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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 2/00
A Cross-Regional Analysis of Civil Society and Democratic Development
September 1999
The Center for International Studies University of Southern California
Domestic instability often has a deleterious effect at the international level, too, particularly as more states adopt democratic institutions and market-oriented economies. Whether we are talking about failing multi-ethnic states and their impact on the UN and NATO, or about failing economies and their impact on international markets and such international organizations as the IMF and the World Bank, it is clear that the domestic and international levels cannot be separated. While instability may arise from many different sources, the state-society connection is perhaps the most problematic: a democracy in which the only link between citizens and politicians is the electoral connection is a democracy impoverished by stagnant ideas and limited societal input. A state disconnected from society is prone to domestic instability, with negative effects at both the domestic and international levels.
The “wave” of democratization that has occurred since the mid-1970s has heightened interest in the study of regime change and consolidation, focused primarily on democratic forms of government as the desired outcome. What has been most noticeable in the burgeoning literature is the renaissance of the civil society concept, as a means both for understanding the state-society connection and for promoting the important role it plays in democratic development. Despite the attention paid to these political events and the emphasis placed on civil society, though, the study of democratic development has been inhibited by vague and incommensurate conceptions of the connection between civil society and democracy, which limits our ability to synthesize material and insights across cases. Moreover, the assertion that civil society is a necessary component of democratic development is one that has only rarely been examined on a systematic multi-case basis, let alone through large-N analysis.
The research project I am conducting here at the Center attempts to overcome these deficiences, building on the conceptual development in my dissertation, “Civil Society, Ideas, and Policymaking: Building a New Framework for Democratization Research.” The argument I outline here is that existing conceptions of how civil society relates to democracy are built on limited understanding of groups and ideas in the state-society connection. The remainder of this paper is taken up by the first portion of my project, a cross-regional quantitative analysis of the relationship between non-profit sectors, access to state information, and democratic development. The purpose of the analysis is not only to conduct the first large-scale examination of civil society and democracy, but also to demonstrate the plausibility of some of my conceptual arguments for the study of democratization. It should be noted that this analysis is only examining institutional features, in particular only those that related to two segments of civil society, civic associations and non-profit organizations. The second portion of the project is a set of eight case studies that examine more closely the nature and activities of civil society in these states. Taken as a whole, this project is a deliberate combination of careful conceptual development, quantitative methods, and comparative case studies, in an attempt to mitigate the trade-off between “thick” theory and rigorous analysis (see Coppedge 1997).
Conceptualizing Civil Society
The study of democratization has been marked by competing theoretical approaches and an emphasis on case study, which has made comparison of these political transitions difficult. Recent examples of these approaches would include strategic acting (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986), class-based analysis (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992), institutional (Elster 1988, 1998; Linz and Valenzuela 1994), or some combination of insights from all three (Collier and Collier 1991; Linz and Stepan 1996). The theoretical argument being made here is that one remedy for this is to pay more attention to how states encourage the development, functions, and involvement of civil society.
The term “civil society” is ubiquitous in research on democratization, especially in the context of the collapse of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe (Weigle and Butterfield 1992; Linz and Stepan 1996; Ekiert and Kubik 1997). Scholars point to the central role played by civil society in the transition from authoritarian regimes and its importance for the durability of effective democratic institutions (Arato 1982; O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986). The literature on civil society is voluminous and conceptions of civil society have changed significantly over the last three hundred years, generating different interpretations of civil society's role in democracy (Keane 1988; Cohen and Arato 1992). Despite the common perception of civil society's significance as the venue for the aggregation and communication of societal interests, however, more explicit conceptions of what civil society is and what it does are often limited and contradictory.
Thomas Paine’s anti-statist philosophy runs through all of the current conceptions and represents the beginning of the contemporary renaissance of the concept (Arato 1982; Ekiert 1996). Envisioning a state-society dichotomy, this philosophy was commonly found in works by East European dissidents (Benda et al 1988), but has since been recognized as unworkable and inadequate in the context of democratization (Hirst 1991, 231-4; Linz and Stepan 1996, 271-2). A brief survey of the two civil society concepts commonly found in the regime change literature—the sociological and political conceptions—demonstrates that the approaches utilizing them would yield distorted and conflicting images of democratic development. 1
The sociological conception focuses on actors in pursuit of broad societal interests, usually in the form of such autonomous collective actors as economic classes, trade unions, and social movements. Democratic development is enhanced to the extent that a mobilized civil society can stave off hostile economic or political actors by signalling its interests through collective action (Moore 1966; Cohen and Arato 1992; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992; see similar development by Ekiert and Kubik 1997).
The political conception is concerned with autonomous civic associations of individuals in pursuit of societal interests within the acceptable bounds of democratic processes, and is commonly found in the democratization literature (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Stepan 1988; Diamond 1994). The development of civil society is not sufficient for the consolidation of democracy, though, as strong political institutions are needed; a coherent party system, in particular, is necessary to aggregate interests, form governments, and make policy through legislation and rules; it should be noted that Putnam’s influential work, Making Democracy Work (1993), breaks with the emphasis on political parties to assert the primacy of civil society.
Three commonalities stand out. First, these conceptions have a limited understanding of groups. Besides emphasizing different groups, both ignore the existence of anti-system groups, obstacles to organization (Olson 1965), and the ways in which states shape the nature of civil society through institutional features.
Second, they all assign to civil society an important role in democracy. Associations are needed to restrain a more powerful, systemic actor, as well as to aggregate and express various interests in society. Active citizen participation is needed for the organization and functioning of associations. The communication of information and ideas is needed to encourage participation, stimulate new interests, and guard against abuses of state power. Through civil liberties guaranteed by the state, societal norms are promulgated that, in turn, strengthen the legitimacy of the state. Although this consensus argument is based on ideas and norms, it cannot overcome limitations in how it accounts for the quality of ideas, the volatility of interests and preferences, and the flow of ideas between the state, civil society, and society.
A third commonality is that the primary ways in which regime change scholars envision the expression of societal interests in a democratic state-society connection—voting or collective action—are at odds with several decades of scholarship on democratic policymaking processes. Neither of these concepts has a viable model of how societal interests are articulated, communicated, and recognized in democratic regimes, that is, the policymaking process. 2 The two rely unduly upon elections or political parties for accurate recognition of changing ideas in society. Elections are an imperfect indicator of societal interests, however, both because elections occur infrequently and episodically, and because they capture those interests only indirectly. The analytical strategy of focusing on collective action and protest assumes that political parties will accurately recognize societal interests. A more useful and complete way to examine the connection between society and the democratic process is to focus on policymaking, for it is here that societal interests and preferences meet the state’s capacity for action. The ability of citizens or groups to participate in, communicate ideas to, and gain influence over policymaking strengthens democracy; the inability to do so could lead to such significant destabilizing pathologies in political development as apathy, extremism, and extra-institutional means of political expression. The key to democratic development is in the quality of the state-society connection, which is generally perceived to extend beyond the act of voting. Although the major civil society conceptions envision a civil society engaged in idea-based functions, the failure to adequately incorporate a more sophisticated perspective of the policymaking process has led to inaccurate, misleading analyses of the state-society relationship.
The first step for remedying this situation is to consider ways in which the state inhibits or promotes the growth of civil society. 3 The nature and extent of civil society is shaped by the institution-creating power of the state. The existence and guarantee of civil liberties certainly shapes the development and potential impact of civil society, but so do many other, less visible institutional features. For example, complicated registration procedures that are subject to administrative discretion can inhibit group formation. The more a state limits the development of civil society, the more it will close off the development and flow of interests, information, and ideas, thereby disconnecting itself from society and leaving itself vulnerable to popular dissatisfaction as ideas change. A state that encourages the development of civil society promotes the development and flow of ideas, which enables it to consider and respond to changing ideas.
The second step is to pay more explicit attention to the flow of information of all kinds, for this is another aspect of the state’s ability to respond to societal interests. The flow of information between the state, civil society, and society is actually made up of several different flows (see Figure 1). Involvement in policymaking processes represents a flow of information from civil society to the state, as civil society communicates societal interests and issue expertise. At the same time, however, there is another flow as civil society gathers information for society about state actions; this same flow is also necessary for the generation of new information in the form of analyses and expertise. State ownership or effective control over mass media has a profound constrictive effect on the flow of information to society, particularly with regard to information about state activities. Information flows are aided by constitutionally-mandated rights to information, but only if these rights are accompanied by regularized procedures for obtaining information and regulations forcing bureaucracies to regularly publish data. Information about societal interests do not flow exclusively through civil society, but also directly to the state in the form of such political activities as voting, letters to the editor, petitions, and demonstrations. The flow of information between civil society and society consists of not only reporting about state actions, but also generating and communicating new knowledge. Again, lack of access to state information has a profound effect here. The less civil society is integrated with society as a whole in terms of members, contributions, reputation, or publications, the smaller this flow will be. The ideational framework asserts the importance of information flows through the state-society connection for state capacity to respond to changing societal interests, and hence to regime development. Weakness in any of the above six flows of information means reduced state capacity, which in turn means increased vulnerability to changing societal ideas
The third step is to examine civil society’s involvement in policymaking processes, for this is the most fundamental venue for consideration of societal interests. Some readers may point out that such activities as lobbying, giving expert testimony, and gathering information are only a small portion of the spectrum of political activity, which could range from revolution to civil disobedience to voting. This is certainly correct, but I suggest here that these activities should be interpreted as the effect of the state-society connection; it is perhaps better to consider other modes of political activity as attempts to call attention to problems and change the policymaking agenda of the state, precisely because the policymaking process fails to incorporate societal interests adequately.
Existing conceptions of the state-society connection are inadequate and limited. To better understand how civil society strengthens democracy, we must examine the groups, ideas, and activities that make up the connection.
Cross-Regional Analysis
The first portion of this project takes up the challenge of conducting quantitative analysis on the basis of “thick” theory, that is, moving between the careful conceptualization of case studies and the rigor of large-N statistical methods. While different approaches to the study of regime change and democratization have typically favored comparative case studies, there is now enough information available to submit the civil society-democracy relationship to more rigorous analysis. Here, then, I take the first two of the three remedy steps to examine the civil society-democracy relationship and the plausibility of my conceptual arguments on a quantitative basis, as of 1995.
The general assertion that civil society is necessary for the healthy development of democracy will be examined by making use of recent sources of information. State encouragement for the development of civil society will be measured by an indicator of the non-profit sector, created by evaluating legal and regulatory frameworks with respect to features of “best practices” guidelines. State encouragement of information flow will be measured by an indicator of access to state information, built by evaluating constitutional and legal frameworks. These two indicators will then be compared to a democracy indicator created by Freedom House; in addition, the performance of my two new indicators will be compared to that of GDP (adjusted to reflect purchasing power parity) and the Human Development Index (HDI) (UNDP 1999), which are traditional variables with strong correlations to democratic development.
Institutional Features Encouraging Civil Society
The democratization literature suggests several ways to examine civil society. Putnam’s research took into account the number of civic associations per capita and the values these groups promulgated; many scholars have followed him by studying values and social networks (Boix and Posner 1996). There are several problems with using the sheer number of groups, however. First, it ignores how institutional features shape civil society. For example, difficult or subjective registration procedures act to depress the official number of organizations, to the extent that in Thailand it is estimated that 80% of all associations are unregistered. Second, it ignores the data-gathering reality that many states have no central registry or centralized reporting of registrations.
The related strategy of focusing on values and norms is more reasonable at a time when public opinion research is no longer uncommon throughout the world. There are problems with this strategy, too, though. First, the most and best data are for major, established democracies, so that we learn little about democratic development. Second, as with counting groups, this strategy also ignores obstacles to organization; indeed, it ignores organizations entirely, thereby reducing civil society to values revealed through survey methodology. This is not to say that values and norms are not important aspects of the state-society connection, just that they are encumbered by limitations on what they can tell us about groups that make up civil society.
The indicator developed here will be based on the legal and regulatory frameworks for non-profit sectors, going beyond the more basic right of association. Such an indicator would effectively capture the ways in which the state explicitly promotes the development of civil society. For this indicator I utilized a wide variety of recent books, reports, working papers, and other documents by scholars and consultants. The quantity and quality of data on non-profit sectors around the world has improved dramatically in the last decade, for several reasons. First, non-profits in and of themselves have become a major research topic on the domestic and comparative levels. Representative research includes individual projects here at USC focusing on volunteerism in California and large-scale projects at The Johns Hopkins University and the Information Center for Not-For-Profit Law (INCL) gathering extensive data on characteristics of non-profit sectors in many countries. Second, the rise of human rights and environmental groups as actors on national and international stages have given non-governmental organizations, i.e., non-profit groups, prominence, particularly for their influence on democratic transitions. Third, states and supranational organizations have become more interested in non-profit groups not just out of concern for human rights and the environment, but also as a means to improve quality of life or to facilitate scaling back the welfare state. Finally, the legal complexity of non-profit sectors has created the need for legal consultants and experts, especially in states undergoing political transitions, which has resulted in large collections of materials and the development of “best practices” guidelines.
Development of the indicator will be informed by expert discussions in the study of non-profit organizations. One obvious issue is the type of legal system in states, civil or common law, and the ways in which colonial empires implanted them; experts note, however, that this is actually a non-issue, for the nature of non-profit sector problems is generalizable even if the exact details are not (Salamon 1997; Simon 1997a). Other issues concern internal governance, restrictions on personal benefit from organization operations, and accountability obligations, but these are matters that relate more to the connection between society and civil society. More relevant issues for this paper’s purposes are those of organizational diversity, registration procedures, tax treatment, and permitted political activities. Following “best practices” guidelines, each state’s legal and regulatory framework for non-profit organizations will be evaluated and coded (ICNL 1997, 1998; Klingelhofer and Frye 1997; Salamon 1997; Simon 1997b; World Bank 1998).
(1) Organizational Diversity—There is a bewildering universe of official and unofficial types of non-profit groups, often including unions, cooperatives, or other community-based mutual benefit societies. The question here is whether any types of organization besides membership-driven associations have legal definition.
(2) Registration Procedures—These quite often mirror if not amplify the diversity of official groups and their unofficial subtypes. For example, it is not uncommon for educational foundations to register with the Education Ministry, health clinics with the Social Welfare Ministry, and folk-dancing associations with the Culture Ministry, while all others are handled by local administrators. The essential issue here is the existence of obstacles to registration. Thus, we can evaluate registration procedures in terms of their simplicity, ease, expense, registrar discretion, and ability to appeal; discretion is often a major problem in democratizing states.
(3) Tax treatment—Financial sustainability is a major problem for non-profit organizations, largely as a result of the absent profit motive, but also due to the diffuse nature of the goals and interests pursued by these groups. Two general issues dominate this discussion: the existence of exemptions, concessions, and deductions for income derived from activities related to the group’s purpose, and the status of unrelated economic activity. The pertinent questions here relate to the general existence of income tax exemptions for related activity, duty and VAT concessions, deductibility of donations, permission to engage in unrelated economic activity, and regulatory procedures for obtaining favorable tax treatment.
(4) Political Activities—It is not unusual for states to forbid non-profit organizations from campaigning or directly supporting political parties or candidates; after all, that is what the legally-defined group of “political party” does without beneficial tax treatment. However, the question here is about explicit bans on lobbying or advocacy, and implicit bans in the form of discretionary oversight by state officials looking for activities that violate such undefined official norms as “public morals,” “custom,” or “social order.”
Each of these aspects of non-profit institutional features will be coded 0 or 1, and then added to form an aggregate score for the non-profit sector indicator (NPS).
Institutional Feature Encouraging Information Flows
Like civil society, studies of democracy also suggest ways to study information flows. One indicator is freedom of the press, but others could include television set ownership, circulation of newspapers and other periodicals, or perhaps the number of installed telephones. Freedom of the press is perhaps the most commonly-used indicator, but for my purposes here it is not useful, as it is generally also an explicit component of existing measures of democracy. Of greater and more direct importance is access to state information.
The right to information goes beyond more the basic right of expression, for it is an explicit obligation upon the state to inform citizens about its activities; perhaps the most well-known example is the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S. This is not to say that this obligation is unlimited, such that states are forced to reveal sensitive personal, commercial, or security materials, but that there can be reasonable and objective limitations on what citizens can demand. There are two aspects of the right to information, acknowledging the right and implementing regulations for its exercise by citizens.
(1) Commitment—The question here is whether the right to information has been explicitly recognized by the state in its constitution or any binding international treaties. The constitutions of many post-communist states deliberately include the mention of right to information, for example, while the Maastricht Treaty commits some members to promote the right to information in order to achieve greater government transparency (REC 1998c).
(2) Implementation—A stronger commitment by the state can be seen in legislation, regulations, or case law that enables citizens to request, receive, or appeal rejections for information on a simple and objective basis. Lengthy timeframes, multi-stage processes, excessive fees, administrative discretion, or appeals directed to the rejecting authority act to inhibit exercise of this right.
The score for the right to information indicator (R2I) will be created as follows: the presence of enabling institutions promoting the right to information will be coded 2; the existence of inadequate enabling institutions or explicit recognition of the right will be coded 1; and the absence of explicit recognition will be coded 0.
Democracy
Democratic development has been measured through many different objective and subjective measures, such as voter turn-out, urbanization, life expectancy, educational achievement, GDP, economic development, fair elections, political party competitiveness, freedom of the press, and the existence and enforcement of civil liberties (Diamond 1992; Bollen 1993). Critics of objective indicators pointed out that many were not valid measures of democracy, both because they were not based on theorized connections to democracy and because they were flawed and misleading indicators; this is particularly true of voter turn-out. Critics of subjective indicators argue that although these measures consider realities that objective indicators fail to capture, their reliability is suspect.
Two indicators have been used extensively as the dependent variable in the study of democracy, the Freedom House rankings and the Jaggers-Gurr Polity databases. The former utilizes a multi-item checklist for subjective determinations by judges to come up with rankings for “Political Rights” and “Civil Liberties,” which are then added together for a combined ranking. Freedom House does not report the checklist scores that lead to the two individual rankings, so its reliability has been questioned. The Polity databases are more concerned with regime change, and are therefore considered valuable for time-series analysis, but two critics have recently pointed out that the multi-factor scores used in the database can often be simply collapsed to one single factor, constraints on chief executives (Gleditsch and Ward 1997). The analysis here will use Freedom House rankings, for studies have shown high correlations among all of the major indicators in the literature, and because it does seem to validly measure many aspects related to democracy (Coppedge 1997).
Analysis
The dataset covers a total of 67 states, drawn from several regions and across Freedom House rankings (see Table 1) It should be noted that the Freedom House average in my 67-case dataset differs from a larger set of 162 cases (see Table 2), suggesting that my set is skewed in favor of democratic states. While a critique could be made that there is a selection bias based on the generally greater data availability in wealthy democratic states, much of the material used here was created by local non-profit organizations themselves, not governments, without regard for levels of democracy or economic development. Intuition suggests that the inclusion of additional less-democratic states would decrease the strength of such traditional indicators as GDP and HDI, at the same time it would increase the strength of my two new indicators.
Reliability analysis of my indicators demonstrates that they are internally reliable (Table 3). One weak area, though, is the “Organization Types” item within the NPS indicator, which seems to be less correlated than the other items. Removal of that item did increase the reliability coefficient from.7665 to.7764, but it weakened correlations among the indicators, adjusted R_, and statistical significance; the relative weakness of the item is perhaps due to the need for more added differentiation in its coding. Based on the weak and mixed effect of removing this item from the NPS indicator, I chose to leave it in, giving preference to conceptual considerations over statistical ones.
Figures 2-5 graphically show positive relationships between democracy and each of the two traditional and new indicators. Note also the very slight N-curve between the scores of 2-4 on the NPS figure. Correlations between the Freedom House rankings and the GDP, HDI, NPS, and R2I indicators were surprisingly high. Both NPS and R2I actually correlated with Freedom House rankings at a higher level than either GDP or HDI. These results not only strongly support the general assertion of a positive relationship between civil society and democracy, but also the plausibility of my arguments about the role of non-profit organizations and information in democratic development. Correlations among the indicators are also interesting and provocative. The weakest correlations among the indicators are those between the two traditional indicators and the two new indicators. This not only leads to questions about the link between non-profit sector legislation and levels of economic development, but it also suggests that institutional features can help overcome low levels of development. The relative strength of correlations finds intuitive support in the reality that non-profit sectors exist at all development levels and in all regions, and that charity and philanthropy are universal and timeless. Finally and most importantly, the strong correlation between NPS and R2I provides support to my conceptual arguments.
Regression analyses lend further credence to the general and specific arguments under examination (Table 5). Although both GDP and HDI by themselves had significant explanatory power and significance, as has been noted in many previous large-N studies (see Lipset, Seong, and Torres 1993; Diamond 1992), it is exceeded by that of my two indicators. R2I was again slightly weaker than NPS, most likely due to clustering of the highest score among the most democratic states; this suggests, however, that instituting legislation guaranteeing access to state information separates moderately democratic states from strongly democratic states. The combined effect of either traditional indicator with the two new indicators produced an even stronger adjusted R_ and roughly equivalent levels of significance.
Breaking down the dataset by indicator item and region also provides some illuminating insights. In general, the most noticeable difference between the West and most of the rest is that the former states have eliminated the space for discretion in the registration process. For many states outside the West, discretion is used as a means for limiting and shaping potentially political behavior. The importance vested in this “gatekeeping” function is seen in the less frequent use of limitations on the political activities of groups. Another indicator item difference is that nearly all post-communist states have an explicit recognition of the right to information, while almost no Latin American or African states do; for the post-communist states, this is largely due to a reaction against the secrecy and manipulation practiced by the former regimes.
Regional comparisons based on the indicators support general perceptions of political development in certain parts of the world. On average, there is a clear distinction among post-communist states between states of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and other East European states for the Freedom House, NPS, and R2I indicators. Rankings within each of the two subsets mirror the general consensus about political development circa 1995: Slovenia and the Czech Republic at the top of East European states and Romania and Croatia at the bottom, with the Baltics at the top of FSU states and three Central Asian states at the bottom; moreover, non-profit legislation since 1995 in Romania and the Baltics has paralleled improvements in their democratic ratings. Equally interesting and intuitive are comparisons between post-communist subsets and other developing regions, as the profile of indicators for East European states resembles that for Latin American states, but the FSU profile more closely matches the African profile. This would suggest that while Latin American experiences have been used for comparison to post-communist transitions, the similarities do not travel very far eastward.
Conclusions, Cautions, and Implications
Analysis of the non-profit sector, access to state information, and democracy indicators demonstrates that there appears to be a strong positive association between civil society and democracy, and that the plausibility of my conceptual argument is high. I can state with some assurance, therefore, that extending our understanding of the state-society connection beyond basic rights and freedoms has value in democratization studies. This association is not the result of a concentration at the most democratic end of the Freedom House rankings, but is present in different degrees at all levels of democratic development and the effect increases with increasing levels of democracy. The analyses suggest that more nuances should be introduced within the NPS indicator in order to improve its power, especially with regard to organization types. Given that many states have access to state information legislation that is directed primarily at limited policy issues like the environment, there may be reason to introduce more differentiation there, too.
This quantitative study of the relationship between civil society and democracy is of limited use in the absence of time-series analysis, a caveat supported by detailed knowledge of these cases. On the one hand, it was not unusual to find in the data sources that non-profit legislation had been enacted within 5-10 years, or that access to state information was a fairly recent development even among many West European states. 4 On the other hand, developments in non-profit legislation and democratic development from 1995 on in many states have moved in tandem. Such quantitative analyses would be incomplete, however, without also considering the institutional context for collective actors and religious organizations. Moreover, case studies would be needed to flesh out the extent and content of civil society’s activities.
The implications of my arguments and these results suggest research agendas across traditional fields in political science and international relations. On the national and comparative levels, studies of regime change should consider how the state encourages the development of a strong state-society connection. Indeed, my dissertation was an application of the analytical framework to political development in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Normative considerations also suggest that domestic and international actors should actively promote objective conditions for the development of a non-profit sector and the flow of information. On a subnational level, my conceptual argument leads to questions of variations among social or ethnic segments in terms of the formation and activities of groups. On an international level, these results make a strong argument that international NGOs can be a force for positive change, as well as that Western foreign policy in support of democracy should not discount non-profit or right to information legislation as democratic frills to be added at a more convenient time.
Figure 1—Information Flows Diagram
Figure 2—Freedom House and GDP
Figure 3—Freedom House and HDI
Figure 4—Freedom House and NPS
Figure 5—Freedom House and R2I
Table 1 — Listing Of States In Dataset
| Freedom House Ranking* | Country |
| 14 | Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, United States |
| 13 | Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, UK |
| 12 | Bulgaria, Chile, Japan, Korea (South), Lithuania, Uruguay |
| 11 | Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Estonia, Latvia, Malawi, Slovakia |
| 10 | Brazil, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar |
| 9 | Armenia, Colombia, Paraguay, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Ukraine |
| 8 | Belarus, Croatia, India, Mexico, Thailand |
| 7 | Ghana, Peru |
| 6 | Georgia, Singapore, Uganda, Zimbabwe |
| 5 | Kazakhstan |
| 4 | Azerbaijan, Egypt, Kenya |
| 3 | Indonesia |
| 2 | China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam |
* The Freedom House rankings normally run from high of 2 (free) to a low of 14 (not free), but I have transformed them here for ease of use in analyses.
Table 2 — Descriptive Statistics
|
|
Average | Std Dev |
| Freedom House (n=162) | 8.57 | 3.95 |
| Freedom House (n=62) | 9.90 | 3.79 |
| Log GDP (adjusted) | 3.590 | .2625 |
| HDI | .7714 | .1695 |
| NPS | 2.51 | 1.43 |
| R2I | .87 | .89 |
Table 3 — Reliability Analyses
| Internal Correlations | Registration Procedures | Organization Type | Tax Advantages |
| Organization Type | .3166 |
|
|
| Tax Advantages | .5877 | .4514 |
|
| Political Activity | .5897 | .2986 | .4305 |
| Internal Correlations | Commitment to Access |
| Enabling Legislation | .6488 |
| Correlations | Freedom House | GDP | HDI | NPS |
| GDP | .640 |
|
|
|
| HDI | .677 | .934 |
|
|
| NPS | .808 | .554 | .538 |
|
| R2I | .714 | .395 | .473 | .665 |
Table 5 — Regression Analyses
|
|
Adjusted R_ | Coefficient | Std Error |
| 1) IV=GDP | .400 | 9.227 *** | 1.375 |
| 2) IV=HDI | .450 | 15.121 *** | 2.041 |
| 3) IV=NPS, R2I | .700 | 1.584 *** | .239 |
|
|
|
1.353 ** | .386 |
| 4) IV=GDP, NPS, R2I | .746 | 3.826 ** | 1.076 |
|
|
|
1.216 *** | .243 |
|
|
|
1.299 ** | .355 |
| 5) IV=HDI, NPS, R2I | .759 | 6.689 *** | 1.628 |
|
|
|
1.267 *** | .228 |
|
|
|
1.087 ** | .352 |
** p<.01, *** p<.0005
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Endnotes
Note 1: I would especially like to thank David Schwieder at the University of Illinois, Karla Simon at ICNL, and Mara Bird and Mauricio Sanabria at USC.
Two other, less influential conceptions can also be found in the literature. The neo-liberal conception of civil society developed by University of Chicago scholars Hayek, Friedman, and Buchanan argues that autonomous civic associations will certainly develop within society, but the state should not interfere to promote their development lest it come under assault by groups seeking state benefits. Societal interests are best expressed through periodic elections, for groups distort information about what society truly wants. See Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); James Buchanan, The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Friedrich von Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). The associative approach proposed in Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers (eds.), Associations and Democracy (London: Verso, 1995), fuses elements of the other three approaches. In order to fulfill norms of egalitarian democracy, this approach centers on how to overcome the failure of pluralist interest group politics, which can be seen by the dominance of economically-advantaged groups and their “capture” of bureaucracies. Through the use of the state's institution-creating power, obstacles to organization could be reduced and participation in policymaking processes could be opened, thereby mitigating the deleterious impact of factionalism in democracy. Back.
Note 2: Moreover, these conceptions rely on outdated notions of a policymaking process dominated by pluralist group competition, which the public policy literature long ago abandoned in favor of those emphasizing the interaction of ideas, groups, and institutions; see Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), and Paul Sabatier and Hank Jenkins-Smith, Policy Change and Learning: An Advocacy Coalition Approach (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993) for more information on the evolution of this literature. Back.
Note 3: The analytical framework in my dissertation expands the definition of civil society to include corporatist organizations, as well. Back.
Note 4: Political parties in legislatures often had access to information, however, which could be considered a weak form of what this study was looking for. Back.
