By David Lewis
Nonprofit Management and LeadershipFall 1998
Michael Edwards is a leading researcher and practitioner working on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international development issues subjects in which there has been a huge growth of interest during the 1990s. He has a Ph.D. in geography and for the past fifteen years has worked for a variety of development agencies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Between 1984 and 1988, Edwards was Oxfam U.K.'s Regional Representative in Lusaka, Zambia, and until recently was head of research and information at Save the Children Fund (U.K.). He is author and editor of several books on NGOS, including Making a Difference: NGOs and Development in a Changing World (1992), Beyond the Magic Bullet: NGO Performance and Accountability in the Post-Cold War World (1996), and NGOS, States, and Donors: Too Close for Comfort? (1997). Edwards is presently senior adviser on civil society at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. He was interviewed by David Lewis in London in the spring of 1997 about linking research to practice and the future of international nongovernmental organizations.
Lewis: Much of your published work has been about trying to combine theory and practice in the study of NGOs and development problems. Did you establish an interest in NGOs first as a practitioner or as an academic?
Edwards: My interest in bridging the divide between theory and practice originated during my doctoral research in Latin America, where I experienced at firsthand the tension between what was required in academic terms (a contribution to theories of housing and class, which were much in vogue in the mid-1970s) and what people wanted in the barrios I was studying (short-term solutions to problems of housing shortages, rising rents, greedy landlords, and so on). I became convinced that the latter should not be sacrificed to the former, and that a synthesis of the two was likely to lead to both better theory (that is, more empirically informed and tested) and better practice and policy (more analytical and less ad hoc). At the end of my doctoral work I decided to leave academia and apply for jobs in the NGO sector, because I thought such "bridging" would be easier to do from there.
Lewis: How easy or difficult has it been to maintain both approaches, particularly while working for NGOs such as Oxfam or Save the Children, which were probably more interested in usable findings than in research per se?
Edwards: It has not been easy at all! The difficulties of creating and protecting space in NGOs for analytical work, which is self-critical and reasonably rigorous, are well-known and for me this has been a constant effort. But I am certain that the situation is more positive now, on both sides of the fence. Most NGOs have or are beginning to think much more seriously in research terms about their work and to document and analyze it increasingly with colleagues from universities and research institutes. Many academics are already working with NGOs and want to do more work of this kind. It is no longer really an issue of principle but more how to do it in practice. I think this trend will continue over the next decade, by which time this form of coworking will be seen as standard practice. But serious problems remain-mutual suspicions, differences in agendas certainly, and major problems of how to combine rigor with relevance and how to link micro with macro-that pose a challenge to social science as a whole as it emerges gradually from its positivist past. So there is a long way to go. Both personal change and institutional reform are essential to make both NGOs and research institutions more friendly to coworking.
Lewis: In the late 1980s in Britain you were in many ways at the center of an at-times rather acrimonious debate that arose in the development studies world about research and practice when you suggested that academic work on development was of little practical value to those working in the field. Were you surprised at the reactions-both supportive and hostile-that were afforded your article "The Irrelevance of Development Studies?"'
Edwards: Yes, I was surprised! You have to remember that I wrote that article while I was Oxfam's field director in Lusaka, cut off from the literature and the general intellectual ferment in the North. I had no idea what was really going on more broadly in development studies or social science generally, and had read none of the works I should have read that were relevant to the issues I was covering from Fals Borda to Foucault! That's why the article cites none of these authors or trends, even though it clearly covers a lot of the same ground. It was a cry from the heart, a polemic based on personal experience as an NGO worker, not an academic piece. The whole point was to provoke a response. It was only when I returned to the U.K. in mid- 1990 that I realized (from things I read or that people said to me, or from invitations to conferences that were discussing the article and its themes) that it had such a wide circulation and had provoked such a range of reactions. I wasn't surprised by the negative tone of some of them-any polemic will do this and on balance most comments were positive or at least constructively critical. In hindsight, it was just one of those happy coincidences when something you write hits the market at the right time, chimes with the issues of the day, and therefore attracts more attention than usual. It is still probably the most useful thing I have written. If I fell under a bus tomorrow I would die knowing that I had written at least one thing that genuinely helped to move a key debate forward, despite all the criticisms.
Lewis: In the past ten years or so, development agencies and researchers have paid more and more attention to NGOs as crucial actors in the development process. This explosion of interest has perhaps created a set of expectations that in many ways are impossible to fulfill. Has their time now come or do you think this is a passing development fashion and in a few years we will all have moved on to something else?
Edwards: I think it is in the nature of both development agencies and researchers (especially given the increasing links between the two in terms of research funding) to pass from one subject to another. There is nothing inherently wrong with this so long as it represents a genuine attempt to increase our understanding of what is happening in the world and to influence it for the better. But that would mean "layering" one set of issues on top of the other, not abandoning one set completely, which is a danger I see now among both NGOs and academics (for example, abandoning institutional development in favor of microfinance). So yes, I think there is a real danger that NGOs will be a passing fashion-not all NGOs and not in the immediate future, though. I would give it another ten years before the NGO bubble will really burst, and in that time who knows what may happen? My hope is that NGOs will get their acts together sufficiently to carve out an exciting and independent future for themselves as major players in the continuing struggle for a fairer world, and that researchers will continue to work with them for what they have to offer in key debates about equity, sustainability, and so on in the context of a globalizing economy and culture. In other words, I hope that NGOs will be "studied" for what they are achieving, not just for what they are.
Lewis: How do you see the future for northern NGOS? Are they losing their distinctive niche as intermediaries in resource transfers between "the North" and local organizations in "the South"? Many have moved from an operational role to one of capacity building, but this too now seems likely to change as southern NGO capacity increases and official donors fund SNGOs directly.
Edwards: I am convinced that the future for northern NGOs lies in the direction of international alliances and coalitions of agencies working synergistically toward common long-term goals that abandon the donor-recipient relationship in favor of collegial working or authentic partnership. I believe the prime task of these coalitions will be to do whatever is necessary to promote and preserve nonexploitative or at least less exploitative relationships in a world increasingly driven by market economics and related power relations. But clearly what is necessary will vary greatly with context and circumstance-from monitoring the activities of multinationals through experiments with alternative trading and production, through lifestyle changes to more traditional activities in service provision and the provision of funds or expertise. But all these things will be carried out in a radically changed atmosphere that will emphasize collegial working, mutual accountability, democratic governance, and so on. Otherwise I can't see how northern NGOs will resolve the problems they face in terms of accountability, legitimacy, and so on at least if they want to be more than international contractors (and even they will find increasing competition from the commercial sector). The constant strategic reviews that you see now among international NGOs are a sign that they recognize the necessity of change, but most lack the intellectual clarity and courage to see what needs to be done, and to do it.
Lewis: Is the increasing role of NNGOs in relief and emergency work a positive trend or is Alan Fowler's concern about "ladles for the global soup kitchen" closer to the reality?
Edwards: Against this background, the increasing reliance of many NNGOs on emergency work and grants is entirely predictable. Of course, if they can demonstrate a distinctive competence in delivering relief or working in conflict, there is no reason to see this in a negative light-who else will do it? The problem is first that others (the commercial sector again) are increasingly displacing NGOs from this arena on cost grounds and second that the same questions about NNGO performance, accountability, and legitimacy are now being raised in relation to emergency work. The core mission of NNGOs is surely to support the development of indigenous capacity to work in such situations and to encourage local organizations to use that capacity, not to do things for them, however well they can do it. So in time I see the same pressures working to change international NGO emergency work as have surfaced in the longterm development arena. I don't see a long-term operational role as being a viable option for INGOs in the humanitarian field, though few realize this at present. Without emergency grants, most INGOs would have to reduce their staff by 50 percent or more, so the stakes are obviously very high. For that reason, I think change here will be much slower.
Lewis: You are currently interested in NGOs and their relations with the commercial sector. Where do you see this relationship going?
Edwards: I see increasing links between NGOS, markets, and business, not in terms of fundraising (though this is the nature of the relationship at present) but in terms of NGOs influencing economic forces (which means private forces) for the better-working with and within corporate structures in order to bring pressure for less exploitative ways of operating, as I mentioned earlier. This is already happening on a very small scale, with ex-NGO people becoming advisers to multinational corporations (NMCs), with NMCs approaching NNGOs for "certification," and campaigns for fairer trading and better terms for producer groups (such as Christian Aid and Sainsbury's supermarket stores in the U.K.). Clearly, there are dangers of co-optation here, but I think these are manageable. I think the foreseeable future will be dominated by attempts to reshape capitalist processes to reduce their social and environmental costs while not killing incentives to growth-the British New Labour project writ globally! NNGOs could have a key role to play in this process, but this demands major changes of them. Some will rise to this challenge and thrive; others will fall by the wayside. We will eventually come to see the period 1960 to 2000 as an atypical phase during which a particular type of organization-the northern intermediary NGO working internationally-became an important player but then retreated into the background to be replaced by other forms of organization more attuned to the twenty-first century.
Lewis: Thank you.
More Information on the General Analysis of the Role of NGOs
