Business Finance - Management Business & Finance Business Finance - Management ASSIGNMENT (APA, NO PLAGARISM, GREAT WORK, ON TIME)

RESEARCH PAPERS

NGO Failure: A Theoretical Synthesis

Nives Dolšak1 • Aseem Prakash2

Accepted: 14 September 2021 / Published online: 30 September 2021

� International Society for Third-Sector Research 2021

Abstract An extensive literature identifies conditions

under which markets and states work efficiently and

effectively toward their stated missions. When these con-

ditions are violated, these institutions are deemed to show

some level of failure. In contrast to the study of market and

government failures, scholars have tended to focus on non-

governmental organizations’ (NGOs) successes instead of

failures. This is probably because they view NGOs as

virtuous actors, guided by principled beliefs rather than

instrumental concerns, not susceptible to agency conflicts,

accountable to the communities they serve, and working

cooperatively with each other. A growing literature ques-

tions this ‘‘virtue narrative.’’ When virtue conditions are

violated, NGOs could exhibit different levels of failure. In

synthesizing this literature, we offer an analytic typology of

NGO failures: agency failure, NGOization failure, repre-

sentation failure, and cooperation failure. Finally, given

NGOs’ important role in public policy, we outline insti-

tutional innovations to address these failures.

Keywords NGOs � Institutional failure � Information

problems � Agency conflict

Introduction

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are important

policy actors that undertake activities such as running

schools and local soup kitchens, protecting the environ-

ment, providing health services, and advocating for social

justice. They bring the community together and facilitate

collective efforts to pursue shared goals. When natural

disasters strike—which is happening more often with cli-

mate change—NGOs are often the first to arrive for relief

delivery and often continue to work toward disaster

recovery and reconstruction.

Yet, like markets and governments, NGOs also suffer

from organizational failures or dysfunctionalities. Take the

case of Oxfam, a leading global NGO, which is well known

for its humanitarian work. On February 9, 2018, the Times

of London reported that Oxfam’s senior staff in Haiti paid

earthquake survivors for sex on Oxfam premises.1

Although Oxfam’s top managers in the UK commissioned

an internal inquiry, they covered up its report, indicating

governance failure at individual and organizational levels.

Soon, there were multiple exposes about misconduct in

other prominent NGOs such as Save the Children, Mercy

Corps, World Vision, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Scurlock et al., 2020).

Failure can be observed at both the organizational and

individual levels. Theoretically, organizations fail (or show

dysfunctionalities) when conditions necessary for their

efficient and effective functioning do not hold, or they do

not function as per their missions. For example, markets

work well when there are a large number of buyers and

sellers with full information about products. However,

& Aseem Prakash

[email protected]

Nives Dolšak

[email protected]

1 School of Marine & Environmental Affairs, University of

Washington, Seattle, USA

2 Department of Politics Science & Center for Environmental

Politics, University of Washington, Seattle, USA 1 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43112200.

123

Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-021-00416-9

when these conditions do not hold, markets suffer some

level of failure.

What are the conditions for NGOs to work efficiently,

effectively, and per their mission? The literature suggests

that NGOs’ actions are guided by their social missions and

not the organization’s or its managers’ instrumental con-

siderations (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Because the social

mission is rooted in the community, NGOs represent and

are accountable to the communities they serve. Account-

ability often requires that they mobilize resources from the

local community; it is difficult to be accountable to

stakeholder A when the organization derives most of its

resources from stakeholder B. Finally, given the shared

mission of serving humanity, NGOs are expected to work

cooperatively (Cooley & Ron, 2002; Clifford, 2005; Pra-

kash & Gugerty, 2010b), differentiating them from ato-

mistic, profit-seeking firms.

Following the ‘‘virtue narrative,’’ scholars argue that

NGOs are critical in the policy process because of their

close connections with the local community. NGOs’ self-

less actions create social capital, which has spillover

effects on democracy, good governance, and economic

development. Thus, NGOs are a third way of governance

(Giddens, 1998), reflecting a new type of politics beyond

the state and the instrumental motivations guiding market

exchanges. At the end of the Cold War, Salamon (1994)

declared the onset of the global associational revolution,

which he suggested was at par with the Westphalian

nation-state system’s emergence in the seventeenth cen-

tury. In 1998, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi

Annan described civil society as a ‘‘new superpower.’’

NGOs show some level of failure when these conditions

do not hold. Drawing on the literature (Balboa, 2018;

Edwards & Hulme, 1996; Johnson & Prakash, 2007;

Martens, 2002; Morfit, 2011; Watkins et al., 2012), we

identify four types of failures, which are inter-related.

Further, some failures apply to any organization type,

including governments and for-profit, while others are

specific to NGOs. These failures are (1) principal-agency

issues (agency failure); (2) managerialism and profession-

alization, which transforms NGOs from community actors

to service delivery subcontractors (NGOization failure); (3)

failure to work as per the preferences of the community

they serve (representation failure); (4) lack of cooperative

behaviors (cooperation failure).

Organizations consist of individuals, and this might

require differentiating between organizational and man-

agerial failures. The reason is that while most organizations

probably have ‘‘bad apples,’’ their presence does not nec-

essarily mean that the organization has failed. Take the

case of governments and firms which sometimes employ

corrupt individuals. Yet, individual misconduct does not

lead us to condemn firms or governments as failed insti-

tutions. Scholars note that organizations begin to show

failures when they internally (or in the external policy

environment in which they function) do not have rule

systems to detect and weed out bad apples (McDonnell &

Rutherford, 2018). We suggest that the dominance of the

‘‘virtue narrative’’ probably creates conditions for moni-

toring and governance lapses, hindering the weeding out

processes.

This paper offers a theoretical synthesis of the literature

on NGO failure and not methodological strategy to mea-

sure it. We recognize that measuring organizational dys-

function poses conceptual and empirical challenges

(Prakash & Potoski, 2016). Failure is a continuum, not a

binary concept. Organizations typically face different

levels of failures; the same organization might fail in one

dimension but do quite well in others. All institutions, be it

governments, markets, or NGOs, exhibit some level of

failure. Thus, acknowledging NGO failure does not mean

condemning NGOs as a category of policy actors. Just as a

study of market and government failures provides ideas for

their reform, we hope studying NGO failures will help

reform the NGO sector to accomplish their social, political,

and economic missions.

This paper has four sections. In section two, we examine

different conceptions of NGOs. Section three discusses the

concepts of market and government failure because they

provide us with building blocks to conceptualize NGO

failure. Section four identifies four (inter-related) dimen-

sions of NGO failure: agency failure, NGOization failure,

representation failure, and cooperation failure. Finally, in

the concluding section, we identify issues for future

research, including measures to mitigate NGO failures.

Defining and Describing the NGO Sector

Most countries have a history of civic activity outside the

state system, undertaken via multiple actors (Dolšak, 2017;

Martens, 2002; Salamon & Anheier, 1997, 1998). This

diversity contributes to the multiplicity of definitions of

what constitutes the civil society sector (or NGOs). The

theoretical confusion (Vakil, 1997) is accentuated by dif-

ferent disciplines favoring different definitions. For

example, the interest group perspective, which is well-

established in political science, is not the dominant para-

digm in sociology to examine civic actions.

Civil society or NGOs are defined by what they are not,

as opposed to what they are. Scholars identify two defining

features: the non-governmental character and the nonprofit

status. These features are supposed to shape how NGOs

emerge, raise resources, and govern themselves. NGOs

cannot legally compel individuals to donate to them or

662 Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671

123

participate in their activities, unlike the state.2 There could

be instances where a religious order (organized as an NGO)

requires members to pay membership dues such as tithing.

If members do not have credible ‘‘exit’’ options, the reli-

gious order shows features of a government instead of an

NGO. Similarly, if a non-governmental militia compels

residents living in a particular area to pay a tribute, this

group acquires features of a state.

Broadly, the civil society sector includes (1) advocacy

organizations and social movements3 that seek to influence

public and business policy for broader societal goals, as

opposed to particularist goals, (2) nonprofits that seek to

supply goods and services, often to the underprivileged; (3)

local community groups such as Bowling Leagues and

Parent-Teacher Associations (Putnam, 1995) that provide

local public or club goods, and (4) community groups

(typically without a formal structure) to ensure sustainable

use of common-pool resources by community members

(Ostrom, 1990). This paper focuses on advocacy organi-

zations and nonprofits only because they tend to constitute

the modern NGO sector. Nevertheless, these organizations

are the critical pillars of NGO research and the focus of the

literature on NGO failure.4

To explore NGO failure, we need to understand why

NGOs emerge in the first place. Weisbrod (1988) suggested

that service delivery NGOs (nonprofits) arise due to the

twin failures of both markets and governments. Informa-

tion asymmetries between the buyer and the seller cause

market failures. While governments respond by providing

these products, they fail when citizens have heterogeneous

preferences about what government should do, how, when,

and for whom. While the governments may meet the needs

of the median voter, preference heterogeneity means that

governments are not supplying products to the preferences

of the non-median citizen: for them, the government has

failed. As Tiebout (1956) noted on fiscal federalism, these

citizens could exit the jurisdiction. Alternatively, citizens

might look for other suppliers, namely NGOs, of this

product. For example, instead of sending children to public

schools due to unhappiness with the quality of education,

families might send them to private or parochial schools

that are registered as NGOs.

Advocacy NGOs can also be understood through the

theoretical lens of ‘‘twin failures.’’ Governments are

expected to enact regulations to correct market failures that

emerge from externality problems such as pollution.

Governments construct rules keeping in mind the prefer-

ences of the median voter or the most well-resourced ones.

But this means that some citizens fail to receive the reg-

ulatory policies they desire, which they perceive as a

government’s failure. When citizens believe that their

inadequate political voice contributes to policy neglect,

they seek a mechanism to make themselves heard. This is

where NGOs, as policy advocates, come in. Working on

behalf of their constituents, they tackle government failure

by mobilizing, educating, and lobbying governments about

citizens’ preferences on policy issues. A large number of

NGOs in a given sector simply reflects the multiplicity of

citizen viewpoints, analogous to the point Weisbrod had

made about service delivery NGOs (Johnson & Prakash,

2007).

Hansmann (1980) offers another perspective on the

emergence of service delivery nonprofits (but not advocacy

NGOs). Firms seek to maximize profits for shareholders.

While service delivery NGOs (or nonprofits) such as hos-

pitals can generate profits, they do not have shareholders

who can legally claim them. For Hansmann, this ‘‘non-

distributional constraint’’ explains why consumers trust

NGOs over firms in product categories where they face

information problems in assessing product quality (such as

education and health services). This is because consumers

implicitly assume that in light of information problems,

profit maximization on behalf of shareholders drives firms

to do unethical things, such as providing substandard

products or overcharging consumers. Thus, in the virtue

narrative, NGOs are implicitly ‘‘good’’ (the behavioral

logic), but in Hansmann’s approach, NGOs do good things

because of the specific institutional constraint under which

2 Scholars note that dependence of many NGOs on government

funding raises questions about their non-governmental character. If

the NGO sector gets ‘‘captured’’ by the government (as is typical in

authoritarian regimes), it will be less effective in safeguarding citizen

autonomy against governmental intrusion. We examine this issue later

in the paper in our discussion of cooperation failure. 3 How are advocacy NGOs different from interest groups? After all,

both advocate policy positions. We recognize the vast political

science literature on interest groups (Truman, 1951; Berry, 1977;

Salisbury, 1984; Walker, 1991; Baumgartner & Leech, 1998).

Moreover, within political science, scholars tend to adopt different

definitions of interest groups. Baroni et al. (2014) note that some

scholars define interest groups in terms of their activities, while others

define them based on organizational characteristics such as member-

ship (Dür & Mateo, 2013). NGO scholars have tended to favor the

former approach by differentiating advocates from service providers.

Moreover, NGO scholars implicitly claim that even advocacy NGOs

are different from traditional interest groups because interest groups

seek to shape public policy in favor of particular interests, while

advocacy NGOs serve to advance the public good (the virtue

narrative). For them, NGOs do so because they are guided by moral

principles and not instrumental concerns (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). As

we discuss subsequently, literature notes problems with this virtue

assertion because many NGOs (such as unions) do purse particularist

and sometimes materially focused goals. 4 Furthermore, the distinction between advocates and service

providers sometimes breaks down with the rise of rights-based

advocacy which has encouraged service providers to undertake

advocacy. Perhaps, instead of claiming that there are two types of

NGOs, scholars should think in terms of types of functions a modern

NGO might undertake: advocacy and service delivery.

Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671 663

123

they function: non-distribution of profits (the institutional

logic).

Salamon (1987) views market failures as motivating

voluntary efforts to deliver public services (not advocacy),

especially when these failures hurt the underprivileged.

With the onset of industrialization and urbanization, social

problems grew in scale and complexity. The voluntary

sector simply did not have the means and expertise to

address these growing challenges, including housing,

health, or education. Moreover, because donors tend to

support specific causes or population groups, some sectors

or population groups are neglected. Thus, in Salamon’s

narrative, governments intervene in response to voluntary

failure, and not vice versa. Indeed, in his perspective, this

probably contributed to the emergence of the modern

welfare state.

Conceptualizing Institutional Failures

Theoretically, institutions fail when the conditions neces-

sary for their efficient and effective functioning, as outlined

in their ideal type, do not hold, and they do not work

toward their missions. For example, most standard public

policy textbooks (for example, Weimer & Vining, 2017)

note that markets fail when: (1) there are too few buyers or

sellers (as in monopolies), (2) products have public goods

characteristics (such as national defense), (3) products

create externalities (such as pollution) or show increasing

returns, causing the divergence between social bene-

fits/costs and private benefits/cost which guide private

transactions (Baumol & Oates, 1975), (4) there are infor-

mation asymmetries which do not allow buyers and sellers

to assess product value before the transaction, and (5) costs

of contracting, monitoring, and dispute resolution are high

and restrict market exchanges.

There is an extensive literature on correcting market

failures. Starting with Coase (1937), scholars suggest that

firms emerge to economize on the transaction costs of

arms-length market exchanges, a market failure. In per-

fectly functioning markets where commercial contracts can

be developed and enforced at zero transaction costs, firms

(as organizations) are not needed. But contracting costs

cannot be wished away. Firms economize on contracting

costs by replacing arm’s length transactions with hierar-

chical fiats about resource allocation (Williamson, 1973).

Because firms are themselves susceptible to principal-agent

conflicts (Berle & Means, 1932), they establish corporate

governance institutions to mitigate these conflicts, as we

discuss subsequently.

While firms address contracting failures, they do not

address (sometimes even accentuate) other kinds of market

failures such as externalities, public goods, information

problems, and monopolies. This is where governmental

regulations come in. Since the Depression of the 1930s, the

notion of self-governing markets has come under severe

challenge. Consequently, the government’s role in regu-

lating economic activities has increased substantially.

Although facing legitimacy problems of its own (Majone,

1999), the regulatory state is expected to enact and enforce

regulations to correct market failures.5

The belief that government interventions will correct

market failure assumes that governments are motivated to

act, are omniscient, and impartial. When these assumptions

do not hold, governments fail through sins of omission and

commission. Governments could fail to enact policies.

Administrative agencies tasked with creating and enforcing

regulations might have agendas that differ from that of the

legislature. Governments can get captured by regulated

firms (Stigler, 1971). When government regulations breed

crony capitalism, government failure causes market failure

instead of correcting it.

In 1979, Charles Wolf introduced the notion of non-

market failure, analogous to the concept of market failure.

For him, nonmarket failure encompassed both governments

and NGOs (we disagree with this view and explain why

below). In Wolf’s analysis, nonmarket failures arise

because nonmarket outputs have distinctive characteristics,

making it difficult to monitor the performance of the actors

supplying them. These include: (1) supplying nontraded

goods whose production is not guided by market signals,

(2) product quality is difficult to assess because consumers

often cannot vote with their dollars to signal their approval

or disapproval of the product, (3) governments, in partic-

ular, tend to be monopoly suppliers, (4) unlike firms,

nonmarket actors do not generate profits and therefore

cannot make decisions about production levels. In Wolf’s

view, other ways of preference aggregation to signal

desired production levels, such as voting, function poorly.

Wolf’s key point is that governments and nonprofits

suffer from an ‘‘internality’’ problem because organiza-

tional performance is evaluated by internal standards that

cannot be benchmarked against market-based goals. In

effect, the measurement problems drive nonmarket fail-

ures. As we note subsequently, Wolf has overstated the

case about internal standards and puts too much faith in

external standards. Donors, funders, and even rating orga-

nizations such as Charity Navigator routinely assess NGOs

using external standards, and yet their measurement

approaches may not correct governance challenges that

NGOs face.

5 The welfare state—the state tasked with correcting distributional

failures by providing social safety nets—is distinct from the

regulatory state that corrects externality-based market failures.

Viewed this way, NGOs seek to correct regulatory failures (as policy

advocates) and welfare failures (as service providers).

664 Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671

123

While Wolf incorrectly subsumed governments and

NGOs under the same category, some elements of his

discussion offer ideas for categorizing NGO failures.

Drawing on the growing literature on NGOs’ dysfunc-

tionalities, we offer a typology to understand NGO fail-

ures’ drivers and observable characteristics.

NGO Failures: Toward a Typology

The twin failure theory views NGOs as vehicles to correct

market and government failures. But NGOs show some

level of failure when they do not conform to the assump-

tions informing their governance design. These assump-

tions are: NGOs work for the community (and not donors),

and their employees are aligned with the mission (agency

issues); their activities reflect the needs of the communities

they serve (representation issues); they function as organs

of the community and not as professionalized organizations

(NGOization failure); and they work cooperatively with

each other to solve social, political, and economic prob-

lems (cooperation issues). Below we examine four NGO

failure categories that have some overlap: agency failure,

representation failure, NGOization, and cooperation fail-

ure. Given the variation in the functions NGOs perform,

some NGO failures such as agency failure and NGOization

failure are more prevalent among service delivery non-

profits, while representation failures are more salient for

advocacy NGOs. Cooperation failures probably are equally

salient for both.

Agency Failure

The modern NGO sector consists of formal organizations.

The virtue narrative fails to adequately appreciate that

NGOs face principal-agency issues like any other organi-

zation (Berle & Means, 1932). As locally rooted actors,

NGOs are supposed to work for the community (Prakash &

Gugerty, 2010a). If local rootedness is assumed to hold,

NGOs should view the communities they serve as their true

principals (Tocqueville, 1969 [1835-40]. But in reality,

donors, the resource providers, tend to be viewed as the

real principals.

Every organization requires critical resources to survive,

which are often provided by external actors. Resource

dependence theories note resource controllers’ influence

over organizational structures and strategies (Pfeffer &

Salancik, 1978). When donors reside outside the commu-

nity, their lack of lived experience probably makes them

inadequate judges of community needs.6 Consequently,

different incentives begin to shape organizational priorities

(Abou Assi, 2013).7 As Ebrahim (2005) notes, NGOs pri-

oritize upward accountability to donors over downward

accountability to communities.8

Resource dependence issues are particularly salient in

the international NGO sector (Khieng & Dahles, 2015). For

example, scholars note the case of mission displacement. In

the context of Malawi, Morfit (2011) notes how global

AIDS funding has crowded out other health priorities for

both governments and NGOs. In particular, the Gates

Foundation, an NGO with enormous wealth and a tech-

nology-focused theory of change, has captured the global

health agenda, often at the cost of local priorities (Birn,

2014; McCoy et al., 2009).

Monitoring costs also cause agency problems. Even if

NGOs’ missions (or their donors’ priorities) were perfectly

aligned with that of the community, it is not clear whether

adequate governance systems are in place to monitor NGO

action. This has two dimensions: internal monitoring by the

board and external monitoring by donors. While (non-execu-

tive) NGO boards have a fiduciary duty to ensure that their

organizations work as per their mission, there is considerable

variation in how they interpret their roles. Scholars suggest that

given the ambiguous accountability standards and unclear

organizational performance measures, the level of board

monitoring depends on how board members themselves

interpret their role (LeRoux&Langer, 2016; Preston&Brown,

2004). Thus, the role played by NGO boards remains unclear.

Scholars also debate the role of external monitors. Firms

have shareholders, the legally identifiable owners with a

claim to the ‘‘residual.’’ Shareholders have strong incen-

tives to monitor the firm. They are aided by the stock

market and the army of well-trained financial analysts who

carefully monitor firm performance and benchmark it

against peer firms. For NGOs, donors have strong

6 A similar argument is made in the ‘‘resource curse’’ literature

(Ross, 2015): When governments can survive on revenue from

resource extraction and no longer depend on local taxation, their

Footnote 6 continued

implicit contract with the citizens is weakened. They have fewer

incentives to provide local public good such as education and public

health. 7 Should then NGOs not accept outside resources when a natural

disaster strikes a community? We suggest that they should but for a

limited time only. The reason is that dependence on aid for post-

disaster recovery can lead to perverse outcomes. A very good

example is Haiti, which is sometimes termed the ‘‘Republic of

NGOs’’ (Kristoff and Panarelli, 2010). The flood of outside money

after the 2010 earthquake brought in a very large number of global

NGOs. Many of them have not left the country, and their continued

presence has created political and social problems. Indeed, Haiti was

the location of the Oxfam scandal (Scurlock et al., 2020), which

brought to light governance failures in several other global NGOs. 8 There is a vast and growing literature on upward, lateral, and

downward dimensions of NGO accountability. In addition to

Ebrahim, important works include O’Dwyer and Unerman (2008),

Jordan and van Tuijl (2012), Murtaza (2012), Abou Assi and Trent

(2016), Hielscher et al. (2017), and Bryan et al. (2021).

Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671 665

123

incentives to ensure that their donated monies are well

spent (which leads to other problems, as discussed subse-

quently). Institutional donors such as governments and

foundations typically outline performance criteria for ser-

vice delivery NGOs—although it is not clear that the

proliferation of accountability mechanisms leads to supe-

rior outcomes at the organizational or policy level (Park &

Kramarz, 2019). While individual donors might have fewer

tools to establish criteria and monitor NGO performance,

online platforms such as Charity Navigator and Guidestar

could be viewed as (imperfect) functional equivalents of

financial analysts that work on their behalf. Thus, agency

failures stem from NGOs viewing donors instead of com-

munities as their principals, but not due to a lack of

appropriate criteria to assess NGO performance. Given the

critical role, donors play for service-focused nonprofits,

agency failures are probably more salient for them in

relation to advocacy NGOs.

NGOization Failure

External funding tends to create another type of NGO

failure that transforms the NGO sector’s very nature.

Scholars term this as NGOization (Alvarez, 2009; Hearn,

1998). While NGOs are supposed to be community ini-

tiatives managed by community leaders, the modern NGO

sector has become professionalized with the attendant ills

of managerialism. This is sometimes termed as the

NGOization of the civil society sector, a phenomenon more

salient for internationally focused service delivery non-

profits (Chahim & Prakash, 2014).

NGOization, in part, is an outcome of both governments

contracting out public service delivery at the domestic level

(Eikenberry & Kluver, 2004; Smith & Lipsky, 1993) and

‘‘aid fatigue’’ at the international level. Domestically,

social service subcontracting begun in the 1980s as a

consequence of the Thatcher-Reagan approach to limited

government. It gathered speed in the 1990s with the

‘‘reinventing government’’ movement (Osborne, 1993).

Internationally, donors saw little tangible progress in

developing countries (Easterly, 2010) and found a politi-

cally attractive culprit: the governments of aid recipient

countries (Gibson et al., 2005). Donors believe that NGOs

have the motivation and knowledge to use foreign aid

appropriately (Dietrich, 2013; Edwards & Hulme, 1996).

Increasingly, donors are funneling aid to local NGOs via

global charity chains (Bebbington, 2004; Wallace et al.,

2007).

In charity chains, the key pillar of NGOization, donors

typically contract with a prominent international NGO,

who, in turn, seek to subcontract with local NGOs along

with establishing local offices. As local NGOs compete to

become subcontractors, they ‘‘professionalize’’ (Hwang &

Powell, 2009). Donors emphasize ‘‘deliverables’’ and

appropriate paperwork to prevent agency abuse (Baines

et al., 2011). This is something that professional NGOs can

handle. But professional NGO managers, as opposed to

volunteers, tend to work within a different incentive

structure. For them, NGOs are a career. They move

between organizations, sometimes between government

and the NGO sector, as we discuss below. Their focus is on

bigger budgets, organizational growth, and other indicators

of professional success.

Moreover, in a replay of Gresham’s Law, professional

NGOs begin to drive out locally rooted NGOs. The former

tend to be visible because they know how to work with

media (especially social media) and receive publicity due

to their international connections. In addition, their top

managers probably have completed studies in elite western

institutions and met international NGOs at conferences and

professional development workshops (Kamstra & Schul-

pen, 2015). Hence, NGOization creates dualism in the local

civic sector (Dogra, 2013) and marginalizes the home-

grown, locally connected NGOs. As opposed to commu-

nity-managed NGOs, the professionalized NGOs have

fewer capabilities and incentives to understand and meet

community demands, hence the failure.

Representation Failure

Previously we noted how resource dependence impedes

NGOs from effectively working for the community. Some

scholars challenge the notion of a community as an egali-

tarian, non-hierarchical collection of individuals (Agarwal

& Gibson, 1999) because communities vary in the levels of

their economic, linguistic, racial, and ethnic diversity. It is

not clear that NGOs represent all interests equally (Sala-

mon, 1987) or how they identify their ‘‘median’’ commu-

nity member. Some suggest that advocacy NGOs, in

particular, have an upper- or middle-class bias (Kamath &

Vijayabaskar, 2009), undermining the voices of the poor

and the minorities, a constituency that tends to be neglected

by both the market and the state.

In many Western societies, upper-class white men tend

to occupy leadership positions in leading NGOs. The

Green 2.0 report documents the lack of diversity in US

environmental NGOs.9 Moreover, volunteers play an

important role in many NGOs. Often only the middle or

upper classes have the resources to volunteer their time,

which has sizeable opportunity costs for less privileged

households. Finally, to the extent advocacy NGOs influ-

ence policy agendas, they privilege certain perspectives

within a community over others.

9 https://www.diversegreen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Green2.

0_ES.pdf.

666 Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671

123

Salamon (1987) had also anticipated that certain NGO

sectors or organizations might attract disproportionate

resources. Donors may have idiosyncratic preferences that

may lead them to focus on specific areas. NGOs favored by

the rich and the powerful tend to get publicity and become

identified as civil society representatives in the policy

process. Consequently, inviting advocacy NGOs to sit at

the policy table does not necessarily make the policy pro-

cess more democratic or representative. Instead, it might

reinforce the structural inequities and enhance the

democracy deficit that NGOs are expected to correct.

Critical scholars see the NGO sector reproducing social

inequalities and making citizens less willing to challenge

the system. The Gramscian critics note that NGOs perform

a system-maintenance function (Katz, 2006). The NGO

sector’s status-quo bias is also encouraged by philanthropic

foundations, many of which have been established by

industry titans (Fisher, 1983; Francis, 2019). In sum, NGOs

begin to show some level of failure when their agendas and

advocacy do not represent the preferences of the under-

privileged, who are often neglected by markets and states.

This way, NGOs might reproduce inequalities and not

playing the transformational role that is envisioned for

them.

Cooperation Failure

Virtue narrative asserts that unlike markets, which foster

atomistic, non-cooperative behavior and encourage instru-

mental actions, NGOs promote pro-social, cooperative

behaviors that lead to the production of social capital (Keck

& Sikkink, 1998). At a fundamental level, the cooperation

assertion faces problems in pluralist democracies that

encourage a clash of viewpoints via political parties,

interest groups, or advocacy NGOs. Indeed, advocacy

NGOs often represent different policy preferences: pro-gun

versus anti-gun groups or pro-choice versus pro-life

groups. While conservative NGOs tend to get labeled as

counter-movements (Meyer & Staggenborg, 1996), their

presence reveals that NGOs compete in pluralist systems,

and cooperation is not necessarily a critical part of their

institutional DNA.

But even ideologically aligned NGOs may not function

cooperatively (Sell & Prakash, 2004). Scare resources that

NGOs compete for—funding, grants, and media atten-

tion—are critical for organizational survival. Competition

is more pointed for governmental and foundation grants,

especially for service-focused nonprofits. In the context of

the former USSR, Henderson (2002, p. 159) finds that

‘‘[g]roups…are not necessarily willing to share their grant

ideas for fear that it would jeopardize their funding pos-

sibilities.’’ Cooley and Ron (2002) find that international

aid agencies’ use of competitive tenders and renewable

contracting encourages service-focused nonprofits to adopt

firm-like competitive mindsets.

Both advocacy NGOs and service-focused nonprofits

face another problem that encourages competitive behav-

ior: low barriers to entry. In most countries, it is easy to

establish an NGO. For example, there are at least 3.1

million legally registered NGOs in India, which is more

than double the number of schools and about 250 times the

number of government hospitals.10

Resource competition means that NGOs have incentives

to ‘‘capture’’ funding agencies. These dynamics are visible

in government funding, which brings into question the

assertion about their ‘‘non-governmental’’ character. When

NGOs receive substantial resources from governments, as

in many Western Democracies, they have incentives to

capture the political system, especially the budget appro-

priation processes. Mosley (2012) reports NGO managers

adopting several strategies to secure government funding,

including lobbying. The budgetary capture is aided by the

‘‘revolving door’’ between NGOs and governments, with

retiring politicians moving to top NGO positions and vice

versa (Cada & Ptácková, 2014). This closeness potentially

leads to another problem: reverse capture (Coen, 2005).

Governments seek to ‘‘use’’ the favored NGOs for their

agendas. In this way, NGOs begin to function as a de facto

arm of the government, more interested in serving gov-

ernment interests and less focused on collaborating with

other NGOs in the same sector.

Conclusion

In an indictment of the NGO sector, Sriskandarajah (2014),

the secretary-general of Civicus, wrote: ‘We have become

a part of the problem rather than the solution. Our corpo-

ratization has steered us toward activism-lite, a version of

our work rendered palatable to big business and capitalist

states. Not only does this approach threaten no one in

power, but it stifles grassroots activism with its weighty

monoculturalism.’’ If true, NGO failures have several

unanticipated consequences for public policy. Perhaps the

most glaring is how governments weaponize these failures

to crack down on the NGO sector. Amnesty International

notes that about 50 countries—about every fourth coun-

try—have enacted laws restricting NGOs (Christensen &

Weinstein, 2013; Dupuy et al., 2015).11 Governments cast

NGOs as foreign agents disconnected from local

10 https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/india-has-31-

lakh-ngos-twice-the-number-of-schools-almost-twice-number-of-

policemen/. 11 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/02/global-assault-

on-ngos-reaches-crisis-point/.

Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671 667

123

communities (Hearn, 1998; Vogel, 2006). Managers of

international NGOs often lead elite lifestyles and adopt a

patron-client mindset when working abroad. In Angola,

Peters (2013) reports that the European managers’ salary is

typically three times of a local professional working in the

same position, who probably has superior technical cre-

dentials and work experience. Pfeiffer (2003) notes how

working for international NGOs in the health sector is often

equated with winning a lottery. Cailhol et al. (2013) doc-

ument how in sub-Saharan Africa, high salaries interna-

tional NGOs pay caused an internal brain drain from the

government health systems to the international NGOs.

Is this criticism of NGOs fair? Are not all institutions

prone to failure because the assumptions about their ideal

types do not hold? This is a fair point; all institutions are

fallible. Yet, a focus on institutional failings could

encourage institutional reform. Indeed, in response to some

criticism, the NGO sector has adopted new governance

mechanisms. Institutions can fail when their principals do

not have low-cost mechanisms to monitor performance.

The community members, the real principals, certainly lack

such mechanisms. But donors, as resource controllers and

defacto principals, might also face challenges on this count.

While institutional donors can demand detailed reports

from NGOs, most individual donors do not have such

leverage—although the individual mega-donors surely do.

This is where third-party rating platforms such as Charity

Navigator play a role. They analyze NGO revenue, over-

heads, and expenditures information that US charities

annually provide to the federal government on Form 990.

Based on this information, Charity Navigator rates charities

on how efficiently they manage their funds, penalizing

them for high overheads, which are a proxy for agency

problems. Potential donors can benchmark individual

charities against others in the sector to assess how charities

use their donated funds. Viewed this way, Charity Navi-

gator mitigates information problems donors face and

potentially controls NGOs’ agency problems. Yet, solu-

tions sometimes create a new set of problems. In the

context of Charity Navigator, it is not clear whether high

charity ratings lead to more giving. Moreover, because

Charity Navigator penalizes charities with higher over-

heads, it creates perverse incentives for charities to

underinvest in organizational building over short-term

results (Brown et al., 2017; Ling & Neely, 2013; Lowell

et al., 2005; Sloan, 2009; Yörük, 2016).

Another important NGO innovation is the emergence of

accountability clubs (Bies, 2010; Prakash & Gugerty,

2010a). NGOs seek organizational survival and growth.

They might aim to address donor concerns about organi-

zational performance proactively. They might also worry

that scandals or media exposes about any NGO could

damage the reputation of other NGOs in that sector.

Anticipating such collective reputation problems (Grant &

Potoski, 2015), NGOs come together to form self-regula-

tory clubs that ask members to adopt the best management

and good governance practices. Some clubs also require

that external auditors check members’ compliance with the

club rules (Willems et al., 2017). Club membership could

be expensive, but NGOs have incentives to participate in

these clubs because their membership serves as a reputa-

tional signal to outside stakeholders. This allows the better-

governed NGOs to differentiate themselves from others.

This paper has offered a theoretical synthesis of the

literature on NGO failures. Future research should develop

an empirical strategy to measure it, building on the grow-

ing literature examining both what types of NGOs under-

take organizational evaluation (Mitchell & Berlan, 2016)

and how they undertake it (Bryan et al., 2021; Carman,

2011; Hoefer, 2000). Broadly, measuring institutional

failure poses substantial conceptual and empirical chal-

lenges. In some cases, scholars could identify ‘‘objective’’

dysfunction measures, while in others, scholars may rely on

perception-based measures. For example, scholars calcu-

late the loss of consumer welfare due to higher prices

resulting from market imperfections in anti-trust issues, a

market failure. Yet, Tinkelman and Donabedian (2007)

note the problems of relying on financial measures alone to

judge nonprofit performance. Charity Navigator outlines

another way to measure nonprofit performance despite

criticisms, such as the NGO starvation cycle and the dif-

ficulties of relying on overheads to assess performance

(Gregory & Howard, 2009; Lecy & Searing, 2015).

Most measures of NGO failure examine how the inputs

are used. As a result, there is a neglect of their outputs,

outcomes, and impacts. Government agencies provide

dashboards with information allowing citizens to assess

how they use their inputs, what activities they undertake,

what outputs they produce, and what outcomes result.

Many NGOs, especially professional ones, follow this

approach in their annual reports. Yet, output-based mea-

sures have limitations as well. If performance is assessed

via specific indicators, the organization has incentives to

focus on those metrics only, the problem of ‘‘commensu-

ration’’ (Espeland, & Stevens, 1998). Therefore, commu-

nity members must be consulted about the specific metrics

to assess NGO’s organizational output. In this way, com-

mensuration incentives can be mobilized to focus organi-

zational attention on community needs. Thus, while

recognizing its limitations, we believe the organizational

output-based approach offers another possibility to mea-

sure different levels of NGO performance and failure.

668 Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671

123

Declarations

Conflict of interest All authors certify that they have no affiliations

with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial

interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials

discussed in this manuscript.

References

Abou Assi, K. (2013). Hands in the pockets of mercurial donors: NPO

response to shifting funding priorities. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 42, 584–602.

Abou Assi, K., & Trent, D. L. (2016). NGO accountability from an

NGO perspective: Perceptions, strategies, and practices. Public Administration and Development, 36(4), 283–296.

Agrawal, A., & Gibson, C. (1999). Enchantment and disenchantment:

The role of community in natural resource conservation. World Development, 27(4), 629–649.

Alvarez, S. (2009). Beyond NGO-ization?: Reflections from Latin

America. Development, 52(2), 175. Baines, D., Cunningham, I., & Fraser, H. (2011). Constrained by

managerialism: Caring as participation in the voluntary social

services. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 32, 329–352. Balboa, C. (2018). The paradox of scale: How NGOs build, maintain,

and lose authority in environmental governance. MIT Press.

Baroni, L., Carroll, B. J., Chalmers, A. W., Marquez, L. M. M., &

Rasmussen, A. (2014). Defining and classifying interest groups.

Interest Groups & Advocacy, 3(2), 141–159. Baumgartner, F., & Leech, B. (1998). Basic interests: The importance

of groups in politics and in political research. Princeton

University Press.

Baumol, W., & Oates, W. (1975). The theory of environmental policy. Prentice Hall.

Bebbington, A. (2004). NGOs and uneven development: Geographies

of development intervention. Progress in Human Geography, 28(6), 725–745.

Berle, A., & Means, G. (1932). The modern corporation and private property. Harcourt, Brace & World.

Berry, J. (1977). Lobbying for the people: The political behavior of public interests groups. Princeton University Press.

Bies, A. (2010). Evolution of nonprofit self-regulation in Europe.

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 39(6), 1057–1086. Birn, A. (2014). Philanthrocapitalism, past and present: The Rock-

efeller Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the setting (s) of

the international/global health agenda. Hypothesis, 12(1), e8. Brown, A., Meer, J., & Williams, F. (2017). Social distance and

quality ratings in charity choice. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 66, 9–15.

Bryan, T. K., Robichau, R. W., & L’Esperance, G. (2021).

Conducting and utilizing evaluation for multiple accountabili-

ties: A study of nonprofit evaluation capacities. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 31(3), 547–569.

Cada, K., & Ptácková, K. (2014). Between clients and bureaucrats:

An ambivalent position of NGOs in the social inclusion agenda

in Czech statutory cities. Policy and Society, 33(2), 129–139. Cailhol, J., Craveiro, I., Madede, T., Makoa, E., Mathole, T., Parsons,

A. N., Van Leemput, L., Biesma, R., Brugha, R., Chilundo, B., &

Lehmann, U. (2013). Analysis of human resources for health

strategies and policies in 5 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, in

response to GFATM and PEPFAR-funded HIV-activities.

Globalization and Health., 9(1), 52. Carman, J. (2011). Understanding evaluation in nonprofit organiza-

tions. Public Performance & Management Review, 34(3), 350–377.

Chahim, D., & Prakash, A. (2014). NGOization, foreign funding, and

the Nicaraguan civil society. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 25(2), 487–513.

Christensen, D., & Weinstein, J. M. (2013). Defunding dissent:

Restrictions on aid to NGOs. Journal of Democracy, 24(2), 77–91.

Clifford, B. (2005). The marketing of rebellion: Insurgents, media, and international activism. Cambridge University Press.

Coase, R. (1937). The nature of the firm. Economica, 4(16), 386–405. Coen, D. (2005). Business–regulatory relations: Learning to play

regulatory games in European utility markets. Governance, 18(3), 375–398.

Cooley, A., & Ron, J. (2002). The NGO scramble: Organizational

insecurity and the political economy of transnational action.

International Security, 27(1), 5–39. Dietrich, S. (2013). Bypass or engage? Explaining donor delivery

tactics in foreign aid allocation. International Studies Quarterly, 57, 698–712.

Dogra, N. (2013). Representations of global poverty: Aid, develop- ment and international NGOs. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Dolšak, N. (2017). Bowling together: Mobilization of collective

action by environmental NGOs. Nonprofit Policy Forum, 8(1), 25–44.

Dupuy, K., Ron, J., & Prakash, A. (2015). Hands off my regime!

Governments’ restrictions on foreign aid to non-governmental

organizations in poor and middle-income countries. World Development, 84, 299–311.

Dür, A., & Mateo, G. (2013). Gaining access or going public? Interest

group strategies in five European countries. European Journal of Political Research, 52(5), 660–686.

Easterly, W. (2010). The cartel of good intentions: The problem of

bureaucracy in foreign aid. The Journal of Policy Reform, 5(4), 223–250.

Ebrahim, A. (2005). Accountability myopia: Losing sight of organi-

zational learning. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 34, 56–87.

Edwards, M., & Hulme, D. (1996). Too close for comfort? The

impact of official aid on non-governmental organizations. World Development, 24, 961–973.

Eikenberry, A., & Kluver, J. (2004). The marketization of the

nonprofit sector: Civil society at risk? Public Administration Review, 64, 132–140.

Espeland, W., & Stevens, M. (1998). Commensuration as a social

process. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 313–343. Fisher, D. (1983). The role of philanthropic foundations in the

reproduction and production of hegemony: Rockefeller founda-

tions and the social sciences. Sociology, 17(2), 206–233. Francis, M. (2019). The price of civil rights: Black lives, white

funding, and movement capture. Law & Society Review, 53(1), 275–309.

Gibson, C., Andersson, K., Ostrom, E., & Shivakumar, S. (2005). The Samaritan’s dilemma: The political economy of development aid. Oxford University Press.

Giddens, A. (1998). The Third Way. Polity Press.

Grant, L., & Potoski, M. (2015). Collective reputations affect

donations to nonprofits. Journal of Policy Analysis and Man- agement, 34(4), 835–852.

Gregory, A., & Howard, D. (2009). The nonprofit starvation cycle.

Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall, 7, 29–53. Hansmann, H. (1980). The role of nonprofit enterprise. Yale Law

Journal, 89, 835–901. Hearn, J. (1998). The ‘NGO-isation’ of Kenyan society: USAID & the

restructuring of health care. Review of African Political Econ- omy, 25(75), 89–100.

Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671 669

123

Henderson, S. L. (2002). Selling civil society: Western aid and the

nongovernmental organization sector in Russia. Comparative Political Studies, 35, 139–167.

Hielscher, S., Winkin, J., Crack, A., & Pies, I. (2017). Saving the

moral capital of NGOs: Identifying one-sided and many-sided

social dilemmas in NGO accountability. VOLUNTAS: Interna- tional Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 28(4), 1562–1594.

Hoefer, R. (2000). Accountability in action?: Program evaluation in

nonprofit human service agencies. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 11(2), 167–177.

Hwang, H., & Powell, W. (2009). The rationalization of charity: The

influences of professionalism in the nonprofit sector. Adminis- trative Science Quarterly, 54, 268–298.

Johnson, E., & Prakash, A. (2007). NGO research program: A

collective action perspective. Policy Sciences, 40(3), 221–240. Jordan, L., & van Tuijl, P. (Eds.). (2012). NGO accountability:

Politics. Routledge. Kamath, L., & Vijayabaskar, M. (2009). Limits and possibilities of

middle class associations as urban collective actors. Economic and Political Weekly, 44, 368–376.

Kamstra, J., & Schulpen, L. (2015). Worlds apart but much alike:

Donor funding and the homogenization of NGOs in Ghana and

Indonesia. Studies in Comparative International Development, 50(3), 331–357.

Katz, H. (2006). Gramsci, hegemony, and global civil society

networks. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 17(4), 332–347.

Keck, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders. Cornell University Press.

Khieng, S., & Dahles, H. (2015). Resource dependence and effects of

funding diversification strategies among NGOs in Cambodia.

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 26(4), 1412–1437.

Kristoff, M., & Panarelli, L. (2010). Haiti: A Republic of NGOs? Peace Brief 23. United States Institute of Peace.

Lecy, J., & Searing, E. (2015). Anatomy of the nonprofit starvation

cycle: An analysis of falling overhead ratios in the nonprofit

sector. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 44(3), 539–563.

LeRoux, K., & Langer, J. (2016). What nonprofit executives want and

what they get from board members. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 27(2), 147–164.

Ling, Q., & Neely, D. G. (2013). Charitable ratings and financial

reporting quality: Evidence from the human service sector.

Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Manage- ment, 25(1), 69–90.

Lowell, S., Trelstad, B., & Meehan, B. (2005). The ratings game.

Stanford Social Innovation Review, 3(2), 38–45. Majone, G. (1999). The regulatory state and its legitimacy problems.

West European Politics, 22, 1–24. Martens, K. (2002). Mission impossible? Defining non-governmental

organizations. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 13, 271–285.

McCoy, D., Kembhavi, G., Patel, J., & Luintel, A. (2009). The Bill &

Melinda Gates Foundation’s grant-making programme for global

health. Lancet, 373(9675), 1645–1653. McDonnell, D., & Rutherford, A. (2018). The determinants of charity

misconduct. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 47(1), 107–125.

Meyer, D., & Staggenborg, S. (1996). Movements, counter-move-

ments, and the structure of political opportunity. American Journal of Sociology, 101(6), 1628–1660.

Mitchell, G., & Berlan, B. (2016). Evaluation and evaluative rigor in

the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 27(2), 237–250.

Morfit, N. (2011). ‘‘AIDS is money’’: How donor preferences

reconfigure local realities. World Development, 39(1), 64–76. Mosley, J. (2012). Keeping the lights on: How government funding

concerns drive the advocacy agendas of nonprofit homeless

service providers. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 22(4), 841–866.

Murtaza, N. (2012). Putting the lasts first: The case for community-

focused and peer-managed NGO accountability mechanisms.

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 23(1), 109–125.

O’Dwyer, B., & Unerman, J. (2008). The paradox of greater NGO

accountability: A case study of Amnesty Ireland. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 33(7–8), 801–824.

Osborne, D. (1993). Reinventing government. Public Productivity & Management Review, 16, 349–356.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons. Cambridge University

Press.

Park, S., & Kramarz, T. (Eds.). (2019). Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap. MIT Press.

Peters, R. (2013). Development mobilities: Identity and authority in

an angolan development programme. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39(2), 277–293.

Pfeffer, J., & Salancik, G. (1978). The external control of organiza- tions: A resource dependence perspective. Harper and Row.

Pfeiffer, J. (2003). International NGOs and primary health Care in

Mozambique: The need for a new model of collaboration. Social Science & Medicine, 56(4), 725–738.

Prakash, A., & Gugerty, M. K. (2010a). Trust but verify? Voluntary

regulation programs in the nonprofit sector. Regulation & Governance, 4, 22–47.

Prakash, A., & Gugerty, M. K. editors. (2010b). Advocacy Organi- zations and Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.

Prakash, A., & Potoski, M. (2016). Dysfunctional institutions?

Toward a new agenda in governance studies. Regulation & Governance, 10(2), 115–125.

Preston, J., & Brown, W. (2004). Commitment and performance of

nonprofit board members. Nonprofit Management and Leader- ship, 15(2), 221–238.

Putnam, R. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social

capital. Journal of Democracy, 6, 65–78. Ross, M. (2015). What have we learned about the resource curse?

Annual Review of Political Science, 18, 239–259. Salamon, L. (1987). Of market failure, voluntary failure, and third-

party government: Toward a theory of government-nonprofit

relations in the modern welfare state. Journal of Voluntary Action Research, 16(1–2), 29–49.

Salamon, L. (1994). The rise of the nonprofit sector. Foreign Affairs, 73, 109–122.

Salamon, L., & Anheier, H. (1997). Defining the nonprofit sector: A cross-national analysis. Manchester University Press.

Salamon, L., & Anheier, H. (1998). Social origins of civil society.

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9, 213–248.

Salisbury, R. (1984). Interest representation: The dominance of

institutions. The American Political Science Review, 78(1), 64–76.

Scurlock, R., Dolsak, N., & Prakash, A. (2020). Recovering from

scandals: Twitter coverage of Oxfam and save the children

scandals. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 31(1), 94–110.

Sell, S. K., & Prakash, A. (2004). Using ideas strategically: The

contest between business and NGO networks in intellectual

property rights. International Studies Quarterly, 48(1), 143–175. Sloan, M. (2009). The effects of nonprofit accountability ratings on

donor behavior. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 38(2), 220–236.

670 Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671

123

Smith, S., & Lipsky, M. (1993). Nonprofits for hire. Harvard

University Press.

Sriskandarajah, D. 2014. NGOs losing the war against poverty and

climate change, says Civicus head. The Guardian, August 11, 2014.

Stigler, G. (1971). The theory of economic regulation. The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, 2(1), 3–21.

Tiebout, C. (1956). A pure theory of local expenditures. Journal of Political Economy, 64(5), 416–424.

Tinkelman, D., & Donabedian, B. (2007). Street lamps, alleys, ratio

analysis, and nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 18(1), 5–18.

Tocqueville, A. (1969) [1835-40]. Democracy in America. In J.

P. Mayer (Ed.), (Lawrence, George. Doubleday, Anchor Book,

Trans.).

Truman, D. (1951). The governmental process: Political interests and public opinion. Knopf.

Vakil, A. (1997). Confronting the classification problem: Toward a

taxonomy of NGOs. World Development, 25(12), 2057–2070. Vogel, A. (2006). Who’s making global civil society: Philanthropy

and U.S. empire in world society. The British Journal of Sociology, 57(4), 635–655.

Walker, J., Jr. (1991). Mobilizing interest groups in America: Patrons, professions, and social movements. University of

Michigan Press.

Wallace, T., Bornstein, L., & Chapman, J. (2007). The aid chain: Coercion and commitment in development NGOs. Practical

Action Publishing.

Watkins, S., Swidler, A., & Hannan, T. (2012). Outsourcing social

transformation: Development NGOs as organizations. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 285–315.

Weimer, D., & Vining, A. (2017). Policy analysis: Concepts and practice. Taylor & Francis.

Weisbrod, B. (1988). The nonprofit economy. Harvard University

Press.

Willems, J., Waldner, C., Dere, Y., Matsuo, Y., & Högy, K. (2017).

The role of formal third-party endorsements and informal self-

proclaiming signals in nonprofit reputation building. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 46, 1092–1105.

Williamson, O. (1973). Markets and hierarchies: Some elementary

considerations. The American Economic Review, 63(2), 316–325.

Wolf, C., Jr. (1979). A theory of nonmarket failure: Framework for

implementation analysis. The Journal of Law and Economics, 22(1), 107–139.

Yörük, B. (2016). Charity ratings. Journal of Economics & Manage- ment Strategy, 25(1), 195–219.

Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to

jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Voluntas (2022) 33:661–671 671

123

Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.