Civil Society Assistance Counterproductive: Undermines Legitimacy

Civil Society Assistance Counterproductive: Undermines Legitimacy

Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid, Professor Cairo University, 2000, Funding Virtue: civil society aid and democracy promotion, eds. M. Ottaway & T. Carothers, p. 69-70

In fact, it would be unwise to ask Western donors, governmental and nongovernmental, to do more to help the embryonic civil society in Arab countries. It is doubtful the donors have the will to do more, so long as the rise of civil society is associated with a democratization process that could bring in governments less friendly to the West than those now in power. Furthermore, Arab countries do not believe that the West, and in particular the United States, is truly committed to democracy or to the legitimate interests of Arab countries. Washington’s continued support of Israel, its disregard of the suffering of the Iraqi people, and its lukewarm response to Turkish incursions in Iraqi territory do not promote a positive image in the region. Large segments of the population in Arab countries, as well as most of the region’s governments, are suspicious of any kind of external assistance provided to groups viewed as belonging to the opposition, which is the case for active civil society organizations in countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. Nationalist and Islamist press campaigns against foreign sponsorship of social science research in Egypt is one of the latest manifestations of the profound mistrust of Western aid for any civil society organizations. Under these circumstances, increased support by Western donors would serve only to discredit civil society organizations in the eyes of ordinary Egyptians.

Civil Society Assistance Fails: Outside Aid Distorts Focus on Groups to U.S. Agenda

Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 193

This distance, or better, this hiatus, is very similar to the limited conception of civil society used by most international donors and appropriated by a few powerful local recipient NGOs. Both outside donors and inside recipient NGOs rely on rather exclusive definition of civil society that is constantly infused into the parlance of large international donor institutions. The role of Putnam is an apposite example of the recycling of social-political theories into the priorities of multilateral agencies such as the World Bank. Selective theoretical discussions can definitely make a difference since they largely influence donors and can definitively make a difference since they largely influence donors and NGOs’ practice. To be concrete, we have tried to demonstrate that first, civil society promotion tends to limit itself to a particular range of NGOs (shortcomings of the theories of civil society by proxy). Second, few NGOs tend to become the privileged partners of international donors at the expense of a much larger number and broader range of civil society organizations (shortcomings of the process of implementation between donors and recipient NGOs). Finally, the (neo-)Orientalist claims that there cannot be a civil society in the Arab-Muslim world have had an influence on donors (for being selective and discriminating against Islamic – as opposed to Islamist – organizations), and on key local intellectuals who reinforce the view that there is no civil society in the region (shortcomings in the conception of civil society in a transcultural setting).

All of these three shortcomings can be summed up as follows: Programs and projects concerning the promotion of civil society, as implemented through the interaction between western donors and local NGOs, tend to have a differentiated and hence exclusionary impact upon the civil societies of receiving countries, especially in the Arab-Muslim worlds. This exclusion embodies a version of civil society which is not about intrinsic political participation (civil society in itself, or an sich), but about a reflexive appropriation of the discourse about key civil society organization (civil society for itself, or fur sich). In a catchphrase, only these civil society organizations having the institutional and discursive means to sell themselves under the accepted label of “NGOs” will be successful in their bureaucratic interaction with international donors and their quest to receive funding for their activities.

Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 104-5

The reason behind these very restrictive conditions is linked, to a large extent to the question of support to armed groups in the Territories. To make sure that no US tax payers’ money goes to what the State Department has defined as terrorist organizations, Palestinian NGOs must sign a waiver (the so-called “Anti-Terrorism Waiver”) stating that funding will not go to support terrorist infrastructures and that their services will not benefit “terrorist individuals or organizations.” Thus, all projects submitted to USAID funding are controlled and vetted by U.S. officials. Project details include not only the type and location of activities, but also details of all the personnel involved. USAID can then vet the whole organization or the participation of certain Palestinian individuals.

Therefore the various types of contracts provide and escape for not signing the waiver. By having a contract, this gives more legal guarantees to USAID that money will not be misused. This is a purely American technical question (so far). The interview with another American quasi-governmental organization also stressed this legal technique to avoid signing the waiver. As its director put it bluntly:

“Our way to deal with the anti-terrorism waiver required by USAID is to split between grants and contracts. In our cases, we have an approximate 50-50 percentage of both. To put it simply: the advantage of the contract is that they do what we want. In grants, they do what they want.”

This can be interpreted simply as a way to bypass the very difficult question of signing or not USAID’s waiver about terrorism. But, from the point of view of donors about whether they feel that they can chose whatever programs and partners suit them, it gives a sense of the potential lack of autonomy left to Palestinian civil society partners. Were the US money a tiny and scant proportion of international aid, the issue would not be that important. But USAID is by far one of the largest single donors in the region with regard to civil society projects and dozens of local and international NGOs depend on its funds, therefore rendering its way to “do development very influential for many years to come. This again, gives a sense of how little space for maneuver the local NGOs have.

Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 8-9

Michele Dunne, Carnegie Endowment, 2005, Unchartered Journey: promoting democracy in the middle east, eds. T. Carothers & M. Ottaway, p. 217

Finally, those designing assistance programs face the practical problem of needing to spend the funds allocated for democracy promotion, whether or not they are able to do so in a way that supports policy goals, which themselves remain poorly defined. USAID and MEPI have understandably chosen to work in areas such as civil society, local government, judicial reform, and women’s rights that seemed the easiest and least sensitive. There has been little assessment of areas in which reform would be the most meaningful, which must be determined on an individual country basis, and few attempts to coordinate policy engagement and assistance programs with a view to making progress in those areas.
EXTERNAL FUNDING DISTORTS FOCUS OF NGOs INTO PLEASING FOREIGN FUNDERS

Doyle Stevick, Education Professor-University of South Carolina, 2008, Advancing Democracy Through Education: US influence abroad and domestic practices, eds. E. Stevic & B. Levinson, p. 114

The extent to which projects were driven by the foreign donors reinforces Wedel’s point: “with the outside donor[s] as chief constituent[s], local NGOs are sometimes more firmly rooted in transnational networks than in their own societies” (Wedel, 2001, p. 114). As these examples suggest and the Carnegie Endowment report notes about assistance, it “often forces them to be more responsive to outside donors than to their internal constituencies” (as cited in Wedel, 2001, p. 114). But as Samoff (1999) makes clear, the responsiveness of NGOs to foreign partners and donors is not an isolated dynamic; it is consistent with the relationships between the small countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the EU, NATO, and other great powers. Indeed, under pressure from NATO and the EU, Estonia officially adopted a policy of Holocaust Day for schools, despite widespread opposition from the population (Stevick, 2007). Whether involving NGOs or governments, these are not democratic relations between equals, but “heavy-handed and top-down approaches that involved, on the recipient side, elites who knew English and had quickly earned how to write grant proposals” (Wedel, 2001, p. 117).
DONORS DISTORT THE CHARACTER OF CIVIL SOCIETY

Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 129

Despite a formal variety of views, there tends to be only one version of civil society privileged by some of the local NGOs and international donors. This reduced and reductive version, though discussed in a variety of ways, actually becomes a sort of fixed dogma. We will explore how this can be the case, and how the historical context under which local NGOs evolve actually shape(d) and influence(d) the discourse about civil society.
EXTERNAL FUNDING FOR CIVIL SOCIETY PROGRAMS DISTORTS GOALS AND MESSAGES

Doyle Stevick, Education Professor-University of South Carolina, 2008, Advancing Democracy Through Education: US influence abroad and domestic practices, eds. E. Stevic & B. Levinson, p. 123-4

Foreign influence on civic education, though shaped by ideological goals, was nevertheless not characterized by the direct transmission of ideological views from foreign experts through nationally prominent civics experts to teachers and students. Instead, foreign resources and donors were often used instrumentally by domestic actors for their own purposes. One clear purpose was the acquisition of foreign funds, which was too often the end—rather than the means to some other end—end of the partnerships for those under economic stress. Ironically, perhaps, the free-market ideology that pervaded the push for civil society development ultimately subverted the message, as those under economic pressure took on projects whose values they did not endorse and ceased advocating for further policy or implementation of those projects once the funding ran out. Foreign resources, donors and experts were often more empowering of partners’ local goals than they were effective advocates for the positions they espoused. These dynamics are best understood in the context of power and resource imbalances between partners, the perverse incentives that pit recipient self-interest against project goals, and the lack of donor knowledge of local languages and cultures. These various dynamics and contextual factors were manifested within the selection of participants in civic education partnerships: who gets the floor; which domestic partners are selected, and how they select those to be trained.
KOSOVO’S NGO EXPERIENCE DEMONSTRATES THAT EXTERNAL AID CREATES AND SHAPES NGOs TO PROMOTE WESTERN AGENDAS

Jens Stilhoff Sorensen, Research Fellow – Swedish Institute of International Affairs, 2010, Challenging the Aid Paradigm: Western Currents and Asian Alternatives, ed. J. S. Sorensen, p. 95-6

However, in Kosovo, where the whole ethnic Albanian community stood in opposition not only to the Serbian regime, but to the Serbian state as well, the effect was to support an ethnic society against the Serbian state. Although some activity involved other ethnic communities in Kosovo (such as Serbs or Roma), the aid promoted organizational development within ethnic communities in an ethnically divided society, and in effect provided an external source of funding to the para-state functions in Kosovo during the 1990s.

Some organizations had an important role in the parallel structures of the 1990s, such as the (Catholic) Mother Theresa Society, with a history as charity organization, but most of the present-day NGOs are the result of the increased access to funding from foreign donors, or were even directly created by foreigners.

The rapid expansion of the NGO sector in Kosovo indicates that these structures are quite disconnected from any “organic” social development within the communities of Kosovo, and that they are a direct adaptation to the new financial opportunity structure provided by foreign intervention. From approximately 50 NGOs in Kosovo in 1999, the number increased to some 642 registered NGOs by July 2000, out of which some 400 were “local” (Kosovo) organizations. By 2004 the total number of NGOs registered to operate in Kosovo was more than 1000. It has since increased to over 2,800. Although many NGOs exist only on paper, the rapid expansion of this sector not only indicates that it largely is an external implant, but also shows how the NGO sector is not merely complementary for donor organizations, but indeed a prime instrument and channel for aid.