*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
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- Reducing Oversight on NGOs Won’t Solve Problems
- Targeting Aid to NGOs Undermines Democratization
Aiding NGOs in Egypt FailsEGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT CONTROLS US ASSISTANCE TO NGOs Patrick Cronin & Tarek Ghani, Director-International Institute for Strategic Studies & Policy Assistant-Center for Global Development, 2007, Security By Other Means: foreign assistance, global poverty, and American leadership, ed. L. Brainard, p. 205 However, democracy assistance faces significant obstacles. The U.S.-Egypt bilateral aid agreement establishes the Egyptian government’s right to veto any U.S.-funded assistance project or nongovernmental organization, which in the past has limited USAID in project selection and implementation. Only in 2003 did Egypt begin to allow ESF funds to be disbursed directly to nongovernmental organizations providing technical assistance and training in support of governance reform rather than requiring these funds to go through the central government.
Dirk-Jan Koch, Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2009, Aid from International NGOs: blind spots on the aid allocation map, p. 152 However, the “Multiple Layered Principle Agent” framework developed in Chapter 6 actually warns against the optimistic assumption of altruism on the part of international NGOs. This framework portrays international NGOs as intermediary agencies that engage in elaborate bargaining processes with their back donors, whereby back donors attempt to gain as much symbolic capital (evidence of success and success stories) as they can for economic capital (resources) they deliver and international NGOs attempt to do the opposite. For the symbolic capital they promise to deliver, the less likely they are to meet their obligations. This would have negative repercussions on their track record with their back donor and increase the chance that the donor will stop or reduce funding in the future. With more flexible contracts and relaxed reporting requirements, international NGOs can accumulate symbolic capital without starting to work more efficiently or effectively. The persistent calls from international NGOs for looser reporting requirements and more flexible grants thus needs to be viewed with healthy skepticism since it is international NGOs themselves who stand to gain from a potentially more favorable symbolic-to-economic capital exchange rate. It is not a given that the increased freedom from international NGO managers to make country choices will automatically lead to increased poverty performance of NGO aid. First, as shown in this research international NGOs have specific missions, which translate themselves in preferences for specific types of countries. These preferences, which are not necessarily pro-poor, engrain themselves within organizations. The subsequent organizational inertia is likely to prevent automatic increased autonomy to lead to more pro-poor and demand-led choices. Second, power imbalances between international NGOs and their Southern partners are too large to assume that the geographic distribution would automatically be more tilted towards where the demand is greatest if back donors reduce their interference in the country choices of international NGOs. The literature on the relationship between Northern and Southern NGOs is clear on the extent to which the former dominate the latter’s agenda. This imbalance can be illustrated by an analysis of the governing bodies of international NGOs, such as their boards. An analysis of such bodies for a representative sample of 55 of the largest NGOs worldwide shows that they have a total of 693 members, of whom a mere 42 – 6 percent – come from developing countries. The imbalance also surfaces when contrasting the contractors the contracts that international NGOs sign with their back donors with those they sign with local NGOs. One study of Dutch co-financing agencies, for instance, showed that while Dutch NGOs often reserve core grants (institutional subsidies, which organizations can spend on overheads and programs), they do not give core grants tot heir partners. Also, while the contracts of international NGOs with their back donors are often for about four years, they sign shorter contracts with their Southern partners. The unwillingness of international NGOs to finance the organizational development of local NGOs is well documented. Often, international NGOs appear more interested in executing their own projects than in strengthening the capacity of Southern organizations. A broken feedback-loop has been shown to exist in international aid. Hence, even if the support international NGOs receive from their back donors would cease to be geographically tied, it is not clear whether this would automatically lead to country choices that are more demand-led and poverty-oriented. Targeting Aid to NGOs Undermines DemocratizationFOCUSING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE ON NGOs TO PROMOTE “CIVIL SOCIETY” COUNTERPRODUCTIVE 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. 78-9 In the new post-communist states in Eastern Europe, NGOs were depicted as an emerging civil society structure upon which democratization depended, and in post-conflict areas – as in the Balkans – t hey were seen as platforms of resistance to ethno-nationalist governments, as well as vehicles for inter-ethnic dialogue and reconciliation. This was the rationale for giving support to local NGOs, presented as civil society in the making, while various Western NGOs provided opportunities for penetration into receiving societies for aid projects that did not go to state institutions. Civil society was in this manner construed as an opposite to the state. The general conceptualization within the aid industry has been that civil society constitutes a cornerstone for democracy, and a public arena for fostering pluralism and liberal values. It posits civil society in opposition to the state, thereby relying heavily on an Anglo-Saxon version of the concept but filtered through the Eastern European revival of the concept, where it had been formulated by dissidents in opposition to an authoritarian state. In this chapter I shall suggest that there are considerable problems with such a conceptualization of civil society, and thus problems with the policy of supporting NGOs as a means of promoting civil society, democratization, or reconciliation. Indeed, in certain regards such policies may contribute to fragmentation and polarization in society, rather than integration and democratization, especially in societies that are already polarized, such as those subject to post-conflict reconstruction. This chapter discusses this problem in relation to international support to civil society in Kosovo. POST-CONFLICT DEMOCRACY AID TARGETED AT NGOs AND “CIVIL SOCIETY” COUNTERPRODUCTIVE IN EASTERN EUROPE AND IRAQ 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. 99-100 For all their dissimilarities there are parallels between such diverse regions as Kosovo, BiH and Iraq. To mention an example, in Iraq the US supported ethnic and religious-based groups, such as the Kurds and the Shi’a umbrella organization SCIRI (later SIIC, with the aim of creating an Islamic state), as well as individuals with quite personal agendas, such as Ahmed Chalabi, while dismantling all the state’s unifying institutions, including the army and the police. Giving support to separate groups while dismantling the state created further self-organization of non-state actors and exacerbated existing divisions. Again, there was an accompanying process of rapid privatization and a generation of mass unemployment through the dismantling of the police and the army, and the closing of state industries. While there has been considerable support to NGOs and “civil society,” such existing civil society bodies as the trade unions, among which various ethnic groups have united against the adoption of the Oil Law and foreign economic exploitation, have been proclaimed illegal and received no assistance. Conditions in Iraq differ considerably from Kosovo, but in neither place is there a great willingness by the various communities to integrate into joint state institutions, and there is in both an excessive emphasis on private solution, privatization and non-governmentalization. The record in the Balkans indicates that in the focus on private actors and NGOs, international aid policy fails to address the complexity of inter-ethnic and inter-community relations, which lie at the center of the conflict.
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