Development Studies: hypocrisy or true altruism |
1. IntroductionSince the 1980s, the NGO sector has been the most popular and fashionable in the international development agenda, mainly because of rapidly increasing funds from international aid agencies to NGOs (Edwards 1996). The number of NGOs registered in OECD countries in the North has increased from 1600 in 1980 to 2970 in 1993 (Hulme 1997b p. 4). In terms of sizes, BRAC has more than 12,000 staff and implements their projects with over three million people (op cit).
On the one hand, international aid agencies supported NGOs because it was clear that governments in developing countries were not effective and capable agencies to provide funds, and because NGOs were supposed to be the vehicle to promote democratization. They regarded NGOs as more effective and economical agencies to achieve development. On the other hand, governments in developing countries were heavily criticized because they were not responsive to people’s needs, whereas NGOs were supposed to be much closer to people and not corrupted. NGOs were viewed as more suitable and fairer agencies to engage in developmental projects than governments. There were these two perspective, even though the reason why each of them stood by NGOs were different, behind the prominent emergence of NGOs in development.
However, recently, they have been denounced in terms of their lack of accountability. According to Edwards (1995b p. 9), they are over-account to donors and under-account to those who they serve. Nevertheless, considering the fact that there are various stakeholders to which NGOs are supposed to be accountable, such as other NGOs, GROs, governments in developing countries, the Northern public and so forth, it can be argued that the problem of NGOs’ accountability is not such a simple issue whether it is upward or downward, but a quite complicated one. Therefore, the main aims of this essay are how NGOs can manage their multiple accountabilities, and what is the way forward. After taking a general view of NGOs’ accountability to other developmental actors, I will show the way forward based on some empirical examples.
2. Multiple accountability
(1) The definition of accountability
Before arguing the problems of accountability that NGOs are facing, it is necessary to define accountability and how NGOs can increase their accountability to various stakeholders. Shah argued (1995 p. 184) that “accountability does not just mean reporting; it means a process of information exchange, consultation and joint decision-making”. It seems that the definitions by Shah is suitable in the context of NGOs, given the fact that the relationships between NGOs and other developmental agencies are not always vertical, formal, unilateral, but horizontal, informal, and reciprocal.
Generally speaking, an organization can increase accountability by “a statement of goals, transparency of decision-making and relationships, honest reporting of what resources have been used and what has been achieved, an appraisal process for the overseeing authority to judge whether results are satisfactory, and concrete mechanisms for holding to account those responsible for performance” (Edwards 1995 p. 9). It can be argued that the issue of accountability would be much simpler, if NGOs have to accountable to only one authority. However, this is not the case in NGOs, they have to accountable to multiple stakeholders; their partners, beneficiaries, staff and supporters, their trustees, donors, host governments and so forth. This multiple accountabilities make it quite difficult for NGOs to solve, or to manage, their accountabilities. It seems that it is more adequate way to disaggregate their accountabilities and to grasp problems existing in the relationship with each stakeholder, than to try to analysis multiple accountabilities themselves. Because of the limitation of space, in this essay, NGOs’ accountabilities to donors, local people,, governments in developing countries, partners are analyzed separately to make complexity clear.
(2) The accountability to donors
The relationship between NGOs and donors has been criticized to the extent that donors, instead of funds, has forced NGOs to implement policies that they prefer (Hashemi 1995 p. 108). As a result, many scholars and practitioners contend that NGOs are overaccount to donors (Edwards 1995 p. 9; Covey 1995 p. 170; Shah 1995 p. 184). The original main aims of NGOs were, supposed to be, poverty alleviation, the empowerment of the people, and so forth, but it seems that NGOs focus on the areas that donors require them to do, such as micro credit and HIV (Hashemi 1995 p. 109).
Donors are willing to adopt blueprint approach, in other words, they assume that “it is possible to pre-determine a set of cause-and-effect relationships that will turn resources, knowledge or technology into desired and sustainable human change” (Fowler 1995 p. 145), but it is highly questionable whether this approach is valid in development projects because of the complexity of issue, various externalities, and cultural and social differences. Nevertheless, donors allure NGOs by providing massive funds, and require NGOs to adopt their approaches. Consequently, NGOs tends to concentrate on how much inputs they put in the projects, and does not count the long term outcome or impact of their projects (Fowler 1995 p. 146). This is problematic because, firstly, sustainable development will not occur only with short-term perspective, secondly, what donors view as the need of local people is, in many cases, different from their needs, and lastly, donors just try to keep their powerful position and not consider the development problems seriously (Hashemi 1995 p. 109; Hailey 2002 p. 97). By depending on donors financially and having upward accountability excessively, NGOs are to be the puppet of donors, and implement project in which local people are regarded not as a subject but just as an object (Fowler 1995 p. 155).
(3) The accountability to beneficiaries
Influenced by donor policies that are short-term and input-oriented, the downward accountability of NGOs to beneficiaries seems to be weak. Nevertheless, they have been reluctant to create capable mechanism to develop downward accountability, even though they could increase their income tremendously between 1984 and 1994 (Edwards 1995 p. 224; Hashemi 1995 p. 107). Moreover, although the movement that tries to involve the poor into development projects, such as participatory development, is popular, it is often the case that they cannot participate in a project design process. Only they can do is just to participate projects planned and established by donors or NGOs (Hashemi 1995 p. 107).
It can be argued that this situation is not adequate if the main aim of NGOs is to achieve the self-help of the marginalized people. Without any involvement by the poor, NGOs cannot insist that they are working for sustainable or participatory development in the sense that the poor cannot obtain anything, except for material resources, from NGOs’ projects to survive for themselves and of themselves. The accountability to beneficiaries is quite important to ensure that NGOs implement their projects in a reciprocal manner and those projects are responsive to people’s needs. Otherwise their projects would not produce any impact or outcomes on the local communities, but just wasteful inputs. The accountability to beneficiaries should be reciprocal, not complacent.
(4) The accountability to the host governments
NGOs originally regard themselves not as just service-providers but as facilitators for the poor or innovators in development (Farrington et al. 1993 p.183). On the other hand, states have faced serious problems to provide their population with enough basic human needs because of their financial inability, especially ones under the conditions of SAPs. Therefore, they want them to play the role as just service-providers to make up for the public sector. If they try to work for the empowerment of the poor and to advocate the changes in policy on behalf of the poor, states would be scared whether their authority might be injured. Indeed, most African governments face the difficulty to provide for the well-being of their citizens and to take development into their own hands, while NGOs tend to possess the capacity not only to provide people’s basic needs but also to inspire their developmental awareness and to aspire the translation of force from those in power to those in powerless (Fowler 1991 p.63). In consequence, this situation brings about the governments’ viewpoints to regard NGOs as a threat and the political tension between existing regimes and the NGO sector. Another example by Hashemi (1995) shows that the tension between NGOs and the governments ended up a hot battle in Bangladesh.
However, it is fair to say that the legitimacy of NGOs would be questionable without the support from the host government, because the government has authoritative sovereignty within its boundary. Thus, no matter how reluctant it is (Farrington et al 1993), it is necessary for NGOs to get along with the host government. It can be argued that this would not work well without reciprocal accountability between NGOs and the host government.
(5) The accountability to partners
It seems that NGOs has increased their power and solidarity at global level. As representatives of civil society, they had a large impact on agenda and outcomes at the Rio summit in 1992 or Beijin Women’s Conference in 1995 (Florini 2001 p. 37). Northern NGOs have closer links to resources, technologies, and multilateral aid agencies, whereas Southern NGOs can get access to the information of local people more easily. Therefore, by utilizing their comparative advantages each other, it should be that Northern and Southern NGOs collaborate effectively and create transnational civic networks.
However, it is often the case that they compete each other to gain official funds, especially after the amount of direct funding from donors to Southern NGOs increased (Hulme 1997 p. 280). In addition, as donors prefer NGOs working as a service provider to those increasing public awareness and trying to achieve social mobilization, there is a tension between well-resourced NGOs and poor-resource ones (Hulme 1997 p. 281). It is needed that they recognize their comparative advantages each other, and ensure the division of labor and reciprocal accountability. Otherwise, they cannot escape from the situation in which they are at donors’ beck and call. They have to be flood rather than fragmented many drops.
3. Way forward
As clearly shown above, the accountability of NGOs to each stakeholders has, more or less, problems. While upward accountability to donors is too prominent, upward accountability to host governments, downward one to beneficiaries and horizontal one to other NGOs seem to be vague. Moreover, the fact that accountability to each stakeholder is not separate but interrelated issue makes how to achieve multiple accountabilities more complicated. However, it seems that there is still some room for NGOs to maneuver, even though it might require NGOs to abandon current comfortable status in terms of financial capability and popularity.
Firstly, the clearest strategy to manage this issue is to diversify their funding. For example, Apnalaya has worked to innovate the condition of urban dwellers in Bombay (Desai et al 1995). By raising private funds locally, they have made clear their downward accountability to the urban poor and have not needed to suffer from donors’ intervention to their policies (ibid p. 91). It can be argued that excessively high accountability to one stakeholder distort the whole balance of multiple accountabilities. In the current situation, NGOs tend to exhaust all their energy to make sure their accountability to donors. Consequently, other accountabilities are not considered properly, or even ignored. Thus, finding different sources for funding has the possibility to change NGOs’ current imbalanced multiple accountability to well-balanced one.
Nevertheless, just mitigating NGOs’ accountability to donors does not automatically mean that their accountabilities to other stakeholders take their adequate appearance back. They have to move beyond funding strategy and consider more fundamental issue to keep their multiple accountability and legitimacy. Although there is some variety, the most crucial goal of NGOs in development is to make the poor people’s life better, less vulnerable and more sustainable. As long as this is the case, the priority of NGOs’ activities should be on the poor. However, in fact, the poor can rarely participate decision-making process of NGOs and reflect their voices in NGOs’ activities. As Hashemi warns (1995 p. 108), it is often the case that new hierarchy emerges in the relationship between NGOs and beneficiaries. To ensure the downward accountability, NGOs have to make concrete mechanism to achieve the strategic accountability to the poor (Edwards 1995 p. 224). The case of AKRSP in India shows how NGOs can construct effective mechanism to make clear their accountability to the poor.
The main aim of AKRSP is to create “an enabling environment to enable local communities to develop and manage their local natural resources in a productive, sustainable and equitable way” (Shah et al 1995 p. 184). To keep their downward accountability to beneficiaries, they have their performance evaluated by local communities to whom they serve. Local communities set criteria to assess AKRSP’s performance, then rank each criterion by numbers (ibid p. 186). Based on the data that local communities enumerates, a workshop is hold between AKRSP and local people to discuss corrective actions in the future enhancing mutual accountability (ibid p. 188). As a result, AKRSP’s activities are clearly accountable to local communities that they serve, and local communities can increase their capacity by providing feedback and communicating with AKRSP (ibid p. 189).
Therefore, the active involvement of people to whom NGOs serve is a key to enhance NGOs’ downward accountability (Fowler 1995 p. 150; Edwards et al 1995 p. 221). Participatory involvement of local communities, as shown above, is just one of the many strategies that NGOs can choose. Zadek argued that social audit would help NGOs developing new perspective to secure the interests of the key stakeholders (1995 p. 204). Covey suggested that NGOs could play a role as facilitator between the local people and the government and enabled grassroots members to involve into political arena more strategically (Covey 1995 p. 180).
Also, it is necessary for NGOs to negotiate with the host governments. It seems that NGOs cannot, or should not, replace the government in the sense that the government has authoritative power within its boundary. Therefore, they have to collaborate to make development projects successful at macro-level. Without the government’s help, the achievement of NGOs would be limited at micro-level, no matter how effectively and efficiently they work. When different stakeholders who have different aims and perspectives are involved in projects, negotiation would be the only way to deal with differences (Edwards 1995c p. 221). Without adequate accountability to the host governments, NGOs cannot negotiate with them properly and wretched confrontation might happen as mentioned earlier (Hashemi 1995).
It seems that there are various ways to move forward. However, it is important to remember whether these strategies succeed or not depend on the intention of staff in NGOs (Zadek 1995 p. 204). No matter how excellent tool NGOs use, they will fail if the values and norms of NGOs’ staff do not change. What is more important is whether NGOs’ staff can put the local people first (a loan-word from Chambers 1983).
4. Conclusion
Without managing multiple accountabilities and without changing current situations, NGOs will not find any place in development agenda to keep their legitimacy. They will have to make a meager living (Zadek et al 1995 p. 199), or they will be replaced by other actors in development (Edwards et al 1995 p. 226), if they cling to their past glories when they were called magic bullet (Edwards et al 1995 p. 5). The issue of accountability has to be considered more strategically, because that is crucial problem for NGOs, especially for Northern NGOs, to survive (Edwards et al 1995 p. 224). Otherwise, they will lose their identity, supporters and legitimacy. It seems that an age when NGOs can enjoy their growth in terms of their size and number would be coming very near to end. Without rethinking and redefining their multiple accountabilities, they have no way forward except for being the puppet of donors, then will be thrown away some time. NGOs have criticized the state or the market, but it is the time for them to criticize themselves. Lastly, it is worth emphasizing that it is NGO staff, especially managers or board, who hold the key to manage multiple accountabilities. No matter how effective mechanism they create to manage accountabilities, and no matter how useful participatory methods they invent, they are meaningless if NGO staffs are reluctant to account for their stakeholders. What is important is the value and norm of those who are in the NGO sector.
Bibliography
Cooke B. and U. Kothari (eds) (2001). Participation: The New Tyranny?. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Covey J. (1995). ‘Accountability and Effectiveness in NGO Policy Alliances’, pp. 167-182 in Edwards M. and D. Hulme (eds) (1995)
Edwards M. and D. Hulme (eds) (1995a). Non-Governmental Organisations Performance and Accountability: Beyond the Magic Bullet. London: Earthscan Publication Ltd.
Edwards M. and D. Hulme (1995b). ‘NGO Performance and Accountability: Introduction and Overview’, pp. 3-16 in Edwards M. and D. Hulme (eds) (1995)
Edwards M. and D. Hulme (1995c). ‘Beyond the Magic Bullet? Lessons and Conclusions’, pp. 219-228 in Edwards M. and D. Hulme (eds) (1995)
Edwards M. and D. Hulme (1996). ‘Too Close for Comfort? The Impact of Official Aid on Nongovernmental Organizations’. World Development 24(6): 961-973
Edwards M. and J. Gaventa (eds) (2001). Global Citizen Action, London: Earthscan Publication Ltd.
Farrington J. and A. Bebbington (1993). Reluctant Partners? NGOs, the State and Sustainable Agricultural Development, London: Routledge
Florini M. A. (2001). ‘Transnational Civil Society’, pp. 29-40 in Edwards M. and J. Gaventa (eds) (2001)
Fowler A. (1991). ‘The Role of NGOs in Changing State-society Relations: Perspectives from Eastern and Southern Africa’. Development Policy Review 9: 53-83
Fowler A. (1995). ‘Assessing NGO Performance: Difficulties, Dilemmas and a Way Ahead’, pp. 143-156 in Edwards M. and D. Hulme (eds) (1995)
Hailey J. (2001). ‘Beyond the Formulaic: Process and Practice in South Asian NGOs’, pp. 88-101 in Cooke B. and U. Kothari (eds) (2001)
Hashemi S. (1995). ‘NGO Accountability in Bangladesh: Beneficiaries, Donors and the State’, pp. 103-110 in Edwards M. and D. Hulme (eds) (1995)
Hulme D. and M. Edwards (eds) (1997a). NGOs, States and Donors: Too Close for Comfort?. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.
Hulme D. and M. Edwards (1997b). ‘Conclusion; Too Close to the Powerful, Too Far from the Powerless?’, pp. 275-284 in Hulme D. and M. Edwards (eds) (1997)
Shah P. and M. K. Shah (1995). ‘Participatory Methods for Increasing NGO Accountability’, pp. 183-192 in Edwards M. and D. Hulme (eds) (1995)
Zadek S. and M. Gatward (1995). ‘Transforming the Transnational NGOs: Social Auditing or Bust?’, pp. 193-206 in Edwards M. and D. Hulme (eds) (1995)
BACK