Conservatives and liberals agree that globalization is hastening civil society’s coming of age. Liberals consider civil society the only countervailing force against an unresponsive, corrupt state and exploitative corporations that disregard both environmental issues and human rights. Meanwhile, conservatives celebrate the awakening of civil society as proof of the beneficial effects of globalization for the development of democracy. Thus, in the debate on

development and the state, left and right appear to converge on the side of civil society. In advancing this proposition, the dynamic rise of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is offered as proof of the self-organizing capacity of civil society and the consequent redundancy of the state.

The global phenomenon of NGOs reflects the new policy consensus that these groups are de facto agents of democracy rather than end-products of a thriving democratic culture. This is evident in the astonishing speed with which NGOs have emerged in countries on the verge of establishing democracies. The leading role ascribed to NGOs foretells a reworking of democracy in ways that coalesce with global capitalist interests. Global policy institutions are actively enlisting NGOs in the economic reform process, but in doing so, they undercut their popular role as forces of democraticization.

Current debate on the role of NGOs points to the dangers of replacing the state as the representative of democracy. Given expanding market economies and shrinking states, NGOs fill a growing void by responding to the needs and demands of the poor and marginalized sections of society. Pointing to this emergent trend, development analysts caution that, unlike governments and state bureaucracies, there are no mechanisms by which NGOs can be made accountable to the people they serve. Instead, analysts suggest that a balanced partnership between states and NGOs can best serve the interests of society.

Much of the current discussion on NGOs focuses on issues of improving NGO accountability, autonomy, and organizational effectiveness. However, as Robert Hayden’s recent essay in the Harvard International Review (“Dictatorships of Virtue?” Summer 2002) illustrated, NGO autonomy is a mirage that obscures the interests of powerful states, national elites, and private capital. If NGO autonomy is indeed a myth, the more relevant task at hand is to understand the nature of developing states’ dependency on NGOs as well as the effects on development and democracy.

The evolution of community based organizations (CBOs) is illustrative of the changed environment in which NGOs operate and the grave implications of the new scenario for development, democracy, and political stability. CBOs are locally based organizations seen as the champions of “bottom up” or “pro-people” development. They have been particularly vulnerable to the unexpected patronage of donor agencies. CBOs emerged in the post-World War II period between the 1960s and 1980s in response to the failure of developmental states to ensure the basic needs of the poor. For the most part, the leaders of CBOs were socially conscious middle class citizens, many of whom had been active in women’s or radical left movements of the post-independence period but later became disenchanted with leftist political parties and movements. The CBOs promoted a “development with social justice” approach, and established political rights and awareness campaigns alongside health and livelihood projects.

Donor NGOs such as the United Kingdom’s Oxfam were eager to fund CBOs directly because these organizations were more committed and effective in reaching the poor than were the governments of developing countries. The nature of their work requires CBOs to interact with local communities on a daily basis, building relationships of cooperation and trust to understand local needs and tailor projects that respond to those needs. Consequently, CBOs tend to have intimate working relations with the people of the community, some of whom are paid staff of the CBO. The work of numerous such activists and organizations in India—which political scientist Rajni Kothari identified as “non-party political formations”—was looked upon suspiciously by the state.

This early history of CBOs signified the birth of pluralist democratic cultures in many developing countries but has been ignored in the current policy environment characterized by free market reform and the dismantling of the social democratic state apparatus. With the imposition of structural adjustment programs and neoliberal economic policies in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, CBOs have become useful and even essential to the functioning of international donor institutions. The lack of state infrastructure, combined with the decline in state entitlements to the poor, has led donor agencies to channel greater amounts of aid to CBOs and NGOs rather than to state governments. In fact, the Financial Times reported in July 2001 that the United Kingdom is increasingly inclined to fund locally based NGOs directly, bypassing its own NGOs such as Oxfam.

The parallel between a “minimalist” state and the exponential increase in community development NGOs has led development theorist Geoff Wood to conclude that the phenomenon is analogous to “franchising the state.” Financial institutions both recommend the withdrawal of state support from the social sector and allocate aid to community-based NGOs for those very same social services. This phenomenon indicates that the expansion of the NGO sector has been externally induced by foreign policy decisions. This dual policy of aid institutions undermines the credibility of NGOs, formed during their early community-based operations, as homegrown constituents of a thriving political culture, independent of patronage from state and international institutions. Their dependence on external funding and compliance with funding agency targets raise doubts about whether their accountability lies with the people or with funding agencies.

The Evolution of CBOs

This influx of money, combined with pressure to lead when the state is absent, has forced NGOs and CBOs in particular to restructure their operations to suit the new partnership with First World donor agencies. In this process, the organizational ethic that distinguishes CBOs as democratic and more representative of the popular will than other types of NGOs is being dismantled. CBOs have an active membership base among the particular community in which they work, be it urban slum-dwellers or poor farmers. These “target” or “client” groups at the local level are themselves involved in decision-making processes and provide organizational direction often through a complex tiered system that involves members from the smallest unit (such as village or hamlet) to the larger district level. This form of direct democracy enthralls donor agencies but also inconveniences them. On the one hand, it locates the unique strengths of NGOs, which, as outlined by the World Bank in 1998, include “their ability to reach poor communities and remote areas, promote local participation, operate at low cost, identify local needs, build on local resources.” On the other hand, direct democracy is inconvenient to international donor agencies because of its “limited replicability, self-sustainability, managerial and technical capacity, narrow context for programming, and politicization.”