Congregational Aid: North American Protestant Engagement in International Relief and Development

A review of large North American Protestant congregations (n = 423) engaging in global relief and development, or ‘holistic mission’ (HM), suggests that half engage in HM activities per year, with the majority of those activities focused on human and physical sectors. Most activities are led by religious NGOs or missionaries and about half are short-term. A mix of proximity, poverty, population, and policy variables direct short- and long-term aid. Findings provide a benchmark for enhancing learning and partnerships among churches, NGOs, and development scholars, ultimately enhancing the efficacy of Protestant aid.     

Governance,Representation and International Aid

The growth of the postwar 20th century international aid architecture has generated much debate over the successes and failures of aid, its changing forms and its challenges. This article uses this aid landscape to explore the representational or discursive power and authority of the aid donor over the aid recipient. It suggests that representations about what aid does, its modalities and dispensations reproduce a hegemonic discourse and that representational authority in diagnosing aid’s problems and prescribing solutions resides generally on one side of the aid binary. It thus focuses on the hierarchical or asymmetric relations of power implied by such a binary, on the way development aid in particular has come to shape self-understandings of donors in relation to recipients, and on the discursive labour that enables such a construction. It also explores how the post-Washington consensus on poverty eradication has embedded neoliberal solutions to development. The reproduction of the hegemonic aid discourse is examined in reference to NGOs involved in the dispensing of aid in Southeast Asia by drawing on scholarly literature and field research in Southeast Asia and Washington DC.     

Informing Grassroots Development: The 1994–1995 Peacebuilding Experience in Northern Ghana

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) focused on poverty alleviation play a central role in responding to conflict situations and initiating peacebuilding activities. Following the 1994–1995 conflict in Northern Ghana, development NGOs coordinated a largely effective grassroots peacebuilding effort. However, insights gained from peacebuilding activities have not informed ongoing development efforts, which continue to propose ‘top-down’ strategies. By examining the strengths and limitations of the peace process in Ghana, this article suggests development NGOs apply the grassroots strategies they used for peacebuilding to their ongoing development activities. This analysis is based on data drawn from archival research as well as field interviews with 21 representatives of the state and NGOs, and community and religious leaders.     

Pluralising global governance: Analytical approaches and dimensions

This paper argues that a significant reframing of global poverty is likely to emerge in the next decade as world poverty becomes less about the transfer of aid and more about domestic distribution and thus domestic politics. This proposition is based on a discussion of the shift of much of global poverty towards middle-income countries. There are questions arising related to how countries are classified and to administrative capacities, as well as to domestic political economy, but it is argued that many of the world’s extreme poor already live in countries where the total cost of ending extreme and even moderate poverty is not prohibitively high as a percentage of gdp. By 2020, even on fairly conservative estimates, most of world poverty may be in countries that do have the domestic financial resources to end at least extreme poverty; this could imply a reframing of global poverty.     

The Determinants of Women’s Empowerment in Bangladesh: The Role of Partner’s Attitudes and Participation in Microcredit Programmes

This paper employs data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (2004) to explore how women’s empowerment is related to partner’s attitudes, participation in microcredit programmes and a set of other socio-economic factors. We use a structural equation model with categorical observed variables. We get that participation in microcredit programmes has a positive impact on both the empowerment’s dimensions considered, while partner’s attitudes effect is weaker, proving that gender community norms are likely to be rooted in women’s minds regardless of the partners’ perceptions of women’s status.     

Women in development: A critical analysis

In the early 1970s a general disenchantment with development efforts in Third World countries led to a search for alternative development strategies and a growing awareness that women, like the poor, were peripheral to the development efforts of major aid donors. In 1972 the United Nations designated 1975 as International Women's Year, highlighting the need to involve women in issues of economic development. During the past 20 years the 'women in development' approach, which seeks to recognise and integrate women in aid policies and programmes, has been incorporated into the aid practice of most development agencies. This paper traces the efforts of large aid agencies over the past two decades to integrate women into their aid programmes and discusses the main limitations and weaknesses of the WID approach.     

The Politics of Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Putin’s Russia: Power,Opposition, and the All-Russia People’s Front

Abstract

The beginning of Vladimir Putin’s third term was characterised by the politicisation of corruption. Opposition forces focused on corruption and criticised the regime for tolerating it. This article explores how the regime reacted to opposition criticism. The regime encountered a dilemma: it could not ignore the opposition but promoting anti-corruption reforms was risky for the regime. This study focuses on the regime’s use of the All-Russia People’s Front (Obshcherossiiskii Narodnyi Front—ONF) and concludes that it functioned as a ‘parastatal’ anti-corruption movement, enabling the regime to deflect the blame without directly involving itself in the process.     

Aid as an encounter at the interface: the complexity of the global fight against poverty

International development discourse has recently shifted its focus from top‐down economic adjustment to participative anti‐poverty policy. This shift hints at an acknowledgement of the local complexities within the poverty process and at a need to listen to and develop actions with the ‘poor’. But, whereas the mainstream argument remains couched in a technical framework, we argue that the fight against poverty is inevitably political. Conceptualising the aid industry as a set of global–local interfaces, it follows that a closer look at ‘participation’ in anti‐poverty interventions is needed to come to grips with the political issues involved. Four issues are discussed: the complexity of local ‘participation’, given the ‘polycephalous’ character of third world societies; the power biases in the aid chain; the potential problem of ‘false consciousness’; and the ambiguities of the role of local development brokers. We conclude that anti‐poverty policy is in need of ‘interface experts’, who, through ‘provocation’ can beget ‘participation’.     

Mainstreaming Gender in Politics in Bangladesh: Role of NGOs

‘Gender mainstreaming’ has been regarded as one of the strongest approaches to deal with the issue of equality policy for women. In order to mainstream women in the political process, a number of NGOs have been carrying out different programs in Bangladesh for building awareness among women so that they could opt for participation in the political process. The paper analyzes the role of NGOs in the process of mainstreaming gender in politics in Bangladesh in general and in the enactment of the Local Government (Union Parishad) (Second Amendment) Act of 1997 in particular. Based on empirical data collected through an open-ended structured questionnaire and available secondary data, the study findings reveal that despite having no formal access to the policy process, NGOs augment participation of women in the political process through informal means as is exemplified by their training programs that enhance women's social and economic status.     

Development Effectiveness and the Politics of Commitment

International aid agencies have experienced a ‘political turn’ over the past decade, with political economy analyses becoming increasingly numerous as a means to drive development effectiveness. Yet aid agencies have so far failed to shift their aid modalities in response. The problem lies in an inadequate conceptualisation of ‘politics’. Most donors continue to see development as a public good, rather than as the focus of contestation in a context of societal struggle, and consequently fail to take oppositional forces sufficiently seriously. This facilitates the misapplication of terms such as ‘partnership’ and ‘ownership’, contributing to failures in efforts to promote reform. A more truly political analysis of aid intervention entails two innovations: the use of structural analysis to distinguish between interests in reform; and the use of this distinction, in turn, to inform the practice of taking sides in political struggles. Case studies of international aid programmes in Cambodia and the Philippines illustrate how the failure of donors to take sides with particular reformers has resulted in lost opportunities to achieve concrete outcomes from development projects.     

A Retrospective Impact Evaluation of the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Alleviation (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project

Community based livelihood interventions, which focus directly on increasing income and employment, have become an increasingly important component of large-scale poverty reduction programmes. We evaluate the impact of a participatory livelihoods intervention – the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction (Pudhu Vaazhvu) Project (PVP) using propensity score matching methods. The paper explores the impact of PVP on its core goals of empowering women and the rural poor, improving their economic welfare, and facilitating public action. We find significant effects of PVP on reducing the incidence of high cost debt and diversifying livelihoods. We also find evidence of women’s empowerment, and increased political participation.     

Are Women as Likely to Take Risks and Compete? Behavioural Findings from Central Vietnam

Using controlled experiments to compare the risk attitude and willingness to compete of husbands and wives in 500 couples in rural Vietnam, we find that women are more risk averse than men and that, compared to men, women are less likely to choose to compete, irrespective of how likely they are to succeed. Relevant to development programmes concerned with lifting women out of poverty, our findings suggest that women may be more reluctant to adopt new technologies, take out loans, or engage in economic activities that offer higher expected returns, in order to avoid setups that require them to be more competitive or that have less predictable outcomes.     

‘The Foreign Within’: State–Civil Society Relations in Russia

Abstract

The development of Russian civil society is linked to authoritarian government, fear of ‘colour revolutions’ and the ‘sovereign democracy’ that legitimises state control of civil society. This article acknowledges the narrowing room for manoeuvre of contemporary Russian civil society and discusses NGOs’ practices in the context of government pressures, the politicisation of transnational connections and the increasing geopolitical tension surrounding Russia. It describes the localisation and depoliticisation of Russian NGOs as well as their disruptive practices, and explains how narrowing civil society identities inform the self-governing of NGOs. Finally, it argues that seeing Russian civil society in simple dichotomies further narrows these identities.     

Russian NGOs and Their Struggle for Legitimacy in the Face of the ‘Foreign Agents’ Law: Surviving in Small Ecologies

Abstract

The essay investigates the survival strategies of foreign-funded Russian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the face of the so-called ‘foreign agents’ law of 2012. Conceptualising NGOs as autonomous social systems and drawing on two qualitative case studies of Russian NGOs in the fields of human rights protection, we show how these organisations manage to cope with the state’s withdrawal of legitimacy by creatively handling their diverse environmental dependencies. Through shifting the relative importance of different audiences and generating new sources of legitimacy, they have eventually created and maintained small supportive ecologies within the overall environment of a political regime that does not tolerate them.     

The Effect of a Workfare Programme on Psychological Wellbeing in India

Little is known about the effect of poverty alleviation programmes on mental health. In this paper we use variation in district implementation dates and location of residence to examine the short-run effect of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India on psychological wellbeing. We find that in the first year of the programme, women in recipient districts were less likely to experience depression symptoms. The effects of the programme on men’s mental health, on the other hand, are generally not statistically significant and are not robust to different specifications. We provide suggestive evidence that one mechanism through which the programme could have affected women, at least in the short-run, was providing them with greater economic security and independence.     

Reconsidering Women’s Empowerment: the Contradictory Effects of Microfinance for Guatemalan Women

In light of changing global trends that connect women’s empowerment and development, this paper extends debates by exploring how projects aimed at empowering women in the Global South intertwine with diverse women’s lived realities in ways that complicate assessments of “success” or “failure.” The article begins by analyzing the incorporation of the concept of empowerment into mainstream development, demonstrating that the conceptual fuzziness of empowerment has allowed it to be associated with vastly different development strategies: some have interpreted it narrowly to promote self-help strategies whereas others have interpreted it broadly to promote structural change. The former has targeted women with “choice-enhancing” resources that are thought to have spillover effects; the latter tends to adopt a more holistic approach. In order to explore how these contrasting strategies affect women’s empowerment experiences and outcomes on the ground, this article then draws on comparative ethnographies of two microfinance non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are emblematic of these diverging approaches. It finds that despite their differences, both spillover and holistic approaches lead to diverse and contradictory experiences that defy easy classification as “empowering” or “disempowering.” This finding reveals the advantages and limitations of relying on the concept of empowerment for evaluating development outcomes and raises questions about our ability to generalize about the effects of the varying approaches encompassed under the current feminization of policy. The analysis also suggests that we should adjust our understanding of women’s agency to include the agency women exercise when they transform, challenge, or reject empowerment projects themselves.     

‘Sometimes fear gets in all your bones’: towards understanding the complexities of risk in development work

ABSTRACT

In the context of increasing risk for aid workers, a growing body of scholarship is focused on risk management in contexts of humanitarian assistance and development work. Much less attention, however, has been given to how staff and volunteers experience such risks. This paper adopts a feminist geographical approach to explore how development workers make meaning of risk in specific contexts. Adopting a qualitative approach, it draws upon 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews with international (7) and local (7) staff of an international educational and sporting non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Afghanistan. After exploring differences between local and foreign staff perceptions of risk, it also offers a gendered analysis of risk for women development workers in Afghanistan. In so doing, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature in ‘Aidland’ studies by revealing the complex understandings of risk and fear by both foreign and local staff in the same geographical and organisational context. For NGOs seeking to make life-saving decisions based on the calculation of risk, this paper evidences the need to also create space for the voices of local and foreign staff whose experiences of risk will be highly relational, embodied, gendered and context specific.     

Risky Business: What Happens to Gender Equality and Women's Rights in Post-Conflict Societies? Insights from NGO's in El Salvador

Using the case of El Salvador, this paper explores how women's organizational skills developed in civil war translate into work in NGOs in the post-conflict struggle for rights. The paper briefly describes the gender stratification methodology used in the analysis and then presents the situation in El Salvador before, during, and after the war. After discussing how Salvadoran women, despite quite limited economic power, became a well-organized force that was strategically indispensable to the rebels during the war, the paper examines factors that contributed to the success of Las Madres Demandantes (LMD), an NGO focused on the single issue of getting child support payments to women. The experience of other NGOs in El Salvador is reviewed with respect to the factors that contributed to the success of LMD. In conclusion, a few lessons from the issues faced by the post-conflict women's NGOs in El Salvador are presented.     

Hegemony,Politics and Ideology: the Role of Legislation in NGO–Government Relations in Asia

In the wake of debate on the ‘New Policy Agenda’ of good governance and the increasing prominence of Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in public service delivery, serious questions are being asked about the role of NGOs in development, their accountability, their relationships with donors, with the state and with their beneficiaries. As southern NGOs receive increasing amounts of funding from donors and northern NGOs, their profile is being raised, prompting government response. The nature of legislative responses of governments to increasingly high profile NGO communities range from open hostility and suspicion, to indifference. National legislative frameworks are neglected in the literature, yet they may profoundly influence the accountability, legitimacy, organisation and vision of local NGOs as well as the way northern NGOs can operate in a country. The article illustrates the potential for conflict over legislation on NGOs but also important opportunities and benefits, maintaining that legislation is necessary, because it can act as a catalyst to spark and focus debate on the role of NGOs, the extent to which they legitimately represent civil society, to whom they are accountable and how they can be protected. Open, balanced negotiation between stakeholders is necessary to avoid conflict and focus discourse on NGO and government roles and accountability. Governments, donors and NGOs each have a role to play in shaping NGO legitimacy, ensuring their upwards and downwards accountability.     

The Strategic Choices of NGOs: Location Decisions in Rural Bangladesh1

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play an increasingly important role in the delivery of public services in developing countries, but little systematic evidence is available about their strategic choices. We develop two stylised accounts of NGO strategies: one in which pragmatic and organisational concerns determine location decisions, and another in which charitable motivations are the principal determinants. We then use data from the 1995 and 2000 rounds of the Bangladesh Household and Income and Expenditure Survey to analyse location decisions of NGO programmes established between those two sample years. Whether disaggregated by sector of work or mother organisation, the data show that the net change in NGO programmes in a community was not related to indicators of community need, that NGOs established new programmes where they themselves had no programmes previously, and that they did not avoid duplicating the efforts of other NGOs. Overall, the analysis is consistent with an account of NGO choices in which a concern for broad coverage significantly affects NGO choices.