Civil Societies, Uncivil States

Government Repression of NGOs

Civil Societies, Uncivil States examines why governments around the world have turned against the nongovernmental organizations they once welcomed—and how they choose their methods of repression.

In the decades following the Cold War, NGOs became central players in global governance, buoyed by a liberal international order that rewarded states for supporting civil society. That openness proved short-lived. From Russia's foreign agent laws to India's crackdowns on foreign funding, governments increasingly viewed NGOs as threats. Suparna Chaudhry argues that whether governments choose violent crackdowns against NGOs or subtler administrative restrictions depends on two factors: whether an NGO poses long-term risks to state authority, and how visible it is internationally. A state's relationship with the liberal international order shapes which strategy it pursues.

Chaudhry's findings show that administrative crackdowns allow states to maintain democratic facades while systematically dismantling infrastructures of accountability. She reveals that, paradoxically, the very successes of transnational advocacy networks in pressuring governments to reform incentivized more sophisticated tools of repression. Unflinching in its analyses, Civil Societies, Uncivil States asks us to understand how states are silencing dissent before it is too late.

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