Abstract
AbstractScholarship and practitioners interested in civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world have drawn attention to the growing set of laws—both restrictive and permissive—governing CSO activities. To date, however, there have been limited efforts to typologize these regulations which hinders the ability to analyze their emergence and effects. This article seeks to move scholarship toward a coherent framework by first, introducing a broad typology of governance, formation, operations, and resources provisions that allows for a systematic study of CSO laws and policies across contexts; and second, proposing four ideal-types of regulatory regimes, rigid-conservatism, bureaucratic-illiberalism, permissionless-association, and legitimized-pluralism. These regulatory regimes are political institutions that consist of multiple laws and constitutional protections that govern and protect civil society. The article theorizes the effect of each ideal-type regulatory regime on CSOs’ organizational ecology. To provide a concrete example, I apply the typology to the case of Kenya to show how its regulatory regime has changed incrementally over time. Methodologically, the article uses an iterative, inductive review and analysis of academic articles, book chapters, and practitioner reports contributing to our understanding of the laws and policies that regulate CSOs, or what I call CSO regulatory regimes.
Highlights
Practitioners, policymakers, and scholars are giving increased attention to the regulatory frameworks governing civil society. These regulatory frameworks are multiple laws combining with constitutional protections to create carefully institutionalized regulatory systems that govern the activity of civil society organizations (CSOs), or what I call CSO regulatory regimes
It consists of a diverse assortment of book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, and professional reports produced by analysts from around the world. These works examine regulatory regimes in Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Western Europe; and include in-depth case studies, large cross-national statistical analyses, comparative historical analyses, expert legal reviews, and descriptive accounts connecting real-world events to policy changes. While they vary in scope and level of detail, each contributes toward a systematic conceptualization of CSO regulatory regimes
Recent global affairs and political developments have led governments, practitioners, and social scientists to give renewed attention to the regulatory systems that oversee the activity of civil society organizations (CSOs), or what I call CSO regulatory regimes
Summary
Practitioners, policymakers, and scholars are giving increased attention to the regulatory frameworks governing civil society. I review and synthesize existing scholarship to make two original contributions: first, I propose a broad typology of provisions intended to make the systematic study of CSO laws and policies across contexts more possible; and second, I introduce four ideal-types of regulatory regimes and theorize their effects on the CSO organizational ecology. Combining the second and third points results in a matrix typology of the many types of provisions that regulate CSOs. The review found analysts approach the study of CSO regulatory regimes differently: many analyze only restrictive provisions while others study broader subgroups; some examine only the adoption of provisions while others discuss only their outcomes. It appears less common to systematically study regulatory regimes in their entirety and over long periods. Combining the enabling nature of the regulatory environment with the complexity of the regulatory regime conceptualizes four ideal-types: rigid-conservatism, bureaucratic-illiberalism, permissionless-association, and legitimized-pluralism. The final section uses the case of Kenya to demonstrate how this conceptualization allows for the systematic study of civil society regulations over time and at different levels of analysis
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