Carrie A. Meyer

Opportunism and NGOs: Entrepreneurship and green north-south transfers

Abstract Through the lens of entrepreneurship, this paper applies the New Institutional Economics to examine two case studies of environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Latin America to clarify their political economic roles. Southern NGOs that rely on Northern donors are viewed as entrepreneurial economic entities producing international public goods. These nonprofit NGOs take their place alongside for-profit firms as contributors to economic production, employment, institutional innovation, and technology transfer. The theoretical framework proposed assumes that self-interested behavior coexists with loyalty, commitment, and altruism as well as opportunism.

The political economy of NGOs and information sharing

Abstract To a large extent, information sharing is what nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) do, and the costs of sharing information are falling dramatically. Joining politics and economics, this paper builds an analytical framework to illuminate how these falling costs are affecting information-intensive NGOs in Latin America. Case studies describe the various information-sharing outputs and inputs of nonprofit, NGO production. I argue that the participatory activity of NGOs affects both political and economic realms, and that as the costs of sharing information fall, NGOs will be a more powerful link in the changing balance between states, markets, and civil society.

A step back as donors shift institution building from the public to the "private" sector

Abstract Frustrated with public sectors in developing countries, donors have shifted support to nonprofit nongovernmental organizations. This paper questions the preferability of the nonprofit or public sector from the donor and host country perspectives. Case study experience from agriculture and natural resource institutions in Ecuador and the Dominican Republic is presented to expand upon current thinking about the role of the nonprofit sector. Nonprofits are found to possess substantially increased flexibility for donor purposes and avoid many of the pitfalls of the political process. They are, however, subject to free-rider problems and bear no responsibility to the general public.

Public-Nonprofit Partnerships and North-South Green Finance

Environmental nongovernmental organizations working in partnership with the public and for-profit sectors are increasingly recognized as key players in international environmental politics and finance. This article examines a specific NGO partnership, the National Environmental Fund (NEF), which recently exploded in Latin America under the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative. This innovative institution is expected to increase economic efficiency by reducing transaction costs and fighting opportunism in North-South environmental finance. The article also highlights causes for concern and points to processes of distributional politics at work, alongside processes that may reinforce democracy.

Agrarian reform in the Dominican Republic: An associative solution to the collective/individual dilemma

Abstract The dilemma of appropriate organizational structure for agrarian reform projects is pervasive in all of Latin America. Collectives or production cooperatives provide superior vehicles for necessary credit and technical assistance, but, unlikely family plots, they are wrought with administrative problems and low worker incentive. This case study of land reform projects in the Dominican Republic presents the limitations of collective and individual farming structures, and characterizes an intermediate “associative” preferred by the Dominican reform beneficiaries. Empirical evidence shows higher productivity as the reform projects adopt the associative structure.

A hierarchy model of associative farming

Abstract Acceptance of the need for complementary services, when agrarian reform is introduced, such as credit and technical assistance, has led many countries in Latin America to organize land reform projects into collectives or production cooperatives. But the disincentives to effort inherent in group farming have been a continual source of underproduction and disappointment with cooperative farming experiments. The paper suggests an intermediate farming structure currently successful in the Dominican Republic. In the framework of an agency contract, incorporating the hierarchical relations between beneficiary, administrator, and governing agency, the advantages of the associative over either individual or collective farming are illustrated.

Early Gas Engines on the Farm: Did Women Use Them?

Decades ago, automobile history scholars recognized that farmers’ knowledge of portable and stationary internal combustion engines used for farm work contributed to the enormous success of Henry Ford’s Model T in 1908. Yet scholars have given scant attention to the farm gas engine. Reynold Wik and Ronald Kline have done much to illuminate the use of the Model T in rural areas and Kline has given more attention than most to the farm gas engine, but even Kline has been dismissive of it, calling the gas engine “powerful, but rather expensive and difficult to start.” This paper builds on recently published research on the farm gas engine to examine the early use of “small” farm engines and how they affected women’s work.