Measuring the civil society legal environment in developing nations: The case of Nigeria.

摘要

Governments have the power to influence the size and health of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector in their nations through their economic, political, social, and military policies, as well as through their legal and regulatory systems. New instruments that seek to assess how these governmental policies, laws, and regulations, in fact, affect the NGO sector in particular nations have not been developed with reference to those nations whose governments are deemed by the international community to be the most inefficient, corrupt, and otherwise excessive. Nigeria is one such nation. This mixed methodology study includes a case study that compiles, describe, and analyzes Nigerian laws and regulations, and evaluates their effect on Nigerian NGOs, and a quantitative component that uses the Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Law Index to examine the relationship between the Nigerian legal environment and the size and impact of the Nigerian NGO sector. No human subjects are involved, and no experimental methodology is utilized, in this study.