Supporters or Challengers?

Abstract

How do nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) affect local politics in developing democracies? Specifically, do NGOs have systematic effects on the fortunes of incumbent political parties in local elections? Existing work predicts starkly contradictory political effects: Some scholars claim that NGOs most likely help incumbents by providing services for which politicians can claim credit, whereas others believe that NGOs most likely hurt incumbents by facilitating political opposition. The authors argue that both of these effects are possible, depending on the size of a jurisdiction's population. In smaller populations, the authors hypothesize that NGOs facilitate collective action and decrease the ability of an incumbent to claim credit for projects; larger jurisdictions water down the effect of NGOs on collective action and permit incumbents' credit claiming. Strong support is found for hypotheses, using electoral, sociodemographic, and NGO data for all of 314 municipalities in Bolivia.