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NGOs, Civil Society, and Development
Abstract
Civil society in Africa has been shaped by a number of developments over the recent years, including the incomplete democratic wave that has produced “hybrid” political regimes, ideological and financial imperatives promoted by international donors, and the varied success of different modes of nongovernmental public action. One important implication of these influences has been a tendency to emphasize the developmental rather than the political role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society in Africa, a move that has sharply divided scholarly opinion in terms of civil society’s progressive potential. Whereas NGOs have continued to access large-scale funding, skeptics feel that this has transformed them from functioning as incubators of alternative development ideas into “partners” charged with delivering development programs on behalf of states and donors. For optimists, the idea of partnership is not inherently bad as it could provide opportunities for both the state and the NGOs to collaborate in advancing their agendas around democracy and development. The aim of this chapter is to illuminate these debates further by drawing on the existing literature from sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter suggests that, for NGOs to remain relevant, they will need to reposition themselves—such that rather than locating themselves within the civil society sector, NGOs should instead occupy the space between the state, market, and civil society. The chapter provides practical suggestions on how this can be achieved.
... Despite IVCOs' theoretical advantages over other state and market actors in civic space, an analysis of the contemporary reports from Forum members raises questions about the extent to which IVCOs have the capacity to genuinely align with civil society interests. In some instances, donor practices that constrain the organisations' focus to service delivery and poverty eradication may inadvertently cause them to neglect broader support for grassroots civil society movements necessary to drive transformational structural and social change [9], [10]. This concern is especially poignant for government-funded IVCOs, which may deliberately divorce themselves from contentious politics between the state and civil society in order to maintain government funding. ...
... In broad terms, IVCOs have both political and developmental roles in relation to civil society [9]. Political roles often involve an element of conflict directed against powerful forces, and include activities such as lobbying and campaigning, mobilising social movements, helping to build coalitions and supporting activism. ...
... While both public and private organisations can ostensibly embrace a civil society mission, it is most commonly the mission of non-governmental organisations. Linkages between volunteers, ordinary citizens and larger social and political institutions fortify an organisation's position to help represent the voice of citizens, to protect their rights, to provide channels for citizen participation in governance, and to help hold the state and market accountable when the interests of vulnerable populations are compromised [1], [9], [20]. Because of this distinctive position, an organisation's civil society mission is seen as particularly important for promoting structural change, particularly when tackling issues of power and inequality. ...
This paper examines ways that modern donor practices may challenge international volunteer cooperation organizations' (IVCOs) alignment with the interests of civil society in partner countries—particularly in circumstances where a strong focus on service delivery and poverty eradication limit support for grassroots movements aimed at transformational structural and social change. This thesis is presented within a wider context of IVCOs’ historic development beginning in the late 1950s. Discussion and recommendations focus on how modern IVCOs can balance donor priorities while maintaining alignment with the sometimes oppositional role of civil society as a transformational driver of social change.
... Even with the liberal agenda imposed on governments by donors, there are reductions in civil society's political playing field. The effect of this has been that numerous organisations have taken on non-political issues rather than initiatives for empowerment and accountability (Bukenya 2012;Bukenya and Hickey 2014). Service delivery organisations in particular have become closer to the government and more distant from social movements (Lister and Nyamugasira 2003;Wood 1997), even on occasion refusing to bring real issues into the public sphere. ...
... The authors discussed in Chapter 1 (Lang 1997;Dicklitch 1998;Silliman 1999;Hickey 2002;Obadare 2004;Sadoun 2006;Bebbington et al 2008;Banks and Hulme 2012;Fowler 2014;Bukenya and Hickey 2014;Hammett 2014) have highlighted concerns about the legitimacy and effectiveness of aid-supported NGOs, and these have also been emphasised by recent work such as that by Brechenmacher and Carothers (2018). This study has identified some key issues in relation to these concerns, and some possible ways forward based on the experience of defiant civil society in Mozambique. ...
This thesis looks at defiance in civil society and aims to contribute towards a deeper understanding of contestation against regimes that restrict the expansion of the political playing field in sub-Saharan Africa. It also analyses the role of contemporary African activists in these contestations, and examines why some social contestation process are successful and others not. The role of Mozambican activists from aid-supported NGOs in relevant political movements between 2010 and 2015 is a key issue. The first part of the thesis offers a theoretical overview of civil society as contesting actor in Africa and Mozambique, and outlines the construction of concepts of civil society latency, defiance and co-construction through a theoretical framework that draws on the literature on moral economy, social movements, contentious politics, the public sphere, power and competitive authoritarianism. Analysis of two contrasting civil society organisations, the LDH (the League for Human Rights) and UNAC (the Mozambican Peasants’ Union), aims to give a better understanding of public spaces for participation and defiance, and to follow the movement of activists from urban areas towards traditional indigenous sectors so as to ensure that vital issues for communities are brought into the public sphere. It also looks at the neutralisation processes suffered by organisations that offer support and/or directly organise contestation of government initiatives and policies that have a negative impact on the population. The case studies draw on research over a period of three years in the city of Maputo and the provinces of Nampula, Cabo Delgado, Tete, Zambezia and Manica. They examine the reasons for contestations around land issues between 2010-2015, focusing on peasants' and NGOs' resistance to the ProSAVANA agrarian development project, and on urban protests against abductions and against the 2012-2015 return to civil war, investigating the role of European donors and government in the near destruction of one of the most well- known NGOs in Africa.
... "Civil society" became a catchword in the 1980s and 1990s, amid the economic crises facing states in the global South, the critiques of state-run economic modernisation, and the rollback and decentralisation of the state demanded by international financial institutions providing loans to struggling governments (Shivji 2007). Western donors promoted civil society as crucial both to holding states to account and to providing services that the state previously provided, but presumably less efficiently and responsively (Bukenya and Hickey 2014). Civil society became viewed "as a hitherto missing key to sustained political reform, legitimate states and governments, improved governance, visible state-society and state-economy relationships, and prevention of the kind of political decay that undermined" postcolonial governments in the past (Harbeson 1994: 1-2). ...
... In Africa, as elsewhere, international donors, policy makers and experts, along with their counterparts at the domestic level, continue to support the (neo)liberal approach to civil society, most effectively by channelling funding into this global project. Attempts have been made to respond to certain critiques, for example by funding local over international organisations or by fostering citizen participation and state-civil society partnerships, but the professionalised NGO that follows "the rules" remains the most legitimised form of associational life (Bukenya and Hickey 2014). This reality in Africa led Kasfir (1998) to critique mainstream civil society as a normative project with little analytical or descriptive value. ...
Through a close reading of the case studies in this collected volume, which focus on local civil society’s role in shaping transitional justice in diverse country contexts across Africa, this introductory chapter examines how civil society theory affects practitioners’ thinking on and practice of transitional justice on the continent. Civil society theory can be characterised as having a mainstream approach, aligned with the dominant (neo)liberal paradigm, and a broader collection of alternative approaches that seek to describe realities on the ground in postcolonial states and are largely positioned as alternatives to the Eurocentrism of mainstream thinking. The main tensions between mainstream and alternative approaches concern the nature of the relationship between the state and civil society, the validity of positioning (human rights) nongovernmental organisations as the most legitimate form of civil society, and the significance of associational life based on sectarian ties. They also concern the role of ‘uncivil’ collective action, the extent of the divide between private and public, and the possible marginalisation of various local, regional and global dynamics with the centring of the state implied by the state–civil society binary. I argue that although most of the case studies are aligned with alternative thinking on transitional justice and demonstrate alternative thinking on civil society, they also suggest that the practice of transitional justice is constrained by mainstream conceptions of civil society.
... 10 It also means that programs tend to focus on less confrontational priorities. 11 Instead, given the hostility NGOs provoke by intervening in democracy-building or vocalizing challenges to government, they must persuade the state that they are non-political – a significant challenge when trying to advance the interests of beneficiaries in a highly political arena (Bukenya & Hickey, 2014; Dicklitch & Lwanga, 2003; Ghosh, 2009). Prioritizing their functional capacities and service delivery roles has led to many NGOs working in partnership with governments through forming strategic alliances. ...
... Despite the concerns we outline about the ability of NGOs to function as political actors and incubators of alternative development, opportunities for pursuing development that contributes to progressive political outcomes still exist (Bukenya & Hickey, 2014). Even within the constraints imposed on NGOs by the structures and systems they find themselves in, the diversity of form we see emerging is indicative of attempts to avoid these pressures and to retain (or return to) their original 'roots' as agents of the poor. ...
Serious questions remain about the ability of NGOs to meet long-term transformative goals in their work for development and social justice. We investigate how, given their weak roots in civil society and the rising tide of technocracy that has swept through the world of foreign aid, most NGOs remain poorly placed to influence the real drivers of social change. However we also argue that NGOs can take advantage of their traditional strengths to build bridges between grassroots organizations and local and national-level structures and processes, applying their knowledge of local contexts to strengthen their roles in empowerment and social transformation.
... tives (Bukenya & Hickey, 2014;Burger & Seabe, 2014;Lewis & Kanji 2009) and as a result they have been active in most of the developmental programs on the continent. For example, in Ghana, Basic Needs has been very active in mental health advocacy and partnering with government to influence public opinion and policy on mental health (https://www.basicneedsghana. ...
This paper addresses national responses to suicide prevention in the African region. Eighteen countries responded, of which none had a national suicide prevention strategy in place and only three countries, namely Algeria, Congo, and Madagascar, were in the process of developing any kind of strategy, at the time of this survey. Official national statistics on suicide were available in four of the 18 AFRO countries, with two countries publishing figures on suicide attempts nationally. Training programs on suicide assessment and interventions for general practitioners or mental health professionals were very limited, available in just four countries. One country had a national center specifically dedicated to suicide research or prevention and four countries have at least one NGO dedicated to suicide prevention. Postvention bereavement support for families affected by suicide was available in three AFRO countries. In more than half of the countries, suicide is not an option to certify cause of death. Statistics on suicide and suicide prevention are poorly monitored in all the 18 AFRO countries. The present state of suicide prevention in the region will require cross-country efforts that will generate a critical mass to move suicide advocacy in establishing national prevention strategies in the region.
... While some partnerships forged as a result of this shift in donor priorities and guidance result in positive outcomes, many do not (Bukenya & Hickey 2014;Banks, Hulme, & Edwards 2014: 713). Even a majority of the successful ones only work for the short period of time when the two parties are co-implementing a joint project that has external funding (Aniekwe, Hayman, & Mdee 2012;Roper 2002: 338-345). ...
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and US-based universities are under increasing pressure to collaborate on international development efforts in order to achieve greater impact and influence. To date, however, most of these project-based collaborations have made only limited strategic investment into achieving longer-term, transformational goals. This article explores an attempt by US-based NGO Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to develop a model for institutional partnerships that goes beyond project-driven collaborations, and the ways in which these collaborations are contributing to achievement of the agency's strategic priorities. The article describes some of the important internal and external pressures that led CRS to adopt a new approach to university engagement; the processes that evolved to manage its five-year strategy; and some of the key activities that the partnerships supported. Based on this analysis, the paper extrapolates a series of six cross-cutting lessons learned that can help guide other NGOs and universities which are seeking to develop similar types of engagement, including a self-assessment checklist. The authors conclude that while these six-cross-cutting lessons learned are important, their significance will vary as the partnership grows, matures, and diversifies. Keywords: NGO-university partnerships for development; NGO-university operational research; NGO-university engagement; Management/functionality of NGO-university partnerships for development; Non-governmental organizations and development; Universities and development1
... In Africa, early associational life, has "a strong normative and moral basis" exemplified by "cultural notions of belonging, togetherness, and caring for one another" (Graham et al. 2006, 8-9). In Zimbabwe, the concept of vabatsiri (meaning, those who help others), describes the ethos that continues to underpin voluntarisman ethos that embodies traditional cultural beliefs, practices, and support systems that are based on the principles of collective responsibility, solidarity and reciprocity (Bratton 1994;Graham et al. 2006, Kaseke and Dhemba 2006, Bukenya and Hickey 2014. ...
Sovereign nations have the right to regulate the activities and operations of civil society organizations (CSOs) within their jurisdiction. The nature of official policy controls bears important implications for the breath and health of associational life, to the degree that they are relaxed, restrictive, or intrusive. Since nations in Africa have often been seen to subvert the growth and impact of CSOs, this article traces the policy controls that govern CSOs in Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Within the context of policy change, the article employs the Advocacy Coalition Framework in an effort to trace the policy process in these two countries. It particularly focuses on CSOs-focused policies and on clarifying the role and influence of non-state actors. Although political elites continue to dominate the policy process, non-state actors increasingly permeate the process through various formal and informal strategies, including the use of venues and influencing public opinion. Overall, CSOs-focused policies reflect distorted beliefs originating from the West’s preoccupations with a homogeneous, governance-focused African civil society.
The interest between civil society groups and democracy in developing countries is not a new phenomenon. Today, as part of civil societies, NGOs are dominant in the African market, acting as ‘gap fillers’ as well as driving democratic efforts in these countries. By considering the multifaceted relationship between NGOs and governments in developing countries, this chapter critically discusses attempts by NGOs to drive democracy in African autocratic regimes. NGOs are alleged to be ‘compradors’ and drive democracy through moral rehabilitation of imperialist regimes. NGOs are active parties used by international observers in ensuring credible elections. However, some scholars have argued that NGO are active ‘re-colonizers’ in the twenty-first century as they bid the will of Western regimes to attain funding. As such, NGOs are explicated through external domination of African regimes and not necessarily driving democratization. In exploration of this topic, a mixed methods research design has been designed, underpinned by the fundamental tenets of a pragmatism philosophical position.
In this chapter, the authors explore what more-than-human approaches can contribute to development research, teaching and practice. The authors believe that this work is timely as development studies and practice have yet to engage with more-than-human insights in any significant way. They first develop the concept of more-than-human development before analysing the challenges it poses to how we conceptualize and approach core development concerns such as community and empowerment. They then reflect on the ramifications of the concept for practice and policy, before finally exploring how to incorporate more-than-human approaches into pedagogy.
In 2012 the Mozambican government announced the revision of the mining and petroleum laws in consultation with civil society organizations (CSOs). This followed the discovery of world class gas reserves in the Rovuma Basin, and growing demands for transparency, fair sharing of revenues and protection of national interests, from all quadrants. Given this, what was the role played by CSOs? Did they influence the process at all, or did the consultation serve as a tool to strengthen the regime’s interests and legitimacy? Building on Gramsci and African scholarship that conceptualizes the state and civil society as relational social forces that co-influence each other through shifting power balances, the study reveals that CSOs influenced the development of the mining and petroleum laws by performing four essential roles: expertise, agenda-setting, representative and monitoring. The government accommodated some of CSOs demands, even though the consultation process was not fully open. The findings build on a mix of interviews with members of CSOs and other qualitative sources (laws, news and reports) and underline the need to analyse state and civil society beyond dichotomous and homogenizing categories. They also contribute to a flourishing literature on the role of civil society in competitive authoritarian regimes.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), are central actors in implementing welfare policies in countries of the Global North and Global South, as well as transnationally. Beside the welfare provision function, NGOs are recognized as prominent policy advocates furthering social transformation by shaping development and social policy agendas. NGOs thus represent a fundamental building block of the welfare mix, known as the division of welfare provision between the state, market, family and the third sector in which they are typically included. Despite the congruent roles NGOs hold in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the academic study of NGOs has taken two divergent paths. NGOs operating in the Global South have been mainly studied as ‘development NGOs’ in the field of development studies, while NGOs operating in the Global North have been investigated as ‘charities’ and ‘non-profits’ belonging to the third sector in the field of social policy. This chapter explores the role of NGOs in the welfare mix as deliverers of and advocates for welfare policies, and highlights the existing interface between social policy and development theory and practice.
Robert Putnam argues that civil society—citizen organizational activity—contributes to successful governance and democracy, outcomes potentially helpful in reconstructing Central America. Putnam does not, however, specify how civil society shapes government performance. We demonstrate how group participation might impinge upon the state through the “political capital” of political participation and democratic norms. We first explore the relationships among two civil society measures (formal group activism and community self-help activism) and social and political capital, employing survey data from Central America. We then investigate the effects of civil society and social and political capital upon levels of democracy. We find that while higher levels of formal group membership and several political capital measures associate with higher levels of democracy, social capital lacks the relationship Putnam predicts. We conclude that political rather than social capital links formal group activism to democracy in Central America.
In many low and middle income countries, dismal failures in the quality of public service delivery such as absenteeism among teachers and doctors and leakages of public funds have driven the agenda for better governance and accountability. This has raised interest in the idea that citizens can contribute to improved quality of service delivery by holding policy-makers and providers of services accountable. This proposition is particularly resonant when it comes to the human development sectors – health, education and social protection – which involve close interactions between providers and citizens/users of services.Governments, NGOs, and donors alike have been experimenting with various “social accountability” tools that aim to inform citizens and communities about their rights, the standards of service delivery they should expect, and actual performance; and facilitate access to formal redress mechanisms to address service failures. The report reviews how citizens – individually and collectively – can influence service delivery through access to information and opportunities to use it to hold providers – both frontline service providers and program managers – accountable. It focuses on social accountability measures that support the use of information to increase transparency and service delivery and grievance redress mechanisms to help citizens use information to improve accountability. The report takes stock of what is known from international evidence and from within projects supported by the World Bank to identify knowledge gaps, key questions and areas for further work. It synthesizes experience to date; identifies what resources are needed to support more effective use of social accountability tools and approaches; and formulates considerations for their use in human development.The report concludes that the relationships between citizens, policy-makers, program managers, and service providers are complicated, not always direct or easily altered through a single intervention, such as an information campaign or scorecard exercise. The evidence base on social accountability mechanisms in the HD sectors is under development. There is a small but growing set of evaluations which test the impact of information interventions on service delivery and HD outcomes. There is ample space for future experiments to test how to make social accountability work at the country level.
This article analyses collaboration between governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan in three services: basic education, healthcare and sanitation. It questions the premise that NGOs that collaborate lose their autonomy and capacity for policy influence. It finds that, even where NGOs operate in constraining institutional environments and enter agreements with government, they are able to exercise strategic choices in response. Most of the studied NGOs depended on government for less than half their funding; they all had alternative sources and so could make strategic choices to some degree. Non-government service providers are not passive in face of structural constraints. Although their strategies are not usually explicit, they balance the need for financial survival, the defence of their organisational identities and commitment to their goals—including influencing government. At least for these NGOs, there is no contradiction between advocacy and service delivery. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This paper argues for an approach to researching citizenship and democracy that begins not from normative convictions but from everyday experiences in particular social, cultural and historical contexts. The paper starts with a consideration of the ways in which the terms 'democracy' and 'citizenship' have been used in the discourses and approaches taken within mainstream studies of citizenship and democracy, drawing attention to some of the conceptual blind spots that arise. We call for more attention to be paid to contextual understandings of the politics of everyday life, and to locating state, ngo and donor rhetorics and programmes promoting 'active citizenship' and 'participatory governance' within that politics. It is this kind of understanding, we suggest, that, by revealing the limits of the normativities embedded in these discourses, can provide a more substantive basis for rethinking citizenship from the perspectives of citizens themselves.
This article examines the globalization of civil society through the proliferation of non-governmental organizations in developing countries. By focusing on the technologies and methods through which these new forms are globalized their expansion becomes explicable without recourse to theories of neoliberal governmentality. New organizational templates and the role of writing are highlighted in the dissemination of civil society forms in developing countries. These organizations do not represent an extension of state power but a multiplicity of peripheral positions from which actors seek contractual engagement in development relations.
This study examines survival patterns in a large, representative panel of Ugandan nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) between 2002 and 2008. It finds no evidence that more effective or more altruistic NGOs have a greater likelihood of survival. The main determinant of survival appears to be access to grants, and NGOs without grants struggle to survive. An investigation of the grant allocation mechanism suggests that effectiveness does not increase an NGO?s likelihood of receiving a grant. Grant allocation appears to be neither fair nor effective, but rather to be awarded on the basis of habit rather than merit: once a grant has been allocated there is a strong tendency for it to persist. The odds are stacked against small NGOs that have not previously received grants. A picture emerges of two parallel NGO worlds: one where revenues are small, variable and hard to come by and survival is not very likely, and the other where revenues are high, more stable and more accessible and survival is more likely. The study suggests it may be difficult for an NGO to move from the former to the latter.
This paper reviews the use of co-production — with state and citizens working together — as a grassroots strategy to secure political influence and access resources and services. To date, the literature on social movements has concentrated on more explicitly political strategies used by such movements to contest for power and influence. Co-production, when considered, is viewed as a strategy used by citizens and the state to extend access to basic services with relatively little consideration given to its wider political ramifications. However, co-production is used increasingly by grassroots organizations and federations as part of an explicit political strategy. This paper examines the use of co-productive strategies by citizen groups and social movement organizations to enable individual members and their associations to secure effective relations with state institutions that address both immediate basic needs and enable them to negotiate for greater benefits.
Poor people confront the state on an everyday basis all over the world. But how do they see the state, and how are these engagements conducted? This book considers the Indian case where people's accounts, in particular in the countryside, are shaped by a series of encounters that are staged at the local level, and which are also informed by ideas that are circulated by the government and the broader development community. Drawing extensively on fieldwork conducted in eastern India and their broad range of expertise, the authors review a series of key debates in development studies on participation, good governance, and the structuring of political society. They do so with particular reference to the Employment Assurance Scheme and primary education provision. Seeing the State engages with the work of James Scott, James Ferguson and Partha Chatterjee, and offers a new interpretation of the formation of citizenship in South Asia.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are high profile actors in the field of international development, both as providers of services to vulnerable individuals and communities and as campaigning policy advocates. This book provides a critical introduction to the wide-ranging topic of NGOs and development. Written by two authors with more than twenty years experience of research and practice in the field, the book combines a critical overview of the main research literature with a set of up-to-date theoretical and practical insights drawn from experience in Asia, Europe, Africa and elsewhere. It highlights the importance of NGOs in development, but it also engages fully with the criticisms that the increased profile of NGOs in development now attracts. Non-Governmental Organizations and Development begins with a discussion of the wide diversity of NGOs and their roles, and locates their recent rise to prominence within broader histories of struggle as well as within the ideological context of neo-liberalism. It then moves on to analyze how interest in NGOs has both reflected and informed wider theoretical trends and debates within development studies, before analyzing NGOs and their practices, using a broad range of short case studies of successful and unsuccessful interventions. David Lewis and Nazneen Kanji then moves on to describe the ways in which NGOs are increasingly important in relation to ideas and debates about 'civil society', globalization and the changing ideas and practices of international aid. The book argues that NGOs are now central to development theory and practice and are likely to remain important actors in development in the years to come. In order to appreciate the issues raised by their increasing diversity and complexity, the authors conclude that it is necessary to deploy a historically and theoretically informed perspective.
Le declin de l'Etat, considere par certains comme caracteristique de l'epoque contemporaine, s'accompagne d'une attention croissante pour les institutions de la societe civile. Parmi celles-ci, les Organisations Non Gouvernementales (ONG) ont pris une place preponderante dans la sphere du developpement, depuis les annees 1980. L'A. se propose de discuter de certains aspects du fonctionnement des ONG, plus particulierement en Inde
In some African countries, democratic openings have intensified ethnic competition and led to protracted transitions or outright conflict. In Kenya, I argue, the stalled transition reflects the effects of republican citizenship in ethnic political communities and liberal citizenship in the national political community. This duality in citizenship engenders conflict over democracy-conceived as libel al majoritarian democracy-and results in ethnic coalitions disagreeing over which institutions are appropriate for a multiethnic state. I provide evidence from discourses over institutions from two transition periods in Kenya: at independence and in the recent shift from one-party rule. This study makes two contributions. First, it adds to current citizenship theory, which is largely derived from Western experience by demonstrating that republican and liberal citizenships are not necessarily compatible and that the modern nation-state is not the only relevant community for forming citizens. Second, it adds to studies of African transitions by highlighting citizenship issues in institutional design with regard to ethnicity in Kenya.
Part 1 General issues: bringing voluntarism back in - East Africa in comparative perspective, Goran Hyden NGOs and the globalization of social welfare - perspectives from East Africa, Alan Fowler. Part 2 Kenya: the politics of development space - the state and NGOs in the delivery of basic services in Kenya, Njuguna Ng'ethe and Karuti Kanyinga dynamics of partnership in the provision of general education in Kenya - state versus non-state sectors, Amukowa Anangwe service provision in rural Kenya - who benefits?, Walter O. Oyugi. Part 3 Tanzania: social services provision in Tanzania - the relationship between political development strategies and NGO participation, Gaspar K. Munishi provision of secondary education in Tanzania - historical background and current trends, Abel G.M. Ishumi maintaining law and order in Tanzania - the role of Sungusungu defence groups, Jwani T. Mwaikusa the Catholic church and Tanzanian state in the provision of social services, John C. Sivalon. Part 4 Uganda: popular initiatives in service provision in Uganda, Emmanuel Nabuguzi the rise of People's Organizations in primary education in Uganda, P.O. Passi popular versus state provision of local justice - the resistance councils in Uganda, Per Tidemand.
This article examines the impact of the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on governance in Kenya. Looking specifically at service provision, it analyzes how the growth of NGOs has begun to change the way decisions are made and policy is formulated. In so doing, the article explores shifting NGO–government relations over time. The governance of service provision has become a complex, intertwined affair in which NGOs sit on national policymaking committees, government integrates NGO plans and budgets into national policy, and government actors learn from and copy NGOs' participatory, accountable approach. Through (1) the integration of former NGO leaders in government, (2) increasing the variety of voices heard in government decision making, (3) lobbying by NGOs, and (4) mimicry of NGOs by government, governance of Kenyan service provision has begun to become more democratic. Through such changes, developing countries are witnessing a blurring of the line between public and private.
This article presents a generic framework for understanding institutional sustainability in development. Its lessons draw from the agriculture and health sectors. The framework treats institutions as: (a) systems that function in relationship to their environments; (b) organized and managed entities whose organizational structures and procedures must match the tasks, products, people, resources, and contexts they deal with; and (c) settings intimately concerned with the exchange of resources where economic and political relationships intertwine to create varying patterns of power and incentive. Application of the analytic framework has shown that institutional sustainability depends upon maintaining: responsive output flows (high quality and valued goods and services); cost-effective goods and services delivery mechanisms (organization and management); and resource flows (recurrent costs, capital investments, human resources).
The current scholarly preoccupation with the state may obscure more than it reveals for students of politics in sub-Saharan Africa. The weakly formed state in Africa—beset by decline in economic production and political authority—is now retreating from overambitious attempts at social transformation. The time is therefore ripe for societal actors to play an enhanced role in political change. This article reviews the current literature on state-society relations in Africa with particular emphasis on the nature of African associational life and the extent to which it is taking on a politically organized form as an identifiable civil society. The author proposes a theoretical framework and research agenda that takes account of the capacity of either state or societal actors to exercise a range of options to engage or disengage.
This article examines corruption in Nigeria's development sector, particularly in the vastly growing arena of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Grounded in ethnographic case studies, the analysis explores why local NGOs in Nigeria have proliferated so widely, what they do in practice, what effects they have beyond their stated aims, and how they are perceived and experienced by ordinary Nigerians. It shows that even faux NGOs and disingenuous political rhetoric about civil society, democracy, and development are contributing to changing ideals and rising expectations in these same domains.
This paper is concerned with the factors that influence and constrain NGO contributions to poverty reduction in a globalizing world, focusing on their role as transmitters of grounded knowledge about poverty in very poor countries. Interviews with staff in 33 NGOs in Ghana, a country where the NGO sector is heavily dependent on overseas funding, indicate that local understandings about poverty are being overridden by so-called programmes of partnership support that erode local confidence in home-grown ideas about poverty and how to combat it. This is illustrated by reference to the common donor preference for working with groups and for ‘Asian’ development approaches.
Recent research in Bangladesh highlights an interesting paradox: impressive development outcomes combined with extremely poor quality of governance. The country’s active development NGO sector has been credited with some of the more positive development achievements. The question that this paper sets out to address is why the sector has not made an equivalent contribution on the governance front. It draws on primary survey data to explore the hypothesis that the problem lies in the increasing homogenization of NGOs around the delivery of services, primarily microfinance services, and its shift away from social mobilization organizations.
Who needs civil society? What is civil society useful for? While the foregoing and similar dilemmas dominated the early civil society literature on sub-Saharan Africa, this was soon followed by a steady shift to the analysis of non-governmental organizations. The shift foreshadowed the recent methodological approach to civil society research which emphasizes ‘measuring’ and ‘surveying’ civil society. In this essay, I contend that this approach, to the extent that it seems to totalize civil society as component voluntary associations that can be measured, deepens the crisis of understanding which it aspires to transcend. Yet, although I critique—and reject—this approach, I argue nonetheless that it ought to be seen as an opportunity to reinstate a more theoretically robust and politically driven imagination of civil society, one that problematizes, not just civil society organizations that are, ultimately, only an aspect of civil society, but the civil domain as a whole. While conceding that ‘measuring’ civil society has its own merits, I insist that it comes with a real danger of, first, reducing civil society to organizations, especially organizations that can be measured; and second, distracting students of African societies from the politicality that underpins much of the continent's socio-economic woes.
One of the most striking features of the anglophone literature on NGOs is the diversity of NGO sectors and their contributions to civil society and democracy; yet, exploration of this complexity is often eschewed in favour of a normative approach in which the apparently mutually enhancing relationship between NGOs, civil society and the state is underpinned by liberal democratic assumption rather than an engagement with wider debates about the politics of development. Following a critique of this approach to NGOs, civil society and democracy, the paper argues that the role of NGOs in the politics of development is far more complex than much of the NGO literature would suggest, and calls for a more contextualized and less value-laden approach to the understanding of the political role of NGOs.
Since the late 1970s, NGOs have played an increasingly prominent role in the development sector, widely praised for their strengths as innovative and grassroots-driven organisations with the desire and capacity to pursue participatory and people-centred forms of development and to fill gaps left by the failure of states across the developing world in meeting the needs of their poorest citizens. While levels of funding for NGO programmes in service delivery and advocacy work have increased alongside the rising prevalence and prominence of NGOs, concerns regarding their legitimacy have also increased. There are ongoing questions of these comparative advantages, given their growing distance away from low-income people and communities and towards their donors. In addition, given the non-political arena in which they operate, NGOs have had little participation or impact in tackling the more structurally-entrenched causes and manifestations of poverty, such as social and political exclusion, instead effectively depoliticising poverty by treating it as a technical problem that can be ‘solved.’ How, therefore, can NGOs ‘return to their roots’ and follow true participatory and experimental paths to empowerment? As this paper explores, increasingly, NGOs are recognised as only one, albeit important, actor in civil society. Success in this sphere will require a shift away from their role as service providers to that of facilitators and supporters of broader civil society organisations through which low-income communities themselves can engage in dialogue and negotiations to enhance their collective assets and capabilities.
As post-military ‘democratic’ regimes across Africa perpetuate norms and practices that were characteristic of the previous openly authoritarian era, humour and ridicule have emerged as a means through which ordinary people attempt to deconstruct and construct meaning out of a reality that is decidedly surreal. In Nigeria jokes serve a double function as a tool for subordinate classes to deride the state (including its agents) and themselves. Jokes are therefore a means through which an emergent civil society, ‘behaving badly’, subverts, deconstructs, and engages with the state. Yet, for all its significance as a form of agency, humour has been neglected in the civil society literature, partly because of the mentality which frames civil society in terms of organizations (humour is not organized), and partly because of its almost exclusive attention to the ‘civil’ attributes of civil society (humour is, inter alia, rude). This article argues for incorporating humour into the civil society discourse, and suggests that doing so will enrich civil society analysis by focusing on both the constructions of sociality and their associated politics, and the hidden spaces in which most of visible political action originates.
Islamic NGOs have proliferated in an effort to solve basic socioeconomic problems within an Islamic framework. Although legal conditions and government oversight prohibit direct political activities through Islamic NGOs, Islamists utilise these institutions to combat the intrusion of Western values and cultural codes. It is this struggle at the level of discourse and culture that imbues Islamic NGOs with political import, even if these activities are outside the boundaries of traditional politics. This article uses a case study of the al-Afaf Charitable Society in Jordan to examine the relationships among socioeconomic development, political and cultural struggle, and Islam. In an effort to promote early family formation, as encouraged by Islam, al-Afaf provides a variety of services to remove obstacles to marriage. This, in turn, is conceptualised by Islamists as an institutionalised attempt to counter Western values and practices that are seen as inimical to Islam.