IGCF

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• تعليقين على Development NGOs: Arm of the state or part of civil society?
• يونيو 12, 2024

Clearly, NGOs are seen by global observers of development and change as a major contributor to the “miracle” of development in Bangladesh. Strategically and structurally, this reputation is two-edged, especially with regards to rights and entitlements, access to support services, and the meaning of citizenship. The reliance upon donors in the early decades after liberation has also been a crucial part of the equation, as they reacted to a “weak” state by funding NGOs and arguably reinforcing state weakness in the process, fracturing or bypassing the contract between state and society, and perhaps unwittingly undermining aspects of democracy and governance.

This potential judgement needs to be tested against ideas about civil society. The term “NGO” can embrace a wide range of organisations. Just because they are non-government, does that necessarily allocate them to “civil society”? If we define institutions of civil society as a moderating force on absolute state power, providing important democratic functions between periodic elections, then many NGOs would not qualify for “civil society” inclusion. Many charities, philanthropic foundations, and service delivery organisations are then better understood as not-for-profit rather than not-for-government. And in that sense, they are private sector institutions, only distinguished from, say, banks by having social objectives rather than for-profit ones. Of course, they may exist as living embodiments of state critique, as for example food banks in the UK. Their “doing” rather than “saying” implies criticism of state or government failure. In Bangladesh, it is common to use the term “development NGO” to describe them.

If only real practice was so categorically simple! NGOs have their own histories and over time can emit mission creep or goal displacement. Might we say that BRAC used to have a more mixed mission than it does now, that once it was more in civil society than it is now?