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A Rational Choice Model of Grassroots Empowerment

Kendall W. Stiles

International Studies Association

March 18-21, 1998

This paper offers a "pluralist global model" to explain why the civil society empowerment model became a popular alternative to the basic needs model at the time it did by considering the relative power and interests of the major participants in the policy process, and by showing how changes in global economic and political conditions altered relationships between these participants. By understanding the effects of structural changes on the relative strength of the various players in development policy, it is possible to explain, post hoc, why the civil society model emerged in the form it did at the time it did. Further, I argue that by exploring scenarios of systemic change, it is possible to anticipate how this development model will evolve in the future.

This perspective borrows loosely from the various rational choice models of interactive decision-making. It draws particularly from the work of Young, Krasner and Putnam on institutionalized bargaining and multi-level games, respectively (Young 1991, Krasner 1991, Putnam 1988. See also Snidal 1985 and Garrett 1993). I argue that the interests and identities of major players tend not to change over time, only their strategies and tactics depending on the general distribution of power and resources. States continue to care deeply about security, relative power, autonomy and internal control. International organizations care about securing the support and resources of donors, the cooperation of all members, and enough policy space to carve out a unique niche. INGOs, NGOs and GROs all seek resources to serve their members while preserving the autonomy to chart their own destiny. The policies each player promotes reflect these long-standing interests, although the overall policy outcome will depend on the concentration of relevant resources and influence of the players at particular moments. Ultimately, the international economic and political context provide the parameters of the debate and help determine which resources will be most effective.

 

The Players and their Interests

Table One lists the key actors, interests and resources of the issue-area. Three are governmental: donor states, recipient developing states, international governmental organizations (IGOs); three are non-governmental: international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), indigenous non-governmental organizations in developing countries (NGOs) and local grass-roots organizations (GROs). Each has an essential part to play, and the outcome is the result of their interactions.

Table 1: Actors in the Civil Society Empowerment Agenda
Actor Interests/Objectives Resources
Donor States Global influence
Maintaining liberal order
Fiscal responsibility
Electoral success for governing administration		 Funds/ODA
Votes in IGOs
Field worker networks
Control over INGO access to policy circles
Developing States Attraction of funds/ODA
Legitimacy at home/abroad
Domestic political stability
Political dominance for governing administration 		Control over donor/INGO/IGO access to policy circles
Power to regulate local NGO/GRO Expertise on local conditions
Multilateral Donor Organizations Financial security
Influence in policy circles
Measurable accomplishments
Maintain member-state confidence 		Funds/ODA
Policy clearinghouse
Policy expertise/research
Field worker networks
Neutrality
INGOs Financial security
Influence in policy circles
Measurable accomplishments
Maintain donor confidence 		Funding for projects
Policy expertise/research
Field worker networks
Neutrality/authenticity
National NGOs and GROs Financial survival
Membership service
Influence in policy circles
Membership representation 		Grass-roots mobilization
Expertise on local conditions
Neutrality/authenticity

 

Donor States

Donor states are all those governments which engage in official development assistance. This includes most of the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as well as a few others. These states have demonstrated a long-terms commitment to development assistance over the years, and their command of financial resources is one of their key assets. Although there is some debate over motives, it is generally accepted that all states conduct foreign policy in order to improve their standing in world affairs and to make the international system more solidly rooted in liberal principles of open economies and open societies. These goals in turn reflect the desire of all elected governments to shore up their domestic political support. Foreign aid meshes with these objectives by giving states some degree of leverage over the developing world's foreign domestic policies, thereby scoring points with legislators and the electorate, as well as providing an outlet for surplus production and foreign investment for some domestic industries (Cohen 1994, 102-4).

The U.S. Congress, in particular, has consistently put pressure on the executive to show evidence of both economic and political returns on foreign aid, while Scandinavian and Dutch aid agencies have been under much less scrutiny. U.S. aid was tied to political loyalty during the Cold War, while Scandinavian and Dutch aid agencies have been given a much freer hand, often compensating for U.S. neglect of progressive and left-leaning regimes (Schraeder 1998).

 

LDC Governments

Developing country governments have much in common - first and foremost the need to assert their control over their respective nations. As put by Bratton:

The basic function of any state is to impose and maintain political order. Because Africa contains the newest of nations, the problem of forging unified control over a national territory is perhaps more pressing and intractable than in any other region. Even if a government professes a developmentalist ideology, its first responsibility is to guard the integrity and security of the territorial realm. In situations where the values of governability and development run counter to one another, the public authorities are bound to opt for the former. In the quest for order, most African governments endeavor to eliminate independent centers of power (Bratton 1989, 573).

Much of the history of the developing world consists of the struggle on the part of states to assert their preeminence over society, whether through nation-building, populist patronage, repression, constitutionalism or other mechanisms, not all of which have been successful. From ethnic guerrilla warfare and secessionism to black markets and parallel social service systems, non-state actors have challenged state authority, often with considerable effect. As put by Esman and Uphoff, "One important reason why active local organizations are not found more widely is the hostility of central governments. Some regimes regard any organized activity in rural areas as potentially subversive." (Esman and Uphoff 1983, 35). On the other hand, states have often depended on local organizations for political support, as in the case of the Zia regime in Bangladesh or the Salinas government in Mexico, each of which organized networks of village associations (Hernandes and Fox 1995, 206). Some progressive states such as Costa Rica have coopted local organizations through selective recruitment of association leaders into government and excessive paternalism (Seligson 1980). The recent wave of "state-in-society" writing emphasizes the ambivalence many states feel vis-a-vis non-governmental organizations and other elements of civil society (Harbeson 1994).

Developing country governments are also constantly engaged in the struggle to attract resources from the developed world without surrendering their autonomy in the process. Untied multilateral grants are the ideal, and tied bilateral loans are the least desirable form of resource transfer, as a general rule. Most important, nearly all developing country governments seek control over the distribution of external funds in order to shore up political status, maximize credit-taking and retain some coherence to the overall national development strategy. Generally speaking, developing country governments are reserves of considerable local expertise and their cooperation can prove invaluable to external donors. They therefore question the wisdom of direct funding to non-state actors on both operational and political grounds. But, so long as non-governmental associations are willing to work closely with the state, they may be permitted, or even encouraged, to receive funds (Carroll 1992, 177). Their ability to ultimately block the flow of external funds to domestic actors is a key asset of developing country governments.

 

IGOs

International governmental organizations are in an awkward position when it comes to international policy. In general they lack autonomy and must abide by the wishes of member-states. They must rely on the good will of donor states for their resources, as a general rule, and must take care not to alienate either them or the developing member states. But most IGOs are far more than merely the sum of their membership (Stiles 1998). They typically have a well-formed policy agenda which reflects the values of the staff and is rooted in sound scholarship. IGOs therefore walk a thin line, having found that effective international policy:

...requires the integrated engagement of civil society with public entities at and across all levels... Yet the foundation of the United Nations and other IGOs in the principle of the inviolability of national sovereignty greatly constrains and inhibits international institutions from so engaging with civil society. [IGO officials have had to] wiggle creatively around the constraints of sovereignty. (Coate, Alger and Lipschutz 1996: 95-96)

Ultimately, most IGOs have learned that an emphasis on measurable progress in achieving basic objectives such as improved standards of living and better health is the key to retaining the confidence of member-states and achieving the policy latitude they cherish. Their expertise and reputation for diplomatic impartiality are the key assets of IGOs.

Important differences in priorities distinguish IGOs. Bretton Woods institutions have generally stressed infrastructure development, monetary stability and fiscal responsibility as the means of improving the quality of life of individuals in the developing world (Binswager and Landell-Millls 1995). On the other hand, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and other programs and specialized agencies of the U.N. tend to tolerate more direct government intervention and planning in the development process. UNICEF has long worked closely with progressive and radical regimes, praising their efforts on behalf of the poor, while UNDP has never seriously concerned itself with excessive government interference. At times the two sets of agencies - U.N. and Bretton Woods - have criticized each others' policies openly (Helleiner, Cornea and Jolly 1991).

 

INGOs

Moving to non-state actors, I distinguish between three levels of associational life: the global, the national and the local (Korten 1980, Fowler 1991, Carroll 1992). Associations which are based in developed countries and which operate globally I call INGOs for the purposes of this paper. They share several significant characteristics and objectives. The first and foremost objective of any INGO is the collection of funds - particularly those from private individuals and granting institutions - which in turn depends on visible accomplishments. INGOs are reluctant to form joint ventures in part because this would water down their ability to take credit for successes. However, successful development projects typically take a decade or more to bear fruit, but few contributors are willing to wait that long. Emergency relief, on the other hand, brings immediate, if ephemeral. results and tends to prompt far more giving (Smillie 1993, 26). There is therefore a natural tendency to sacrifice long-term success for the sake of short-term survival.

Many associations seek longer-term funding through state agencies. But this also put them on the horns of a dilemma - one which Anglo-Saxon INGOs have generally resolved differently from Scandinavian agencies. In the case of most American and British agencies, private associations cherish their independence and autonomy. In many cases their distinctiveness from state authorities is their only raison d'etre and is one of their key assets in dealing with international actors (Fowler 1992, 17-19). Acceptance of public funding therefore presents a profound dilemma, and generally they have limited state funding to no more than a third of their total budgets and have insisted on operational independence. Some have refused public funding because it violated their principles (Hellinger et al. 1988, 148) Scandinavian INGOs tend to accept state partnerships more readily, sometimes allowing up to eighty percent of their budget to come from public sources (Smillie 1993, 27). While they recognize this will tend to dampen their willingness to criticize government policy, they feel the greater access it provides to government policy makers makes up for it.

Thus, when it comes to engaging non-state actors as part of a development project, INGOs are sometimes torn. Many have long advocated direct linkage with existing developing country NGOs, while other have been content to either create their own local affiliates or simply collaborate with the government. Ideas which can be traced to sources as varied as E.F. Schumacher, Mao Zedong, Mohandes Gandhi, and Alexis de Tocqueville have driven many INGOs to press for the civil society empowerment model since the mid-1970s (Korten 1980, Esman and Uphoff 1983). Many of their ideas eventually took hold in the minds of policy-makers in developed countries and IGOs, but it was not until the late-1980s that they became part of the mainstream. The ideas they generate and their ability to disseminate them convincingly are important resources to INGOs.

short-term survival. 

NGOs and GROs

Two more sets of actors merit our attention: NGOs and GROs. Both sets of associations operate exclusively within the developing country context, although NGOs sometimes create linkages and even establish offices overseas. GROs are exclusively local operations which function at the village level. Both sets of organizations share a commitment to service to the community largely outside the state apparatus and a strong need for resources with which to operate, but there the similarity among various NGOs and GROs ends. NGOs can usefully be organized into two categories with relatively little overlap: membership NGOs and NGOs networks on the one hand and technical assistance and/or charity providers. Membership NGOs exist for the sake of the members of the NGO itself rather than for some separate group. Grameen Bank, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), Sarvodaya Shramadana movement and many other national NGOs bring together villages and individuals for a common purpose, whether it be entrepreneurial, political, social, or religious. Failure to serve this purpose would likely lead to the association's demise (Robinson 1996, 3). By "NGO networks" I am referring to intermediary or facilitator NGOs which are organized by GROs or NGOs to serve the needs of these associations (rather than the government, for example) (Stremlau 1987; Holcombe 1995; Carroll 1992).

For both types of NGOs, the aim of membership service is tied to a need for authenticity and representativeness. There is natural resistance to intrusion from the outside, whether by the state or external donors, especially if such intrusion involves changes to the NGO's program or procedures. "Donors, who provide low cost capital and funding for training, monitoring and evaluation and other programs, may, intentionally or by weight of their assistance, attempt to intervene in internal organization. Grameen has, in fact, rejected donor assistance when it thought that conditional terms offered threatened its autonomy and integrity." (Huque 1988, 47) In a famous episode, Grameen director and founder Mohammed Yunus spurned offers of support from the World Bank, USAID and the Asian Development Bank, saying "I don't think we can handle such big organizations - all their regulations - I don't think we would be able to cope." He instead accepted aid from Norway and Sweden and only later allowed support from the larger organizations - and then only on his own terms. (Bornstein 1996, 178.). The switch in the early 1990s from almost exclusively domestic funding for the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, a strongly religious, communalist NGO in Sri Lanka, to heavy external funding precipitated a crisis of identity and management in the organization that cost it several years of work. (Lean 1995, 38; see also Perera 1997). "The donors were all keen to help Sarvodaya, but in so doing they transformed what had been a people organization into a more administrative organization.... People began to come to it for the money, not the message." (Lean 1995, 42). The movement became hierarchical and bureaucratic and nearly lost its communal identity. While such results are far from inevitable (Carroll 1992, 177) it provides an insight into the aims of NGOs and GROs which are primarily membership-based.

This is not to say that all membership NGOs and GROs are models of democracy and authenticity. In many cases successful NGOs and GROs emerged from the efforts of a small number of outsiders driven by a desire to help the community (Clark 1991, 83). Such "outreach workers" are often members of the intelligentsia or business elite with few ties to the community (Bornstein 1996, 178). Only later did the movements take on a genuinely grass-roots character. Some GROs are designed primarily to institutionalize the authority of patrons and other village elites and are beset with nepotism, corruption and patriarchal heavy-handedness (Esman and Uphoff 1983, 193-202; Carroll 1992, 157; Boyle 1996).

Technical or charity-oriented NGOs (there are few local GROs which fit this description) are far more willing to collaborate with external and public donors since their principal purpose is more specialized and involves provision of services to groups not affiliated with or involved in running the NGO. NGOs of this type often take on an entrepreneurial character. As put by Carroll, they need not fear "losing their soul" in the process of accepting public funds since "they never really had souls, in the sense that they never strived to empower their beneficiaries" (Carroll 1992, 178). There is a tendency for such NGOs to spring up in response to the availability of funds - sometimes with little coherent purpose or links to society. INGO field officers have coined colorful terms for such agencies: "bogus NGOs", "briefcase NGOs" and "come-n-go's". In some cases these agencies become mere extensions of the state and actually serve to stifle civil society (UNDP 1993, 89-90). The ultimate goal for many such technical NGOs is inclusion in the inner circles of power of the state.

 

A Decade of Crisis

Between 1982 and 1992 a string of shocks beset the international system which dramatically changed the relative weights of the majors players listed above. Specifically, the debt crisis undermined Third World development and state autonomy relative to donors and IGOs, the "structural adjustment" strategy undermined LDC states and created openings for non-state actors, the end of the Cold War and the denigration of Marxist socialism strengthened the hand of liberal donors and IGOs, and the renewed interest in human rights and democratization and the general weakening of sovereignty norms weakened LDC states in the short-term relative to civil society actors. To this list could be added "donor fatigue" and the end of Soviet aid to the members of the Non-aligned Movement. I will consider first the economic questions.

 

Economic Upheaval

The story of the debt crisis is well-known and need not be belabored here (Kahler 1986). Suffice it to say that the debt-service ratio of all developing countries increased from 13.3 percent of export earnings in 1970 to 23% in 1980 and remained at 21% in 1990, while total debt relative to GNP increased from 26.2% in 1980 to 42.3% in 1991 (for sub-Saharan Africa the increase was from 28.6% to 107.9%). As result of devoting more and more resources to debt repayment, incomes stagnated. GNP per capita in 1982 stood at $2,010 on average for "intermediate income countries" (as defined by UNDP) which were hardest hit by the debt crisis. By 1985 that figure had dropped to $1,800 and did not return to its 1982 level until 1987 (World Bank 1995, UNDP 1996). Over the course of the period 1982 to 1993, GNP per capita for these countries grew only 21% overall. Least developed countries' GNP per capita grew only 18% over twelve years while OECD countries' GNP per capita grew 111 percent (World Bank 1995). As more and more countries found themselves owing more and more to industrialized countries, both in official and private debt, they recognized that their ability to secure development assistance was severely constrained. While many nations negotiated generous debt rescheduling arrangements (Stiles 1991), little of this new money went toward social services of infrastructure. By the late 1980s, the proportion of aid going to social services was a scant 16.9% of the total (UNDP 1996).

In this context, donor states increased their pressure on LDC governments to ensure accountability and cost-savings while at the same time providing enough capital to allow debtors to maintain interest payments in order to preserve the stability of the international financial system. Long-term development goals were largely irrelevant to this effort at crisis management. Perhaps most important to debtor nations was the decision on the part of donors to address their problems on a case-by-case basis rather than address structural issues. Several of the most dramatic reschedulings were timed to prevent the consolidation of a "debtor cartel" (Stiles 1987). A consequence, the solidarity which had emerged between developing states during the 1970s was largely dissolved (Rothstein 1979; Krasner 1985).

The role of the International Monetary Fund and later the World Bank were dramatically expanded as they served as intermediaries between creditors and debtors. Because of the disproportionate weight of creditor member-states and the orthodox economic training of the staff, the policy of structural adjustment came to prevail. The policy aimed at "getting prices right" focused on what the Fund considered fiscal imprudence and monetary irresponsibility. Policy instruments included reduction of state subsidies for food and fuel, reduction of social services, privatization of state-owned firms, currency devaluation, reduction of trade and investment barriers and interest rate increases to stifle consumption.

The result was to significantly alter the state-society relationship across the Third World. As put by Harbeson, "The campaigns for structural adjustment are in part responsible for the reemergence of the idea of civil society, in that the concept grew out of a faith in the vitality and indispensability of the private sector to a country's political and economic health. Moreover, civil society is ingrained in the very classical liberal philosophy upon which the structural adjustment discourse has been founded.." (Harbeson 1994, 9). The reduction of state-funded public welfare created important opportunities for non-profit charities to intervene, albeit without having adequately prepared. As put by Reilly, "Austerity politics, sometimes enjoined on national governments by external actors (particularly the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank), contribute to the de facto decentralization trends and to the breaking down of traditional, corporatist-clientelist patterns of interaction. The populist handouts of the past are quite impossible today..." (Reilly 1995, 249).

The debt crisis coincided with a shift in the mood of many donor states, described in the literature as "donor fatigue." The discouragement many in the West felt regarding the effectiveness of aid put pressure on government (usually through the legislature) to reduce development assistance in favor of domestic priorities. Annual aid levels in the United States, for example, averaged .24 percent of U.S. GNP from 1980 to 1985, but slipped to .19% between 1987 to 1993. In Britain, aid levels feel from an annual rate of .37% of GNP in 1980-1985 to .30% in 1987-1993 (World Bank 1995). Whether manifested as opposition to U.N. programs by the U.S. Congress or ambivalence about continuing generous aid policies in Sweden and the Netherlands, there were clear signals being sent to developing countries across the Third World that they would be expected to rely on private rather than public capital in the future. Furthermore, the end of the Cold War and the Gulf War and subsequent peace process in the Middle East created new objects of assistance. Aid to Europe and Central Asia increased from $200 million in 1989 to $1.3 billion in 1990 and $1,9 billion in 1991. Aid to the Middle East increased from $3.5 billion in 1989 to $9.7 billion in 1990 and stayed at $9.3 billion in 1991 (World Bank 1995). While data are inconclusive as to whether these increases in aid came at the expense of traditional aid recipients (note that aid to sub-Saharan Africa increased somewhat during the same period), it became clear that the latter should not expect any dramatic new development initiatives in the near future.

Donor states came to the realization that they could achieve some cost savings in the area of humanitarian and development assistance by sub-contracting to INGOs. Beginning in the mid-1980s, major donors began to funnel a significant portion of their aid through INGOs. By 1990, roughly $750 million in public aid went through INGOs, a figure which increased to $800 million by 1994, or ten percent of all public development assistance (Van Rooy 1997, 3; Gordenker and Weiss 1996, 25). UNDP began tracking NGO public assistance and reported that in 1994 nine percent of Canadian, ten percent of Dutch and over ten percent of Swiss net development aid went through NGOs (UNDP 1996, 199). The U.S. in 1995 pledge to increase the share of its aid going through NGOs from roughly 25% to nearly half by 2000 (Gordenker and Weiss 1996, 25). Overall, "[t]he increase of donor-funded NGO relief operations and Western disengagement from poor countries are two sides of the same coin." (Gordenker and Weiss 1996, 25) The interest in INGOs ultimately spread to IGOs as well and the World Bank began to integrate INGOs and eventually NGOs into project implementation while at the same time tolerating INGO criticism of past projects for the first time in the late-1980s (Conca 1995, 109).

The net effect was a strong stimulus for INGO growth in the context of a generally stagnant aid pool for developing countries. This has proven to be a mixed blessing for these agencies, since the receipt of public funds increases INGOs' accountability to states, contrary to their goals of autonomy and independence. In addition, the prospect of public funding has prompted the formation of new INGOs, such that competition has increased. One result is what Smillie calls the "homogenization" of mature INGOs such that they resemble each other more and more in function, outlook and structure (Smillie 1993, 23).

 

Political Restructuring

Coinciding with and often related to these significant changes in economic conditions between donors and recipients of aid were a number of political developments. First was the undermining of authoritarian and populist regimes. As alluded to earlier, traditional patronage was no longer possible in the context of structural adjustment. One could add that austerity measures, while often accompanied by an increase in repression over the short term, tend to undermine large-scale internal security institutions over the medium and long term. "[P]articipation is being grudgingly offered [to NGOs and GROs] as an alternative to patronage that governments can no longer finance, and repression they can no longer indulge as aid agencies become increasingly preoccupied with human rights and good governance" (Bebbington and Farrington 1993, 204). The "third wave" of democratization is closely linked to the dismantling of strong states through structural adjustment (Huntington 1991, Haggard and Webb 1994). While the process has often resulted in greater democracy and civil liberties, it has also led to social disintegration, polarization and the creation of parallel state institutions (Zartman 1995; Azarya 1988). In Chile and much of Latin America, the dismantling of state services galvanized civil society associations and precipitated a generally peaceful democratic transition (Vergara 1989, 2; Zuniga 1989, 197). In parts of Africa, "societal groups responded to state decline by establishing new institutions outside of the formal structures of state," including black markets, NGO and GRO service provision and even informal local security arrangements such as the Sungu Sungu activities in Tanzania (Rothchild 1994, 202). Manifestations of weakened states abound, whether in the constructive political parties of the Czech Republic, organized crime in Russia, ethnic warfare in Bosnia or warlords in Somalia, and can often be attributed to transitions from authoritarian or patronage systems.

Some regimes have, willingly or not, allowed considerable autonomy to civil society (Bratton 1989, 575). At any rate, the relationship between the state apparatus and private associations in society is one of the central political questions for all developing country regimes, and all have an interest in preventing civil society from overwhelming the state.

The collapse of strong states in the Third World coincided with the demise of command economies in Eastern Europe. Culminating in the end of the central planning and authoritarianism, the shift made possible the end of Cold War hostilities. This change dramatically altered the place of the Third World in world affairs and directly influenced the prevailing development strategy. To begin, Western powers, and especially the U.S., no longer needed the strategic benefits of authoritarian states and could gain more politically at home by severing ties with the most egregious human rights violators. West-leaning, hard-line regimes in South Africa, Zaire, Chile, Haiti, the Philippines and elsewhere were each in turn either cut off or put under severe pressure to halt massive human rights abuses. The West could also afford the political cost of demanding greater accountability from aid recipients and became less tolerant of the graft and corruption that so often accompanied international aid. Given the lack of alternative sources of development assistance with the end of Soviet largesse, few regime were able to resist Western policies.

Western powers, yielding to domestic concerns and in the hope of creating a more hospitable international environment, made human rights a high priority. Whether on the political left or the right, "political conditionality" for aid has become extremely popular (Farrington et al. 1993, 10). This spirit has been advanced in multilateral agencies as well, and the Security Council, World Bank and other IGOs have promoted more activist policies aimed at liberalizing authoritarian regimes. Extreme actions include the surrendering of sovereignty to the U.N. by Somalia and Cambodia as well as the direct military engagement of authoritarian forces in Haiti and Bosnia. In general, the notion of sovereignty is under question (Weber 1995, Lapidoth 1992). With respect to the question of "civil society empowerment," the World Bank's "good governance" initiative of 1988 is perhaps the most dramatic (World Bank 1989, 60). The approach called on states to not only restructure their economic systems and reorder their fiscal and monetary priorities, but to improve performance through improved bureaucratic accountability, increased decentralization of policy and enhanced popular participation in policy. While not officially a "democratization" program, "good governance" was seen by LDC states and Bank opponents as a purely political initiative (Nelson 1995, 9).

Governance provides a new tool-kit, an instrument of control, an additional conditionality for the time when the traditional blame-the-victim defense again becomes necessary. It further offers the opportunity both to instill Western political values in borrowing countries and to fault them if things go wrong (George and Sabelli, 1994, 142).

Use of NGOs became integral to Bank efforts to circumvent bloated, corrupt central governments in practice while promoting their importance in principle (compare Fonseca 1995, 66 with World Bank 1997).

Other IGOs, in support of donor and INGO initiatives, more directly supported NGOs and GROs in the developing world. The Global Environmental Facility's Small Grants Program - an outgrowth of the 1992 U.N. Conference on the Environment and Development - provides resources directly to NGOs and GROs for local environmental protection and is designed to be distributed by local NGOs themselves. While state representatives may sit on allocation committees, they may not veto majority decisions (Work 1996). When Nigeria objected to this arrangement, which it considered an infringement on its sovereignty, the administering IGO simply waited it out. The government eventually relented and accepted the funds along with the procedures. UNICEF has taken to engaging local organizations directly in the name of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and routinely brings together state and NGO officials for joint policy and planning meetings (Nelson 1996). The World Health Organization, stymied by reluctant states with respect to implementing its Global AIDS Strategy in 1988, simply invited NGOs and INGOs to create a parallel service-delivery structure called the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (Coate, Lipschutz and Alger 1996, 108). IGOs now actively promote the recognition by states of NGO rights:

One big challenge is establishing the legal framework in a country to permit NGOs to work in partnership with governments. To this end, the public and governments need to be educated about the nature and function of civil society organizations. Governments need to be helped to understand that giving up some control is not necessarily only a loss. UNICEF and other UN agencies clearly have a role to play in establishing a more enabling legal and administrative environment... (UNICEF 1995)

The inclusion of community groups in development projects has moved beyond a mere cost-saving strategy. "Viewed as an end in itself, participation is endowed with normative qualities: it becomes tantamount to a human right." (Marsden 1991, 3). As put by Bebbington and Thiele, "Different donors have ... been promoting NGO participation for more explicitly political ends: to strengthen civil society and the process of social participation in the new democracies. During the last few years, these financing agencies have become increasingly explicit in acknowledging that democratization is both necessary for the development process and a desirable goal in and of itself." (Bebbington and Thiele,1993 p. 55) LDC states have therefore been put on the defensive and held to account for their human rights records. Some observers have gone so far as to suggest that the new "civil society empowerment" model is merely a front for an effort which aims at reducing the LDC state to the status of donor "franchisee" - replacing public officials with private actors unaccountable to the public (Wood 1997, 84).

The results have not been entirely beneficial for the NGOs and GROs themselves. Although they have enjoyed from increased funding, they have been forced to adopt more sophisticated accounting techniques and in many cases have adjusted their programmatic focus to accommodate IGO, INGO and donor priorities. In some cases, this has led to serious disruptions within the organization, as we saw in the case of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement mentioned earlier (Lean 1995, 42). Oxfam UK and UNICEF were impressed with a national nurse training program established by an NGO in Malawi and decided to support it, only to find a few years later that it was the organization's energetic improvisation and pioneering sprit which were the keys to its success, and which were destroyed by donor support (Clark 1991, 110-16).

NGOs have also been injured by being excluded from the civil society empowerment model. The World Bank is heavily biased against NGOs with an "agenda" and even UNICEF steers clear of overt ties to secessionist groups, no matter how effective at delivering services to their members (Nelson 1995, 130-32; Nelson 1996). A bias in favor of mainstream agencies willing to work with the state has emerged, especially at the behest of the Scandinavian donors and INGOs. At the same time, US and British agencies have pressed for entrepreneurial NGOs. The net result is that many technical NGOs have received considerable funding and are therefore multiplying in number. Whether this trend is healthy for the promotion of equitable and just development is highly questionable. In fact, the nurturing of these technical NGOs is likely to exacerbate social divisions (Boyle 1997).

 

The Aftermath and its Implications

What has "civil society empowerment" become in the wake of these upheavals and conflicting pressures? Given the overwhelming dominance of donors, the stronger presence of IGOs and INGOs, and the relative weakness of LDC governments, it is not surprising that the civil society model has emerged as the dominant approach to development. It satisfies the need for economical, human-rights and capitalist-oriented development on the part of donors that no longer need worry about grand security strategy and maintaining competing spheres of influence. It allows IGOs to promote principles to which the staff and leadership have long been committed, namely democratic development. It provides resources for INGOs in their struggle to survive in a competitive marketplace for charity and relieves some of the pressure to collect private funds. The policy has almost no risks for the donors, although there is always the danger that IGOs may alienate less developed member-states if they push too hard. INGOs and other voluntary associations have found some risks involved in allowing public agencies to dominate their funding, but have generally taken the money anyway.

Developing country governments, on the other hand, have seen much of their authority and sovereignty come under fire, sometimes in rather subtle ways. Although IGOs tend, more than other donor agencies, to respect the authority of states in principle (the World Bank's 1997 World Development Report stresses the fact that there is no substitute for effective state programs), in practice they and other donors have done much to undermine it. NGOs and GROs often find themselves caught up in a global power struggle in which they are ill-prepared to participate. There exists a real danger for them of co-optation by external players bent on promoting participation and democratization for their own sakes.

The image presented here is less appealing than many advocates of civil society and empowerment have presented, but I believe gives us more accurate picture of the policy's nature and its sources. The analysis presented here helps to put the role of non-governmental organizations in proper perspective. Lacking the resources of donor states, these agencies cannot expect to have the type of unilateral influence on policy. However, given a change in power relations, it is possible these INGOs and NGOs can be invited into policy circles and have genuine impact. This view differs from the "epistemic community" emphasis on the role of networks which join public and private agencies in shaping policy and stresses instead the ability of states to identify both policies and instruments of policy. While ideas may emerge in the independent sector, they will take effect only if they mesh with the priorities of powerful states.

By the same token, the discussion puts the role of states in proper perspective, since it illustrates the capacity of non-state and multilateral actors to influence the implementation of policies and, to some extent, the delineation of the range of policy options. By using INGOs and NGOs, donors found they could not entirely control outcomes and were forced to accept some of the priorities and practices of these agencies. Their experience with Grameen Bank, for example, taught donors that they could not force an NGO to take their money unless they accommodated the organization's priorities to some extent.

Most important, the image presented here helps to clarify the linkages across levels of analysis and across issues in ways most approaches do not. While the state-society relationship is central to the story, it cannot be understood without considering the broader donor-recipient relations. And while the donor-recipient relationship is central, it also cannot be fully understood without considering the broader systemic context. While economic forces are crucial to the dynamic, they cannot be fully understood without the political context. And while legal questions enter into the mix, they need to be understood in the context of political and ideational forces.

The ultimate test of this perspective will be to measure changes in the policy in response to future changes in international conditions and actor resources (assuming interests remain relatively constant). Two potential changes merit close observation. First, if global security conditions take a significant turn for the worse and a realignment of major powers emerges, the great powers may feel compelled to provide support for strategic allies regardless of domestic conditions. This situation may explain American and British policy in the Persian Gulf today, particularly with respect to their human rights policies vis a vis Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan. Second, if the economic and/or political strength of major developing nations significantly increases, we should expect to see a lessening of their willingness to accept the civil society empowerment model in favor of purely private financial transactions. Changes in the posture of Malaysia and Mexico in this regard may point toward this trend emerging. The possibility of a genuine Third World backlash against political conditionality seems relatively high and would serve to confirm the linkages laid out in this model.

 

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