NGOs, States, and Donors Revisited: Still Too Close for Comfort?

Progress in Development Studies, 2002

One of the most striking features of the anglophone literature on NGOs is the diversity of NGO sectors and their contributions to civil society and democracy; yet, exploration of this complexity is often eschewed in favour of a normative approach in which the apparently mutually enhancing relationship between NGOs, civil society and the state is underpinned by liberal democratic assumption rather than an engagement with wider debates about the politics of development. Following a critique of this approach to NGOs, civil society and democracy, the paper argues that the role of NGOs in the politics of development is far more complex than much of the NGO literature would suggest, and calls for a more contextualized and less value-laden approach to the understanding of the political role of NGOs.

Creating and sharing knowledge to help end poverty www.manchester.ac.uk/bwpi Abstract Since the late 1970s, NGOs have played an increasingly prominent role in the development sector, widely praised for their strengths as innovative and grassrootsdriven organisations with the desire and capacity to pursue participatory and peoplecentred forms of development and to fill gaps left by the failure of states across the developing world in meeting the needs of their poorest citizens. While levels of funding for NGO programmes in service delivery and advocacy work have increased alongside the rising prevalence and prominence of NGOs, concerns regarding their legitimacy have also increased. There are ongoing questions of these comparative advantages, given their growing distance away from low-income people and communities and towards their donors. In addition, given the non-political arena in which they operate, NGOs have had little participation or impact in tackling the more structurally-entrenched causes and manifestations of poverty, such as social and political exclusion, instead effectively depoliticising poverty by treating it as a technical problem that can be 'solved'. How, therefore, can NGOs 'return to their roots' and follow true participatory and experimental paths to empowerment? As this paper explores, increasingly, NGOs are recognised as only one, albeit important, actor in civil society. Success in this sphere will require a shift away from their role as service providers to that of facilitators and supporters of broader civil society organisations through which low-income communities themselves can engage in dialogue and negotiations to enhance their collective assets and capabilities.

Development is a fundamental part of the mandates of many NGOs. NGOs are important stakeholders in the development landscape where they have accrued extensive knowledge within the sector. They are high profile actors in the field of development both as providers of services to vulnerable individuals and communities and as policy advocates. Much of their work aims to strengthen community capacities through training, technical advice, exchange of experiences, research and policy advice. Yet there is considerable dissatisfaction within some quarters regarding their role, impact and intentions. This article provides a critical discussion on this topic looking at why NGOs matter, the ideological factors that help explain the rise of NGOs as well their advantages and disadvantages within the development landscape. This article also engages fully with the criticisms levelled against NGOs and also shows that NGO relations with governments may take different forms and go through many different phases and fluctuations. This article is a non-exhaustive assessment based on literature and research that includes academic studies, research commissioned by international organizations, donor agencies' reports, as well as government assessments and reports. Research on NGOs is vast, and NGOs have been subject to rich academic debates related to global governance, democratization and development. NGOs have become an integral part of the international aid architecture and contribute to the implementation of the multilateral aid agenda. Joint partnerships between governments, NGOs and the private sector are crucial to the development trajectory of any country. NGOs are central to development theory and practice and are likely to remain important actors for years to come. From the late 1980s onwards, NGOs rapidly assumed a far greater role and profile on the development landscape than they had previously. NGOs were celebrated by donors as being able to bring fresh solutions to complex and long standing development problems. The new attention given to NGOs at this time brought many far reaching changes to development thinking and practice as a consequence of new interest in the then alternative concepts such as participation, empowerment, gender and a range of people oriented approaches. Alongside such claims, too much became expected of NGOs. All too often NGOs were seen as the magic bullet that could unlock the disappointment, disillusionment and deadlock that characterised the world of development. Such views inevitably led to a backlash when evidence began to suggest otherwise. NGOs are an extremely diverse group of organisations which makes meaningful generalization difficult. NGOs play different roles and take very different shapes and forms within and across different country contexts. NGOs as an analytical category are complex and difficult to grasp as they are quite difficult to pin down analytically. This has generated a lot of debate on what is and what is not an NGO and the most suitable approaches for analyzing NGO roles in development. Many are externally funded while others rely heavily on locally mobilized resources. Some are well resourced and affluent while others live 1 The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any particular agency

The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa, 2013

providing relevant details, so we can investigate your claim. Download date:15. Jun. 2022 **Working papers are preliminary drafts from work in progress. They are circulated to obtain comments and criticisms prior to finalisation. Wherever possible we identify the final/authoritative version of what were originally working papers. The role of NGOs and civil society in development and poverty reduction

One of the many reasons why non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were considered to be part of the alternative development paradigm, was because the state, its institutions, and public policy, were unable to address a host of issues of underdevelop-ment. NGOs mushroomed in every corner of the globe, with substantial amounts of multilateral and bilateral funds being diverted through them for developmental purposes. NGOs were perceived to be a panacea for much of the ills that a€ect underdeveloped countries, and were supposed to do development in a way very di€erent from the way the state pursued these objectives. They were thought to be participatory, community-oriented, democratic, cost e€ective, and better at targeting the poorest of the poor. However, in recent years, the halo of saintliness around NGOs has almost disappeared , and there is wide acknowledgement of the inability of NGOs to deliver what was expected from them. This paper after analysing the shortcomings of NGOs and the reasons and causes for their failure, suggests that there is need to bring the state back into development once again, with emphasis on reform of the nature of the state. Acknowledging that the state has failed, it argues that the only alternate to state failure is the state itself. Over the last two decades, a new development paradigm has emerged, which argues that development needs to be more sustainable, just, participatory, democratic and environmentally friendly. In this way of doing development, the notion and role of the state has also undergone considerable rede®nition and a term more generally called`good called`good governance', has become a key concept which is a prerequisite for addressing the issues of development. The phenomenal rise in the number and in¯uence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in underdeveloped countries over the last two decades, must also be seen as part of this process. 1

Political Studies, 1998

NGOS and the millennium development goals: …, 2007

Public Administration and Development, 1999

This paper argues that global trends are creating unprecedented opportunities for civic action at local, national and international levels. Three inter-connected trends are identified: economic and cultural globalisation, and the inequality and insecurity they breed; the increasing complexity of humanitarian action in response to ethnic conflict and intra-state violence; and the reform of international co-operation to deal with the problems

Development and Change, 2006

These six books show that the study of non-governmental organizations is alive and well; its subject matter, however, has fallen upon harder times. In the early 1990s, NGOs were seen as an alternative to corrupt states and a slow and increasingly marginalized UN system. They were, it was argued, close to the local population(s), efficient and innovative in service delivery, and driven by moral concern and solidarity. In former communist countries and dictatorships, they could even become the harbingers of a new and vibrant civil society. As a result, NGOs could play a central role in bringing about peace, democratization, and development. To some, NGOs almost became coterminous with civil society.

This paper will show how NGOs, despite the lack of an internal democratic process, by voicing a large, unrepresented segment of the global population, are the expression of the participatory democracy, the bedrock of their legitimacy.

Rethinking Marxism, 2003

Harvard International Review, 2003

Conservatives and liberals agree that globalization is hastening civil society’s coming of age. Liberals consider civil society the only countervailing force against an unresponsive, corrupt state and exploitative corporations that disregard both environmental issues and human rights. Meanwhile, conservatives celebrate the awakening of civil society as proof of the beneficial effects of globalization for the development of democracy. Thus, in the debate on development and the state, left and right appear to converge on the side of civil society.

Progress in Human Geography, 2004

Much research on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in international development has been case-study-based, with questions about the broader geographies of NGO intervention rarely asked. This paper explores the factors that drive such NGO geographies and considers how they relate to the uneven geographies of poverty and livelihood produced under contemporary processes of capitalist expansion and contraction. Explanations of NGO presence and absence must of necessity be historicized and contextualized, and particular attention should be paid to the influences of the politics and political economy of aid and development, the geographies of religious, political and other social institutions, the transnational networks in which these institutions are often embedded, and the social networks and life histories of NGO professionals and allies. The resulting geographies of intervention pattern the uneven ways in which NGOs become involved in reworking places and livelihoods, thou...

Journal of International Development, 2006

This paper sets out an argument for moving forward research on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) within developnment studies. The body of research on NGOs that emerged from the late 1980s onwards focused primarily on NGO roles as development actors and their organisational attributes, but paid less attention to theory and context. While such research had many positive strengths, it was also criticised for its normative focus, and for its vulnerability to changing development fashions and donor preoccupations. Today, attitudes to NGOs have grown more complex and ambiguous, and the institutional landscape in which NGOs are embedded is undergoing rapid change. A new wave of NGO-related research is underway which gives particular emphasis to theory, agency, method and context. Such approaches have the potential to consolidate the field of NGO research within development studies as a more stable and theoretically-grounded subject area.

Area, 1999

Non-governmental organisations are increasingly being regarded as the development panacea for the 1990s and beyond, principally due to the rise of the ‘New Policy Agenda’ advocated by the international financial institutions and the international development community. This agenda views the NGO sector as an effective vehicle for strengthening civil society, because NGOs are independent from the state and are suitable agents for facilitating participation amongst the poorest. This paper draws on research undertaken in Tanzania to suggest that NGOs may not be fulfilling this role. Issues arising at both the national and local scales demonstrate that relations between the state and the NGO sector are not straightforward, and that NGOs are at risk from becoming an appendage of the state. Furthermore, unequal patterns of participation suggest that NGOs are contributing towards the reproduction of inequality.