NGOs: Progressive Force or Neo-Liberal Tool?

Abstract

The increasing prominence of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has been seen by many as a potentially transformative force in promoting more equal, participative, and sustainable development.At the same time, NGOs have also been seen as co-opted by neo-liberalism, functioning in ways that maintain systemic inequality.Edwards and Hulme's (1996) thoughtful article reviews many of these debates, and this short essay, like others in this issue, reacts to this article as well as draws upon my own experience and analysis of the threats and promise of the NGO phenomenon.NGOs, of course, are very diverse.The NGO literature makes a variety of distinctions among NGOs and aims to capture some significant differences in their functioning: e.g., national vs. international, Northern vs. Southern, community-based, religious-based, grassroots organizations, popular organizations, NGOs associated with social movements, and even progressive vs. neo-liberal NGOs (Edward and Hulme, 1996;Macdonald, 1995).While these and other distinctions are very important in understanding the contributions and functioning of NGOs, there are some lessons that can be learned from looking at the NGO phenomenon as a whole.Mostly, I wish to comment on some of the ways in which the NGO sector has been an integral part of a system that reinforces unequal development.[2] Nonetheless, I want to begin by underscoring the progressive promise of NGOs.My own experience, over many years, and, most recently, working in very diverse contexts--with programs for street and working children in Brazil, girl's and women's education in Guatemala, and social and economic development in Mozambique--is that NGOs consistently run the most interesting, innovative social programs with a commitment to grassroots participation and social justice.[3] Along with this, as one might expect, some of the most committed social activists I have worked with have been in NGOs.This is not to say all or most NGOs are progressive nor is it to slight the work of others within the government or elsewhere who have excellent programs and similar commitments.I simply wish to acknowledge that, in my view, some of the promise of NGOs is clearly being fulfilled.At their best, NGOs act as a progressive element in the dialectic of global and local, empowering individuals and communities to face, resist, and transform the unequal relations of neo-liberalism.[4] Unfortunately, the ability of NGOs to carry out this role effectively is seriously compromised for a number of reasons.NGOs may have initially grown within the cracks and fissures left by the unmet needs of a capitalist, patriarchal, and racist world system.However, as Edwards and Hulme discuss, the incredibly rapid expansion of NGOs has primarily been a consequence of two decades of a neo-liberal focus on privatization.With the advent of Reagan/Thatcher politics on a global scale, bilateral and multilateral agencies developed a rationale for avoiding aid to governments: imperfect markets are better than imperfect states.[5] As a compromise between funding social programs through governments and complete laissez-faire, NGOs became an important vehicle for development funds with consequences that seriously undermined their progressive potential.[6]

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.