Accountability, Strategy, and International Non-Governmental Organizations

Increased prominence and greater influence expose international non-governmental development and environmental organizations (INGOs) to increased demands for accountability from a wide variety of stakeholdersdonors, beneficiaries, staffs, and partners among others. This paper focuses on developing the concept of INGO accountability, first as an abstract concept and then as a strategic idea with very different implications for different INGO strategies. We examine those implications for INGOs that emphasize service delivery, capacity-building, and policy influence. We propose that INGOs committed to service delivery may owe more accountability to donors and service regulators; capacity-building INGOs may be particularly obligated to clients whose capacities are being enhanced; and policy influence INGOs may be especially accountable to political constituencies and to influence targets. INGOs that are expanding their activities to include new initiatives may need to reorganize their accountability systems to implement their strategies effectively. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 7. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Social Entrepreneurship and Social Transformation

This study provides a comparative analysis of seven cases of social entrepreneurship that have been widely recognized as successful. The paper suggests factors associated with successful social entrepreneurship, particularly with social entrepreneurship that leads to significant changes in the social, political and economic contexts for poor and marginalized groups. It generates hypotheses about core innovations, leadership, organization, and scaling up in successful social entrepreneurship. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for the practice of social entrepreneurship, for further research, and for the continued development of support technologies and institutions that will encourage future social entrepreneurship.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 15. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

The Role of NGOs in Human Security

Human security is fundamentally concerned with helping people to deal with unforeseeable threats and sudden downturns, whether international financial crises, environmental disasters or incapacitating illnesses. In this paper I argue that NGOs, as one of the most visible sets of actors in the related fields of human development and human rights, can play a significant role in helping to achieve human security. NGOs are especially well suited to action for human security because of their size and reach, closeness to local populations, willingness to confront the status quo, and ability to address transnational threats through coalition-building. While NGOs face many obstacles in reorienting their activities explicitly towards human security, including the cyclical nature of the aid monies on which many of them depend and the high costs of networking, I argue that the human security framework will nonetheless attract many NGOs to its approach.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 12. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

A Comparative Study of Inequality and Corruption

We argue that income inequality increases the level of corruption through material and normative mechanisms. The wealthy have both greater motivation and opportunity to engage in corruption, while the poor are more vulnerable to extortion and less able to monitor and hold the rich and powerful accountable as inequality increases. Inequality also adversely affects peoples social norms about corruption and beliefs about the legitimacy of rules and institutions, and thereby makes it easier to tolerate corruption as acceptable behavior. Our comparative analysis of 129 countries utilizing two-staged least squares methods with a variety of instrumental variables supports our hypotheses, using different measures of corruption (the World Banks Control of Corruption Index and the Transparency Internationals Corruption Perceptions Index). The explanatory power of inequality is at least as important as conventionally accepted causes of corruption such as economic development. We also find a significant interaction effect between inequality and democracy, and evidence that inequality affects norms and perceptions about corruption, using the World Values Survey data. Since corruption also contributes to income inequality, societies often fall into vicious circles of inequality and corruption.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 22. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

State-Directed Political Protest in US Capital Cities: 1998-2001

Using a new dataset, we analyze four years of political protest events in US state capitals, in order to specify the processes and possibilities for collective action at the state level. Drawing from resource mobilization/political process theory, we test hypotheses regarding density of activist communities, political culture, social capital, administrative capacities, and political processes in affecting the number of protests, rallies, and demonstrations directed at state government. We find that the most important factors include the density of contentious communities of individuals (specifically university students), political culture, Democratic Party control of government, and the option to use direct legislation (a negative effect), while administrative capacity, generalized social capital, and party competition have no effects. We also find strong positive baseline effects for the population size of the state, the relative importance of the capital compared to other cities, and urbanization. We argue that these findings illustrate how aggregate levels of state-level political protest arise out of collective action processes and the mobilization of small groups, as mediated through stable cultural repertoires of political tactics and moderated by certain political opportunities and processes.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 13. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Gurses' Type (b) Transformations are Neighborhood-Isometries

Following an idea close to one given by C. G. Torre (private communication), we prove that Riemannian spaces (M,g) and (M,h) that are related by a Gurses type (b) transformation [M. Gurses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 367 (1993)] or, equivalently, by a Torre-Anderson generalized diffeomorphism [C. G. Torre and I. M. Anderson, Phys. Rev. Lett. xx, xxx (1993)] are neighborhood-isometric, i.e., every point x in M has a corresponding diffeomorphism phi of a neighborhood V of x onto a generally different neighborhood W of x such that phi*(h|W) = g|V.Comment: 10 pages, LATEX, FJE-93-00

The Simple Analytics of Accountability

In this paper, the author offers a schematic that distinguishes the actors, interactions, and dynamics of various accountability relationships. A number of distinctions including those between responsibility and accountability, moral and legal accountability claims, and socially or governmentally generated demand for accountability are offered to assist those working on accountability policies or strategies and who may be struggling with generic conceptions of accountability that conflate all of these elements. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 33.9. Hauser Working Paper Series Nos. 33.1-33.9 were prepared as background papers for the Nonprofit Governance and Accountability Symposium October 3-4, 2006

Countering a Legal Threat to Cultural Exchanges of Works of Art: The Malewicz Case and Proposed Remedies

The ability of U.S. museums to borrow for exhibition works of art from museums owned by foreign governments is seriously threatened under a ruling of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia in the case of Malewicz v. City of Amsterdam that is now on appeal. If upheld, future cultural exchanges may be seriously curtailed; in fact, there is evidence that the case has already had a chilling effect on the willingness of foreign lenders to permit their works of art to travel to the United States. The case in question involves works of art lent by the city of Amsterdam to two U.S. museums that, under the terms of the 1965 Immunity from Seizure Act, were protected from seizure while in the United States. At issue in the case is a separate statute, the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, under which foreign governmental entities whose property is at any time in the United States are immune from suit here unless the property involves a violation of international law and commercial activity. The District Court held that the Immunity from Seizure Act only protects works of art from seizure; it does not preclude suits for damages against the owners; and that the loan of art works to U.S. museums is commercial activity as that term is used in the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act. In order to assure continued cultural exchanges, legislation is needed that will extend the Immunity from Seizure Act to protect a foreign owner from any suit based on the presence of artwork in the United States that has received protection under the Act.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 42. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

An Empirically Based Calculation of the Extragalactic Infrared Background

Using the excellent observed correlations among various infrared wavebands with 12 and 60 micron luminosities, we calculate the 2-300 micron spectra of galaxies as a function of luminosity. We then use 12 micron and 60 micron galaxy luminosity functions derived from IRAS data, together with recent data on the redshift evolution of galaxy emissivity, to derive a new, empirically based IR background spectrum from stellar and dust emission in galaxies. Our best estimate for the IR background is of order 2-3 nW/m^2/sr with a peak around 200 microns reaching 6-8 nW/m^2/sr. Our empirically derived background spectrum is fairly flat in the mid-IR, as opposed to spectra based on modeling with discrete temperatures which exhibit a "valley" in the mid-IR. We also derive a conservative lower limit to the IR background which is more than a factor of 2 lower than our derived flux.Comment: 14 pages AASTeX, 2 .ps figures, the Astrophysical Journal, in pres

The Parable of the Professor and the Foundation: Lessons in Philanthropic Accountability, Risk, and Impact

The paper uses a case study of a loan guarantee fund of $800,000 provided by the Ford Foundation to the Grameen Bank in 1981 as a framework for offering reflections on current debates within US philanthropy on accountability, support for innovation, risk taking and impact. Ford's loan guarantee fund leveraged commercial bank lending to Grameen Bank. The subsequent high rates of loan repayment by loan recipients convinced commercial bankers of the viability of Muhammad Yunus' model of lending to poor entrepreneurs unable to provide traditional loan collateral. The paper develops the concept of "accountability regimes," and argues that foundations engaged in international poverty reduction are better able, institutionally, to bear risk in support of innovation than multilateral and bilateral aid organizations such as the World Bank and USAID. That said, recent interviews of a small sample of executives whose foundations fund poverty work abroad suggest ambivalent attitudes toward funding innovative and risky projects. This is attributed, in part, to high expectations on the part of foundation boards and top executives that foundation-funded programs show positive, early and measurable impact. The great diversity of the US philanthropic community, and the commitment of many foundations to important charitable activities that are not necessarily inviting of innovation, further explains a more modest investment by US philanthropy in the kind of innovative work that they are uniquely sanctioned to support. Encouraging foundations to be more open to supporting innovative initiatives, the paper next offers three operational principles, drawn mainly from the Grameen case study, which foundations might observe in their poverty reduction initiatives. These are: the strongest ideas are likely to come from individuals and organizations outside of foundations working close to the problems; long-term impact assessments should focus on achievement of administrative and policy reforms in institutions that matter in the lives of poor people and; active and early engagement with governments, the private sector and publicly-funded donors will increase the chances that new ideas, once successfully tested, will bring about systemic change. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 44. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers