Maintaining Inter-Organizational Relationships 3
human rights, and the environment. With motivation to stay afloat comes the constant need for
these grass roots organizations to obtain funds and emotional support. So two years of
democracy leaves the context in Croatia as one comprised of cooperative-competitors: Though
they worked together to see democracy in their nation, now they draw only limited resources
from a dwindling number of funding organizations.
Research immediately following the 2000 elections revealed that the inter-organizational
partners of NGOs, media, and INGOs worked cooperatively despite their competitive needs for
scarce resources (author 1, in press). Author 1 (in press) attributed the Croatian success to the
fact that the election was a driving force for cooperation instead of competition. Two years later,
we look to these inter-organizational relationships once again, to see how these cooperative
competitors relate with one another during a placid time when their shared desire to maintain
democracy is in the background. This paper analyzes inter-organizational communication in a
context of political rest from the perspective of cooperation-competition and resource-
dependence theories. The following sections review civil society and communication literature
that emphasize inter-organizational communication relationships. The civil society research then
transitions into a discussion of cooperation-competition and resource dependence as a theoretical
framework for the hypotheses and research questions. The paper then reviews network analysis
as the method, presents the results of an inter-organizational network analysis among NGOs,
INGOs, and the media, and then offers discussion and implications of the study’s findings.
Civil Society as a Global Concept
The field of Communication can make important contributions to the theory and
development of civil society. Traditionally, civil society has been discussed and studied within
the context of political science. Gellner (1994), Barber (1998), and Putnam (2000) have written
Convention