Untitled Flashcard Set

NGO EXAM 

UN definition of NGOs: “any internal organization which isn’t established by inter-government agreement shall be considered an NGO”

Constraints:

• Can’t be profit making 

• Can’t advocate for use of violence 

• Can be a school, University, or political party

• Any concern with human rights must be genera; rather than restricted to a particular communal group, nationality or country.

Alternative Approach

Judicial approach- (Law/legal approach) whether to not NGOs have legal; status. By the country or the UN or both 

Sociological approach- societal actors, examine compositions, functions they have in the international arena.

Method of disqualification approach by 890-

Non profit

Non-professionalized 

Non violent

Not only a single country 

Lecture 3:

Overlapping concepts 

Professor definition of NGO:

NGOs are private, voluntary, nonprofit organizations that pursue the common good

(Private in the sense of members drawn from private sphere)

According to Martin: 

NGOs can receive governmental funding, but they need to be structurally independent from the government.

Proff: even if most of their money comes from government funding, they are still considered NGOs

NGOs are voluntary in the sense that individuals freely choose whether to join/contribute in their work.

NGOs have become increasingly professionalized. Some are mostly consisting of paid staff members, but others still rely on volunteers. 

NGOs are not for profit in the sense that even though they engage in profit making activities, any profit they earn is directed back towards their mission

Organizations need to have at least some formal/informal structure in place to make it qualify as an organization. There should also be an expectation of persistence over time.

Martin says that you need to have formal structures, headquarters, permanent staff, a constitution, and a district recognized legal status on at least one state. 

Civil Society- (Same as NGO there’s different definitions) Calder emphasizes In her article that the concept of civil society has evolved over time, and she explains that Hegel came along and redefined Civil Society as intermediate realm between various institutions. Its a realm where the opinions and goals and need of the individuals get transformed into the ones of the collective.

• Basically its a realm where the individual goes from being a private individual to a public person. 

Carothers says by the 1990s the concept of civil society splinters, and different actors think in different ways about it simultaneously.  

W the term civil society, the needs of the women change the way we understand the term 

Like in the 70s-80s there was big democratic movements against militarized regimes in latin America, and agains communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Calder’s point is that the way we define society changes with the times that we live in .

In 1990 the definition of civil society is the process which individuals negotiate, argue, and struggle against, or agree with each other and the centers of politics and economic authority.

In the 90’-20-   Civil society is a space where individuals act publicly. 

What Civil Society is NOT:

It’s not labor unions, professional associations, chambers of commerce, ethnic asociations, professional associations, religious organizations, student groups, cultural organizations, sports groups, informal community groups.

Associations that are not primarily advancing social or political agendas.

Civil society isn’t always good. Many times it’s associated w well intentioned actors, but ppl use it to advance bad goals too like militias and mafias.

Carothers says: the proliferation of civil society groups has the potential to choke the workings of representative institutions that could potentially hold them from operating efficiently. 

-Civil society is not a requirement for society 

• Civil society groups receive gov funding, so the degree which er can say they are truly separate from the state becomes a little murky.

• Democracy doesn’t ensure a civil society (Carothers)

• NGOs are NOT  the hearth of civil society(Carothers)

Ahmed and potter say NGOs are considered to be an important component and even the embodiment of civil society, or at least that egos transnational linkages and their civil activities make them key players in global civil society.

Carothers:says that it’s a mistake to acquaint civil society with NGOs. That civil society is a broader concept, and that in many countries NGOs are not at the center of civil society. They are outweighed by more traditional parts of civil society like religious organizations and labor unions or those kind of acts that have a more genuine base in the population and have a more secure domestic sources of funding compared to  .

Also Carothers says that  Transnational Civil society- is the west pushing there agendas and values. It’s the projection of the western political and economic power that civil society activists decry in other venues.

Sep 03

TANs

TANs: Transactional Advocacy Network 

What are TANS? It’s like a group of activists and different organizations working together across borders on a shared issue.  They exchange information services.

What make TANS a network? Forms of organization w some kind of regularized exchange 

• Structured patterns of interactions among organizations. Spelled out who the member of our network are.

• In the network there will be engaging in communication on a regular basis, through reciprocal and horizontal equality of membership

TANs Transnational -> Crossing a border 

TANs advocacy-> TAN members are committed to something bigger than themselves, Their principles, ideals and values that they are pften advocating for ( that the org is based on)

• Organize campaigns. Ought to do something for the mission 

• Develop explicit ties with each other. Together they create mutual rules in pursuit to the TANs mission 

Take:

TANs need to be transnational. A network is a structure that needs to be motivated by a principle goal, which is based by their principles, ideals, or values. 

*They are members of a network committed to something more than just their own benefit. They are committed to something bigger than themselves. They typically organize campaigns, and they always of something to advance their principled mission. 

*NGOs are central players in TANs, BUT they aren’t the only types of actors; there’s also: IGOs, states, social movements, media, foundations, and churches. But they all don’t have the same role.

NGOs often initiate TANs into existence. They often put pressure on more powerful actors whithin a network to act. (Like put pressure on other states who are part of their network to apply sanctions)

TANs a structure whithin which social movements might operate just as they are a structure within which NGOs operate.

TSM

What are transactional social movements?

Is a socially mobilized group engaging in sustained continuous interaction with power holders.

Any other social movement that has are socially mobilized groups in sustained contentious interaction w power holders. (Contentious toward other ppl)

To qualify as a social movement it has to:

 have some kind of shape, like a common discourse emerges.

The members have to be in at least 2 countries, and engaging in this kind of sustained contentious interaction w power holders in at least 1 country other than their own\\, or against an institutional institution or a multinational economic actor.

TSMs can’t target your own government, it has tp be another’s country govenment, and their members have to be across borders.

Distinction:

Tarrow  says:

How NGO + TANS relate to transnational social movements: 

• They both don’t have a set definition.

• TSM are cross-border movements that engage in contentious politics. 

• Both NGOs and Social Movements have may have social change goals. 

• Social movements engage in sustained contentious interaction with power holders.

• Social movements are contentious

•  He says INGOs are typically engaging in more routine transactions with these same actors or providing services to citizens or other states. 

• INGOs are not getting up in the face. They play nicely.

Do transnational social movements exist?

Tarot says that scholars might rush their interpretations, and this was leading them to misunderstandings.

Real TSM are really hard to construct, and really hard to maintain, and they have very different kinds of relations to states and international institutions than the less contentious family of international NGOs.

NGOs and TANs  are often encouraged by power players in international systems. 

Tarrow say that because social moments are contentious in their orientation, they don’t get the same kind of warn and fuzzy reception from international and transnational power players, and so are much harder to build and sustain.

Sep 5

International NGOs are the minority, the majority are grassroots organizations. 

Why we don’t know how many NGOs there are:

• Bc we can’t agree on a definition 

• We have to have better data (not questionable data)

All we can really know is that there’s a lot of NGOs, probably in the millions.

Boli and Thomas focus:

Term NGO is relatively new, it appears in 1946, but even before that term there was organizations that we could catalog as NGOs.

Transnational advocacy Network 1990.

Correlation: money, democracy, and     (new NGOs weren’t being created during WWI, and WW2. After ww2 a lot of new NGOs there was a huge growth and prevalent)

• 70% of NGOs after ww2 survived 

Salamon 

Bottom Up explanation 

• Global communication revolution Changed the way we communicate (phone), travel (reduced cost), and organize

• Retreat of the state- Power shift. Government giving up some of the responsibility. The things governments used to be doing for the people, they are not doing it anymore, so NGOs are coming in.

• Post-Material Values- middle class stopped being concerned with their own well being and focused on social equality, quality of life, and things that go beyond their narrow self interest. This shift is what people value kind of what incentives the creations of new NGOs.

Retreat of the state

Sep 08

Reimann

COMPARE HER W SALAMON

Perspectives for 80s-90s

Bottom Up explanation- people taking action of the issue with their own hands. 

We need more NGOs because the state isn’t doing what’s supposed to, so the more need for NGOs, but also the rise of post material values is contributing to this, because people are more aware, and concerned of things like human rights and climate change

Kim Reimann suggest that we see a lot of NGOs bc of things happening from the Top Down

Reimann says that there’s 2 things happening at the elite level (international level among power levels, but also individual states) That NGOs are being created because of the choices being made at tha elite international level.

She focuses on 

International political opportunity structure:

•  Opportunities for NGOs at the international level improve

• States turn to NGOs on new global issues, and it makes it easier for them to operate. 

• This is the moment where international organizations and states fund NGOs for the first time.

• They also provide technical assistance to help NGOs to develop capacity to run larger projects 

Top-Down Explanations:

There’s 2 things happening at the elite level that are encouraging NGOS. It’s the things happening at the elite international governmental organization level, but also among individual powers like individual states

(Basically the opportunities for NGOs to exist and to be influential at the international level to improve is because of the decisions being made by those elite powers.

In Top down: 

International Political Opportunity Structure:    the opportunities for NGOs to exist and be influential at the international level.

Took on new issues, they turned to international NGOs in particular as partners and service providers.   Because of this turn towards NGO opportunities improved and they became easier to operate.

  This is the moment where NGO and states wanted to start addressing new issues at the international level, and they wanted to work with non-government actors. So the government starts channeling more funding towards NGOs and it becomes easier to emerge because there’s more money.

Institutions besides funding also start providing technical support, so NGOs can develop the capacity to run larger projects. 

Also they are given access to constitutive status like the UN.  + Given access to international forum.

Pro-NGO international norm

RYMAN SAYS

• States and INGOs during this time period are actively promoting NGOs in 2 developing country states, 2 development country governments.( the NGO model was predominant in the west)

• They make the case that NGOs are normatively goof and should be spread 

Expansion of this model in transitional countries was because these countries had no option. They are financially dependent on wealthier countries, so it was like a pressure for them to embrace NGOs.

National level expansion:  political opportunity structure in developing countries, because of the promotion of the pro NGO international norm by donor states. (They wanted to be players)

(Here powerful actors decide want to work with NGOs and make it happen)

FOLEY AND THOMAS

Say that these things can be happening simultaneously 

Mutual Constitution 

• Idea single world polity. 

• Idea that NGOs are responding to events  happening on the ground but also at the international level 

• INGOs emerge from European imperial expansion  + INGOs Expand further alongside intergovernmental efforts at the global balance that happened long before the 80s-90s

• Another jump for NGOs is as independent nation-state systems start to form w decolonization in the 60s-70s.

Foley and Thomas saying:  these things are mutually reinforcing. We can see the growth curve for INGOs closely matches the growth curve for IGOs.

They are both a topdown reflection of world culture in the way that it’s embodiment by INGOs like the UN.

Even Kim Ryman acknowledged that even in the 80+90’s is not purely top down. There’s a symbiotic relationship btw states + IGOs + NGOs as they are all trying yo pursue some similar goals.

- NGOs rely in states + on IGOs for material and political resources.

- States and IGOs depend on NGOs to help solve global problems through the kind of activities: like service provision, agenda setting, information gathering, analysis monitoring, international agreements, lobbying states, mobilizing public opinion and media attention.

- States and IGOs that want the sane things are dependent on NGOs the same way NGOs are dependent on them.

VAKIL 

According to Vakil you always want to be paying attention to orientation and level of operation every time you are studying NGOs. 

2 ways to part them:    Level of operation + Orientation

Created a classification system for NGOs

She focuses mainly on orientation and level of operation.

(Categories are NOT mutually exclusive)

Orientation: essential description of NGO. Type of activities NGOs are engaging  

Welfare- Charity model. Delivering services/goods. Point is provide things to make people’s lives directly better ( but its not just in cases of crisis)

Development-Goal: improve people’s capacity to provide for their own basic needs over the long term. (Teaching them skills so they can do it)

Advocacy- Effort to influence policymaking, create broader support, raise awareness in the general public so that then they will then pressure on decision makers to act differently.

Level of operation: 

(Mutually exclusive)

International- Based in industrialized countries that operate in the global south. (developed countries)

Regional- Based in the global south, but serving a whole region.

National- Based in developing countries but limited to a single country

Community based- based in local communities in developing countries.

“Contingent” Descriptors  NOT mutually exclusive

Contingent descriptors: attributes that in certain situations we might want to pay attention to divvying up NGOs. Not universally important to keep our eye on tho.

• Sectoral Focus: what type of issue is the NGO concerned with? (Like housing, agriculture, women’s rights) (sometimes this will be relevant) Some NGOs can work in different issues, so it’s not mutually exclusive.

• Evaluative atrributes: Is the NGO accountable? Is it operating afficiently? Is it creating participatory opportunities? These are less important.  Vakil   says  these kind of attributes are not useful for creating apriori categories

Subjective to 

- Accountability

-Participation

- Values

- Control over resources 

(Bc there aren’t NGOs w good accountability and bad accountabilities, those lines are aribitrary) 

• Another important test review in which to classify NGOs is autonomy. Like how independent they are from government uf they weren’t promoted. 

• NGOs are in more control of their decision making when they are NOT dependent of their funders/donors.

September 10

BUSBY   

Strategies and Tactics 

Advocacy organizations: they are trying to make a change. They are tying to push states, or IGOs, or multinational corporations, or even population to change something that they are doing around some issue they care about.

Advocacy startegies 

Mechanisms 

• Coercion (military force)-> Policy change. Germany, Iraq 

• Negative incentive -> Sanction, Shaming

• Positive Benefit -> Reward, Praise

• Attention Shift -> Strategic framing, retortical action 

• Conversion (communicative action) -> Consensual Dialogue 

TANS cannot act on the coercive part of the spectrum because they don’t have that type of power. 

Instead what they do is:

Persuasion and socialization- whether we convince you to do this, everyone else will also do it. This is how you are a good international citizen.

That doesn’t mean that TANs are only engaging in conflict free startegies.

Yes, they cannot invade, can’t oppose financial sanctions, but that can public shame and that’s a very conflictual act. Even reasoning w opponents can be combative.

TANs are limited to persuasive and socializing mechanisms for getting states to change their behavior.

Tactics that TANs can use:

• Information Politics: ability to generate useful information and to get it to where it will have most impact. TANs can gather facts, testimony, and it’s important that the information is credible, dramatic, attention grabbing. The TAN takes those facts and interprets it in moral terms of right or wrong and making it public to address the issue.

•  Symbolic Politics: Ability to call upon symbols, actions, stories that make sense go a situation for an audience that is frequently borrowed. Like maybe a situation is hard to understand, but a TAN might present it in simple terms.

• Leverage Politics: TAN members like NGOs working to get more powerful actors to affect a situation where a weaker member of a network isn’t likely to have any real influence. So NGO maybe can shame, but they can also push states or IGOs to impose financial sanctions or to offer aid in exchange for good behavior or something. That’s leverage that NGO members have that TANs don’t.

• Accountability Politics: Variation on info politics. It’s the ability to hold powerful actors to their previously stated policies for principles. Holding them accountable. They hold them accountable through the boomerang pattern.

The Boomerang Pattern: the domestic NGO in just one country can’t get their own government to change, so they reach out to other NGO in a different country and they share information btw them. NGOs in other countries put pressure on their own states, and their intergovernmental organizations, and then the NGOs outside the states, the IGOs, put all the pressure on that state.

September 15

Domestic social movement- they are more confrontational

Gongos- govenrment NGOs- more like an extension of the government 

Activists choose a frame  and try to persuade policymakers to view that issue through that frame, so that’s also a strategy.

• How do NGOs and TANs use framing? Depending how you talk about an issue, so it resonates with what they already believe. So molding the issue to what they already believe.

Development strategies

Technology of talk (strategies)

2 big things that developing NGOs do: 1. Tangible technologies and 2. Techniques that produce intangible products  

1. Tangible technologies: produce tangible outcomes that can be measured. Like the numbers of wells that are built, amount of food distributed.

1. Techniques that produce intangible products: a response to the environment NGOs find themselves in, particularly the donor environment.

Most of developing NGOs are at the bottom of the chain, and multilateral donors are at the top of that chain, and those at the top they make grants and contracts to NGOs on the ground in developing countries. 

Usually the donors have different preferences about what they want NGOs to be doing, and that creates uncertainty for NGOs and they try to act on what the donors would want, but also tying down to one single donor isn’t the best option because all different donors want different things, so specializing on one single thing is not the best strategy to be able to secure  funding from different donors.

Watkins says 

 When NGOs lack specific technical competence they need to hold trainings. + teach people about the issue so they can learn and go back to their communities and shared what they learned.

What donors like about trainings is that they don’t like funding on the long term, so the idea is that the volunteers would teach the community. (But the issue is that volunteers leave) 

September 17

NGO State retaltions

Why might government view NGOs as an asset?

NGOs could take away money burden 

• Benefits from pulling resources 

• Learning (like about the public interest, or how to work with communities effectively?)

• They can also see NGOs as something they can exploit (corruption) 

• Cooperation (working together on projects to deliver something meaningful together or seeing NGOs as a way to fulfill the government agenda)

Why might government view NGOs as threats?

• Bc the things the government is supposed to be doing or delivering to their people, the NGOs are doing them, and it could impact the government legitimacy (like NGOs delivering food, water, education, healthcare)

• Government might perceive NGOs as competition (bc NGOs are doing the things the gov is supposed to be doing) Thread of competition of funding. Historically the $$ funding was given directly to the government, but now donors are worried about corruption so they give it through the private sector. 

• NGO part of the job is to criticize, to raise awareness, so that might not make the gov happy.

• NGOs might threaten the government ideology 

• Legitimacy concerns in the development and service space (things that the actual state capacity is supposed to be doing.) If INGOs take over responsibility in the development and service space, then it might make harder for the government to build up the capacity to do these things in the future.

• NGOs might also divert donor funds from the government 

• NGOs might act as government watchdogs and criticize the government directly.

• NGOs are engaging in communities in democratic ways that leads people to have a sense of their own efficacy and a greater sense that they have a voice and that sometimes translate into greater demands on the government for more democracy and a better government

• NGOs are usually aligned with the opposition 

• NGO leaders sometimes go into politics 

Why might NGOs view the gov as an asset?

• Positive relationship might give you access to: collaboration to work together 

• Legitimacy, trust to reach certain communities 

• Government can help coordinate

• assist

• Provide technical assistance 

• Enhance NGOs sustainability 

Why might NGOs view the gov as a threat?

• Self censorship 

• Loosing independence 

• Violence 

• Arresting their leaders

• Gov finding direct or indirect ways to interfere with the NGOs work

• Shut them down

• Government would want to take their money or sources

Najam: 

Type of NGOs Strategies

• Over the years there has been an increase of NGOs interactions w the government. (Not all NGOs, but increasingly NGOs and states do interact)

Strategic Institutional lens  (NGO-state relationship) (focus on the goals and their preferred strategies)

There’s 4 combinations that can emerge 

1. Cooperation 

2. Co-optation

3. Complementary

4. Confrontation 

Cooperation- similar goals+ similar proposed strategies- they work together

Co-optation- similar means (strategies), but different goals- this is the most unstable and short lived because both will try to convince each other, so it will either become cooperation or confrontation. It’s an action, not a state to be in.

Complementary- share goals (ends) but have different preferred strategies.- The goal could be achieved by each party pursuing their own means. They are both going to be doing the same thing, but they are not going to be getting in each others way, not a confrontational relationship, not worried about a negative relationship. Here they are just going to work separately in pursuing the same goal.

Confrontation- Different goals and different preferred strategies. They are going to confront each other. Confrontational relationship. Not all confrontations are violent or hostile. A confrontation can happen at the negotiation table in a civilized way. 

September 19

Sources of variations in NGOs-State Relations 

The type of political regime-

Like for example authoritarian regimes might have good relationships with human rights NGOs (bc they are constantly violating human rights). But that doesnt mean that democracies don’t have any issues with NGOs, because they do. But we might expect Authoritarian regimes to be more hostile with NGOs.

Bratton says:  Among authoritarian regimes we might expect that civilian regimes are going to be less hostile to NGOs than military regimes.

If there’s some type of civilian constitution it might provide freedom of expression and association to at least some degree.

• Whereas military regimes there’s a suspension of constitutional provision and making more room for the government

Bratton says that multiparty regimes are going to be more favorable to NGOs than single party states. When you have multiple parties competing w each other, those kinds of systems are based in voluntary interest association, so that same logic can be applied to NGOs.

Systems that are more personalistic and patronage-based might feel more favorable towards NGOs.

Bratton’s logic is that patronage based systems politicians might welcome NGOs because NGOs become and additional source of spoils for distribution, so you can be able to use NGOs to do development work in districts where it benefits you and advance you politically.

Government Development Strategy- where governments themselves;ves have adopted neoliberal economic policies, he thinks we should be able to see them more encouraging independent NGO entrepreneurships vs socialists, or communist systems where the government is meant to play a significant tole in the provision of social business.

• Countries that depend on foreign donors might be pushed to being more open to NGOs

State Administration Capacity- Whether they can crack down if they want to. They are in a better position to monitor all the NGOs operating in their space and ensure that are not running against the government. (But many countries don’t have the capacity to monitor all the NGOs in their state)

• Bratton suspects we are going to see a more hostile response from the government when the NGO sector starts to get bigger 

Control Mechanisms 

Mechanisms the government use to limit threat from NGOs?

• Police, Military 

• NGO bans ( like China, Bruma) not most countries tho 

• Deny registration and reporting requirements (legal status in country)

• Countries adopt laws that restrict NGO ability to receive foreign funding. Or allows them to only receive certain quantities or certain percentages. (significant consequences)

• Coordination requirements- the government needs to approve everything they do (keep an eye on them)

• Dissolution- Government taking action to dissolve NGOs (revoke legal status, shut them down, arrest leaders, force leadership to be reorganized)

• Non-Regulatory-Mechanisms-  outside from formal regulatory process. Delaying NGOs permissions, help, making it hard to function 

• Co-optation-government push NGO off what they intend to do, undermining their independence as an organization. Bratton example: huangos, huzza NGOs, he talks about an umbrella organization for NGOs where they are required to belong, but in which staff and the board of the quango are appointed by the guard, and in situations like this you can be legitimately concerned about co-optation because NGOs aren’’t able to voice their thoughts independently. Their access to to the government and their ability to voice their interest and wishes is funneled though these umbrella organizations.

Countries that receive more foreign air are more likely to have adopted these laws (looks counterintuitive). Where there’s a lot of foreign aid, there’s a lot of NGOs. Like Bratton’s point, because NGOs started to become more powerful, it started to gain the attention of the government.

Interaction effect: Statistically, countries who recently had competitive elections were more likely to adopt those restrictive financing laws. Governments usually perceive foreign aids as political opponents.

September 22 

Brass

Are control mechanisms always bad for NGOs?

It just depends on what specific regulations look like. Also NGOs can have bad intentions, and states have a legitimate interest in regulating NGOs and keeping track of them. 

There’s millions of NGOs, and not all of them have the best intentions, some could undermine government programs, confuse communities, so it not a ridiculous idea that a government would want to regulate and keep track of NGOs.

• If the government isn’t trying to suppress NGOs or threaten them, then the mere existence of restrictions is not bad.

Cooperation Mechanisms 

• What mechanisms do goverment and NGOs use to cooperate w one another?

Coordination: It’s optional. The government creating forums where NGOs can come together and talk about their intended or ongoing projects in particular regions of the country and also around particular issues. It works best at the local level because it can enhance local participation and the efficiency of resource allocation. Every NGO is still doing its own thing, they are just talking w other org and w the gov abt what they are doing 

Collaboration: actually collaborative programs and projects where NGOs and gov are pulling their resources and negotiating some kind of division labor on joint projects. Beneficial to both NGO + gov to work together on some larger goal, to pull their resources and divide their labor in ways that each party does best.

Shared Governance: Instead of clear division of labor, where government is making policy and NGOs are implementing policy, the service provision in Kenya has become this complex and intertwined service provision process. 

Service provision delivering services/goods to deprived communities: water, food, clothes, healthcare, education.

In the Kenyan case, the government and NGOs are intertwined: NGOs act like interest groups by sitting on national policymaking committees and by lobbying for specific policy changes. 

So sometimes they literally they have a seat at the table at the local and national level. Also most districts in Kenya governments integrates NGOs plans and budgets into their local plans. (Like in the plan it includes what the government and NGOs are going to do in the trajectory development). The government really takes NGO into account.

The service delivery space relationship is very positive, she doesn’t see the evidence of the worst case scenario fears some scholars had about NGOs entering into service delivery and development.

The government is not being replaced, NGO and government are doing this jointly, and they they have become stronger and even more democratic. The government increased transparency, higher levels of responsiveness to the community needs. The Kenyan government learned from NGO (they mimicked their values).

Isomorphism: In this case because NGOs started to push their values onto the Kenyan government, they started to learn and mimicked them, so with time they started to resemble each other because they are actively mimicking each other. They are adopting the structure or behavior of other organizations 

Isomorphism: Things come to resemble each other more and more closely because the parties are actively mimicking each other. They are looking at the other organizations and thinking of becoming like them and then they mimic them, and they start adapting the same structures or behaviors of the organizations. (Grassa)

Or according to Coolie and Ron is that they come to look alike because they are all facing the same kinds of pressures and incentives. They are all just responding to the same set of stimuli and incentives.

Who are the donors? Private donors, governments( wealthy democratic governments,

• Billateral- Major givers of foreign aid and thus the major bilateral orders to enchants. Members of OECD DAC. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Assistance Committee (rich countries club) organization for all the rich countries in the club. It requires its members to have a foreign aid program that provides funds that meed specific conditions for official developing assistance. Ex: US, Australia, 

• Multilateral- They also give a lot of foreign aid, but comparatively less. Ex: World Bank, Financial monetary fund, European union.

• Private- Private individuals, foundations. The money usually goes to big NGOs, that may lend grants to smaller NGOs

September 24

Why do NGOs AID Agencies fund NGOs?

• Enhace efficiency- give better value for money, specially for reaching poor people 

• Expand the scope of aid operations- specially in sectors where official aid presence is thin, and they might still might want to help the ppl from those places so they might do it through NGOs

• Implement human basic needs approach- (water, food, education, healthcare) things u need to carry on ur life. Donors might valuer the basic human needs approach

• Introducing outside perspectives on developing issues- donor version of learning aid + NGO. Even though Potters is skeptical about this bc he says that NGOs have more influence over donor agencies and aid policies. NGOs have more influence at the (lower) project level than at the (higher) program level

• Build civil society- important contributors to a robust civil society, so they might want to fund NGOs to boost civil society abroad to also boost democracy abroad.

COOLEY AND RON

Why do NGO want official AID?

Stability: 

• private donations are harder to predict+ hard to see into the future 

• Official funding has the potential to be mote stable 

• Agencies have more money

• If NGOs want to work in a big and long term project, to be able to scale up they need a big and stable donor

• Easier for NGOs to replicate a project or extend it 

Trends in Donor Funding To NGO

70-90s NGOs shifted away from big infrastructure projects and started to focus on making people lives better: basic needs 

Rise of human infrastructure 

• Expansion 

• Dependency - on official AID

• Marketization -NGOs have to bid for major bilateral donors. They are forced to bid competitively to secure contracts. The renewal of those contracts is based on performance: positive results. They are short contracts

80s: New policy agenda: conservative leaders on west who want to reduce spending are on favor of small limited government . They have a domestic vision, for the people to take on responsibility (volunteer effort), but it spilled to the international air. AID agencies are less likely to give money to gov, and more likely to give money to private actors, including NGOs

90s: Democracy assistance as civil society development: Those countries aren’t democratic. NGOs are the solution, we will funnel the money through them and they can do the development work and also promote democracy. The share go official development assistance is also increasing, so more funds.

• Expansion of bilateral- + AID + NGOs

But because the official donor money became very appealing to NGOs, they became very dependent on them.

Most major NGOs get their funding through official sources. 

September 26 

Cooley + Ron

2 different theoretical frameworks

1. Principal Agent problem- applies to the relationships btw donors and NGOs

Principal: Actor of some kind, Boss, the idea

Agent: Employee, executes

Principal Agent Relationship involves conditional delegation of authority. There’s someone who wants something done but they don’t plan to do it themselves. They will delegate the task to someone else. That delegation of authority can be revoked, if the principal doesn’t like how the agent is doing the task (bc is a conditional delegation of authority), the principal can take the authority back and delegate it to someone else.

Apply to AID donors and NGOs:

**AID donors might want a program that expands water security, but they might contract and NGO to do the work, but that NGO might specialize in delivering food.

The potential problem comes when the principal and the agent don’t want the same thing. 

Misalignment btw agents and principals is always likely to come up, because the principal and agent might not want the same thing.

• How much principal’s interest in agents’ interest diverge is going to vary from one situation to the next, and how well the principals are able to monitor their agents is also going to vary.

Specific to NGO:

 Donor: Principles: They see effective implementation of their projects broadly

AID contractors: Agents: they may share an interest in projects being implemented effectively. Cooley + Ron emphasize  that most of these agents have a second interest which may overwhelm the person, and that’s the interred in organizational survival.  NGOs want to stay alive. 

NGOs are Increasingly professionalized organizations, so if the NGO disappear, they loose their job,  so they are saying NGO agents have the interest of the principal and the principal of the agent diverges a little over here (in surviving)

Donors face the problem of asymmetric information: they know less of what the NGOs are doing, and principals aren’t able to monitor NGOs, and that gives the agent a little leverage to move a little away from only  pursuing the principal interest, and they move toward pursuing their own interest. 

Donor principles face problem of geometric information, these 8 contractors can (hide) withhold or distort information that suggest the project isn’t working and they have a greater incentive to do it in this marketization competitive system 

To ensure NGOs survival is to show that their projects are always working 

1. Multiple-Principals problem-(extension of the principal Agent Problem).: Is about the relationship btw NGOs + AID recipients(governments in those countries). NGOs need to be able to work with these governments or other big actors in the recipient countries in order for their projects to succeed.

Cooley and Ron say: if u think about the 8 contractors like NGOs, the fact that there’s multiple competing aid contractors or NGOs competing for the same project increases rhetoric likelihood of this multiple problem.

Essentially this problem is that the contractors are in competition with each other, all these NGOs are not working together, they are all competing for the same donor, and bc of that, their interest at least partially diverge .

An example:The Bosnian Prison Commanders got tho choose from different groups pushing from different issues, and they picked the one which was the least harmful to them.

• When an organizational survival depends on making these strategic survival choices in an unstable and competitive market, its interest are going to be shaped by material incentives which can lead to dysfunctional organizational behavior

• COOLEY say: these dysfunctional outcomes are a rational response to the circumstances they find themselves in, no matter their normative agendas.  

Consequences of Official AID

• Political and Social agendas of those donors- to the point to even having to ask for government approval before meeting with media organization.

• Sectoral and geographic priorities- accepting foreign aid might push u to to work on issues they wouldn’t otherwise work on

• Amount of Programing 

September 29

How it might affect performance?

Lack of independence? 

• It undermined NGOs independence bc those donors have a bigger say, and sometimes they aren’t as non-governmental as we want them to be, and there could be this perception that NGOs are just puppets and they can’t act independently, or if u get government funding u might become reluctant to challenge the government vocally 

• Lack of legitimacy - lack of independence can harm legitimacy.

• Weak Social Roots- if NGOs are formed rapidly. Most times they are not an organic response to a community. instead NGOs exist because aid exist. 

JAHEEM AND VERHOSH 

Argue that advocacy work has become a synonym for professional lobbying, but in Nicaragua they are just meeting with them to try to get them to change their behavior. NGOs don’t necessarily haver those kind of deep bases on their community, they are like professional organizations.,

Grassroots organizations are also at disadvantage bc they are not in a position to get financial aid.

• Physical access issues- When budgets gets hit they are the first things to get affected. Local access, vehicle, fuel, Staff. All these things end up weakening NGO connection to grassroots, because NGOs often lack time and incentives to do short work because of the marketization and constant competition they are in, and having to demonstrate their positive results in a quantifiable way, they don’t have the opportunity to focus on grassroots organizations because that wouldn’t be a longterm payoff. 

• Short term horizons: NGOs constantly have to show positive progress

The constant need to show results limits the NGOs programming that you can invest in. Like even advocacy space, NGOs can’t advocate for a policy, because that’s not something you can only do for 6 months and obtain results, that would be the type of thing that requires sustained attention; But because donors are constantly changing the things that the care about, it can be hard for NGOs to stick with a particular advocacy issue over the time horizon to push through political and social change.

• Unpredictability- you never know when they can pull out your funding. You might spend money for a project and never get reimbursed for it and makes it hard to operate effectively. 

• Evaluations Failures- bc NGOs are constantly relying on these short term contracts, and they have a real incentive to show that their projects always work and to hide their failures, but ideally we want to see NGOs failures. Cooliman says that this is a response to the incentive structure donors have created.

• Coordination Failures- when there’s intensive competition for donor sources, there’s ultimately an undermined NGOs ability and willingness to collaborate w each other. Cooliman says we see it in Nicaragua, they lack cooperation btw NGOs because NGOs are all competing for money for the same small number of donors, they don’t have good incentives to work together.

Edwards and Holm talk about if you rely heavily on donor aid, you can en up w inhibiting NGOs flexibility and their inability to innovate. It’s also a rigid and complex system that comes with many obligations 

• Flexibility: funding sources are a rigid system, and NGOs become less flexible. If u accept donor funds it comes w complex requirements for project reporting and evaluation. U have to report how u use the money. (Historically donors wanted NGOs because they were flexible but by funding NGOs and donors w their bureaucratic rules they had made NGOs less flexible)

• Bureaucracy- NGOs they start to look more like their own founders, they become devoted to funrasing and donor relations, and they come to measure their performance in their ability to raise money, and they will get divorced from consideration of the welfare of their target groups 

• Isomorphism- (things start to look more and more like each other over time) Some authors say is a response of this official aid environment in particular.

Coolie and Ron suggest that is happening among INGOs that are facing this kind of common organizational environment. The incentives of the system are pushing them all to act the same way. 

Jehima Prakash also observed this happening among grassroots organizations, like they are moving towards NGOs bc they don’t have enough resources. (Even grassroots are starting to resemble NGOs in how they are structured and how they seek money) 

• Size-  This system has trickled incentives and pushed them to act more and more like each other (like more formal professionalized organizations, rather than community based)

 Accountability? 

One thing to be concerned abt is how NGOs balance their accountability to different circumstances. One danger is that the accountability will be skewed towards the donor, and away from the community or internal accountability.

• Upward vs. Downward-rather than providing a mechanism by which citizens can articulate their interest, when NGOs are foreign funded, is more likely that they will be structured in a way that provides a downward stream of expert opinions of stand + donor policies. Instead of people on the ground saying this is what we need + NGOs responding to that accountability relationship btw NGOs and grassroots, instead donors are saying this is what our experts says should be implemented, so the information only flows downhill. No opportunity of meaninfull insight from below 

• Accountancy vs. Accountability- Edward DePaul: by overemphasizing short term quantitative targets rather than deeper accountability, it suggest that they system is more akin to accountancy. Basically its just like keeping track of at the money is how u demonstrate accountability, showing how you used the money/ what u spent it on and how the short term outputs were delivered. Keeping track is what accountability looks like.

• Compromised transparency- Sharing information in public relations first. How can I share information that puts my organization in the best possible light that makes us look the most effective, responsive, accountable. (True accountability does depend on transparency, you can’t hold an actor accountable if you don’t have all the info, but transparency alone isn’t enough, but without it, there is no meaningful opportunity for accountability.)

• Corruption- The quantity of donor aid might encourage corruption. Specially where NGOs scale up rapidly try to access the system, where organizations that might have been more grassroots in orientation, might had more informal and internal management and financial systems are suddenly tasked with very formal accounting obligations.

• Regulation- self-regulation and cooperative attempts to ensure that NGOs are living up to their obligations, but as NGOs depend more and more on donor funds, it makes foreign governments more nervous, and it has created crackdowns on NGOs in developing countries. Less self regulation, and more state regulation of NGOs to be accountable to the state.

Mitigation 

-By Donors - Donors should be encouraged to move towards funding arrangements (longer contracts) to provide more stability and predictability in the long term and timelines and flexibility in the short term for NGOs.

Suggestion: it might be better to channel official funds to NGOs via some independent public institution to protect NGOs from donors influence, or to channel self regulation.

-By NGOs- They can try to diversify their funding sources and pursue strategies to raise funds locally, try to enhance accountability by adopting more democratic structures and employing  things like social audits and generally adopting more participatory methods for monitoring evaluation.  Invest in their organizational development, so they have to understand how they might be negatively affected by changes in their funding sources, and be better positioned to respond; NGOs should be doing research and learning and monitoring their own activities to understand themselves and their direction of their organization and to have internal accountability of their own mission

October 01

Relationship Among NGOs 

Benefits and Cost of cooperation:

• More resources, getting people interested in the cause (advocacy NGO)

• Benefits

- Learning and information sharing 

- More material Resources 

- Donor Mandates- donors require NGOs to work together, (donors have started funding consortia of NGOs rather than individual) 

Some of the cost or risk of cooperating:

• Credit claiming is an issue bc it’s a competitive environment.

•  NGOs might not agree how to allocate resources, or agree on the mission

• Power imbalance 

• Corruption

How do relations among NGOs vary?

Jordan 

Here they are thinking about relationships NGO relationship within TANs (inside a campaign, inside a specific issue)

They are building a typology primarily in the concept of political responsibility.

Political Responsibility- It’s not just a commitment to embrace the goal of an advocacy, it’s also  a commitment to conducting the campaign itself under democratic principles. 

It’s an Informal form of accountability to other NGOs in the network. Basically all these NGOs that might comprise a transnational advocacy network, they have responsibilities not just to the campaign and its overarching goals, but to each other.

It emphasizes that advocacy work as general rule, means taking political risks. When you are doing advocacy you are almost by definition challenging the status quo. You are pushing gov or multinational corporations or IGOs to change whatever they have been doing. That entails taking some risk upon yourself.

• Bc these risks exist there’s corresponding responsibilities that fall in particular on the more powerful members of a TAN to do right by the less powerful members.

• They can’t eliminate the risks for the least vulnerable members, but at least they acknowledge them.

They look at how information, strategies, risk and money are managed within a TAN and the cumulative effect of those things is going to determine the level of political responsibility, and that may influence how legitimate and how representative the TAN is

They split campaign in 4 types of 

1. Cooperative Interlocking- different NGOs are all in the same page abt what objectives of the TAN they are trying to achieve. There’s a broad agreement. Also it’s good to minimize duplication.

2.  Current Compatible

3. Dissociated Conflicting

4. Compatible Opposing

1. Cooperative Interlocking - Highest political responsability

• High Frequency 

• Global distribution 

• Easily accessible 

• Freely shared 

• Continuous review 

• Joint management 

• Risk based upon most vulnerable 

1.  Current Compatible- Medium

• Regular

• Multiphase 

• More tightly directed

• Freely shared 

• Frequent review

• Coexisting management 

• Risk based upon national arena 

1. Dissociated Conflicting - Low

• Infrequent

• Lopsided 

• Difficult to access 

• Shared with reservation ]

• Ocasional review 

• Management and risk exclusive to varying arenas 

1. Competitive Opposing - 

How do relations among NGOs vary?

Degree of interconnectedness and equality

• NGOs sharing information with each other- like what their strategy is, what they are doing and how they are doing it. Light form of interaction. There’s still some kind of relationship here, but the interconnectedness is modest.

• Coordination- Middle. We are using that shared information to make some shared decisions; bc u are working on that thing on that place, we will not do the same. NGOs are still doing their own thing, but they are trying not to duplicate.

• Contraction- High degree of interconnectedness, but also a a high degree of inequality. Big NGOs subcontract small NGOs, so the big NGOs decide the priority of what gets done. Another issue: power imbalance gets worse bc many NGOs are applying for the same contract, and even thought the terms might not be the best, it doesn’t give them leverage to negotiate, because its a competitive marker and many NGOs are willing to take it.

When do NGOs cooperate?

Cooperative TAN campaigns are rare + difficult to achieve:

1. Every NGOs within a TAN is primarily acting in response to a set of incentives that exist within their own political arena (in their own space)- actually able to connect btw global and local levels is really hard + they all have different incentives that are particular to their arena.

2. They might not be able to maintain multiple relationships simultaneously- NGOs don’t have unlimited resources, so expecting them to continuously share information is a big resource drain. 

3. When you try to move out of ur political arena, it might cause erosion of local relationships- It’s hard to demonstrate commitment in multiple arenas simultaneously. Now locals will question who u really are representing.

A point that Jordan makes here is that the exercise of political responsibility is not a problem that TANs don’t want to form relationships, is that it is an operational problem.  NGOs often make decisions about relationships, activities and resources allocations under time and resource constraints, so they don’t have the time or resources to build relationships, they are constrained.

Emphasis: we need to lower our expectations because NGOs have many resources and time constrains we don’t consider, and they are asked to do hard things form an operational stand point, and it’s hard to maintain relationships.

When do NGOs cooperate?

Murray 

2 broad determinations of cooperation among humanitarian NGOs

• Trust -It’s easier to enter if there is trust. Quality of government: the quality of governance in the country where the cooperation is meant to be high; bc if the gov is doing a good job, they are creating an environment where the structural conditions are such that an organization can trust that the partner will behave in a way is predictable and that the partnership will not fall victim to corruption.

If high quality gov: gov won’t interfere + will create forums to communicate w each other 

• Opportunity - When there’s military intervention w the humanitarian focus, like when the UN peacekeeping is present, that encourages NGOs to cooperate with each other bc the UN team provide coordination resources, security that can enable NGOs to work together

Murray is looking at the presence of cooperation, and not the quality.