NGO–Government Relations in States With Weak Institutions: Avoiding the State While Supplementing Resource Gaps

Those working in the NGO space continue efforts to expand the set of government–nonprofit relationship types and strategies that comparative scholars may utilize so that researchers in diverse contexts have a more comprehensive toolbox for identifying variations in relationship patterns across national, regional, or policy contexts. Using data on NGOs aiding migrants in Romania following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in this article we expand existing frameworks to include NGO–government relationships and strategies when state institutions are weak and trust in the state is low, which is characteristic of many governments globally. Our data show that civil society actors engage in gap filling to supplement missing state capacity while also actively avoiding the state due to concerns about lack of trust, culture of corruption, political patronage, and bureaucratic burdens. The implications of our expanded frameworks include new lenses for considering government–nonprofit relationships in less researched countries, and additional pathways for conceptualizing research agendas in states with weak institutional capacity.