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Pluto Press - William E. DeMars

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254 pages

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A propos
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Extrait

Description

Non-Governmental Organisations and their networks are proliferating in all regions of the world. They address every transnational issue from population to peace, human rights to species rights, genocide to AIDS. Supporters claim NGOs are effective in achieving their goals, while detractors counter that NGO power is paltry compared to governments and corporations.

Challenging both views, DeMars irreverently reveals the political claims implicit in every transnational NGO. They are best conceptualised, he argues, not in terms of either principles or power, but through the partners they make in transnational society and politics. NGOs and transnational networks institutionalise conflict as much as cooperation, and reshape states and societies, often inadvertently. NGOs have overthrown dictators, provided life support for collapsed states, and reengineered the family. Their historical origins contrast sharply with current realities, and show signs of radical change in the future.
Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Your NGO Starter Kit

2. Partners in Conflict: A Structural Theory of NGOs

3. Ironic Origins of Transnational Organising

4. NGOs vs. Dictators: Argentina’s Dirty War Revisited

5. Dancing in the Dark: NGOs and States in Former Yugoslavia

6. Engineering Fertility

7. Changing Partners, Shaping Progress: The Future of NGOs

Appendix A: Active NGOs Discussed in This Book

Selected Bibliography

Index

Sujets

Political Process

Political Science

Informations

Publié par	Pluto Press
Date de parution	20 avril 2005
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781849641432
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,6250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

NGOs and Transnational Networks Wild Cards in World Politics

William E. DeMars

P Pluto Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI

First published 2005 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

www.plutobooks.com

The right of William E. DeMars to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN ISBN

0 7453 1906 8 hardback 0 7453 1905 X paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England

Acknowledgements

Introduction 1: Your NGO Starter Kit 2: Partners in Conﬂict: A Structural Theory of NGOs 3: Ironic Origins of Transnational Organizing 4: NGOs versus Dictators: Argentina’s Dirty War Revisited 5: Dancing in the Dark: NGOs and States in Former Yugoslavia 6: Engineering Fertility 7: Changing Partners, Shaping Progress: The Future of NGOs Appendix: Active NGOs Discussed in This Book

Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Table 1.1 Table 2.1

TABLES

Your NGO Starter Kit A Structural Theory of NGOs in World Politics

1 6 34 64 90

120 143 162 188

195 227 244

33 62

wle

Along the way I have incurred many debts, in the ﬁrst instance to the many midlevel NGO professionals on several continents who have explained to me the complexities and paradoxes of their work. My admiration for their courage to act is undiminished by my revealing what I take to be the inadvertent consequences of their actions. The ideas here have germinated in intellectual dialogue with many, most particularly Georges AbiSaab, Bertha Amisi, David Forsythe, Pierre Gassman, Tony Lang, Gil Loescher, George Lopez, Mark Peterson, Jackie Smith, Alex de Waal, and Thomas Weiss. My students at the American University in Cairo, the University of Notre Dame, Earlham College, and Wofford College have helped me by their experience and research as well as their questions and confusion. I thank the Feris Foundation of America, Refugee Policy Group, American University in Cairo, the University of Notre Dame, the Institute for World Politics, Sophia University in Tokyo, and Wofford College for supporting research travel and writing. While acknowledging the help of others, I accept full responsibility for the interpretations in this book and for any errors of fact that remain. Finally, I am grateful to my wife, Therese, for both her patience and welljustiﬁed impatience as the project developed, but most of all for her companionship along the way which makes the whole adventure worth having.

Introduction

Observing world politics at the beginning of the twentyrst century, international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seem to be everywhere, and they often work in mysterious ways. If omnipotence remains yet out of reach, it is not for lack of effort, since NGOs cumulatively claim to be able to do almost anything in world politics, from feeding famine victims and protecting endangered species, to eliminating nuclear weapons and AIDS, to democratizing Russia and the Arab world. NGOs are both prominent and obscure in world politics. They are prominent, for example, in organizing massive street protests 1 in February 2003 against the U.S. War on Terror. NGOs are also obscure, for example, as shadow partners in international legal maneuvers. Chilean General Augusto Pinochet found himself stranded in London for more than a year—from November 1998 to January 2000—while the British government considered whether to extradite him to Spain. Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon had charged Pinochet with crimes against humanity for acts of torture and killing after the 1973 coup, which overthrew Chilean President Salvador Allende. While the affair was ostensibly a negotiation between two governments, the deeper political process was catalyzed at every stage by human rights NGOs. Operating largely behind the scenes, a network of NGOs had initiated the original indictment in Spain, and promoted Pinochets extradition across Europe and North America. However, Amnesty International—the prominent human rights NGO based in London—had penetrated the case so deeply that a decision by a panel of British law lords was reversed when personal links by 2 one of the lords to Amnesty were revealed. Britain nally denied the extradition and returned Pinochet to Chile for health reasons. Nevertheless, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch declared, The Pinochet decision was a wakeup call to dictators around the world. If you torture somebody today, you can get arrested for it tomorrow 3 almost anywhere. NGOs are actively engaged at both the top and the bottom of world politics. At the top, the U.S. National Security Council guiding American foreign policy consisted of 99 policy assistants in 1999, more than a third of whom were on loan from nonprot think

2 NGOs and Transnational Networks

4 tanks and NGOs. During the Rwandan genocide from April to July 1994, Alison Des Forges of Human Rights Watch briefed both the UN Security Council in New York and the U.S. National Security Council in Washington, DC with realtime information on the course of the 5 killings. The bottom of world politics is so densely populated with grassroots NGOs operating in every region that counting them has become a cottage industry among scholars and ofcials. For example, Charles William Maynes, president of the Eurasia Foundation, reports that 80,000 NGOs have somehow sprung up in Russia since the 6 demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali pleaded for help from tens of thousands of grassroots NGOs to persuade member nations to support United Nations activities: I wish to state, as clearly as possible—I need the mobilizing power 7 of NGOs. The NGO organizational form has become so irresistible that a broad assortment of notables, missionaries, and miscreants are creating their own NGOs. Middlepower governments are privatizing some of their diplomatic functions to NGOs. For example, International Crisis Group, an early warning NGO headed by former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, strives to head off emerging conicts by collecting and analyzing information whose sensitivity ranges 8 somewhere between investigative reporting and strategic intelligence. Christian churches in Africa undergo NGOization as African clergy rely on networks of international relief and development NGOs for 9 communication, transportation, and general support. At the same time, some of the shadier operators in world politics cloak criminal activities under NGOs to gain the veneer of respectability. Before his mysterious murder in January 2000, Arkan, the Serbian paramilitary leader, indicted war criminal, and smuggler/businessman, founded 10 and supported his own charitable foundation, The Third Child. The U.S. government has frozen the assets of certain international Islamic charities, accusing them of channeling aid to terrorist 11 groups. Top Israeli leaders have been accused of illegally passing 12 foreign campaign donations through nonprot organizations. NGOs do work in mysterious ways. While they sometimes achieve much more than promised, frequently they accomplish much less. Their real signicance is thatNGOs often create inadvertent political consequences whose impact is more important than either success or failure in reaching ofcial goals.The inuence of NGOs in world politics is greater than either their boosters or their detractors claim.

Introduction 3

If NGOs are rarely what they seem, then political analysis of NGOs ought to include a measure of skepticism, even irreverence, concerning the sacred global norms they claim to serve. For example, NGOs are conventionally categorized according to the norms articulated in their mandates. Government ofcials, international organizations, scholars, journalists, and the general public all follow this lead and conceptualize NGOs within issueareas of related normative goals, such as human rights, humanitarian relief, or environmentalism. With a dose of agnosticism introduced into our internationalist faith, we may nd it conceivable that these issuearea boundaries are not the best points of departure for analyzing the politics of NGOs. This book aims to analyze NGOs across all these issueareas. The point of departure here is not the norms NGOs proclaim, but the structure of transnational action they share, a common structure that forms the basis of seemingly innite tactical variations. Norms and ideas are not disregarded (this is not a materialist analysis), but neither are they taken at face value. This structure of transnational action shared by all NGOs is spelled out in chapter 2. One element of that structure may be touched upon here, however, to indicate the unconventional approach taken in this book. Whatever its issuearea, every NGO articulates a promise of future progress and gives supporters a taste of that promise today. NGOs move people and inuence events as much by evoking a progressive future as by taking action in the present. To make a better futurefeel possible, or at least a bit less impossible, may be enough to sustain an NGO project. For example, Amnesty International and the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina promise a world of universal respect for human rights; CARE, Oxfam, and Save the Children promise a better life for the poor; Greenpeace promises protection for endangered species and ecosystems. With all due respect to these authentic human aspirations, which I happen to share, the NGOs that evoke them take rather tiny steps toward utopia in any particular year or decade. Moreover, at the level of NGO operations, to make even these small steps requires amalgamating the conicting selfinterests of societal and political partners in several countries. One core challenge for NGO professionals, therefore, is to infuse very small steps with very large meanings, and thereby either to transform or obscure the selfinterests of partners. This challenge is to evoke a progressive future and to make that future present today. In this view, the NGO pledging sustainable

4 NGOs and Transnational Networks

development by distributing condoms is attempting something like the sacramental rite of the priest evoking the Kingdom of God, the revolutionary praxis of the agitator prodding history toward the classless society, or the medieval alchemist mixing base ingredients to make gold. And yet—if it would not ruin the magic—one is tempted to ask a few political questions: Who benets from faith in progress in this particular form? What alternate political faith is displaced? What is the impact on local society of importing money, ideas, and international linkages? I would suggest that another metaphor is most apt: NGOs are wild cards in world politics—their impact is up for grabs, and they attract local and global actors who compete, and sometimes cooperate, to play, capture, or neutralize them. As NGOs have proliferated in numbers and inuence, especially in the last decade, a growing body of scholarship has addressed the NGO bloom (see chapter 2). However, many analysts tend to celebrate and promote the NGOs they prole. The tendency by scholars to credit utopian promises based on mundane practices reects the self understanding of NGOs themselves. Such scholarship identies too closely with NGO goals and reiterates in theory the selflegitimating discourse of NGOs. The tunnel vision of such approaches fails to reveal the politics of NGOs in its full range and complexity. This book, in contrast, portrays NGOs and their networks as international institutions in which political conict is inherent, not incidental. Instead of tunnel vision, it cultivates peripheral vision to perceive unintended side effects. The proliferation of NGOs does indeed transform world politics, but often not in the directions that NGO 13 advocates claim. In sum, this book seeks neither to bury NGOs nor to praise them, and still less to reform them. Its purpose, rather, is to understand the actual consequences and uses of NGOs in world politics. Chapter 1 begins with examples of NGO action from several elds, in the form of Your NGO Starter Kit. It spells out the claims and contradictions involved in initiating any international NGO. Specic examples of NGO politics illustrate the need for a fresh analytical approach formulated with greater independence from the worldviews of NGOs themselves. Chapter 2 offers a new structural theory, portraying NGOs as sites of institutionalized political conict at three levels: within themselves as organizations; in the networks they create; and in the regional and global systems they inhabit. Chapter 3 examines historical origins of NGOs prior to 1945, emphasizing the

Introduction 5

religious roots of modern NGOs, the stamp of American government and society on NGO origins, and the shifting norms of progress that NGOs have enacted. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 illustrate three distinct power relationships between state and society embodied by NGOs, the most signicant consequences of which fell outside official NGO goals. Human rights and other NGOs inadvertently transformed the authoritarian regime in Argentina during the 1970s and 1980s (chapter 4). NGOs permeated the wars of Yugoslavias collapse during the 1990s, shaping the conicts by being incorporated in the strategies of all the warring parties and outside powers (chapter 5). Several groups of NGOs are joined in a growing NGO war to reengineer sexual relations, womens fertility, and families on a global scale (chapter 6). Chapter 7 addresses the future of NGOs, including emerging trends of NGO–corporate partnerships, the resurgence of religious identities in NGOs, the posthumanist trend, and NGOs in the War on Terror.

1 Your NGO Starter Kit

“Mister,” he said with a sawdusty sneeze, “I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.” Dr. Seuss,The Lorax,1971

NGOs are increasing in number and inuence in all regions of the 1 world, and across a growing roster of issueareas. The primary geopolitical focus of their normative agendas is to inuence the Third World of former European colonies, and the Second World of former (and remnant) communist states. The broad turn to NGOs reects a largely unexamined faith that they are the most effective vehicles for social and political transformation. Does NGO proliferation necessarily contribute to progressive change? This chapter examines an assortment of NGO claims and discovers some contradictions lying just beneath the surface. NGOs are so numerous, operate in so many countries, and address so many disparate issues that most accounts of NGO politics follow 2 conventional approaches to partition the NGO world for easier study. Four wellworn premises frequently serve. First, NGOs are divided between international agencies based in prosperous Western countries and local or grassroots organizations working directly with the poor or the victimized. Second, much is made of the issueareas that are assumed to be hermetically sealed from inuencing each other. Third, there is a strong assumption that NGO inuence on how the world works follows automatically from NGO participation in formulating global norms in international conferences and treaties. Finally, a sharp distinction is drawn between service NGOs presumed to work in partnership with governments, and advocacy NGOs presumed to challenge government policy and legitimacy. All four premises, which are drawn directly from NGO selfunderstandings, conceal much more than they reveal of the politics of NGOs. NGO cases and vignettes recounted in this chapter illustrate why these conventional premises are illusory and misleading for research. Most observers assume that the best answer to the question What do NGOs do? can be found in their normative principles, that is, in what NGOs say. This assumption is fundamentally misleading for