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Non‐Governmental Organizations and the Local Politics of Forest Governance  

Nathan Cooka, Glenn Wrightb, and Krister Andersson*a

 

 Abstract 

 How does the support from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) influence the

responsiveness of local governments? Using a unique longitudinal dataset from 200

municipalities in Bolivia and Guatemala, We find evidence to support the idea that NGOs

often gain disproportionate influence over local policy processes by supporting local

governments financially. This influence can “crowd out” the voices of local citizens in

public decisions, leading to less responsive local governments. We also see evidence,

however, that the bottom-up political pressure on local government officials from

organized citizen groups can counteract this negative effect. These findings underscore

the importance of recognizing the local political contexts and its potential to moderate the

effects of interventions by NGOs and other external organizations.

Keywords: natural resources; forestry; NGOs; local politics; governance

a Department of Political Science, University of Colorado at Boulder. 333 UCB, Boulder,

CO 80309, USA.

b Department of Social Sciences, University of Alaska Southeast. 11120 Glacier Hwy,

Juneau, AK 99801, USA.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 303 492 1006. Email address:

krister.andersson@colorado.edu.

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Significance  

Concerned with the challenges of sustainable development, policy makers and scholars

often urge nongovernmental organizations to increase their efforts to support improved

governance of natural resources in developing countries. This paper questions the idea

that financial support from NGOs to local governance actors will always produce

improved resource governance. We present new evidence showing that non-

governmental organizations’ financial support to local governments often “crowd out”

the voices of local citizens in public decisions, leading to less responsive local

governments. We also see evidence, however, that bottom-up political pressure on local

government officials from organized citizen groups can counteract this negative effect.

 

 

   

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I. INTRODUCTION  

NGOs are increasingly important actors in local natural resource governance in

developing countries. With the goal of improving policy outcomes, these organizations

work with local communities in a variety of ways, including by donating financial

resources to cash-strapped local governments. In theory, these funds could allow local

officials to hire staff, establish offices for the governance of particular resources such as

forests or irrigation systems, and ultimately respond more effectively to the needs of local

natural resource users. However, the existing case study literature points to instances in

which external donor organizations, such as international NGOs and development

agencies, gained disproportionate influence over local policy processes and promoted

policies that ran contrary to the preferences of local people (1, 2). This study examines

the relationship between NGO funding and local governance responsiveness in the

forestry sector using a unique longitudinal dataset from 200 municipalities in Bolivia and

Guatemala. We formulate and test a theory to explain the conditions under which NGO

funding is likely to harm responsiveness, based on the particular local political contexts

in which they operate.

While scholars are paying increasing attention to the role of NGOs in local

governance, the interaction between external NGOs and local political contexts is

understudied in our opinion. In this paper we build on the existing literature on the role of

NGOs in environmental governance, recognizing the importance of financial and

technical support that external organizations can offer to local governments. Focusing on

the financial and technical resources alone, however, can be misleading because donors

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often have their own policy preferences and goals, and may lack the local knowledge

necessary to promote responsive governance alone. Furthermore, the creation of

responsive institutions is primarily a political process, a process that is governed by local

politicians who are largely motivated by political rewards—such as staying in power,

getting re-elected, and protecting the interests of the ruling elite. The key contribution of

this research is to examine NGO funding in the context the local political incentive

structure.

We find that the effect of financial support from external NGOs on local

responsiveness depends upon the extent to which local politicians are motivated to be

involved in local resource policy and respond to local needs. For the specific purpose of

this study, this means that NGO funding can actually hinder responsiveness where local

officials are not politically motivated to address rural communities’ expressed needs

related to forestry. This is because donor NGOs earn disproportionate influence over

local policy processes, and this influence overpowers the involvement of local actors in

policymaking. However, this negative effect does hold where organized local groups

exert political pressure on the municipal government in the forestry sector. This is

because where the local leadership perceives political benefits from meeting citizen

demands and perceives NGO funding as a plausible instrument to achieve their political

goals, they are motivated to take an active role in natural resource policy and ensure that

external actors do not steer local policy away from the preferences of the community.

 II. THE DRIVERS OF RESPONSIVE LOCAL GOVERNANCE 

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National governments in developing nations have increasingly transferred

responsibilities to local governments to manage natural resources. This trend is part of a

broader pattern of widespread decentralization and devolution reforms across a variety of

sectors in recent decades—reforms that appear justified on a number of theoretical

grounds. It has been argued that an excessively centralized regime is inefficient,

ineffective, and unresponsive to the specific needs of local people (3, 4), and that

decentralization can improve accountability (5), help to address poverty (6), improve

rural livelihoods (7), promote rural development (8), improve the provision of public

services (9), and foster equality and public participation (10). However, at the local level,

a growing literature shows highly variable outcomes from the decentralization of natural

resource governance in the developing world (11–14).

One of the key issues under study regarding decentralization in the natural

resource sector is the degree to which decentralization reforms actually enhance the

representation of local communities, and as a consequence, the extent to which policy

outcomes align with local needs (5). While decentralization should, in theory, empower

local governments who in turn serve their constituents, it seems clear that

decentralization reforms in the natural resource sector often fall short of this ideal (15,

16). Previous literature indicates that the accountability of local governments to their

constituents is an important condition for effective local governance under

decentralization (11, 17, 18). In other words, the possibility for decentralization to

produce improved governance outcomes seems to hinge on the degree to which it is

accompanied by increased downward accountability.

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In assessing decentralized governance arrangements in developing nations, Crook

and Sverrisson (6) suggest that many local governments are quite unresponsive to the

needs of local people. They also suggest that the financial resources available to

governments account for some of the variation observed in responsiveness. Where the

financial resources allocated by central governments are adequate and secure, or where

subnational governments have the necessary infrastructure to raise and allocate funds,

local governments are often more likely to respond to the needs of the local community.

Crook and Sverrisson (6) show that while funding influences governance outcomes in

decentralized arrangements, the “adequacy”—or correct amount—of funds allocated to a

particular policy area is not enough to promote successful or equitable local policies.

Instead, they suggest that adequate financial resources are a necessary, albeit insufficient,

condition for effective governance.

It is reasonable to expect that inadequate funding can limit the activities of local

governments in the natural resource sectors. The powers transferred to local governments

under decentralization reforms matter little where governments are simply too cash-

strapped to fulfill their mandates. Locally elected decision makers, facing demands from

the community to prioritize resource governance, must also contend with financial

constraints. Therefore, scholars might expect the responsiveness of local governments to

local needs to be explained in part by allocations of funding to local governments from

various sources, such as central governments, NGOs, and IGOs. While previous research

suggests that the allocation of funds may be one factor influencing the responsiveness of

local governments to community needs, the impact of funding from external non-

governmental sources has not been thoroughly examined. Previous research

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acknowledges the importance of adequate funding in decentralized governance

arrangements, but focuses largely on the role of central governments in determining

financial resources (17). As we explain in the next section, existing evidence suggests

that NGO funding plays an important role in local natural resource governance. But

whether or not this funding improves the responsiveness of governance to local needs in

the natural resource sector, or possibly makes local leaders less accountable to resource

users and more accountable to these external interests is an unsettled question, and is the

question that we seek to address in this research. In other words, how does NGO funding

impact the responsiveness of local governments in the natural resource sectors?

NGOs and local interests International and domestic NGOs have proliferated in recent decades, and they

are an increasingly important source of funding for governance in developing nations.

Foreign aid spending is increasingly routed through these organizations, rather than

through local or national governments. NGOs are often regarded as an important

component of civil society in the developing world, and this view motivates international

donors to channel aid money through NGOs in order to promote civil society (19). These

organizations often play key roles in chains of aid delivery for sustainable development

and natural resource management in developing countries (20). Although NGOs offer

important material support for decentralized environmental governance in the developing

world, scholars have rarely studied the impacts of this support on local environmental

decision-making using quantitative methods (21, 22). Specifically, does the funding

offered by these organizations lead to local governance that is more or less responsive to

the needs of local communities? Case studies of local environmental governance in a

number of developing countries support divergent arguments as to the effect of NGO

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funding on local interests. Some evidence suggests that through capacity building, NGOs

and other external organizations can facilitate governance and ultimately make it more

responsive to local needs (23, 24). At the same time, others point out that NGO assistance

can promote policies that are ill-suited to local needs, lead to financial dependence, and

undermine local authority (1, 2, 24).

The former hypothesis follows from the well-documented finding that local

governments in developing countries often lack the human and financial resources for

environmental governance (13, 25, 26). Without adequate resources, it is difficult for

local governments to exercise the powers that are transferred to them (23). At the same

time, NGOs are channels for international aid money, and are able to make considerable

contributions to local capacity by financing projects, paying the salaries of municipal

employees, and buying equipment, among other things. In this way, outside organizations

may be in a position to fill the “capacity gap” that prevents some local governments from

managing resources effectively.

While some case studies suggest that external funding might facilitate

environmental governance in a way that ultimately makes it more effective and

responsive to local needs, there is also evidence to suggest that NGO funding might

undermine local interests in natural resource governance. NGOs and other donor

organizations often provide funding to local governments on the condition that recipients

implement specific policies mandated by the donor, which may or may not be congruent

with local needs. Previous research suggests that development aid is often fraught with

informational asymmetries, one of which is a lack of understanding of local conditions by

donor agencies and contractors (20). Informational asymmetries and the conditional

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nature of some external funding in the natural resource sector may explain in part why

some externally funded projects are poorly suited to local contexts.

Furthermore, the interests of NGOs and other external actors do not always align

perfectly with local interests regarding resource use. This is seen especially where NGOs

exhibit a rigid pro-conservation bias, and push for highly protective policies without

regard for local livelihoods (1, 24). NGOs may intentionally promote relationships of

perpetual dependence with certain communities, which may undermine local autonomy

(1). For example, Contreras (2) points to dependency relationships between NGOs and

communities in the Philippines, and likens NGO involvement in the forestry sector to

rent-seeking.

These points highlight an important aspect of the story regarding NGO funding

and local governance: NGOs and other external donors are not simply benign financiers,

providing the financial means for communities to pursue local policy goals. To assume

that external funding will necessarily lead to more responsive governance simply because

local governments are fiscally constrained is to ignore the fact that donor organizations

have their own policy preferences. In the case of environmental NGOs in developing

countries, this means that NGOs and donors may prioritize outcomes that can be

measured in terms of actual forest cover, possibly neglecting the less tangible (albeit

crucial) support for local self-governance institutions (22). Where NGOs and local

communities pursue divergent goals, or where external organizations lack a detailed

understanding of local policy preferences, it is reasonable to expect that the involvement

of NGOs in local policy processes will steer local governments away from governance

processes that are responsive to local needs.

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The discussion above outlines ways in which NGO funding can impact the

responsiveness of local resource governance to local needs. Although the existing

evidence from local case studies yields important clues, it seems that the broad trends in

governance produced by NGO funding are not yet well understood. While it is easy to

find instances in which NGOs have promoted or stymied responsive governance, the

existing environmental governance literature lacks a systematic empirical investigation of

this relationship across a large number of localities. Furthermore, explanations of the

effects of NGO funding on local governance will be more robust if they consider the

local political context in which the support is offered, and particularly the political

motivations of local politicians to prioritize natural resources on the local political

agenda. We argue that the effect of NGO support depends critically on the nature of this

local political context. We seek to explain the effects of this funding source on local

government responsiveness by situating NGO funding within a broader theoretical

framework that takes these political motivations into account.

Our approach: taking political motivations into account Where meaningful powers in the natural resource sector are devolved to municipal

governments, local politicians hold broad authority in regards to natural resources.

Perhaps the most important choice facing politicians is whether or not to prioritize

resource governance. Previous literature points to two important findings regarding this

decision process. First, natural resource governance is often a low priority for local

politicians, and this indifference drives decisions regarding the financing and provision of

services in this sector (13, 27). Second, politicians who do prioritize resource governance

tend to do so in response to political incentives. The strongest motivation is the pressure

exerted by organized local groups in the natural resource sectors (27). Where groups

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demand that local officials prioritize resource governance, politicians may see an

opportunity to gain or maintain political support. In these cases, politicians will take an

active role in natural resource policy. But where these groups are absent, or where they

are overpowered by other groups whose goals run counter to natural resource governance

(such as those representing agricultural interests, in the case of forestry), politicians will

have little to gain from prioritizing natural resources.

This has important implications for the arguments outlined above regarding the

impact of NGO funding on local government responsiveness. While some case studies

show that NGO involvement can overpower local interests and ultimately lead to less

responsive policy outcomes, this seems unlikely where politicians perceive the political

pressure exerted by organized local groups. Because these political incentives are their

primary motivation, it is unlikely that local officials will allow NGOs to steer the local

government towards policies that are incompatible with community preferences. After

all, the opportunity to appear responsive in the face of political demands from the

community is the primary motivator for politicians to take action.

Local officials would rarely act to negate the possible political advantages to be

gained from prioritizing resource governance. Where natural resource governance is an

important issue for local electorates, such as in municipalities where forest products are

important for local livelihoods, local officials are more likely to take an active role in this

sector. In these communities, local politicians will represent community interests in

response to the demands of the electorate, preventing a situation in which funds are spent

contrary to the policy preferences of the community. But where natural resource

governance is not a salient issue to organized local groups, local politicians will not face

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political pressure to take such an active role in this sector. In these cases, politicians have

little to lose by accepting material support from NGOs, but the influence of these external

actors in local natural resource policy goes relatively unchecked. This means that NGO

funds may be spent in accordance with the policy goals of the NGO rather than those of

local resource users, potentially leading to governance that is less responsive to local

needs.

In our view, local political contexts are crucial for understanding the impact of NGO

funding on governance responsiveness. With this view as the basis, we formulate the

following hypothesis: the effect of NGO funding is dependent upon the level of

political pressure exerted by local groups in the forestry sector. In accordance with

the theories outlined above, we expect that NGO funds will be associated with less

responsive governance in municipalities where this pressure is low. This is because (1)

donor organizations earn influence over local policy processes, and (2) this influence can

overpower the influence of local resource users in natural resource governance and

planning. At higher levels of community pressure, NGO funding will be associated with

negligible or even positive effects on responsiveness.

III. RESULTS  [Insert Table 1 about here]

Model 1: Explaining responsive governance  

The results of Model 1, as shown in Table 2, support our hypothesis that NGO

donations impede responsiveness where community pressure is low. At low levels of

community pressure, the marginal effect of NGO donations on responsiveness is

negative. As community pressure exceeds a value of about 3, which indicates that

community organizations expressed opinions to the mayor in the forestry sector “from

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time to time,” the marginal effect is no longer statistically different from zero. The online

supplement presents substantive quantities of interest from this model as well as a

marginal effects plot of the interaction term.

Models 2‐3: Understanding NGO influence  

[Insert Figure 1 about here]

Model 2 and Model 3 provide evidence for the mechanism by which NGO

donations diminish responsiveness in some contexts. The results of Model 2, as shown in

Table 2, support the argument that NGOs earn influence over local policy processes by

donating material resources. The marginal effect of NGO donations on NGO influence is

statistically significant and positive for municipalities with low levels of local taxing

capacity. When the capacity variable exceeds a value of about 3, the effect of NGO

funding is no longer statistically different from zero at the 0.05 confidence level. A plot

of this interaction is included in the online supplement.

The results of Model 3 support the hypothesis that the positive marginal effect of

community involvement in forestry planning decreases as NGO influence in forestry

increases. Community involvement exerts a statistically significant and positive effect at

low levels of NGO influence. As NGO influence exceeds a value of about 3, which

indicates that NGOs have “some influence” in the forestry sector, the effect of

community involvement is no longer statistically significant at the 0.05 confidence level.

A plot of this interaction is shown in Figure 1.

IV. DISCUSSION  Our results reveal a nuanced picture of the effects of NGO funding on

governance responsiveness. Model 1 suggests that where local officials lack political

pressure from organized local groups, NGO funding for forestry leads to less responsive

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policy outcomes. We attribute this to the fact that NGOs that donate material resources

enjoy greater influence in local policy processes, and use it to pursue their own policy

goals in the natural resource sector that can differ from what local citizens want. The

results of Model 2 suggest that donors are most influential over local policy where

governments lack fiscal and institutional capacity. And our results from Model 3 suggest

a mechanism by which disproportionate NGO influence may hinder responsiveness to

local needs: by overpowering or “crowding out” local preferences in natural resource

planning and governance. The effects of NGO donations in Model 1 and Model 2 are

robust even when we control for the frequency with which NGOs expressed their

preferences in the forestry sector to municipal officials.

Higher levels of community pressure counteract the negative effect of NGO

funding in Model 1. Where officials are sufficiently motivated by pressure from below to

get involved in natural resource governance, they appear to provide a healthy

counterbalance to the influence of NGOs, ensuring that funds are not spent in ways that

damage responsiveness. Our results point to the importance of local political contexts for

understanding the effects of NGO interventions. Our analysis of the municipalities of

Bolivia and Guatemala suggests that the pressures exerted on local politicians by

organized community groups matter a great deal for responsive governance, especially

where external actors are involved.

It is worth noting that although higher levels of community pressure seem to

diminish the negative effect of NGO funding, our results did not show a positive effect of

NGO funding on responsiveness even at the highest levels of community pressure. In

other words, NGO funding seemed to harm responsiveness in the worst case scenario

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(low community pressure) and had no effect in the best case scenario (high community

pressure). In our view, this study is an early step towards understanding the role of

external funds in responsive local governance.

Limitations It is important to note that NGOs are strategic about where they choose to work. In

order to secure and maintain funding from donors, these organizations often adjust their

activities strategically to pursue tangible, demonstrable results (20, 22, 28). Some NGOs

will even seek out communities in which natural resource governance may not be very

problematic and where the NGO might not make a big difference for the outcome, but

where measureable governance success is likely, and will tend to avoid localities in

which resource governance is politically challenging or even unfeasible. This means that

NGOs will often concentrate in those communities in which local groups are well-

organized and demanding action. In other words, NGO activity is not randomly assigned.

We think that it is unlikely that this selection issue is driving our results for two

reasons. First, we control for the level of local political organization around forestry as

well as the importance of agriculture in the municipalities in our sample, which are both

strong indicators of the political feasibility of forest governance. Second, if selection

alone is driving our results, NGO activity should be associated with positive outcomes,

rather than the negative outcomes that we find.

V. DATA AND METHODS  Empirically, we add to the existing literature on NGOs and local governance in

two key ways. First, we explore the interaction between NGO interventions and local

political contexts. Second, we measure the responsiveness of municipal forest policy to

local needs, as rated by the local citizens themselves. Governance effectiveness and

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responsiveness are conceptually and empirically different (6). While the former is often

measured in terms of policy outputs such as spending or numbers of projects, the latter is

best assessed by local citizens. Because the livelihoods, needs, and policy preferences of

local resource users may differ widely between communities, and because measures of

policy outputs alone do not necessarily tell us about how congruent these actions are with

local needs and preferences, researchers concerned with governance responsiveness must

measure the perceptions of responsiveness among local citizens.

We employ survey data from local governance actors in 200 municipalities in

Bolivia and Guatemala in 2001 and 2007. We augment this survey with municipal-level

biophysical and census data for these two countries. Drawing upon the theories outlined

in the previous section, we develop three models with which to test the relationship

between NGO funding, local political contexts, and responsive governance.

Model 1: Explaining responsive governance  In order to capture the effect of NGO funding on local governance

responsiveness, local actors in each municipality were asked to rate the responsiveness of

the local government to rural needs in the forestry sector on a five-point scale. For the

Bolivian municipalities, these ratings come from local community representatives from

El Comité de Vigilancia (Municipal Oversight Committee), the grassroots organization

charged with monitoring the local government under the Popular Participation Law. For

the Guatemalan cases, representatives from the local development council and

representatives of the local water committee rated governance responsiveness. This

means that in both countries, a body that is independent of the municipal government

assessed the responsiveness of local policy. The averaged rating for each municipality is

the dependent variable for Model 1.

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In order to model the effect of NGO donations on governance responsiveness, we

employ a dummy variable indicating whether or not external NGOs (organizations

originating outside the municipality) donated money or goods to the local government for

forestry projects, as reported by the mayor in each surveyed municipality. We model the

effect of NGO donations as moderated by political pressure from the local community in

the forestry sector. In order to measure community pressure, surveyed mayors were asked

to rate the frequency with which community organizations expressed their preferences in

the forestry sector to the municipal government, on an ordinal scale.

We also control for several political, economic, and biophysical factors. We

control for the level of communication between NGOs and the municipal government.

Mayors were asked to rate the frequency with which NGOs expressed their preferences in

the forestry sector to the municipal government, on an ordinal scale. Previous research

found a strong association between NGO communication and local forest governance

outcomes (29). Similar work also suggests that supervision by the central government

motivates local politicians to prioritize forest governance (27). Surveyed mayors and

local forestry officials reported the number of officials from the central government

monitoring forestry in the municipality. This continuous variable is log-transformed due

to outliers in the distribution.

Because agriculture is important to many local economies and is also the primary

driver of deforestation, it is necessary to control for the importance of agricultural

interests in the municipality. Local officials were asked to rate, on an ordinal scale, the

importance of agriculture in the municipality. Because many municipalities likely face

financial and technical constraints that limit their responsiveness in the forestry sector,

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we control for local capacity. Mayors were asked to rate the importance of local taxes on

individuals as a source of municipal income. This measure is a proxy for local

institutional capacity, and is also meant to capture the degree to which local governments

have the financial resources to hire staff, purchase equipment, and implement forestry

programs (30). Because the extent of forest resources in a municipality could impact the

choices made by local officials in regards to forest governance, we control for the

proportion of forested land in the municipality using forest cover change maps (Hansen et

al., 2012).

We evaluate Model 1 using data from Bolivian lowland municipalities in 2001

and 2007, and from all other Bolivian and Guatemalan municipalities in 2007. Because

our measure of responsiveness only appears on the 2001 survey for municipalities in

lowland Bolivia, observations for other Bolivian and Guatemalan municipalities in 2001

are excluded from the model. We employ a random effects model with varying intercepts

by municipality. To account for heterogeneity between countries, we include a dummy

variable for Bolivian municipalities in all of the models presented in this paper.

Models 2‐3: Understanding NGO influence  While Model 1 tests our general hypothesis that NGO donations will impede

responsiveness where community pressure is low, the next two models are meant to show

a more detailed picture of the causal mechanism. We argue that the key to understanding

this effect is to examine the influence of donor organizations on local policy processes.

Specifically, the literature reviewed in this paper suggests that donor organizations wield

considerable influence in local communities, that their policy goals often differ from

those of local resource users, and that highly influential outside organizations can

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undermine local involvement in the policy process. We present two models with which to

explore these claims.

Model 2 tests the argument that by contributing material resources, NGOs earn

influence over local policy processes. Local governance actors in each surveyed

municipality in 2007 were asked to rate, on an ordinal scale, the influence of NGOs in the

forestry sector in the municipality. Our dependent variable is the averaged response on

this survey question for each municipality. Our key independent variable is a dummy

indicating whether or not NGOs donated money or goods to the municipality for forestry

projects, as reported by the mayor. Because we hypothesize that NGO donations will

lead to greater NGO influence in communities with lower financial capacity, we

employ an interaction term with our local taxing capacity measure explained in the

previous section. We control for NGO communication as well as the importance of

agriculture in the municipality, using the same measures included in Model 1.

Whereas Model 2 explains the determinants of NGO influence, Model 3 explores

its effects. Specifically, we attempt to show the mechanism by which NGO influence

impedes responsiveness. Our hypothesis is that while greater community involvement

in local forestry decision making will lead to outcomes that are more congruent with

the preferences of the community and thus more responsive, the positive effect of

community involvement will not be as great where NGOs wield disproportionate

influence. In other words, the influence of outside organizations can act to “crowd

out” local voices. In order to test this argument, we employ the same dependent variable

included in Model 1—local governance responsiveness. We model this outcome as

determined by the involvement of the local community organizations in planning with the

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municipal forestry office. Local governance actors were asked to rate the frequency of

this collaboration on an ordinal scale. Because our hypothesis is that the level of NGO

influence in the municipality moderates the positive effect of community involvement on

responsiveness, we include an interaction term with the same measure of NGO influence

used as the dependent variable in Model 2. As outlined for Model 1, we control for

several political, economic, and biophysical factors that may influence responsiveness.

We evaluate Models 2 and 3 using OLS regression. Because our measure of NGO

influence, a key variable in Models 2 and 3, was not included in the 2001 survey, these

models are cross-sectional for 2007 only.

V. CONCLUSION In this study, we provide evidence for the argument that the effect of NGO funding

on governance outcomes is conditional on local politics. While previous research gave

important insights into the effects of external funding in local governance, we seek to

build upon this literature by connecting it to the incentives of local officials. Especially in

decentralized contexts, the ways in which local governance systems respond to external

involvement depend upon politics. Specifically, we find that the sector-specific political

pressure that organized local groups exert on officials is a crucial determinant of the

effects of external actors on the responsiveness of local policy. Where this political

pressure is low, our findings paint a pessimistic picture of the effects of donor funds. In

these local arrangements, it seems that external donors can harm the responsiveness of

municipal governments to local preferences.

This calls into question the ability of external donors to improve governance in areas

where local civil society groups do not pressure the municipal government to respond to

the preferences of the community. While more financial resources can certainly help

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local governments to better address problems, this money on its own does not motivate

officials to prioritize the needs of the community in regards to natural resource

governance. Political pressure from below is what motivates local officials to take an

active role in ensuring that funds are spent in ways that are congruent with the

preferences of local people.

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Tables and Figures  Table 1: Model results Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Independent Variables DV1: Governance

responsiveness DV2: NGO influence

DV3:Governance responsiveness

NGO funding -0.945** (0.420)

0.865** (0.354)

Community pressure -0.105 (0.097)

Local capacity -0.011 (0.053)

0.035 (0.054)

NGO influence 0.147 (0.169)

Community involvement in planning 0.338** (0.141)

NGO funding * community pressure 0.235* (0.140)

NGO funding * local capacity -0.185* (0.110)

NGO influence * community involvement

-0.057 (0.057)

NGO communication 0.022 (0.067)

0.301*** (0.060)

Central government personnel monitoring (log)

0.054 (0.081)

0.142 (0.089)

Importance of agriculture 0.132** (0.053)

0.045 (0.051)

0.078 (0.052)

Forest cover 0.005 (0.003)

-0.001 (0.004)

Bolivia -0.203 (0.190)

-0.269* (0.161)

-0.122 (0.168)

Constant 3.462*** (0.379)

1.140*** (0.255)

2.505*** (0.404)

N 173 137 154 R2 0.326 0.150 Adjusted R2 0.295 0.109 Residual Std. Error 0.832 (df = 130) 0.930 (df = 146) F Statistic 10.476***

(df = 6; 130) 3.682*** (df = 7; 146)

Log Likelihood -250.958 AIC 525.916 BIC 563.755 *p < .1; **p < .05; ***p < .01

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Figure 1: Model 3 results – marginal effect of community involvement on governance responsiveness, conditional on NGO influence. Community involvement in municipal forestry planning has a positive effect on responsiveness, but the effect diminishes as NGO influence increases.

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