NPNGO Research Program: A Collective Action Perspective

Abstract

"While much has been written about the role of nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations (NPNGOs) in domestic and international politics, they remain an undertheorized form of collective action. Key questions such as why NPNGOs emerge and function, how they solve agency conflicts and ensure accountability, and conditions under which they influence politics have not been systematically examined. This paper presents a synthesized perspective on these issues by drawing on three dominant literatures that study NPNGOs, namely the political science approaches to NGO politics, the social movement literature in sociology, and the nonprofit literature in public management. We conclude that the NPNGO research program can be strengthened by an active engagement with the broader collective action literature, specifically the theories of firm."