Links: NGOs Promote Neoliberal Agenda

Links: NGOs Promote Neoliberal Agenda

Edward Ramsamy, Africana Studies Professor-Rutgers, 2006, The World Bank and Urban Development, p. 188-9

However, there is another side to the NGO story that bears mentioning here. In spite of the noble work done by many NGOs, these entities are not without their problems. Many NGOs have ties to fundamentalist religious movements and have become neo-liberal agents themselves, much like their larger and more powerful counterparts, the World Bank and IMF. Some major differences, possibly advantages, are that they reach the grassroots directly and do not seem to suffer from crises of legitimacy that plague the World Bank and IMF. The fact that NGOs are often able to bypass the state in bringing resources directly to their target groups has aided the poor in many countries but presents new problems of accountability. Many NGOs are funded by the very entities that incurred the wrath of the poor during the “bread riots” and other protests: international development agencies, Western governments, and corporations. Because they are ultimately accountable to those who finance them, NGOs are poised to deploy the neo-liberal agenda in unique ways on behalf of the historic bloc (discussed in Chapter 1) with which they are hegemonically articulated. The access that many NGOs have to the grassroots strategically positions them to give form to popular demands. If the World Bank is able to capture and dictate agendas through macroeconomic policy, NGOs shape political possibility at a different point of origin: the people themselves. Thus, it is not surprising that the Bank is courting NGOs; articulation with these actors is a further rescaling strategy of the glocalizing World Bank. As the new voices of the public, NGOs are in a position to strike strategic compromises with the historic blocs. These compromises eventually emerge as “solutions” to problems in the absence of state policy or the presence of state repression.
NGOs ALLOW THE STATE TO COOPT GRASSROOTS MOVEMENTS FOR CHANGE – FURTHERS GLOBAL NEO-LIBERAL AGENDA

Edward Ramsamy, Africana Studies Professor-Rutgers, 2006, The World Bank and Urban Development, p. 189

In a manner that seemingly inverts the “top-down” approaches of other actors within a given historic bloc, NGOs direct consent upward, connecting it to compromise at other scales, thus completing a scaled channel of policy formulation and implementation. Grassroots access also enables NGOs to inflict and manage public discontent effectively by inviting dissenters to “participate” in “self-reliant” or “cooperative” efforts. This gives people the impression that something is being done but the effect is to contain popular rage at the grassroots and prevent its escalation toward the state and corporate interests. The fact that politics in many developing countries is articulated through NGOs has effectively quieted or neutralized popular protest before the public can reach state power.

Thus, through NGOs, hegemonic blocs are able to create the illusion that the distance between the poor and power is being bridged, when, in fact, it is increasing. The NGO phenomenon has thwarted the democratic process, because like corporations NGOs are ultimately accountable to their shareholders and sponsors, not the poor. Such an appropriation of resistance serves to complete the neo-liberal project begun by the World Bank and other actors. States also benefit from the presence of NGOs, especially those involved with aid and relief. Through NGOs, states have been able to renegotiate debts and lobby for aid, but such benefits seldom reach the poor. As noted in Chapter 1, the dependent articulation of Third World states to the global economy and constellations of power has necessitated the maintenance of conditions that would bring in foreign capital, even if those conditions spell a crisis for the poor.

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. 78

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. 82-3

Government donor funding of NGOs and subcontracting of projects is largely a phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s, although it had existed before. Private organizations, and NGOs, had played a certain role as partners in international development since the Second World War, especially in US policy, and in the late 1960s the US asked its allies to support NGOs as a means of broadening the support for development aid. The growth of the NGO sector was largely government sponsored and NGOs became an integral tool of policy, which they in turn supported in, for example the Korean and Vietnam Wars. However, until the 1970s there was a general consensus that the state had a crucial role as an agent in development. The neoliberal impasse and definite break with Keynesian economics in the 1980s changed this. Along with private solutions to public services came an increased role for NGOs within the aid industry too. The 1980s has been labeled the NGO decade, but there was an even wider proliferation of NGOs, and NGO subcontracting, during the 1990s. The pattern of NGO proliferation in the West was accompanied by the growth of NGOs in the developing countries as well. Trends from Africa, especially during the 1980s, received new momentum with the opening of Eastern Europe. Here, in line with earlier dissident concepts of civil society, and accompanied by democratization and transition theories and subsequent neoliberal prescriptions for the “transition states,” the NGO sector became widely promoted as “civil society” that was considered an essential component for democracy. In the disintegrating Yugoslav state, with its violent conflicts along ethnic lines, NGOs were promoted as a civic alternative to the ethno-nationalist political regimes. As embryonic embodiments of “civil society” the NGOs were seen as carrying a mission for both democratization and inter-ethnic dialogue and reconciliation. Another target for donor support of “civil society” was those print and electronic media considered to be “independent.” Supporting free production and circulation of information, and civil society, became a central objective for many western donors, and separate budget posts were created for this purpose. Western NGOs thrived on these new budget posts and local NGOs mushroomed throughout the Balkans, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe. To quote some suggested estimates, the NGO’s share of the USAID budget rose from 13 to 50 percent under the Clinton administration, and the funds transferred by Northern NGOs increased at twice the rate of international aid as a whole.