NGO development in central and Eastern Europe: An empirical overview

Recent years have witnessed a tremendous surge of interest in the broad range of social institutions that operate outside the market and the state virtually around the world. Known variously as "nonprofit," "non-governmental," or "civil society" organizations, these organizations have long functioned as providers of recreational and cultural activities, education and health and social care in developed and developing societies alike, but they have grown in importance over the past several decades as funding and other limitations have reduced the capabilities of the state to cope on its own with the social welfare, development, and environmental challenges of our time, and as citizens have sought to take a more direct part in social problem-solving and public affairs. The result has been a global "associational revolution" (Salamon 1994), a striking upsurge of organized private voluntary activity in virtually every part of the world--in the traditional welfare states of North America and Western Europe, in the former Soviet bloc, and throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. These developments have been especially visible in Central and Eastern Europe with the broad-scale resurrection of civil society after the revolutions of 1989 as well as the extensive degree of public and private democracy assistance that has flown into the region (Carothers 1996; Quigley 1997; Wedel 1998; Kuti 2001) to nurture and strengthen the development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Despite the growing importance of this set of institutions and the very concept of civil society, however, little remains known about them in solid empirical terms, both in Eastern and Central Europe and elsewhere in the world. As a consequence, it has been difficult to attract serious attention to them, to gauge their capabilities to shoulder the new responsibilities being put on them, or to determine what might be needed to improve their operations and role. What is the extent, scope, and structure of the NGO sector in the region? Did the initial outpouring of voluntary activity lead to civil society-based organizations that are fundamentally different from those in the West? How firm is the organizational basis of civil society in the region? Did the Central and Eastern European countries follow similar or decidedly different trajectories in this respect? In an effort to shed more light on this issue, this article presents empirical findings of a comparative research effort--the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project--that is underway in close to 40 countries worldwide (Salamon et al. 1999). We will trace the early development of Central and Eastern European NGOs, utilizing 1995/96 data on the size, scope, structure and financing of the nonprofit sector that are available on 22 countries around the world, including four countries in the region (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia) that form the focus of this paper. (1) As we will show, all over the region, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have made significant inroads not only in political and social, but also in economic terms in the space of only a few years after 1989. However, the process of rebuilding civil society has been neither an easy one nor an even one. Accordingly, the NGO sectors in Central and Eastern Europe differ not insignificantly in the level of their economic development, although they share many commonalties as well as problem areas and key challenges. The major findings emerging from this work on the scope, structure, financing, and role of NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe can be grouped under three major headings: Size, structure and composition, and revenue structure. Size and Economic Contribution In the first place, independent of their social and political importance and in contrast to the West, NGOs are still a modest economic force in the region in terms employment or national expenditures. More specifically, the NGO sector in the four Central and Eastern European countries for which data are currently available (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia) constituted a $1. …