MOVING INTO THE NEW AID APPROACH, DILEMMAS FOR NGOs: THE BELGIAN CASE

Abstract

SUMMARYUnder the new aid approach, nongovernmental development organizations (NGOs) are expected to move from "delivery" (service delivery projects) to "leverage" (lobbying and advocacy). In line with this international tendency, the Belgian government has signed a pact with the NGO sector in which a move away from delivery and toward leverage is being proposed. Given that Belgian NGOs are heavily dependent on government funding and strongly oriented toward the "delivery" model, this pact implies that a number of NGOs will have to undergo organizational changes. This article shows that there is a major cleavage in the NGO landscape in Belgium. Some organizations clearly favor the leverage, whereas others prefer the delivery roles. Those that are more dependent on government funding tend to incline toward the leverage orientation. The attitudinal orientation toward the leverage model however does not imply that organizations are effectively willing and able to change. A number of identity and legitimacy concerns are perceived by NGOs to be important sources of organizational inertia.

The Strategic Orientations of US-Based NGOs

“…The theoretical literature about transnational NGO strategy comprises multiple overlapping and contesting research programs distributed across numerous areas of theoretical and substantive research, including transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998), social movements (Tarrow 1998(Tarrow , 2001(Tarrow , 2005, environmental activism (Wapner 1995(Wapner , 1996(Wapner , 2002, global civil society (Clark et al 1998;Demirovic 2003;Florini 2004;Glasius 2002;Kaldor 2003;Lipschutz 1992), human rights (Hafner-Burton 2008; Risse et al 1999;Ron et al 2007), rights-based development (Nelson and Dorsey 2003), public administration and government-NGO relations (Alam 2011;Batley 2011;Batley and Rose 2011;Guo 2007;Molenaers et al 2011;Nair 2011;Saidel 1991;Sansom 2011), resource dependence theory (Froelich 1999;Hodge and Piccolo 2005;Mitchell 2012;Pfeffer and Salancik 2003;Saidel 1991), institutionalism (DiMaggio andPowell 1983;Guo and Acar 2005;Verbruggen et al 2011), contract theory (Cooley and Ron 2002;Feiock and Jang 2009;Robinson 1997), critical theory (Cox 1999;DeMars 2005;Demirovic 2003;Feldman 1997;…”

Correction to: Lobbying the lobbyists: when and why do policymakers seek to influence advocacy groups in global governance?

“…Others have moved even further and have argued that the relationship between advocacy organizations and policymakers is strongly steered by the behaviour of policymakers (Ainsworth 1993(Ainsworth , 1997Holyoke 2009Holyoke , 2011Matthews 1960). There is a large body of literature dealing with how governments affect the behaviour of advocacy groups through government funding and patronage (Bloodgood and Tremblay-Boire 2017;Cooley and Ron 2002;Heylen and Willems 2018;Mahoney 2004;Molenaers et al 2011;Neumayr et al 2015;Persson and Edholm 2018;Verschuere and De Corte 2014). Bloodgood and Tremblay-Boire (2017), for instance, show that government subsidies can have a dampening effect on the advocacy activities of NGOs, and Heylen and Willems (2018) demonstrate how subsidies steer the choice for advocacy venues.…”

“…The goal of this article is to conceptually outline and empirically assess the 'influence flow' from policymakers to advocacy groups. Former studies in this tradition have taught us that political institutions can shape the behaviour of advocacy groups (see Bloodgood and Tremblay-Boire 2017;Cooley and Ron 2002;Heylen and Willems 2018;Mahoney 2004;Molenaers et al 2011;Neumayr et al 2015;Persson and Edholm 2018;Verschuere and De Corte 2014) and that policymakers pressure these groups into defending policy positions in line with their preferences (Holyoke 2009;Heaney 2006;Heaney and Leifeld 2018;Heaney and Rojas 2015). We build on these findings and seek to explore and explain how policymakers try to shape the policy positions of advocacy groups.…”

Crafting Compromises in a Strategising Process: A Case Study of an International Development Organisation

“…Often there are tensions over the primacy given to social versus economic goals (Jager and Bayes, ; Jegers and Lapsley, ; Parker, ). At an operational level, NGOs make choices over the extent to which they engage in different types of activities, such as service delivery, capacity building or lobbying (Molenaers et al., ), and the need to balance and prioritise the interests of potentially competing stakeholders (Collier, ). They can deal with these potentially contradictory but co‐existing pressures, for example, by balancing commercial and service orientations (Parker, ).…”

“…The potential for conflicting and contradictory missions, philosophies and rationalities is a key feature of non‐government organisations (NGOs) and a core challenge in their operation and management. For example, practitioners need to negotiate and balance between social goals and economic imperatives (Jager and Bayes, ; Jegers and Lapsley, ; Parker, ), or between service delivery projects and advocacy activities (Molenaers et al., ). This can arise because the social goals addressed by NGOs are subject to strong value‐based conflicts, often derived from different conceptions of progress and development (Thomas, ).…”