NGO Research Program: A Collective Action Perspective

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NGO Research Program A Collective Action
Perspective

• Erica Johnson Aseem Prakash
• University of Washington

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Different terms, same actor

• Non-governmental organizations
• Voluntary organizations
• Citizen groups
• Community groups
• Grassroots organization
• Transnational advocacy groups
• Civil society
• Third sector
• Non-profits
• Social movement organizations

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Three literatures

• Political science non-governmental actors
  (businessadvocacy)
• Sociologists social movement organizations
  (businessprotest)
• Public management non-profits (businesssupply
  of goods and services)

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NGO Scholarship Problems

• Area studies mentality descriptive typologies
  applicable to small population subsets
• False categorization principled beliefs, not
  instrumental concerns motivate NGOs emergence
• Normative study good NGOs
• Selection bias focus on success stories

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Why these problems?

• Unwilling to view NGOs as forms of collective
  action
• Focused on the demand side, not the supply of
  collective action via NGOs
• Not asking the question what are NGOs an
  instance of?
• Scholars influenced by constructivism
  rationalbad but NGOs are good
• Unwilling to examine how rational motivations
  may influence NGO emergence, governance,
  structure, and strategy

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Core issues

• Under what conditions do individuals pursue their
  goals via NGOs instead of doing so unilaterally
  or via some other actor?
• Why do NGOs structure their internal governance
  in specific ways? How do they deal with agency
  issues and accountability?
• How do internal resources and structural factors
  affect NGO structure and strategy?

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How to proceed?

• View NGOs as collective actors. Draw on the
  collective action literature
• Work with generalizable theories
• - to cumulate knowledge about various NGOs
• - to compare across NGOs
• - to compare NGOs with other collective actors

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Our contribution

• Employ the collective action perspective,
  especially insights from theories of firm, to
  study NGOs
• Highlight how the non-profit literature is
  analytical superior vs. political science and
  sociology literatures in studying this actor
• Identify critical issues and hopefully develop
  understanding about NGO origin, structure,
  strategy, and efficacy

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Common attributes

• Non-governmental actors
• Subjected to the non-distributional constraint

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Why theories of firm?

• Firms and NGOs are two non-governmental
  institutional mechanisms for individuals to act
  collectively
• Analytically, individuals can be expected to make
  similar make or buy choices

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Differences as well

• Firms Shareholders are the principals residual
  claimants
• NGOs
• Who are the principals Members? Donors? Service
  recipients?
• What is the hold up problem for NGOs?

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Issues

• To what extent can we push the firm analogy to
  the study of NGOs?
• What are the limitations and strengths of this
  approach?
• Even when the firm analogy does not perfectly
  hold, can it help in identifying analytical
  issues that NGO scholars should confront?

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Institutional emergence

• Theory of firm generates falsifiable hypotheses
• Political science no prediction
• Sociology power asymmetries and lack of access
  to formal institutions
• Non-profits
• Information asymmetries
• Trust, heterogeneity in tastes
• Recognize mixed economies

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Some examples of using insights from theories of
firm
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Agency

• Firms Board of directors and market for
  corporate control
• NGOs
• - No market for corporate control
• - Performance cannot be measured easily, no SIC
  system to compare across NGOs
• Therefore, agency problems more serious for NGOs
• But the literature wishes them away under the
  garb of NGOs pursuing principled beliefs

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Accountability

• Firms shareholders
• - Also accountable to other stakeholders
• NGOs accountable to whom?
• - Donors? Members? Audiences they serve?
• - Accountability confusion implies agency
  problems more severe

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Strategy drivers

• Porter vs. RBV regarding drivers of firm strategy
• NGO literature
• Does not systematically study the influence of
  internal vs. external factors
• Studies NGO strategy versus govts or firms but
  not versus other NGOs
• - Neglects how competition for members and funds
  affects strategy

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Examples of unexplored issues

• How do entry barriers in policy markets affect
  NGO strategy? Do incumbents employ different
  strategies vs. new entrants?
• Why do some NGOs offer generic products while
  others focus on niche markets?
• Why do NGOs adopt different types of advocacy
  strategies?
• How do they decide the portfolio mix between
  private and public politics?
• How do they choose advocacy targets?

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Next steps

• Work with generalizable theories. In addition to
  collective action, resource dependency and
  population ecology approaches might be useful
• Traditionally
• - NGOAdvocacy NPservice delivery
• - Develop models of NP NGOs NPNGOs
• Model firms as NGOs?