Strengthening civil society beyond the 'assistance-for-democratization' era. Lessons from Romania.

• Author: Arpad, Todor
• Position: POLSCI PAPERS - Report

Introduction

Achieving democratic consolidation in the absence of a strong, vibrant and sustainable civil society proves rather impossible in countries without significant democratic traditions. As in other parts of the world, after the fall of non-democratic regimes and the start of the democratization process, international donors rushed in, aiming to support and help build civil society organizations that would monitor the political institutions and act as watchdogs on potential sideslips. The influence of international donors in helping democratic consolidation, improving the rule of law and fostering economic development, continued in post-communist countries at the time of their European Union (EU) accession. While Romania experienced significant political, social and economic reforms, evolutions that allowed it to join the EU in 2017, it remained a laggard in most areas, including in its civil society development. The post-accession period generated a new dynamic within the Romanian civil society.

On the other hand, the NGO sector continues to suffer from structural weaknesses. The 2016 Index of civil society organizations (CSO) sustainability shows that, since Romania's EU accession, financial sustainability, organizational capacity and overall sustainability have remained mediocre, but stable (USAID and FDSC--Civil Society Development Foundation, 2016). Also, the report based on Coalitia 52's monitoring from March 2014 to February 2015 (Academia de Advocacy, 2015) (2) indicates that the Romanian NGOs' participation in public consultation, their capacity to influence public policies and the increase in the accountability of state institutions through the consultation mechanism are abysmally low. Data sent by the ministries and city halls reveal that only 4 per cent (119 in total) of the projects submitted to public consultation over a year have been modified following the input received from the public and NGOs. Among these, 12 per cent of the legislative draft modifications were carried out at ministry level (59 out of 498), with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development having performed 82.5 per cent of all modifications (33 out of 40). At the other end of the spectrum, at city hall level, only 60 out of 2578, or 2.3 per cent of all legislative drafts, were modified following the process of public consultation. Last but not least, despite the existence of legal procedures and clear urgent appeal procedures exempt from judicial tax, the research did not identify any cases in the entire period of citizens or CSOs going to court and suing institutions following the absence of any answer or an answer that did not meet the legal standards. While several CSOs participated in the Coalition for the 52/2003 Law, none of them requested judicial assistance in order to continue their requests in court. These weaknesses go hand in hand with stagnation in the last decade in areas such as the quality, level of transparency, accountability and corruption of government. While most of the literature focused on explaining the evolution of NGOs under the presence of significant funding for democratization assistance, few authors have developed explanatory models for the post-EU accession assistance for the democratization period, when the overall funding has been still available, but significantly decreasing. This article aims to cover this gap in literature.

Puzzle and research question

The most important puzzle that drives the inquiry in this article is the contrast between the civil society's capacity to mobilize considerable opposition to specific policies and generate large-scale protest, and its structural weaknesses in influencing and promoting specific public policy changes. Based on a recent extensive survey of the NGOs that are formally involved in the process of promoting various activities that contribute to the quality of democracy, this article tackles this puzzle by investigating the following research question: What are the factors that explain the intensity of activity and tactics of Romanian NGOs' involvement in democracy-promoting activities in the post-EU accession context?

Within the post-assistance for democratization debate, the article evaluates the explanatory capacity of the financial involvement of foreign donors' model, as well as the institutional capacity and networking involvement models. The article is structured as follows: first, I review the main explanatory models of the variation in tactics and intensity of activity of civil society in post-communist countries' involvement in public policy advocacy, with a special focus on the role of international donors; second, I elaborate the explanatory models that stem from the literature review and the hypothesis to be tested through the quantitative analysis; third, I present in detail the research steps and methods, operationalize the dependent and independent variables and explain the methodology of the survey; fourth, the results of the statistical analysis are presented; and finally, the conclusions and implications are elaborated.

Literature review and explanatory models

Especially after the fall of communist regimes, supporting NGOs that would actively promote transparency and watch government actions as a means of promoting democratization and economic transformation has been at the top of international donors' priorities. Nevertheless, the efficiency of the international assistance for NGOs focused on promoting agendas related to enhancing the quality of democracy has been vigorously debated (Guasti, 2016; Henderson, 2002; Nimu, 2015; Regulska, 1998; Suleiman, 2013). One of the most contentious issues is the feasibility of international donors' NGO funding policies, aimed at creating vigorous and sustainable democracies in countries that lack a previous democratic experience and a strong civil society.

In an evaluation of the effects of foreign assistance on developing a participatory local democracy in Poland in the first decade of transition, Regulska underscores the fact that US donors delayed their commitment to projects on local democracy by several years led to significant delays in obtaining stable and effective participatory practices in Poland in the early 1990s (Regulska, 1998). This view is also supported by Guasti's recent regional assessment of empirical evidence which stresses that, despite their limited capacity, the role of CSOs in influencing democratic politics is very important in defining the nature of democracy in Central and Eastern European countries (Guasti, 2016: 220). Instead, other authors point to the limited resources, or means to distribute them, as the main culprits for the observed situation. Petrova and Tarrow (2007) and Henderson (2002) explain how the presence of foreign donors leads to a split in the CSOs between those organizations that can access these funds and those that cannot. The authors explain that this competition limits NGOs' incentives to cooperate, increases incentives to focus on grant-funded single issues and engage in only a limited way with the communities they should presumably serve (Narozhna, 2004; Suarez and Gugerty, 2016). Also, Matveeva argues that in many cases international organizations use NGOs to implement projects, thereby avoiding state agencies, and thus contribute to the limited engagement between state institutions and NGOs (Matveeva, 2008: 7). This first explanatory model, the financial dependence model, places more emphasis on the legacy of the assistance for democratization period and implies that NGOs that have a longer period of existence and have implemented more externally financed projects are expected to be more active and capable of influencing public policy.

A different approach to understand the NGO-state-society relationship is advanced by Petrova and Tarrow's distinction between two different types of activism. On the one hand, participatory activism refers to individual and group participation in the electoral process, interest group activities and protests. On the other hand, transactional activism refers to collaborative activities between NGOs and various power holders, such as political party institutions (Petrova and Tarrow, 2007: 79). The second type of activism, despite being less contentious, can nevertheless be very efficient in promoting various reforms. The explanatory model advanced by these authors implies that there would be a trade-off between the NGOs' involvement in confrontational tactics and their capacity to be involved in cooperative endeavours with state institutions. Testing the existence of this trade-off is also important in evaluating the degree to which the increased capacity of Romanian civil society to react to a negative agenda could lead to an increase in NGO capacity to cooperate with state institutions in advancing a positive public policy agenda. Stressing a different variable that shapes NGOs' activism, Wallace et al. (2012: 7) argue that, because many east-European NGOs are financed from abroad, they are not interested in developing a large membership, a situation that is relatively similar both in countries that joined and those that did not join the EU. Instead, Marinova (2011: 164) explains that despite the low levels of civic participation, NGOs receive a high level of trust, given the widespread governmental corruption and the important role NGOs have in calling this corruption to account. Nevertheless, given the lack of interest of most NGOs in developing grassroots organizations, their capacity to capitalize on this trust is rather limited. Furthermore, Badescu, Sum and Uslaner argue that NGO activists manifest higher levels of trust and tolerance, and thus could serve in the process of transferring democratic values to the wider public (Badescu et al., 2004: 320). Increasing NGOs' embeddedness could be the key to their long-term sustainability. In a 2002 article, Carothers argues that...