.
While the NGO Sustainability Index is carefully constructed and robust to critiques commonly aimed at broader global indices of vague, multifaceted phenomenon like the rule of law, it is still arguably an indicator of “global governance,” and subject to critical analyses of these measures as being forms of continued dominance (see, for example, the contributions to Davis et al. 2012). Unfortunately, such normative debates are beyond the scope of this paper.
Georgia is illustrative of this. Despite scoring well on the legal environment dimension, the level of judicial independence in the country is remarkably low, below either Russia or Ukraine (Linzer and Staton 2011).
The World Bank stopped measuring aid received by these states post-accession. Another example is the lack of measures provided by the EBRD with regard to the Central Asian cases.
In all models independent variables are lagged one year to prevent simultaneity bias.
Since we acknowledge the limitations of corruption index (i.e., subjective measurement from expert groups and slow changes over time), we seek to conduct a robustness check with a different measure of corruption. All models presented in the paper were also estimated using the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index, with negligible differences. No critical covariates lost significance, and coefficients changed minimally. Also, prior to multiple imputation there were more missing values for the TI CPI, bolstering the decision to primarily use the Freedom House rating.
These three variables are taken from the World Bank's World Development Indicators.
Panel unit root tests (Im-Pearsan-Shin and Fisher tests) were conducted in Stata version 11, all results rejecting the null of unit root at p < 0.01.
This contrasts with a fixed effects approach. Fixed effects are inappropriate with time-invariant covariates, and remove the cross-sectional components from the model. As this variation is important, and as the t is small relative to the number of units, mixed effects models are preferred.
The coefficient estimate for FDI in Model 1 is −0.008, and a change from the first to third quartile of the observed values for FDI inflows is associated with a less than 0.04 decrease in NGO sustainability.
Another possibility is that this is dependent on the level of democracy: if government expenditures are a proxy for state intrusion into the economy, then more intrusive, less democratic governments might have worse environments for NGOs. An interaction term between government expenditures and democracy is, however, highly insignificant and in such a model the individual coefficients barely change.
This decision is also supported by Bayesian model averaging, which suggests the inclusion of corruption and democracy in 100% of models, and whose averaged posterior means are almost indistinguishable from those in Model 3.
Plots in Fig. 2 were created using the tile package in R (Adolph 2010). Model parameters and the variance–covariance matrix are averaged results across 20 imputed datasets. As the visualizations require the mean values for each covariate, the average cell value imputed in the twenty datasets was used. Visualizations conducted on pre-imputation data produce similar results.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Eunbi Yu, Daniel Berliner, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Replication data and code can be found on the authors’ websites.
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Appendix
Appendix
Corruption Measures
As was noted in the text, there is a high degree of correlation between the measures employed in the analysis and the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) conducted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank. Each wave of this survey asks the managers of thousands of firms across sectors and post-communist countries about their experiences with corruption, regulations, licensing, and a number of other relevant phenomena. The table below demonstrates the correlation between the national average for each post-communist country on a number of BEEPS questions from the 2005 and 2008 surveys and the Freedom House perception-based measure used in our analysis. While obviously these are the reports of business managers (three quarters of which are coming from manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade), and as such would be inappropriate to use in our analysis, they do show a very high degree of correlation with the expert-survey perception-based measures, suggesting that our analysis is capturing to a large degree the experienced corruption environment in the post-communist world (Tables 3, 4, 5, and 6).
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Epperly, B., Lee, T. Corruption and NGO Sustainability: A Panel Study of Post-communist States. Voluntas 26, 171–197 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-013-9404-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-013-9404-3