Ten propositions on NGOs

(Written 20 January 2002, and actually there are 11 propositions here.)

1 Big western NGO’s provide a profession alternative to politics or journalism, and are very like them in providing grandstands for show-offs. This professionalism makes NGOs vested interests, seeking market share and permanence as much as solutions

2 Big western NGOs seek authenticity by claiming to represent small, indigenous NGOs which they fund and whose agendas they dominate. This makes them prime globalisers and post-imperialists.

3 In poor countries small, indigenous NGOs tend to operate according to the Not In My Back Yard principle seen in the West: that’s to say, they pose the local interest as they oppose the national or regional interest.

4 NGOs are engaged in providing an analysis and policy proscription which is alternative to and distinct from their governments'. In the case of those operating where there is good government, this 'oppositionalism'means they are condemned to talk nonsense.

5 NGOs claim virtue is high on their agenda and thus they are allowed to discount cold good sense. It does not matter how often their factual or practical case turns out to be wrong – they can claim to have been on the side of the angels.

6 NGOs are staffed by people who find government, civil service, commercial and journalistic jobs insufficiently 'moral'. They are romantic and idealist. That is why most people defer to them, and why they are often wrong about the world.

7 NGOs can be arrayed in a spectrum ranging from the “incrementalist” (Friends of the Earth) to the 'non-negotiable' (Greenpeace). The first risk being thought too mild and compromised and the second risk being thought fanatical and fantasist.

8 NGOs are fundamentally undemocratic. They seek no mandate beyond being virtuous, and so ignore the wider dilemmas of real politics (ie: who pays for virtuous policies; the local vs the wider concern; the “cause” in question vs competing desires).

9 Pressure politicians (NGOs) claim to represent a more direct alternative voice for “the people” as opposed to the 'representative democracy' politics which mandates elites. In truth, they weaken the political process, by their “special pleading” of selected causes.

10 NGOs claim successes which belong elsewhere. There have been many “conventional” forces which produced overseas aid, 'green'policies and so on: just because the NGOs were leaning on those doors does not mean they swung open because of NGO action

11 NGOs are unwitting allies of big business in 'raising the bar' of standards in human rights, community involvement and green technologies. These raise the cost of entry for smaller firms to new business and constitute a bar to indigenous competition