NGOs: A ‘New Class’ in International Relations

International conflicts normally happen within a backdrop of numerous differences between states. The problems are aggravated by factors such as the disparities of power balances between the disputing parties. In the face of current unstable world climate, it is suggested here that Non-governmental bodies (NGOs) should play an increasing role in mediating international conflicts and their transformation.

The American Historical Review, 2024

Nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, have been central to the creation of publics, counterpublics, and their globalization. NGOs and the people who work within them have raised awareness about climate change and human rights, protested against systemic racism and sexual violence, provided services such as medical care and legal aid to migrants, and promoted pleasurable hobbies (for example, the Nigeria Flying Disc Sport Association). NGOs serve as a unique case study into the processes through which publics have institutionalized, including but not only through legal registration. An analysis of NGOs also points to potentials and limits in the concept of “globalizing publics.” Problematizing these limitations has application beyond the particular scope of non-governmental organizations. Analyzing NGOs as agents of global (counter)public-making focuses our attention on three points. First, it emphasizes limitations and contradictions in how publics have globalized. This, in turn, disrupts overly rosy depictions of globalization as always smooth, always integrated, and always characterized by connections. Second, a focus on NGOs emphasizes the roles of money and legalities in determining which publics have been able to institutionalize and how. Finally, NGOs draw our attention to the (neo)liberal fantasies and denunciations embedded in some scholarship on NGOs and global publics. In all three cases, NGOs reinforce the continued, if contradictory, role of nation-states in historical and contemporary processes of global public-making. They show that the relationships between publics, globality, and states have been messier than the stock narratives of liberal romanticism or neoliberal doom would have us believe: respectively, NGOs as civil society agents who exist to curb abuses of power from autocratic states in a Cold War and post–Cold War world, or NGOs as pawns of neoliberal capitalism or imperialism, undermining welfare states and national autonomy.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are increasing the influence they are able to play on global politics. As far as they represent political values, interests, and demands that cut across the borders of the states. Furthermore, they participate in many trans-national and world-level actions and programs, and are recognized also by policy-makers as actors of the world political system, the reserved domain of the states. For this reason, it is quite safe to say that they have an impact on the transformation of the structure and processes of world politics. At the same time, it is safe not concealing that the NGOs effective actorness continues to depend on the access given to them by state governments and international organizations (IOs) to international institutions and common decision-making processes and actions. This chapter analyses the participation of NGOs in humanitarian intervention and peace operations. Knowledge about this area of action is of great importance to underst...

Human Rights Review, 2008

Volker Heins' newest contribution to the deepening debate on the origins, organization, and influence of international non-governmental organization (NGOs) is a thought-provoking blend of international relations theory, political theory, and real-world illustrations. This book draws together an impressive number of themes, including the changing nature of the state, the impact of shifting values on society, and the relationships between state and society and power and morality, into a concise and enjoyable explanation of the significance of NGOs. But there is a twist. NGOs are the heroes of the story, but they are convincingly characterized as parasites whose contributions to international society are mixed. While I want to challenge several of the arguments presented, Heins lays the ground for a fertile debate. His book has great potential to advance theorizing about NGOs, a pursuit which has been lacking in international relations. In NGOs in International Society, Heins makes three important contributions to a systematic, theoretical understanding of NGOs. First, he carefully dissects NGOs as organizations in order to understand what they do, why they do it, and why this matters. This approach, similar to that advocated by Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore (2004), enables Heins to avoid the normative gloss which can accompany NGO research which takes NGO self-descriptions at face value. Heins argues that NGOs, defined as "post-traditional and other-regarding civil associations that act on behalf of distant strangers, including future generations and nonhuman species" (12), can be analyzed as a single category based on their fundamental characteristics and purposes. This provides a macro-perspective on their origins and operations and avoids the perils of focusing on their idiosyncrasies or ad hoc accounts of success or failure. While a theoretical rather than empirical work, Heins presents a unique perspective on NGOs characterized as parasites (36-40, 103-105). NGOs are neither agents of states nor independent of states' resources, preferences, and

Chicago Journal of International Law, 2001

For centuries, international diplomacy was predominantly an affair of states. Neither private actors nor even parliaments had much influence on the goals that governments pursued abroad, the commitments they undertook, or the extent to which their behavior conformed to their international commitments. This environment was ideally suited to the shifting alliances of balance of power politics, and to the doctrine of unconditional sovereignty that governments (especially dictatorships) have always found convenient. During the mid- to late-twentieth century, though, a new set of actors-international non-governmental organizations ("NGOs")-began to assert their voice in international diplomacy. As a result, both inter-governmental organizations like the United Nations and the foreign ministries of individual states are now increasingly accustomed (however reluctantly) to the presence of NGOs wherever diplomatic agendas are being set, foreign policies implemented, treaties negotiated, and compliance monitored. After summarizing the nature and activities of international NGOs, this paper responds to the two principal forms of skepticism typically engendered by their increasing salience in international diplomacy. First, I rebut the analytical claim that NGOs are like the background noise of world politics-present, and perhaps annoying, but inconsequential. I then contest the normative claim that the activity of NGOs threatens the processes of popular accountability that sustain representative democracy. Instead, I argue that NGOs have been effective in helping to place certain conditions on the exercise of state sovereignty, and that this effect has advanced, rather than undermined, democratic values worldwide. However inconvenient this development may sometimes be in the short-term, the American people and government should recognize that the spread of international NGOs is helping to create an international order that is consistent with America's long term interests in the rule of law and respect for human rights throughout the international system.

International Studies Review, 2009

European Journal of International Law, 2009

Communication Monographs, 2005

2019

The paper presents conclusions of a research on consequences of the role acquired by NGOs directly engaged in the UN on the form of the international system. Is the role which NGOs gain in the UN big enough for us to be able to talk about emergence of a qualitatively new form of the international system? Drawing upon ideas by neo-liberal institutionalists and social constructivists, the presented research focuses on revealing possible contribution of NGO engagement in the UN to fulfilling traits characteristic for different alternative international system designs, such as global governance, multi-layered governance and world government. The research is based on preliminary determination of structural elements of these alternative international system designs which are then confronted with contribution towards their realization by NGOs engaged in the UN. This contribution is assessed independently for each of the structural element of the alternative international system designs wit...

Anthropology of East Europe Review, 1998

International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs or INGOs) are studied from a wide range of academic disciplinary perspectives, and the perspectives and literature are diverse and growing rapidly. This article approaches the topic from a political science perspective and, in particular, from the perspective of the international relations field in political science. It also includes a range of sources from helpful instructional readings to more sophisticated works that have been influential among scholars in the field. The list incorporates both some of the newest work of theoretical and empirical importance and older works that have been important to the development of this topic of study. The scholars who study international NGOs use a variety of conceptual categories for their analysis. Hence, anyone searching for literature on this topic will find fruitful results by searching for a number of terms, including, for example: “transnational civil society,” “transnational advocacy networks,” “transnational social movements,” and “global civil society.” NGOs are also variously called “civil society organizations,” “social movement organizations,” or “nonprofit organizations.” In European literature they are often discussed as “interest groups.”

World Development, 2015

Serious questions remain about the ability of NGOs to meet long-term transformative goals in their work for development and social justice. We investigate how, given their weak roots in civil society and the rising tide of technocracy that has swept through the world of foreign aid, most NGOs remain poorly placed to influence the real drivers of social change. However we also argue that NGOs can take advantage of their traditional strengths to build bridges between grassroots organizations and local and national-level structures and processes, applying their knowledge of local contexts to strengthen their roles in empowerment and social transformation.

2012

ONG para acciones de democratización y entrega de servicios. Los donantes terminaron estableciendo los objetivos del desarrollo y las ONG se convirtieron lentamente en Caballos de Troya para el neoliberalismo global. Este ensayo analiza cómo las ONG se hicieron promotoras de la hegemonía occidental en los países en desarrollo y presenta algunas propuestas de cambio.

Independent study, 2009

The paper consists of three main parts.The first one describes the general issues of the development of the concept of civil society, its roles, importance for transitional paradigm in the context of growing power and number of NGOs. It also discusses the main reasons of such growth. The second part will assess the NGO movement development in Russia, legal frameworks for activity, changes in 2006 and their Western critiques. The final part will deal with explanation of Putin’s regime as a “FSB state” and reasons why the main attack on civil society was in the field of control of activity of NGOs.