Understanding Contemporary Challenges to INGO Legitimacy: Integrating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Perspectives

Abstract

In recent years, INGO legitimacy has been subject to growing scrutiny from analysts and practitioners alike. Critics have highlighted a backlash against INGOs in the Global South, a growing mismatch between INGO capacities and contemporary global challenges, and diminishing support for norms such as democracy and human rights that underpin INGOs' work. Although these problems have attracted significant attention within the academic literature, this article argues that existing explorations of INGO legitimacy have broadly conformed either to a top-down approach focused on global norms and institutions or a bottom-up approach focused on the local dynamics surrounding states and populations in the Global South. We suggest that this divide is unhelpful for understanding the current predicament and propose a new approach, which pays closer attention to the interaction between bottom-up and top-down dimensions, and to historical context. This new approach can provide important insights into current debates about the future roles and internal structures of INGOs.Résumé La légitimité des ONGI est de plus en plus remise en question par les analystes et praticiens. Les critiques ont fait la lumière sur les réactions hostiles que soulèvent les ONGI dans les pays du Sud, l'écart grandissant entre les capacités des ONGI et les défis mondiaux de l'heure et le respect de moins en moins grand des normes sous-jacentes au travail des ONGI, dont la démocratie et les droits de l'homme. Même si ces problèmes ont été largement traités dans la documentation spécialisée, cet article avance que les recherches existantes sur la légitimité des Resumen En años recientes, la legitimidad de las organizaciones no gubernamentales internacionales (INGO, por sus siglas en inglés) ha estado sujeta a un creciente escrutinio de analistas y profesionales. Los críticos han destacado una reacción violenta contra las INGO en el Hemisferio Sur, un creciente desequilibrio entre las capacidades de las INGO y los desafíos mundiales contemporáneos, y un apoyo decreciente de las normas, tales como la democracia y los derechos humanos que apoyan la labor de las INGO. Aunque estos problemas han atraído una importante atención dentro del material académico publicado, el presente artículo argumenta que las exploraciones existentes de la legitimidad de las INGO se han ajustado ampliamente a un enfoque de arriba a abajo centrado en las normas e instituciones mundiales o en un enfoque de abajo a arriba centrado en la dinámica social que rodea a los estados y poblaciones en el Hemisferio Sur. Sugerimos que esta división no ayuda a la comprensión del dilema actual y proponemos un nuevo enfoque, que presta una más estrecha atención a la interacción entre las dimensiones de abajo a arriba y de arriba a abajo, y al contexto histórico. Este nuevo enfoque puede proporcionar importantes perspectivas en los debates actuales sobre los futuros papeles y estructuras internas de las INGO. Voluntas (2016Voluntas ( ) 27:2764Voluntas ( -2786Voluntas ( 2765 123

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“…They may also have political legitimacy in their own right. The existing literature on civil society legitimacy is primarily focused on the legitimacy of organisations; either nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) (Atack 1998;Edwards 1999;Brown 2001;Lister 2003;Brown and Jagadananda 2007;Walton 2008Walton , 2013 or international NGOs and transnational civil society networks (Brown 2008;Walton et al 2016). Several definitions of organisational legitimacy exist within the literature, the most prominent of which is that of Suchman, who defines it as 'a generalised perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions ' (1995: 574).…”

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