ARNOVA 2025 proposal
Title
(15-word limit)
Civil Society Crackdowns and the Spatial Redistribution of Foreign Aid
Track
Global Civil Society, Social Movements, and Grassroots Associations
What is your research question or thesis statement?
Existing research explores the effect of civil society restrictions on overall levels of aid within countries, but is limited to aggregate totals and sector-specific subtotals (e.g. total aid for humanitarian assistance projects or democracy promotion projects). The geography and location of aid projects are important, but underexplored dimensions of donor responses. When a country restricts civil society, do donor countries simply reduce aid, do they shift it to neighboring countries, or do they shift it to different projects within the country to diversity project locations and reduce possible surveillance from the central government?
Abstract
(50-100 word summary to be included in the session description and catalog of research)
Anti-NGO laws have restricted civil society around the world and shape how official aid agencies allocate foreign aid. While existing research shows these restrictions reduce bilateral aid flows, little is known about their geographic effects. Using geocoded aid data for hundreds of thousands of projects from 1973-2020, combined with original civil society restriction data across 148 countries, we explore whether civil society restrictions lead to aid spillovers to neighboring countries and increased geographic dispersion of projects within restricted countries. Our findings reveal underexplored spatial dynamics of aid allocation and contribute to literature on the consequences of civil society restrictions.
Narrative description
(up to 500 words that provides 1) a clear research question, 2) grounding in the state of knowledge or literature, 3) methodological approach, 4) findings or expected findings; and 5) expected contributions. Bibliographic references are encouraged by not required.)
The previous three decades have seen a proliferation of anti-NGO laws throughout the world, resulting in an increasingly restricted space for civil society organizations to provide services or engage in advocacy. This is worrisome for Western donors because they channel a large amount of foreign aid, especially development assistance and democracy promotion funds through NGOs. How have donors responded to this legal crackdown on NGOs?
Donor countries have a range of possible responses when recipient countries restrict civil society. Recent research finds that national and multilateral aid agencies are responsive to anti-NGO laws, though often in inconsistent ways (Chaudhry and Heiss 2022). Christensen and Weinstein (2013) show that aid from bilateral donors—or direct country-to-country aid—sees an average decrease of $25 million after recipient states pass laws that restrict the flow of foreign funds to NGOs. However, aid from multilateral agencies is not affected by these laws. Similarly, Dupuy and Prakash (2018) find that the adoption of a restrictive foreign funding law is associated with a 32% decline in aid from bilateral donors, but has no corresponding change in aid from multilateral donors.
Existing research explores the effect of civil society restrictions on overall levels of aid within countries, but is limited to aggregate totals and sector-specific subtotals (e.g. total aid for humanitarian assistance projects or democracy promotion projects). The geography and location of aid projects are important, but underexplored dimensions of donor responses. When a country restricts civil society, do donor countries simply reduce aid, do they shift it to neighboring countries, or do they shift it to different projects within the country to diversity project locations and reduce possible surveillance from the central government?
To answer these questions, we use new data from the Geocoded Official Development Assistance Dataset (GODAD), which contains project-level data for hundreds of thousands of aid projects from two dozen aid agencies between 1973–2020 (Bomprezzi et al. 2025). Each project is geo-localized, allowing us to explore the geographic distribution and concentration of projects within countries. We combine this rich data with original data on civil society restrictions across 148 countries from 1981–2020 to assess the impact of these restrictions on total flows of foreign aid, how aid is distributed, and which issues are funded.
In particular, we hypothesize that civil society restrictions have two geographic effects on aid allocations:
- Stricter NGO laws in a given country lead to changes in aid allocation to projects in neighboring countries near borders, creating a sort of spillover effect, and
- Stricter NGO laws in a given country lead to changes in the geographic distribution of projects within the country, increasing entropy and geographic dispersion of aid
The combination of geocoded aid data and civil society restrictions will allow us to better estimate the effect of civil society crackdown on underexplored features of aid.