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Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are a core component of a robust civil society and operate in a wide variety of sectors, ranging from service delivery to political advocacy. However, research has yet to systematically investigate whether the impact of government repression varies across NGO activities. We hypothesize that advocacy NGOs are more affected by repression than those in service delivery. Surveying 176 employees from 106 NGOs in Cambodia, we employ a conjoint experiment to examine how the level of repression affects a task crucial to NGOs' survival: obtaining funding via grant applications. We find that while increases in the severity of repression appear to have a stronger deterrent effect for advocacy NGOs, repression has a large deterrent effect on service NGOs as well. Interviews and text analysis of open-ended questions suggest that local officials target both advocacy and service delivery NGOs, but for different reasons. Our findings speak to the spread of authoritarianism and the challenges NGOs face in countries with closing civic spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses correlation between globalization, public finance and poverty. Topics discussed include reduction in corporate tax rates and receipts, incidence of taxing, spending, and tax expenditures and use of standard cross-national budget data to study the link between globalization, public finances, and poverty. Other topics include several graphs related to social transfers.

Proponents often recommend high labor standards as a means of reducing inequality between and within countries. Opponents suggest that labor standards exacerbate international and domestic inequalities. In this paper, we forward a simple argument whereby the impact of higher labor standards on domestic inequality depends on a country's labor endowment. We hypothesize that where labor is abundant, higher standards will exacerbate inequality. Where labor is scarce, higher labor standards might lower inequality. In both cases, the impact of labor standards on inequality work through an employment and wage effect. Using newly available data on labor standards around the world from 1981 to 2000, we provide evidence largely consistent with our hypotheses. Higher labor standards do, indeed, exacerbate inequality in labor-abundant economies. On the other hand, higher labor standards lower inequality in labor-scarce economies. We discuss the implications of these findings for work on labor market insiders and outsiders as well as the political economy of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries vary dramatically in the amount they spend on social insurance. We establish a theoretical framework linking autarkic post-World War II economic development strategies with the emergence of insurance-based social policies. We argue that a government's choice of development strategy is conditioned by the size of the domestic market, relative abundance of labor, and land inequality in the context of a closed international trading system. The development strategy in turn shapes the fiscal priority governments place on social insurance. Contrary to the compensation hypothesis prominent in studies of the rich democracies, protectionist countries emphasize social insurance. Empirical analysis finds support for our argument. The results suggest that economic policies in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s had important implications for the emergence and current contours of social policy in the developing world. These differences in priorities swamp recent within-country changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]