Dissertation & Book Project

My book-length dissertation project aims to explain variation in the effect of a new wave of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the performance of state systems of service delivery.  While traditional models of civil society suggest that NGOs will act as watchdogs to the state, strengthening the quality of state performance, the last three decades have seen a global proliferation of a different type of NGO, one that specializes in direct service provision rather than advocacy.  Existing work documents heterogeneous effects of these organizations on the state, but little research exists to systematically explain that heterogeneity.  When NGOs stop short of contentious politics and instead act as service providers, under what conditions do they enhance or erode state performance?  My dissertation investigates this question in the context of the education system in rural India, using qualitative comparative case analysis to build a new theory that explains variation in how education NGOs affect the state’s delivery of basic education services used by the poor. 

I argue that while traditional civil society organizations enhance the state’s performance by mobilizing citizens’ political voice and strengthening state accountability, service providers tend to enhance state performance primarily through resource transfer, and they can erode state performance by mobilizing citizen exit, reducing accountability.  These NGOs strengthen the state in parts of the system where resources are the binding constraint on state performance, but have no effect—or a negative effect—where bureaucratic corruption or political capture are the critical factors limiting state performance. Ex ante variation in the binding constraints on state performance thus explain patterns of NGO effects.  As NGOs shift away from advocacy toward direct service provision, my findings suggest that their work has the unintended effect of increasing inequality in the provision of services by the state, undermining service quality for the most marginalized of the poor.

The argument I advance draws on a variety of qualitative data collected during 14 months of fieldwork in India.  The centerpiece of the project is two comparative case studies, each focusing on a different type of service provision NGO.  The first examines divergent effects of NGO-run schools on nearby government schools in a matched pair of villages in Rajasthan.  The second exploits variation over time to explain the changing effects of an NGO-government partnership on the statewide school system in Punjab.  The case studies rely on interviews, focus groups, school visits, and participant observation that I conducted in villages, district capitals, and NGO offices with over 200 community members, government officials, teachers, NGO workers, and teacher’s union leaders in Rajasthan, Punjab, and Delhi in 2014 and 2015.