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Scholars have long been interested in the relationship between civil society and democracy. Today, international donors promote civil society in developing countries, and they explicitly define civil society to include nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). It remains an open question, however, whether service provision NGOs in developing countries fulfill this civil society function. Some prominent scholarship argues that only NGOs that explicitly pursue advocacy perform civil society roles; service provision NGOs do not. I address this question, testing the relationship between individuals' experience with, and perceptions of, NGOs and their political participation in voting, protests, and raising issues with public officials. Using data from Kenya, I find that individuals who report contact with, or positive views of, NGOs are more likely to engage in certain political activities, providing some evidence for the inclusion of NGOs in the concept of civil society. I theorize mechanisms by which service provision NGOs may affect various forms of participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Election-related violence, because it is meant to coerce voters, may have an adverse effect on individual attitudes towards elections-and towards democracy in general. Victims of election violence may come to associate voting with conflict, which may in turn translate into lower levels of support for democratic processes and an unwillingness to participate in future elections. This may be especially true when repeated instances of electoral violence take place, as has been the case in Kenya. To explore the possible relationship between electoral violence and democratic alienation, interviews were conducted in two internally displaced person (IDP) camps in Kenya: one which housed primarily government supporters and one which housed primarily opposition supporters. Among interviewees-all of whom were victims of past electoral violence-there were pronounced differences in stated willingness to vote in future elections. These differences depended on the individual's perception of freeness and fairness of elections and whether the individual's candidate or party of choice won or lost. Additionally, as ethnicity is an important factor in vote choice and partisan support, this translates into stark differences between ethnic groups. These findings suggest that electoral violence may have an uneven effect on democratic attitudes and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]