Volume 13, Issue 2

Research has long established nonprofit organizations’ vital role advocating for the needs of vulnerable populations before legislative policymakers. In the best of times, it is difficult for 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofits employing grassroots advocacy to mobilize vulnerable constituencies to compete with 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) advocacy and special interest groups. The latter organizations inherently have greater flexibility and resources to lobby lawmakers directly, permitting greater access to influencing the policy agenda. Through a multi-method case study of the 2020 regular session of the Louisiana State Legislature, this article demonstrates how the COVID-19 pandemic’s unique contextual conditions made legislative advocacy more difficult than usual for charitable nonprofits promoting a progressive policy response to the pandemic within a politically conservative state. Conducted through interviews with nonprofit leaders and an analysis of legislative records and committee hearings, the case study reveals specific barriers that hampered charitable nonprofits’ access to the legislative process, including physical capacity restrictions and health concerns, as well as issues with virtual legislative protocols and conservative committee chairs’ discretion to ignore remote testimony. The article analyzes how these barriers negatively impacted charitable nonprofits’ ability to advocate for vulnerable populations and explores potential implications for equitable political participation and response to the pandemic.

In South Africa, government relies significantly on NGOs in the delivery of social services (Patel, L. 2012. “Developmental Social Policy, Social Welfare Services and the Non‐Profit Sector in South Africa.” Social Policy & Administration 46 (6): 603–18). The services NGOs provide in areas such as early childhood development, education, health care, skills development, food security, elder care, and other arenas form part of South Africa’s framework for achieving its long-term development goals. Also aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this government-NGO shared vision for development highlights the importance of NGOs in the development ecosystem. At the policy level, government explicitly refers to NGOs as stakeholders and development partners. However, at the level of practice, questions remain about NGOs’ participation in planning for the development to which they so significantly contribute, and the extent of NGOs’ role in increasing participation in democratic processes. In an effort to better understand whether NGOs adequately participate in development planning processes in South Africa, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 73 participants, including NGO leaders and relevant key informants from national, provincial and municipal levels of government. The interview data were supplemented with content analysis of government documents. In spite of the fact that NGOs’ involvement in development planning is explained by the state as a good governance principle ensuring meaningful participation of stakeholders (Republic of South Africa: Department of Social Development 2017, United Nations Development Programme 2011), the research findings suggest that NGOs’ participation in the development planning process is deficient. This deficiency stems from institutional and policy issues including the lack of a framework for participation, government’s perception of NGOs and neglect of the NGO sector, and political issues such as partisan political activity in spaces of participation and engagement. The democratic potential of NGO participation is also hindered by organizational issues relating to the amorphous nature of the NGO sector, apathy of NGOs and a fragmented NGO sector.

Discrimination by charities raises questions about the appropriate extent of equality regulation and has implications for government outsourcing through charities and for the provision of tax concessions. Professor Parachin has recently provided a justification for denying the application of public equality norms to charities through the public policy test of charity law. This paper builds on that work by considering whether liberal societies might, however, have good grounds to apply public equality norms to charities in circumstances such as the provision of outsourced government services, state enforcement of egoistic giving, or where doing so is a proportionate means to prevent harm.

Civil society has played an important role in meeting the challenges of refugee migration in recent years. This commentary documents the importance of civic engagement for the integration of refugees by linking individual survey data on refugees to a regional measure of civic engagement in Germany. Using the density of newly established civic associations at the county level as a measure of civic engagement, we exploit regional differences in civic engagement in order to estimate its association with refugee integration outcomes. We find that in regions with particularly high levels of civic engagement, refugees have significantly more frequent contact to Germans, higher life satisfaction, and better German language skills. This correlation is robust to regional contextual factors such as the local population structure, economic strength, and the state of the labor market. In terms of language acquisition, women and refugees with a low level of education benefit the most from high civic engagement. Moreover, refugees with university degrees find significantly better-paying jobs in areas with higher civic engagement. However, no direct correlation could be established between civic engagement and the likelihood that refugees are employed. Nonetheless, the results suggest that support from civil society translates into improved access to government benefits. Our findings highlight that local civic engagement is an important complement to public assistance services and policy makers should give a high priority to partnering with the civil society to improve refugees’ integration outcomes.