Tempering the EU? NGO Advocacy in the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice

The European Union’s (EU) area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) portfolio comprises policy areas such as immigration and asylum, and police and judicial cooperation. Steps were taken to bring this field into the mandate of the EU first by the Maastricht Treaty, followed by changes implemented by the Amsterdam and Lisbon Treaties, the last one ‘normalizing’ the EU’s erstwhile Third Pillar. As the emergent EU regime continues to consolidate in this field, NGOs of various kinds continue to seek to influence policy-making and implementation, with varying success. This article seeks to establish the context in which NGOs carry out their work and argues that the EU-NGO interface is impacted both by the institutional realities of the European Union and the capacities of EU-oriented NGOs to seize and expand opportunities for access and input into the policy cycle. Using EU instruments representing three different policy bundles in AFSJ (immigration, asylum and judicial cooperation in criminal matters), the article seeks to map out NGO strategies in engaging and oftentimes resisting European Union policy instruments.

エチオピアにおけるNGO活動 -- 「慈善団体および市民団体に関する布告」(No.621/2009)の影響についての検討

エチオピアでは2009年にNGOに関する法律が施行され、アドボカシーや人権の分野におけるNGOの活動が大きく制限されることになった。この法律に対応するために、NGO団体は法律に抵触しないように報告書の文言などを慎重に選択しながら活動を行っている。その一方で、政府と密接な関係を構築しているNGOは活動範囲を大きく広げつつある。このような状況下で、政府に対する批判的役割としてのNGOの重要な役割は萎縮している状況にある。

(EU) friends: NGO cooperation and involvement across multi-level policy processes. IES Working Paper 1/2007

A growing body of research focuses on the expanding roles of NGOs in global and supranational governance. The research emphasizes the increasing number of participation patterns of NGOs in policymaking and cross-national cooperation. It has produced important insights into the evolving political role of NGOs and their growing involvement in governance. The focus on activities at a transnational level has, however, lead to the virtual exclusion of research on other levels of governance. It has not been possible to tell whether the locus of their political activity is shifting from the national to the transnational environment, or whether it is simply broadening. Missing from the literature is an examination of the variety of cooperative relationships, including those between NGOs, which impact policy involvement across different levels of governance. To bridge this gap, I address two key questions: 1) Is the strategy of cooperation among NGOs a common feature of social movement activity across levels of governance, and if so, what does the structure of cooperation look like? 2) What impact, if any, does cooperation have on the expanding political involvement of NGOS, both within and across levels of governance? Using data from an original survey of migrant and refugee organizations across much of Europe, I test several hypotheses that shed light on these issues. The findings broadly indicate that 1) Cooperation is a widely-used strategy across levels of governance, 2) Cooperation with specific sets of actors increases the likelihood of NGO involvement at different levels of governance. Specifically, cooperation with EU-level actors increases the likelihood of national-level involvement, and 3) NGOs are more likely to extend their involvement across a range of institutions if they cooperate with a broad range of actors.

Kajŏng isibonyŏn Pyŏngo kuwŏl []il saengwŏn chinsa si.

Photocopy of the movable type (Ŭrhaeja) ed. in the Mansong Kim Wan-sŏ munʾgo in the Korea University Library, Seoul, Korea.

Yunggyŏng sanyŏn Kyŏngo iwŏl sippʻaril Sama pangmok.

Photocopy of the manuscript copy in the Central National Library, Seoul, Korea.

Adjusting to institutional realities: the 2006 NGO law and its effects on civil society in Russia

Key findings: The paper investigates the impact that the legislative changes of 2006 had on civil society in Russia. This legislation has change the regulatory environment in which civil society actors such as Third Sector Organisations operate. Using the past development of civil society organisations as well as insights about how the institutional environment influences this article illustrates: - the undemocratic nature and motivation of the law and how it exploits the structural weaknesses of civil society - how Third Sector Organisations rationalise and translate the legislative changes into their organisational realities and how this changed or did not change their behaviour - the shift in state-civil society relations away from liberal co-existence into more hierarchical arrangements were Third Sector Organisations are subordinated to the state. These trends have far reaching implications for civil society. The empirical evidence shows that state now manages civil society to meet its own political ends. It also shows that organisations in the field welcome the more engage and directive nature of the Russian state. Why is this important? What does it mean for business or other users? Are there policy implications? The research is important as it shows how Third Sector Organisations have reacted to the legislative changes. Further it provides a basis for interpretation of the potential future development of civil society. Additional it highlights how the continuous process of democratisation in transition economies sometimes might come unstuck. In particular donor agencies will need to consider these trends when disturbing funding to Third Sector Organisations.

Accountability changes in an NGO institutional and resource dependency perspectives on BRAC

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Helvi Sipilä press conference with Betty Friedan and other women members of the United Nations and NGO conference

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.