Citizens, Governments and NGOs: Is Three a Crowd?

The exponential growth of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries is highly linked to the belief that NGOs can forward human and economic development while engendering democratic development. The ability of NGOs to simultaneously fulfill these two roles remains an open question. Voices critical of NGOs allege that when NGOs that step in mainly to fill gaps in service provision, they ultimately prevent local governments from developing their own adequate service provision institutions, because citizens stop holding government accountable and local governments fail to the build the necessary capacity for service provision. These critical concerns are the motivating impetus of this research project. I argue that both the critical and supportive stories of NGOs can be true, but the most pessimistic perspectives that NGOs are undermining local governments are overstated. The places where the possibility of NGOs crowding out government is highest where local governments are weak and struggling. In these cases, it is true that NGOs can easily out-perform local governments, leading citizens to prefer NGO services over government services. Yet, NGOs are associated with greater amounts of contact with government. While their impact is likely to create a more robust relationship between citizens and government, I also argue they do little to build the government capacity relevant for long-term development. To test my arguments, I consider three different categories of effects of NGOs: attitudes towards government, political behavior and outcomes using access to water as a case study. My work employs mixed methods to tackle these difficult questions. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, I test hypotheses about how NGOs affect service provision and attitudes locally, using Peru as a case study, and across Latin America

Exploring the Challenges to Sustainable Rural Drinking Water Services in Chile

Many countries around the world now face the dual challenges of closing the remaining gaps in access to drinking water in rural areas while further addressing the issues of equity, quality, and sustainability outlined in the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our research explores the key factors for sustainability in rural drinking water services in Chile, an important example not only due to its success in rural water access but also because of the new directions the country is taking to achieve the SDGs. Drawing on results from a Delphi study of Chilean rural water experts, we discuss the most important issues identified, including water availability and investment in community water organizations, as well as disagreement among experts, particularly around roles of private service providers and the national government. We leverage these results to assess Law No. 20.998 passed in 2017, which aims to address problematic variation in rural water services by introducing a stronger role for central government and conferring more responsibility on rural water organizations. The work presents insights for challenges countries closer to universal coverage will face as they work towards the SDGs and provides an analysis of the new rural drinking water governance landscape in Chile

Compounding Crises: Bolivia in 2020

Bolivia began 2020 in the midst of a political crisis, with an interim administration led by Jeanine Añez, who assumed power during the political crisis that ended the administration of Evo Morales in November 2019. On March 10th, the government identified Bolivia's first COVID-19 case. The administration's swift initial response was marred by corruption, a strained public health system, and resistance from citizens and politicians. This essay focuses on the unprecedented character of a double crisis in Bolivia: a health crisis preceded and aggravated by a political crisis. The crises put the Bolivian government under intense pressure. The thrice-rescheduled presidential elections on October 18th returned the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) to power with a decisive victory under the leadership of former finance minister Luis Arce Catacora and former foreign minister David Choquehuanca. We review the consequences of the year's events on human and economic development and conclude by anticipating future challenges

Legitimacy and Policy during Crises: Subnational COVID-19 Responses in Bolivia

Why did some Bolivian departments have more success containing COVID-19 than others? We argue that low government legitimacy hampers coordinated responses to national crises, particularly where political polarization is severe and the crisis response becomes politicized. Low legitimacy can intensify the challenges of poverty and poor infrastructure. An original dataset of daily observations on subnational coronavirus policy and cell phone mobility data, paired with administrative data on cases and deaths, suggests that political divisions influenced governors’ policy implementation and citizens’ compliance. In departments that opposed the president, policies were more likely to deviate from the stricter national policy while mobility and protest activity were high. In departments aligned with the president, local policy followed national policy and citizens complied with policy and quarantine restrictions for a longer period of time

Poverty, precarious work, and the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons from Bolivia

Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America with a gross domestic product of around US$3500 per capita, health spending of approximately$220 per capita, a labour market dominated by informal work, and a weak health system. However, in the response to COVID-19, Bolivia has fared better than other health systems in the region and provides insight with regard to the implementation of subnational non-pharmaceutical interventions and supporting workers without social protection. The Bolivian Government confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in the country on March 10, 2020, and responded quickly by cancelling events, closing schools and borders, and implementing a national lockdown on March 22, 2020. However, the Bolivian Government was under pressure to open the economy in an election season. In response, the Bolivian Government shifted responsibility for most non-pharmaceutical interventions to departmental and municipal governments on June 1, 2020. The Bolivian Government maintained a mask mandate, school and border closures, and a nightly curfew, while allowing departmental and municipal governments to set workplace, social gathering, population mobility, and public transit policies. Daily deaths from COVID-19 increased markedly from 20 on June 1, 2020, to 96 on Aug 1, 2020.1 &nbsp;</p

Exploring the challenges to sustainable rural drinking water services in Chile

Many countries around the world now face the dual challenges of closing the remaining gaps in access to drinking water in rural areas while further addressing the issues of equity, quality, and sustainability outlined in the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Our research explores the key factors for sustainability in rural drinking water services in Chile, an important example not only due to its success in rural water access but also because of the new directions the country is taking to achieve the SDGs. Drawing on results from a Delphi study of Chilean rural water experts, we discuss the most important issues identified, including water availability and investment in community water organizations, as well as disagreement among experts, particularly around roles of private service providers and the national government. We leverage these results to assess Law No. 20.998 passed in 2017, which aims to address problematic variation in rural water services by introducing a stronger role for central government and conferring more responsibility on rural water organizations. The work presents insights for challenges countries closer to universal coverage will face as they work towards the SDGs and provides an analysis of the new rural drinking water governance landscape in Chile

Rural Transformation in Latin America\u27s Changing Climate

Despite dramatic changes in rural Latin America over the past century that often excluded rural smallholders, peasants, and indigenous peoples, these same populations continue to assert agency and initiate solutions to meet their own needs and goals. This special issue focuses on transformations in rural Latin America, examining how marginalized and rural populations both already are and can increasingly become key actors in generating emancipatory transformations within the context of a changing climate. Acknowledging climate change is just part of a “tsunami of change” that rural people are facing, these papers explore how climate and other challenges are negotiated on the ground. In this introduction, we focus on transformation as a concept, suggesting that it provides an important conceptual tool with which to integrate emancipatory politics into these multiple processes of change. This introduction draws out some considerations for emancipatory transformation. We suggest that climate change is, in some ways, a red herring, drawing attention away from the ways in which vulnerabilities are produced in particular spatio-temporal contexts. In addition, we suggest that transformations should be considered as hybrid, multiple, and intersectional; a static or monolithic vision of transformation belies the messy realities that rural people face in their everyday lives