The non-governmental organization (NGO) has been one institution among many caught in the crossfire of growing discontent with neoliberal capitalism. Large, multinational NGOs became the hallmark of international development in the postwar era, especially as foreign aid became critical during the wartime collapse of public goods. NGOs that filled the gaps left behind by conflict continued to proliferate, with their numbers dramatically increasing in the late 20th century. In the 1970s and 1980s, the amount of aid targeted to developing nations was more than a thousandfold more likely to be channeled through NGOs than before.
The past decade, however, has brought with it a new international framework of development, complicating the humanitarian love affair with NGOs. Vocal critics now argue that NGOs operate to proliferate capitalist exploitation, stopping short of the radicalization necessary for “real” development. Arundhathi Roy goes a step further in her analysis of the danger of unhindered capitalism, Capitalism: A Ghost Story, alleging that “these NGOs have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation.” According to Roy, NGOs are complicit in a Western narrowing of the human rights agenda, with funding as the main mechanism through which that agenda is manipulated. NGOs have been increasingly labeled as intimate companions of global capital and neoliberalism.
A closer look reveals that this review of NGOs paints with too broad a brush; in other words, not all NGOs are created equal. Many NGOs actually contribute to an alternative face of democracy, one that mobilizes knowledge of communities and contexts to influence political agendas with an eye to what government overlooks.
Context Matters: Looking Underneath Broad Critiques
In 2014, Dhananjan Sriskandarajah, then secretary-general of global activist network Civicus, voiced support for a common criticism of NGOs as neoliberal pawns. He wrote, “Our corporatization has steered us towards activism-lite, a version of our work rendered palatable to big business and capitalist states. Not only does this approach threaten no-one in power, but it stifles grassroots activism with its weighty monoculturalism.”
Sriskandarajah’s sweeping critique of the NGO, however, is incomplete. Specifically, it cannot uniformly apply to all of the various contexts in which NGOs operate. For one, locally-operated NGOs in particular fill various roles along a spectrum of developing nations, from those with the most stable democracies to the autocratic. “There are definitely gray areas,” said Vikram Patel, professor at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Sangath, an Indian NGO, in a conversation with the HPR. Patel emphasized the value of NGOs in these “gray” countries with growing or uncertain democracies, pointing out that NGOs are not always an “arm of the government” but can also stand in opposition to public officials.
The Indian state is a clear example in which Sriskandarajah’s argument rings untrue. The last two Prime Ministers have in fact been visibly threatened by NGOs’ presence, leading them to issue restrictions on foreign funding and create lists of NGOs that “negatively impacted” big-business projects in “economic development.” As NGOs presented an alternative to corporatized development, they increasingly forced the state to go on the defensive. Many NGO activists criticized the move as stifling dissent, since they viewed their role as unsettling the government’s narrow development agenda.
Another important contextual dimension to consider is within-country variation. “In the poorest and the most under-resourced parts of the country, NGOs have a lot more freedom because the government’s reach is much less there,” notes Patel. He describes India as an example of this urban-rural divide in state influence. While from Sriskandarajah’s bird’s eye view, NGOs may seem paralyzed, they can leverage such rural openings to eventually impact broader political agenda-setting.
Creating An Alternative Democracy?
Many NGOs manage to engage both the state and the public, serving in a unique liaison position between the two. “It’s what you call PPP, or public-private partnership,” said Beatrice Otieno, research project officer at the Kenyan NGO Kisumu Medical Education Trust, while speaking with the HPR. Through the PPP model of collaboration, according to Otieno, NGOs in Kenya serve a key role in linking the government agenda with the needs of the common population. In regions where civic engagement is otherwise low, NGOs make it much more accessible to more people by bringing it to a community level.
Dinozoff Odhiambo, youth advocate at Pal Omega, a Kenyan NGO dedicated to empowering the HIV-affected, emphasized the agenda-setting capacities of NGOs. “We are involved in spearheading a journey to self-reliance, whereby even if the [NGOs] end their work…[the government] can take up the mandate and come in.” In a conversation with the HPR, Odhiambo described how NGOs in Kenya have brought forth alternative ideological approaches and have trained youth advocates to engage the community on solutions such as universal basic income. Such topics are much less likely broached within the traditional dialogue between politicians and disillusioned constituents.
What happens if NGOs do push governments toward more inclusive democracy? Bangladeshi organization BRAC, the largest NGO in the world, is one example. BRAC arose in 1972 out of a great need for services neglected by an undemocratic state and holds unparalleled national influence in public engagement and provision. However, public confidence in the national government has recently grown, and the leading party has been forced to enact a public crackdown on corruption. If Bangladesh continues strengthening its democracy and delivering public goods, “the future of the relationship between national-level NGOs and the federal government is one to wait and watch to see what happens,” says Patel. BRAC currently serves a parallel form of government in the absence of solid democracy; ideally, as the state improves, it will adopt BRAC’s best provisions and practices.
Reconciling the Funding Question
There still remains Sriskandarajah’s concern about the commodification of NGO service provision through the influence of foreign and philanthropic funding. However, NGOs possess several mechanisms through which they can contend with the monopolizing powers of neoliberalism. Among these is the ability to form coalitions that can transcend singular funding sources.
“When the government has to engage with a single voice, it often does it through the South African National AIDS Council…which collects voices from many trade unions and NGOs and is highly connected with government,” said James van Duuren of the South African chapter of NGO People’s Health Movement in speaking with the HPR. Not only do coalitions streamline relations with the state and enable stronger representation of marginalized interests, but they can also more efficiently allocate funding for wide-scale initiatives.
It is still crucial for NGO coalitions and larger NGOs to retain the communitarian nature and uniqueness of the individual interests within them. This might involve cultivating more domestic and local investment, and empowering youth to continue as representatives on the ground. Public transparency with NGO funding sources and mechanisms should also be voluntary and frequent.
NGOs in the Time of COVID-19 and Beyond
In bringing this perspective to the contemporary moment, one might interrogate what role NGOs should play in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the primary gaps in government service provision during this crisis is the control of public perception and information dissemination. NGOs can lean in to their community-based engagement to combat misinformation, and better connect the state to the realities of remote public discourse on the subject.
In addition, despite popular narratives of the virus as the great equalizer, worldwide service provision for vulnerable populations is more lacking now than ever. NGOs have the potential to reshape the policy agenda surrounding the virus and should use monitoring capacity and coalition-building to do so.
According to van Duuren, looking to the South African NGO landscape might demonstrate this potential in progress. “At the moment, a group of around 200 NGOs have come together to form a COVID-19 alliance…done independently without any government intervention.” While the impact of such coalitions on the pandemic is yet to be thoroughly analyzed, we should still hold out hope that NGOs will help harken a brighter future for the institution of democracy.
Image Credit: Wikipedia / Brett Matthew