NGOs, States, and Donors Revisited: Still Too Close for Comfort?

Banks, Nicola; Hulme, David; Edwards, Mike

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.09.028

Cited by 434 publications

(409 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…Comparing three cases from Pakistan, this article demonstrates that the NGO leadership that is able to develop an embedded partnership with the government is one most cautious about engaging with donor money and most resistant to adopting the culture of professionalism and material comfort that is popular with donor-funded NGOs (Bano 2008b;Banks et al 2015;Hulme and Edwards 1997). Donors' ability to promote partnerships under the good-governance agenda is thus highly questionable.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partnerships and the Good-Governance Agenda: Improving Service Delivery Through State–NGO Collaborations

Bano

2018

Voluntas

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First under the Millennium Development Goals and now under the Sustainable Development Goals, partnerships for development, especially between state and NGOs, remain a valued goal. Partnerships are argued to improve provision of basic social services to the poor: the state is viewed as providing scale, with NGOs ensuring good governance. Close study of three leading partnership arrangements in Pakistan (privatization of basic health units, an 'adopt a school' program, and low-cost sanitation) shows how state-NGO collaborations can indeed improve service delivery; however, few of these collaborations are capable of evolving into embedded partnerships that can bring about positive changes in government working practices on a sustainable basis. In most cases, public servants tolerate, rather than welcome, NGO interventions, due to political or donor pressure. Embedded partnerships require ideal-type commitment on the part of the NGO leadership, which most donor-funded NGOs fail to demonstrate. For effective planning, it is important to differentiate the benefits and limitations of routine co-production arrangements from those of embedded partnerships.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partnerships and the Good-Governance Agenda: Improving Service Delivery Through State–NGO Collaborations

Bano

2018

Voluntas

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“…They are supposed to have a long-term transformative and social justice agenda that benefits the local civil society [16]. Cambodia, which suffered from a horrific bloodletting and civil war, has one of the largest numbers of NGOs in the world, close to 2000, [17] because the issues the post-conflict nation had to resolve were endless.…”

Section: Ngo Fashion Production In Cambodiamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They are designed and controlled in a top-down manner dictated by donor priorities, which is antithetical to the core values of NGOs [16]. For example, a disproportionally large number of Cambodian NGOs have been established by Western religious organizations.…”

Section: Problems Of Ngo Fashion Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Literature on NGOs suggests that innovation is central to NGO effectiveness [16]. Yet, in Cambodia, most garment-producing NGOs create the same fashion products as other fashion NGOs elsewhere.…”

Section: Problems Of Ngo Fashion Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Globalization in the South made NGOs quite powerful in terms of creating new policies and practices. They have become the darlings of the international development machine because they tend to work with the poor [16]. In Cambodia, they were expected to be tools of democratization, in the hope that the causes they champion will counter the activities of the corrupt government.…”

Section: Ngo Fashion Production In Cambodiamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cambodian Fashion NGOs: are they doing Good?

Medvedev¹

2017

JTEFT

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During the Khmer Rouge's genocide in the 1970s, Cambodia's entire infrastructure was destroyed and its ancient textile traditions were nearly eradicated. However, recently Cambodia has emerged as a top garment producer and also made great strides in restoring its world-famous sericulture. Fashion items are produced in large factories, in nongovernmental (NGO) organizations/associations and in private enterprises. While large-scale fashion production is Cambodia's biggest export industry, the industry is suffering from ongoing labor strife, low wages and poor work conditions. Another key problem of the industry is that the designs and market for the fashions are exclusively Western. In contrast, NGOs/ associations have been championing a progressive social agenda and positively impacted the local civil society. They also laid the foundation for an emerging local fashion scene. NGOs generally recruit their employees from the most disenfranchised segments of the population, such as formerly prostituted women, homeless children and underprivileged youths or unemployed rural people. NGOs help these employees get skills training and cultivate and harness their creativity. However, NGO fashion production also has its downside. These include financial instability, too much focus on donor priorities, massive bureaucracy, and lack of accountability to local workers by foreign donors and passive execution of Western design ideas. At the same time, there are positive examples as well. Successful fashion NGOs not only provide employment, but teach financial, management, design and entrepreneurial skills to their constituents as well. They also promote collective decision making, emphasize local aesthetics and utilize local physical and human resources. IntroductionFashion is one of the cornerstones of cultural and economic globalization. The 1974 Multi-Fiber Arrangement offered developing nations order quotas to enter the garment trade. This meant a somewhat fair shot for clothing producers in developing countries, while spreading the apparel industry worldwide. When the garment industry became international, national governments with scarce natural resources, like Cambodia, sought to provide the global garment industry with cheap labor. Access to cheap labor in Cambodia meant easy access to people in poverty, or more precisely, access to women in poverty. Women make up 90-92 percent of Cambodia's 700,000 strong garment industry work-forces [1]. Cambodian garment workers are mostly young women who travel to Phnom Penh from rural provinces in search of work. These young women represent a steady supply for the garment industry-because in Cambodia it is a daughter's filial responsibility to contribute to the family finances [2]. Cambodian garment productionGarment production is important for Cambodia because it has few natural resources. It has become the country's second largest industry after agriculture [3]. The garment and footwear sector already accounted for roughly 80 percent of the country's total exports in 20...

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Government helper and citizen advocate? A case study of the multiple roles and pressures facing a nongovernmental organization contracted by government to strengthen community health in northern India

Scott

George

Harvey

et al. 2017

Health Planning & Management

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SummaryWhile nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can potentially strengthen valuable citizen political engagement, NGOs that are increasingly oriented towards donor and government contracts may instead contribute to depoliticizing development. Amidst competing pressures, NGO experiences and agency in managing multiple roles require examination. We present a qualitative case study of an NGO implementing a government‐designed intervention to strengthen Village Health, Sanitation, and Nutrition Committees (VHSNCs) in rural north India. Despite a challenging context of community scepticism and poor government services, the NGO did successfully form VHSNCs by harnessing its respected interlocutor status, preexisting relationships, and ability to “sell” the VHSNC as a mechanism for improving local well‐being. While the VHSNC enabled community members to voice concerns to government officials, improvements often failed to meet community expectations. NGO staff endured community frustration on one hand and rebuffs from lower‐level officials on the other, while feeling undersupported by the government contract. Consequently, although contracted to strengthen a community institution, the NGO increasingly worked alongside VHSNC members to try to strengthen the public sector. Contrary to assumptions that NGOs become “tamed” through taking government contracts, being contracted to deliver inputs for community participation was intertwined with microlevel political action, though this came at a cost to the NGO.

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NGOs, States, and Donors Revisited: Still Too Close for Comfort?

Cited by 434 publications

References 83 publications

Partnerships and the Good-Governance Agenda: Improving Service Delivery Through State–NGO Collaborations

Partnerships and the Good-Governance Agenda: Improving Service Delivery Through State–NGO Collaborations

Cambodian Fashion NGOs: are they doing Good?

Government helper and citizen advocate? A case study of the multiple roles and pressures facing a nongovernmental organization contracted by government to strengthen community health in northern India

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