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Editorial, volume 2, number 2, 1991
With the end of the twentieth century already in sight, we are witnessing the most extensive transition in the global political economy since World War II. Long-standing alliances between nations are being re-defined; new actors -- political parties and social movements -- are appearing on the stage; traditional orthodoxies are in crisis. In advanced industrial democracies and rural economies alike, the State is under question. From a neo-liberalist perspective, the market rather than the State is to be entrusted with meeting social needs. From a completely different standpoint, social movements around the world challenge the very legitimacy of the State, since in the past it has exemplified their exclusion from effective representation.
In spite of such far-reaching upheavals, the independent NGO sector has generally continued to relate both to the State and to social movements as it has seen fit: using its own criteria to identify and meet social demands; and seizing opportunities to expand as they arise. Pressed to take on functions being abandoned by the faltering and beleaguered public sector, NGOs need to be far clearer than hitherto about what roles they should meet in social and economic development, and under what conditions: to define themselves by what they are, rather than by what they are not.
This stock-taking is essential if NGOs are to realise their full individual and collective potential in development work. It is vital if they are to distinguish confidently between new roles which are appropriate and those which might instead serve to undermine the very social sectors which NGOs ostensibly represent -- and on which their legitimacy is based. It is crucial if NGOs are to be frank about why and how they intervene in development processes and to whom they are answerable in setting their agendas. In all aspects of their work, NGOs will have to be ever more self-critical if they are indeed to ensure that they play a legitimate role in representing the needs and aspirations of poor women and men.
In this issue of Development in Practice, we offer a number of contributions on the subject how NGOs can best contribute to expanding the options available to people whose interests have usually been ignored in setting the development agenda. Michael Edwards and David Hulme discuss a range of ways in which NGOs, whether through funding or operational programmes, have sought to enhance the impact of their development work. Rightly cautioning against blanket prescriptions for `scaling up' successful intervention, their message is that NGOs need to have a clear sense of their own overall purpose in order to make wise -- and accountable -- strategic choices: neither growth nor smallness can be virtues in themselves. Following on from this, Jon Lane describes how a UK-based NGO worked painstakingly alongside a quasi-governmental counterpart organisation in Nepal. In making institution-building as well as service delivery a declared aim, the international NGO has also succeeded in phasing itself out of the programme. This is indeed a rare occurrence; and the discussion has its counterpoint in the Technical Note by Alan Fowler on the issues facing international NGOs in decentralising their organisational structures. Such decisions, he finds, are often taken in a piecemeal fashion -- and while they may expand some programme options, they may well limit others.
State exclusion of the poor majority from full representation in public debate was a major issue during a decade of war in the Central American republic of El Salvador. Yet in spite of extreme political repression, people have developed their own forms of democratic representation. Salvadorean NGOs have become experienced in supporting grassroots initiatives for survival -- or what, in an earlier issue, Linda Agerbak described as 'doing development in conflict'. In the context of the Peace Accords signed in January 1992, Francisco Alvarez Solis and Pauline Martin present a timely analysis of the issues facing the NGO sector in the transition from war to reconstruction. They contend that, unless a broad-based social consensus is developed, the cycle of violence will not be broken.
In a more general discussion, Ignacio de Senillosa points to principles common to NGOs and alternative social movements. In identifying a commitment to popular participation as the underlying philosophy, he sets the relationships between development NGOs and their specific constituencies in a broader context; and suggests that NGOs, wherever they are based, must engage with movements representing the dispossessed in their own societies if they are to be effective in supporting those elsewhere.
Deborah Eade
Oxfam (United Kingdom and Ireland)
March 1992
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