MPA Program Director Co-Authors Special Issue Publication

​Alisa V. Moldavanova, MPA program director and associate professor in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration, and coauthors Tamaki Onishi and Stefan Toepler have published a special issue “Civil society and democratization: The Role of Service‐Providing Organizations Amid Closing Civic Spaces” in Public Administration and Development. The special issue comprises seven original contributions that are based on a variety of nonprofit service providing contexts located in geographies as diverse as Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South Asia. The research article by the editors can be accessed on the journal website​. The key argument of the special issue is that current democracy promotion strategies relying on rights-claiming advocacy NGOs are falling short of their democratization goals, as authoritarian regimes are closing the space through restrictions on the NGOs that attempt to carry them out. In response, Moldavanova et al. suggest a reexamination of earlier approaches to involving civil society in democratization efforts by shifting the focus back on service-providing civil society organizations that have largely become side-lined in democracy-building agendas. Service providing nonprofits tend to be more capable of functioning “under the radar” thus contributing to democracy in both direct and indirect ways, and thus escaping closing space restrictions.​

Article by Sophonie Milord. Originally posted in UDaily's For the Record.​