NGO Incentives
Sebastian Mallaby writes about non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Foreign Policy: "NGOs: Fighting Poverty, Hurting the Poor".
The article is built around three entertaining case studies of NGO reactions to development projects; the most important is the story of how NGOs derailed a World Bank loan for a Chinese poverty project.
Mallaby argues that some NGOs have incentives that cause their interests to diverge from those of those of the poor:
- "The most common reaction to this sort of story is that the bank must communicate better with its critics and learn how to compromise with them. Unfortunately, this prescription is naive. It presumes the critics are open to compromise. But campaigning NGOs, as distinct from those with real development programs in the field, almost have to be radical. If they stop denouncing big organizations, nobody will send them cash or quote them in the newspapers. Partly for this reason, and partly out of a likeable conviction that the status quo is never good enough, most NGOs do not have an off switch. You can do everything possible to meet them halfway, but they will still demonstrate outside your building. Of course, there will be grown-up groups like Oxfam, World Vision, or the World Wildlife Fund that may accept your olive branch. But they will be the exceptions, and they may cooperate only cautiously. They don�t want to be the next target for the radicals...
...In many of the world�s rich capitals, and especially in Washington, public policy is decided by a bewildering array of interest groups campaigning single-mindedly for narrow goals. A similar army of advocates pounds upon big international institutions like the bank, demanding they bend to particular concerns: no damage to indigenous peoples, no harm to rain forests, nothing that might threaten human rights, or Tibet, or democratic values. However noble many of the activists� motives, and however flawed the big institutions� record, this constant campaigning threatens to disable not just the World Bank but regional development banks and governmental aid organizations such as the U.S. Agency for International Development. If this takes place, the world may lose the potential for good that big organizations offer: to rise above the single-issue advocacy that small groups tend to pursue and to square off against humanity�s grandest problems in all their hideous complexity.
- "Time after time, feisty Internet-enabled groups make scary claims about the iniquities of development projects. Time after time, Western publics raised on stories of World Bank white elephants believe them. Lawmakers in European parliaments and the U.S. Congress accept NGO arguments at face value, and the government officials who sit on the World Bank�s board respond by blocking funding for deserving projects."
Mallaby is a Washington Post columnist, and author of a new biography of World Bank president James Wolfensohn (the article is taken from the biography). I posted on the biography a few days ago: "Who will be the next President of the World Bank".
I learned about this from "Arts & Letters Daily".
P.S. Oct 27: Mallaby tells a story about efforts by the International Rivers Network (IRN) to block a dam in Uganda. The IRN responds here: "IRN Response to Sebastian Mallaby�s Attacks on NGOs". Michael Stastny at Mahalanobis thought to track this down. His post is here: "NGOs: Fighting Poverty, Hurting the Poor ".
Comments