Aid to NGOs Distorts Their Priorities to Western Agenda

Aid to NGOs Distorts Their Priorities to Western Agenda

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).
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.
NGOs PROMOTE PRIORITIES OF FOREIGN DONORS OVER LOCALS

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. 113

“In 1997 was arranged a seminar on the issues of religion. The teachers, who now, after the collapse of communism have to teach among other new content areas about the religious topics, also poorly know that particular area. The two-days [sic] seminar offered to the participant’s [sic] lectures about the essence of Protestantism, church history under the Soviet era, about religious music and arts, held by Lutheran church priests and art specialists.”

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. 119-20

“Individuals in postcolonial societies still tend to privilege those social relations determined exclusively through personal connections…These frameworks of social relations usually escape Westerners’ sensibilities, unless they are project workers with extensive knowledge of local cultures.” (as cited in Wedel, 2001, pp. 113-14).

Indeed foreign experts in civic education often gave their partners complete freedom to select participants of their choice, and this practice was one of the greatest obstacles to broad dissemination of donors’ materials and ideas. Foreign donors and experts who are aware of this problem could structure aid so that opportunities and resources are more likely to be distributed on the basis of need or merit, rather than through social networks and patronage. As Chris Hann explains,

“Those who succeed in establishing good relations with a western organization maneuver to retain the tremendous advantage this gives them …[in these hierarchies] where everything depends on patronage and personal connections.” (as cited in Wedel, 2001, p. 114)

These practices both served to avoid competition and to exclude rivals. Wedel (2001) observed that, “The promise of Western money and access often inspired secrecy, suspicion and competition among groups” (p. 93). Bruno further observed that, “It can be counterproductive to bring together previously unacquainted recipients…other recipients are seen as undesirable competition and the dominant attitude is one of suspicion” (as cited in Wedel, 2001, p.. 113-114). In addition, “Central and Eastern European groups often were unwilling to share information or otherwise cooperate with anyone who had not reached the status of personal friend” (Wedel, 2001, p. 113). In Estonia, one of the country’s leading figures indicated that s/he had never been invite to the sessions sponsored by another organization. A review of training documents revealed just one such invitation, dating from 1996. When I explained these dynamics to an American partner who had encountered him/her at conferences, he exclaimed “So that’s why [that person] avoids me at conferences!” (personal communication, July 2003). Without an awareness of these dynamics, foreign partners cannot address this typical problem: “In the absence of sophisticated, well-conceived incentives on the part of donors to help build bridges among groups, funding frequently inspired competition among groups, rather than cooperation” (Wedel, 201, p. 114).
NGOs MARKET TIES DISTORTS ABILITY TO PURSUE COMMON SOCIAL INTERESTS

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. 115

In their discussion of policy implementation, Levinson and Sutton label the process through which policy – or in this case, foreign aid – is adapted “appropriation.” They characterize appropriation as:

“an active process of cultural production through borrowing, recontextualizing, remolding, and thereby resignifying cultural forms…It emphasizes the agency of local actors in interpreting and adapting resources to be situated logic in their contexts of everyday practice.” (Levinson & Sutton, 2001, p. 17).

Perhaps the most important factor contributing to the forms of appropriation that diverge from donor goals is economic insecurity that can support NGOs, and such a robust economy was manifestly absent in postcommunist countries in the years immediately following the Soviet collapse, civil society organizations had to look elsewhere for support. As Sutton and Arnove (2004, p. ix) point out, “what all NGOs have in common is their unique status as (usually) nonprofit, private sector actors located between the state and market institutions involved in the provision of educational [and other] services.” Although NGOs (and governments) may be distinct from markets, they, and the people who work within them, are nevertheless subject to market forces. Sometimes the uncertainty and pressure of the market are used to motivate their activity. Such an approach can be effective at spurring initiative and responsibility for oneself; it can also produce a set of incentives that pit individuals’ self-interest against the public’s best interest and the common good.
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.
DONORS DIRECT WHICH COUNTRIES NGOs OPERATE IN

Dirk-Jan Koch, Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2009, Aid from International NGOs: blind spots on the aid allocation map, p. 163-4

A third empirical finding of this research concerns the observed lack of autonomy of international NGOs in their geographic choices. These choices were actually found to be rather governmental, that is, influenced by the preference of their back donors. Sometimes back donors influence international NGOs by attaching strict geographic strings to their financial support; sometimes they influence them more subtly. As a key determinant of the copycat behavior of international NGOs, their financial dependence on their back donors came to the fore. The stronger this dependence, the more likely they are to mimic the geographic choices of their back donors, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.