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Volume 13 Number 5 |
Editorial
Not so very long ago – and well within my own professional lifetime – progressive NGOs would argue that their brand of development work was less about products than about process; that it had less to do with what you or your local counterparts actually achieved than about how you went about doing so; less to do with micro management than with supporting work that was engaged with a wider political project. It was thought to be a legitimate, even necessary, element of the development process to provide a relatively safe environment in which local communities and organisations could experiment – and, yes, sometimes make mistakes. The belief was that ‘the worst risk is the one you never dared to take’, to paraphrase a Latin American proverb. The NGO, as a ‘critical companion’ (compañero crítico), saw itself more as helping such groups to learn from their experiences, and indeed learning together with them, than about eliminating risk. In the 1990s, these ideas fell into disrepute as the new managerialist wave swept through the NGO sector. The emphasis on process had, it was felt, led to sloppy practices and uncertain (or, at least, unproven) results. Hundreds of popular education workshops run by campesino (peasant farmer) organisations to discuss issues such as agrarian reform, for instance, had seldom influenced rural development policies or improved the material conditions of subsistence farmers. The same was largely true of other areas of work, whether support for human rights organisations, church-based groups, or trade unions whose concrete achievements may not appear to have added up to very much. Such vague or very modest outcomes were incompatible with the responsible management of limited resources, especially when NGO grant funds increasingly came from official agencies. In a context in which aid budgets were not only shrinking but were in many cases facing an active political threat, these donors were impatient to see clear returns on their investment. The result was an obsessive focus on ‘professionalism’, defined in terms of project design, the adoption of formal planning tools, the establishment of clear indicators, financial controls, and M&E systems, and the guarantee of reliable and measurable outputs.
The ‘process versus outcome’ dichotomy was in reality always a false one: no serious NGO ever promoted experimentation or popular education for its own sake, and it would have been pretty irresponsible to fund ill-defined activities justified only by reference to a broad liberation agenda – which is not to say, of course, that this never happened. But today’s neo-developmentalist or desarrollista discourse is far from a liberating one. On the contrary, it tends to wrap both NGOs and their counterparts (or ‘clients’) up in so much technical and bureaucratic red-tape that they can scarcely move, much less think, ‘outside the box’. Little wonder that some observers in the South as well as in the North have concluded that the institutional needs of the NGO now come before those of the organisations they seek to support.
Several of our contributors to this issue of Development in Practice look at the question of how to constitute a proper balance between the two broad approaches. Tina Wallace reports on findings that NGOs’ increased dependence on official funding is rendering them ever more rigid and risk-averse in their practices and deeply anxious about how the donors view their ‘performance’; in other words, as Wallace documents, NGOs are losing many of their most precious qualities. Ricardo Wilson-Grau sets out a basic framework for how NGOs might manage risk in a more strategic fashion. With reference to Tanzania, Vera F. Mkenda-Mugittu argues that the true impact of a development project in terms of gender relations is often to be found ‘between the lines’ rather than in the standard monitoring indicators, which means that aid agencies need to improve their reading skills. Peter Easton, Karen Monkman, and Rebecca Miles describe the experience of a grassroots organisation in Senegal that really has succeeded in influencing cultural attitudes and practices in relation to Female Genital Cutting (FGC) not only at the local village level, but right up to the policy-making structures of government – a true combination of process and outcome, though one whose results could never have been conditioned from the outset. David Hirschmann gives an account of his own experience in trying to apply the more process- and community-oriented approach promoted by Robert Chambers to the realities of consultancy work, in which time is invariably limited and the consultant may not have the benefit of prior experience of the communities, the sectors, or even of the country or region in which they are operating.
With this, the last issue in our current volume, we are delighted to announce a number of developments in store from 2004. First, we are expanding to six issues a year – appearing in February, April, June, August, and November, with one themed double issue in each volume. We will continue to publish a range of articles, shorter papers, and book reviews in each issue; but the November issue will in future be dedicated to a combination of literature reviews, interviews, and round-table discussions, and will also include a comprehensive set of abstracts in translation into French, Portuguese, and Spanish, as well as the index to the volume. Instead of presenting a Book Shelf in each issue, a listing of relevant publications published during the year will appear in each November issue. In making these changes, our aim is to expand our capacity to report on relevant new publications and other resources while also increasing the number of papers we can publish each year.
We kick off 2004 with an exciting double issue on trade unions and NGOs, co-edited with Alan Leather of Public Services International. NGOs are increasingly involved in – or encroaching on, depending on your viewpoint - issues that have traditionally fallen within the natural sphere of union activity. This has understandably given rise to a certain amount of friction and mutual suspicion, though there have also been some fine examples of collaboration between the two sectors. With contributions from leading writers on labour issues, as well as NGO and trade union activists from around the world, this issue promises to be a must-read.
Deborah Eade
Editor
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