Miklos Marschall *
Transparency InternationalNovember 1, 2002
Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) or NGOs – as the most active agents of civil society – have crucial advantages as well as serious weaknesses vis-a-vis government organisations and businesses. These can broadly be divided into the categories of "legitimacy" and "effectiveness". The latter includes qualities such as flexibility, grassroots experience, and mobility, while the former would include public trust, accountability, and representation.
Freedom and Flexibility
As we know, freedom is conducive to creativity. NGOs are less bound by rules, traditions, interests, and procedures than government officials. Therefore, NGOs can more easily engage in social ventures, untested enterprises, and projects involving considerable risks. If they wish, NGOs can go against public opinion much longer than elected officials, who are more bound by their constituency or electorate. NGOs can be much more creative in bringing together cross-sectoral alliances and issue-related ad hoc coalitions than can governments and their agencies. A great deal of freedom derives from the fact that the majority of NGOs are, by their very nature, single-issue organisations, which enables them to concentrate their resources on that single issue without much compromise and without trade-offs. A politician must balance among competing interests. He or she must be ready to compromise and make trade-offs all the time, if he or she wants to be reelected.
Trust and Legitimacy
Since NGOs are often driven by issues the public considers to be worthy causes, as has been the case with Transparency International, NGOs generally enjoy a good reputation and trust among the public. In many cases, the independence of NGOs from business interests and government influence gives them high standing in terms of uncompromised moral and professional authority. Impartial information on controversial issues, from human rights violations to corruption, is more likely to be expected from an independent NGO than from a government agency or a business corporation. The latter might have other interests than "the truth, nothing but the truth." In their monitoring and watchdog role, NGOs have a comparative advantage because of their professional and moral authority. Of course, we all know how fragile and vulnerable that trust can be. Many years are needed for NGOs to build up a good reputation, and it takes one bad move to lose it.
Grassroots Experience
Especially in the development industry, NGOs with grassroots experience can be very valuable partners for government agencies and businesses. They can provide vital linkages between local communities and funding agencies because both partners trust them. NGOs can provide development and aid agencies with vital feedback about what works on the ground and what does not. NGOs with local roots can mobilise indigenous resources otherwise unavailable for development projects.
Mobility and Swiftness
Thanks to easy access to information, and the capability to store, manage, and disseminate it with unprecedented speed, NGOs have gained very visible power in mobilising public opinion. There is a perfect match between information technology and the way in which horizontal NGO networks communicate. With the help of new technology, virtual communities emerge along interest lines and with affinities that cross geographic, political, and cultural borders. People from across the globe can ally and re-ally quickly with distant colleagues on issues they care about. Mobility and swiftness are crucial resources for NGOs in positioning civil society in the global (and local) public policy arena. Ironically, those attributes that constitute strengths for NGOs can turn out to be weaknesses as well. On one hand, freedom, mobility, and swiftness make the day-to-day operation of NGOs easier and more efficient. On the other hand, these features may raise legitimate questions about responsibility, mandate, constituency, accountability, and sustainability.
Representation: Myths and Misconceptions
Mandate and responsibility are cornerstones of any good organisation. NGOs, and any other citizen groups engaged in public policy deliberations, must be very clear about two things:
1. What is their mandate?
2. Who they are responsible to?
Too often, we see various groups claiming to speak "on behalf of the people," as alternatives to politicians and political parties. These generalisations, the "we the people" type of claims are not just false and misleading, they can undermine the credibility and seriousness of NGOs as well. In addition, these claims suggest that politicians and public officials do not act "on behalf of the people", and they, en bloc, are morally inferior to citizen activists. Although we all know corrupt and immoral public officials, the generalisation is false and unfair.It is important to understand that civil society is complementary, not a rival, to representative democracy, and participatory democracy goes hand in hand with representative democracy. Civil society is about participation, while parliamentary democracy is about representation. The civic politics of citizen participation and the parliamentary "party politics" of representation have a healthy dynamic of both complementarity and tension. Citizen participation carries its own self-originated legitimacy; it does not need to borrow legitimacy from representation.
The conclusion I want to get to is the following: It is what it does, and not representation, that makes an NGO legitimate. NGOs and their networks are legitimised by the validity of their ideas, by the values they promote, and by the issues they care about.
Unlike public officials, NGO leaders are not accountable to an electorate. On one hand, that limits their mandate. They cannot claim overall representation. On the other hand, this kind of "independence" from the electorate gives them the freedom, flexibility, and space, which constitute the "comparative advantages" of NGOs in national and global governance.
In plain words, we need civil society organisations not because they "represent the people"; we need them because through them we can get things done better. Frankly, that is why I have some reservations about ideas like the "People's Assembly", a parallel convention "of the people" as opposed to the UN General Assembly. I am also skeptical about national and local "civil parliaments". Ideas about a special "civil chamber" of parliaments in order to "represent " civil society also raise serious questions. In my judgment, these concepts misunderstand the real nature of civil society. They not only confuse participation with representation; by proposing parallel or shadow political structures, they can also undermine the institutions of representative democracy. Fair elections, responsible parliaments, and good, efficient governments cannot be replaced by civic activism.
Parochialism
By their very nature, most NGOs are driven by, and focused on, a single issue. In most cases, it is a strong emotional motivation that compels people to take action. Personal commitments and emotional motivations are the most important resources NGOs can mobilise. The passion and strength that come from strong belief in a cause can multiply the impact of any citizen action. In some cases, however, the same passion can result in a "tunnel vision" or narrow-mindedness that can hinder the long-term success of an NGO. Single-issue NGOs tend to judge everything by how their particular interests are affected.
Accountability
Whether we like it or not, there are some trade-offs between freedom and flexibility on the one hand, and accountability and responsibility on the other. While public officials are accountable to their electorate, and business leaders to their shareholders, to whom are civil society leaders accountable? The easy answer is that it is the "stakeholders" to whom an NGO owes responsibility. But, who are the stakeholders and how do they exercise their oversight? Even if we can come up with some reasonable answers about clients, partners, members, funders, groups an NGO might work with or for, we know that the relations between an NGO and its stakeholders are often loose and difficult to define. Accountability of politicians and corporate managers vis-a-vis their constituency is more direct, contractual, and time-bound. Voters and shareholders have more control and sanction over what governments and businesses do than the constituency of an NGO will ever have over its activities. The varied nature of accountability reflects the different role and functions of governments, businesses, and civil society organisations. The best way NGOs can make up the natural "accountability gap" is to generate public trust by full transparency and high standards of performance.
This article draws upon "From States to People: Civil Society and Its Role in Governance" (Marschall, Miklos, 1999, in Civil Society at the Millennium, CIVICUS-Kumarian Press)
About the Author: Dr Miklos Marschall is Executive Director of Transparency International (TI) for East and Central Europe. Before joining TI, from 1994 through 1998, he was the founding executive director of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, a global network of NGOs and foundations to promote civil society. Between 1991 and 1994, he served as deputy mayor of Budapest, Hungary. Dr Marschall was a Fulbright Visiting Fellow in 1988-1989 at Yale University. He graduated as an economist from Karl Marx University of Economic Sciences in Budapest in 1977. He received his doctorate from the same university
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