Alan Fowler

NGDOs as a moment in history: beyond aid to social entrepreneurship or civic innovation?

NGDOs are the product of an era that is rapidly passing. Yet the common goals they strive towards remain relevant and are far from being realised. Poverty, inequity, insecurity and injustice were stubborn features of the old world order and are abiding features of the new. A brief history of NGDOs and of the radical shifts in the context where international development takes place shows that the goals NGDOs typically aspire to cannot be reached by simply relying on the framework employed by the official aid system. One important reason is that a growing reliance on tax-based funding is shifting NGDO morality, legitimacy and function from the civic to the public domain. Consequently, a new paradigm is required not just for NGDO development practice, but for the very nature of NGDOs themselves. This paper explores the extent to which social entrepreneurship and civic innovation could provide a new framework for NGDOs and development beyond aid. While both merit further attention, civic innovation is shown the better to fulfil the twin requirements of civic financial embedding allied to principles of co-operation and non-exploitation.

NGO futures: Beyond aid: NGDO values and the fourth position

This collection of articles rests on, for some, a speculative proposition. The proposition is that non-governmental organisations associated with international development (NGDOS) face a future scenario where they can no longer rely on a system of international concessional aid as reference point for their role, work and continuity. Depending on where you live in the world, this scenario is actual, as in Chile, or it may still appear to be far distant, as in Nepal. Whatever the case, this collection offers reflections on alternative NGDO thinking, practice and financing in the 21st century that are not premised on aid as a redistributive system providing international economic and social subsidy.2 This introduction has three purposes.3 First, to set the scene, so to speak, by examining the rationale for considering NGDOS in beyond-aid scenarios (BAS). This is undertaken in terms of both superficial and deeper-lying causes affecting NGDOS in tomorrows world. Second, to provide brief introductions to articles as two sets. The first set of four papers provides different frameworks for thinking about NGDOS outside the notion of aid per se. The second set provides practical illustrations of how NGDOS are changing with the times, many of which correspond to ideas contained in the first group. Combining the two sets permits an identification of crosscutting issues. Finally, the introduction offers a provisional future-orientated synthesis of perspectives contained in the articles, a crux of which is for NGDOS to adopt a fourth, value-based position between state, market and civil society. Most of the contributions to be found in the following pages were originally drafted for and presented at sessions convened under a panel entitled NGOS in a Future Without Aid. The panel was one of many forming the body of a conference with the theme NGOS in a Global Future, held in Birmingham, UK from 13 to 16 January 1999. Of the original papers, three have been combined into one (Aldaba, Antezana & Valderrama). The contribution from Peter van Tuijl was specifically commissioned for this volume; and another (Wiktorowicz & Taji Farouki) is included to help illustrate points raised by other papers. They are linked by a challenge to consider NGDOS in a New World Order outside their traditional location within the thinking, practice and financing of intemational aid. Why is this necessary and useful?

NGO strategies beyond aid: perspectives from Central and South America and the Philippines

Though unevenly spread, many developing countries are experiencing a decline in aid flows. This paper explores and compares NGDO responses in regions and countries in or entering a beyond-aid scenario. The comparison shows that, despite a diversity of contexts and histories, the quest for self-sustainability has become a common and dominant concern. Within a framework of options, examples show what is being attempted in terms of NGDOs altering their resource profile and the problems they encounter in doing so. Emerging evidence suggests that NGDOs are more likely to sustain themselves if they (a) look beyond finance to adopt an integrated, capacity-based approach to sustainability and internal organisational reform and (b) put effort into making good their relational deficit with a wider array of domestic constituencies.

Relocating Civil Society in a Politics of Civic‐Driven Change

Politics is central to development discourse, yet remains peripheral. Over some twenty years, a civil‐society narrative has not fulfilled its potential to ‘bring politics back in’. Reasons can be found in conceptual confusion, in selectivity in donor thinking, in policies towards civil society and in the growth‐driven political economy of NGO‐ism. Remedies for the political lacunae are being sought through a focus on rights, citizenship and leadership that show valuable focused progress. This article examines a comprehensive complement to such efforts referred to as civic‐driven change (CDC). Originating in a grounded empirical approach, the constituent principles and elements of CDC offer a lens that can both sharpen and deepen insights and advance analysis of socio‐political processes.

Civil Society Research Funding from a Global Perspective: A Case for Redressing Bias, Asymmetry, and Bifurcation

This paper adopts a global perspective to review the current situation with respect to the systematic study of civil society. It locates the analysis in a geohistorical framework, arguing that, as a distinct area of scholarship, contemporary civil society research is a “two-track” post-Cold War phenomenon exhibiting major shortcomings. A new type of dedicated research financing and process of allocation could redress todays research limitations in ways that will beneficially cross-fertilize parallel approaches and epistemological traditions while increasing the spread of centers dedicated to such knowledge generation. The analysis leads to suggestions for a civil society research agenda and investment principles.

Civil Society and Aid in Africa: A Case of Mistaken Identity?

Both the understanding and measurement of civil society in Africa exhibit severe distortions. One result is a gross underestimation of the significance of endogeneity in the forms and applications of civic agency. A concomitant consequence is the (mis-)allocation of international assistance to exogenous ‘semi-detached’ forms of civil society, which relying on overly western and overly optimistic expectations of their roles in development. In the words of an African proverb: ‘a foreigner sees only what he already knows’. Through the lens of aid channels to an externally conceived African civil society, this chapter applies a historical approach to unpack a messy conceptual, empirical and policy terrain. It illustrates the biases and gaps between foreign perception and lived reality in terms of associational functionality and associational formations on the continent. This analysis calls into question an implicit assumption of aid agencies that ‘deep’ civil society is not a player in the ethnic and other factionalisms that shape the socio-political process of governance in many African countries. In order to reach a more subtle and realistic appreciation of development reality, a case is made for re-thinking foreign aid to civil society in terms of proportionality between its exogenous and endogenous expressions.

Ownership dynamics in local multi-stakeholder initiatives

Abstract The nature and dynamics of ownership are often neglected features of multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs). Seventeen cases in four countries illustrate characteristics of narrow government or broad societal ownership and forces for change over time. Refinements to the application of Gaventa’s Power Cube are used to analyse such shifts from the perspective of invited and closed spaces for participation. Observations about ways in which stakeholder groups can create a more enabling environment for their collaboration are discussed. Sensitivity to sub-national conditions by weaving endogenous and exogenous forces appears to be crucial if MSIs are to be effective vehicles of choice for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.