By Peter Wahl
Describing recent trends in international civil society, this is a shortened translation of an article published in the German quarterly „Peripherie" N° 71- 1998
Contents:
The democratic ambivalence of NGOs
The grassroots phase
Grassroots democracy is falling apart
The NGO transnationals
The Network Guerrilla
Elements of an emancipatory strategy in the international NGO community
The involvement of NGOs into international negotiations is reaching a new stage. On the background of an increasing hegemony crisis of the neo-liberal paradigm there are increasing attempts by international institutions and national governments to increase acceptance of their policies. Even institutions like the WTO the Commission of the European Union which were by now resistant towards participation of NGOs are now seeking a "dialogue with civil society."
This constitutes new challenges for NGOs, as the "offensive of smile" is ambiguous. The question is whether such a dialogue ends up in co-option and instrumentalisation of NGOs or whether it could contribute to the development and strengthening of alternatives. Simplistic answers either in one, or in the other direction will not be possible. Probably a case by case approach will be necessary. However, there is a need for an analysis of the different actors - including the NGOs - in the context of the present historical conjuncture and an in-depth strategy discussion among NGOs. The following reflections want to contribute to such a discussion.
The democratic ambivalence of NGOs
Many sociological studies have been dedicated to the phenomenon: the rise of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to be the new stars in the skies of international civil society. Against the background of the increasing erosion of democracy in the context of neoliberal globalisation, the majority of those studies focus on key question whether NGOs are able to help forming the emerging system of multilateral regulation according to democratic structures - and if they can, how?
In contrast to far-reaching expectations assigning NGOs the role of a "fifth pillar" (next to legislature, jurisdiction, executive and media) within a system of "global governance" (MESSNER 1998), the potential of NGOs to promote democratization seems to be restricted to create transparency, publicity and counter-publicity and to feed public debates with alternative expertise. As alternative elites NGOs could constitute one element next to others in an international system of "checks and balances" of different interests. Further expectations, however, are unrealistic - at least for now. (WAHL 1996)
According to numerous authors, it is not even desirable to assign NGOs a more outstanding role because from a democratic point of view there is also a dark side to the NGO-phenomenon: the lack of democratic legitimacy compared to governments based on fair and free elections. There is a broad consensus that NGOs have restricted legitimacy and therefore operate in a vacuum of legitimization. (MESSNER 1998). Elements of their restricted legitimacy are however: feedback by members, the potential to mobilize donors and supporters of political campaigns, roots in social movements and acceptance proven by opinion polls. Nevertheless, it is obvious that this cannot substitute the legitimacy of parliaments and governments which are democratically elected by the sovereign.
On the other hand, the lack of legitimacy should not be overrated. Serious NGOs never claimed to substitute governments or change the system of a representative democracy simply into a participative democracy. Nevertheless, the participation of NGOs - and not only NGOs- could be a democratic element complementary to the mechanisms of a representative democracy. Besides, the argument that NGOs lack legitimacy is often used to generally deny NGOs any right of participation. However, in reality the rules of representative democracy do not work in the ideal way as they are presented in the school-books neither, and they are challenged by vested interests - in particular powerful economic interests. Therefore NGOs, whether scarcely legitimized or not legitimized at all, are certainly not the predominant threat to democracy. NGOs needn't be defensive as long as, for instance, small group of business without any democratic legitimization whatsoever, are able to influence important political decisions and affects society far more effectively than all NGOs combined.
Another problematic aspect of NGOs with regard to democratic principles are the internal structures of NGOs. On one hand, the ties to members are an element of (restricted) legitimacy, on the other hand this kind of legitimacy is only given when the membership is very large. Most NGOs however, have no more than a few hundreds of members, many have less or no members at all.
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The grassroots phase
The preparatory meetings for the UN Conference on Environment and Development 1992 in Rio de Janeiro (UNCED) - there were four so-called PrepComs (preparatory committees), each of which being a conference with some hundred participants - and UNCED were the first time for NGOs to have a major appearance at a world conference.
[...]
The situation was new both for the governments and the NGOs. The NGO community was more or less unstructured at the time and underwent a long and difficult process of self-organisation trying to build a horizontal network based on grassroots elements. The idea was to enable as many NGOs to participate and to be heard.
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All in all the process strongly resembled to similar processes of self-organization in the early phase of the student movements in the late 60s. Evidently there was a strong need for a democratic regulation of the internal relations of the NGO community, as shown by the discussion about the draft of an NGO "Code of Conduct". (ROY 1992)
Even the problem of the different access to resources was taken into consideration (at least regarding North-South relations). For example, the treaty on NGO cooperation and division of resources, which is part of a package of around 30 alternative texts to the Agenda 21, intended to "share at least 1 % of our annual budget with other members of the NGO community"
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Grassroots democracy is falling apart
In the course of the Rio process this approach was more and more abandoned. Instead, a more pragmatic approach was pushed through, which did not reflect the NGO community's internal problems with democratic principles any longer.
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The crucial point however was that the dynamics of political and cultural diversities were underestimated. In opposition to the slogan "diversity is our strength", diversity was perceived as weakness and as annoying. The contradicting interests, resulting from a variety of identities, could not be conciliated, for example according to a model of democratic parliaments on a national level, with an institutionalized majority and opposition. Contradictions exist between:
-NGOs from the North and the South
-"moderate" and "radical" NGOs
-NGOs oriented towards lobbying or towards movement
-Anglo-Saxon and romantic political cultures
-rich and poor NGOs
-large and small NGOs
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This is why numerous NGOs gave up international cooperation. Others continue to operate, but they have to do so in an unstructured sector, characterized by almost anarchical and/or market conditions concerning democratic procedures. In the absence of a democratic set of rules, informal hierarchies and asymmetric, competitive and hegemonial structures emerged comparable to an unregulated market.
As a result, some NGOs which continue to operate on an international level, focus on strengthening their own organization and position. Political and/or thematic alliances continue to exist between NGOs or NGO networks, but they are pragmatic, temporary and restricted to single issues as well as restricted to a manageable number of partners, which are carefully selected.
The NGO transnationals
After having failed to create an international network in accordance to grassroots principles, a number of large NGOs decided to transnationalize their structures or to speed up this process in cases where it had already started before and they began to operate as "global players" in order to be able to act in different places at the same time worldwide .
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A number of large environmental organizations in the U.S. have acted as the avant-garde of transnationalization. Above all, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY (TNC) systematically founded branches in different Latin-American countries. (GUDYNAS 1994). These branches are managed by a local staff while receiving funds and know-how from the headquarters in the U.S. Greenpeace International and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) from the very beginning were designed with the intention to establish a net of international branches. Especially Greenpeace operates very systematically in this respect and proved to be strategically far-sighted by opening offices in Russia and China. Since the organization does not depend on members, it is quite easy for Greenpeace to establish branches controlled by a central office that can provide the necessary financial means and build a homogenous "corporate identity" worldwide. Like no other NGO, Greenpeace resembles an economic "global player". Greenpeace turns into "McGreenpeace".
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The THIRD WORLD NETWORK (TWN) is another very special example of a transnational NGO. The TWN is the only real transnational NGO which was founded in a developing country (Malaysia), managed to establish itself in other developing countries, both in Latin America and Africa, and above all operates very successfully. The TWN strongly builds its expansion strategy on prominent figures from the relevant countries, often scientists. For example, the organization of the Indian winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize, Vandana Shiva, is member of the TWN. The reputation and authority of these personalities in combination with qualified analyses - and not to forget the bonus of being from the South - enabled the TWN to play a leading role in the international NGO-community, many times winning conflicts with large transnational NGOs from the North.
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The Network Guerrilla
On April 30, 1998 The Financial Times published an article under the headline "The Network Guerrilla". The article dealt with the international NGO campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), which had been negotiated in the OECD for three years. The campaign against the MAI demonstrated the initial stages of a new development in the way NGOs operate, possibly turning out to be an alternative to the transnationalization of large NGOs which is quite problematic from a democratic point of view.
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Even if the failure of the negotiations on the MAI in the OECD is not only, not even primarily, due to NGO protests, the MAI represents a classical case of the potential of NGOs to create transparency and publicity around international negotiation processes.
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The victory of the NGOs in the battle for public opine regarding the MAI, even if only preliminary, shows an interesting trend in the NGO community: The MAI does not - unlike international agreements on environmental or development issues - belong to the so-called soft issues on the international agenda, which were often pushed aside after Rio, but it belongs to the „ "hard" economic issues. The same is true for the institutional dimension. The OECD, as an association of the industrialized countries, is an exclusive "Club of the Wealthy", that follows a hard-line neo-liberal course. With the MAI the NGOs did not get caught in the trap of insignificance, like in the numerous politically marginal committees of the UN they have participated in since Rio.
The anti-MAI-campaign has been very interesting also for another reason: the success of the NGOs was not achieved by large, transnational NGOs, but by a lose network of both, small NGOs together with some large, transnational NGOs. The latter, however, did not play a leading role in the campaign. Against this background, the term "network guerrilla" is well chosen and more than adequate, as it reflects the efficiency of decentralized and flexible structures with a high rate of non-formalized communication and decision making. The success of the MAI campaign does not confirm those NGOs that regard centralization and a massive input of resources as important political tools to reach their goals..
Nevertheless, the success of the MAI campaign cannot be reduced to the organizational structure of the participating NGOs. Far more important was that the campaign did not aim at improving a project promoted by the government, but classified the agreement as part of the globalisation process and rejected it completely. Obviously it met a vague but growing uneasiness of the public with the globalisation process. This is the secret of its success. In France, Canada and the U.S. the mobilization of the NGOs lead to mass protests against the MAI.
The reaction of the other side shows that the anti-MAI-campaign exceeded the usual single-issue character of NGO campaigns and met the core of the present historic situation. After suspending the negotiations on the MAI, the OECD presented a study in which it expressed concerns about the decreasing acceptance of the globalisation process among citizens. It came to the conclusion that the "benefits of globalisation" needed to be communicated more effectively.
Regarding the future strategy of NGOs the lessons to be learned from the anti-MAI campaign are:
-With the issues of neo-liberalism and globalisation, NGOs have picked out a fundamental social problem as a central campaign issue and have overcome their traditional single-issue projects.
-Refusing the MAI instead of "improving" it, did not harm the image of the campaign in the media and the public, at the contrary, the TUAC (Trade Union Advisory Committee at the OECD) and others which had taken a "moderate and constructive" position have to acknowledge that their strategy remained below the possibilities.
-NGOs are politically successful when their issues move and mobilize the public
-Loose networks turned out to be efficient; centralized and hierarchical structures were not necessary, and maybe even would have been counterproductive.
-Small and flexible NGOs played an important role
Elements of an emancipatory strategy in the international NGO community
