Creating Credibility: Legitimacy and Accountability for Transnational Civil Society

L David Brown has written a much-needed elaboration of the possibilities of legitimacy and accountability for International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) in global governance (GG). Brown, a longtime NGO scholar and campaigner, worries about the growing wave of criticism of NGOs. As NGOs’ profiles rise in world politics, they are increasingly scrutinized, especially their oft-repeated claim that global civil society democratizes GG. NGOs have argued that they bring pluralism to corporate and state-led globalization. They claim to bring transparency and accountability to distant faceless international organizations (IO). They want to represent poor or marginalized voices, or even ‘unvoiced’ actors such as the planet. (An NGO campaigner asked me once, ‘who speaks for the trees? Well, nobody. So we do.’) For several decades, these large normative-democratic claims went unchallenged or unexamined. Peter Willets, an early NGO scholar, once noted that NGOs grabbed the moral attention of the liberal-minded, who felt compelled to support them. Who does not support human rights or dolphins?

But in the last decade, two recognitions have challenged this normative stature. First, there are, in fact, nasty NGOs. Social movements can be regressive as well as progressive, and terrorist groups function much like INGOs. Both are non-state and transnational. They are networked across borders through national chapters. These chapters have memberships and bureaucratic jockeying over advancement, projects, and internal governance. Both engage in fund-raising and recruitment within the relevant social movement. They are principled advocates; they seek deep ideational change in world politics. Second, many NGOs fail by the standards they demand of states, IOs, and corporations. Leadership is often oligarchic and personalistic; charismatic founders tend to dominate, with limited circulation at the top. Few have elections (Amnesty International is a notable exception), and memberships are often treated as fundraisers or volunteers, with decisions and values set elsewhere. Few publish proper accounting statements or release documentation in accord with transparency expectations. North-South coalitions suffer from a continuing problem of distance from grassroots preferences. Elsewhere I have argued that INGOs around World Bank and IMF resemble more a co-opted community of experts than a raucous upsurge of third world or citizen voice (Portrait of Global Civil Society at the Bretton Woods Institutions: Civil Society Dialogue Participation, 2000-2007 in Korean Journal of International Relations, 47/5, 2008:51-80).

Brown notes these problems and the growing pushback against NGO claims. For NGOs to continue to press progressive normative claims, they must develop responses to doubts about their own legitimacy and accountability. By legitimacy, Brown means NGOs’ right to participate in global governance; by accountability, he means their responsiveness to sanction or punishment for failure to meet publicized goals and missions. His discussions of legitimacy and accountability are thorough and fairly convincing. This is a great service to the NGO sector, where such terms are too ill-defined; this sloppiness has encouraged the pushback Brown fears.
The strongest criticism of NGOs is their own ‘democratic deficit,’ and Brown devotes much energy to developing other models of legitimacy than simply the vote. This is problematic. Democracy is the global norm for those who claim to speak for others, yet Brown suggests that NGOs might also legitimize themselves through excellent performance, compliance with legal regulations in host countries, and other non-voting mechanisms. Political legitimacy through elections is simply one possibility among many. This is a disturbing retrenchment from the great strides of democratic process in the last 20 years and feels somewhat desperate, insofar as NGOs often demand greater democracy from their own opponents. Brown notes that corporations too lack democratic legitimacy. Their elites are not elected either. But firms also do not make the ‘public good’ claims that NGOs do. Firms are clearly profit-seeking actors who make no great assertion to improve the world, fix GG, or defend the voice-less. It is precisely because we do not expect such behavior from firms that NGOs are held to a higher standard. There is no moral equivalence between Human Rights Watch and Nike. This collision between failing democratic practice and a highly moralistic language of participation and democracy will continue to de-legitimize NGOs as voices of the excluded until they demonstrate internal participation. Many NGOs are not designed to accommodate elections, but they will need to if they are not simply to be understood as service providers or global interest groups.

On accountability, readers will find more room to agree with Brown. He asserts that NGOs must do essentially what they have demanded of their targets. (This points to a larger issue, that ultimately transparency and accountability apply to all international actors, and Brown’s suggested mechanisms are not really NGO-specific.) Accountable NGOs will be transparent, open to participation, self-evaluative, and willing to redress grievances. It is no coincidence that this mirrors two decades of NGO complaints about the World Bank. But like the meaningful elections discussed above, these are costly, hard-to-implement reforms for the under-resourced NGO sector. Small NGOs will be loathe to spend money on printing, posting, and translating internal materials. Established NGOs will find lots of grassroots mission discussion unnecessary; members can simply take their dues to another NGO whose mission engages them more. Self-evaluation is more likely, as learning will improve operational capacity. But a redress mechanism is likely far beyond most NGOs’ interest, skills or resources. Only very large, corporate NGOs, like Oxfam or World Wildlife, will have the sheer breadth to develop something so legalistic and troublesome. Indeed the World Bank’s experience with its own Inspection Panel suggests such mechanisms quickly become politicized and bureaucratic. Brown suggests that large groups of NGOs cooperating in sectors or on campaigns could jointly build such mechanisms, but this would require a level of cooperation traditionally free-spirited NGOs have generally avoided.

And that brings up the final problem - bureaucratization. Most of Brown’s arguments entail not just resource expenditure but high-levels of coordination and paperwork among actors traditionally opposed to the bureaucratization of their practice. Indeed, a central value that endears NGOs to liberals and ‘progressives’ is their free-spirited, off-the-cuff approach. NGOs have a sprightliness and directness that makes them an exciting, unpredictable actor in a diplomatic world swamped in protocol and paper. As NGOs move more toward more formalized models of organization, they will inevitably lose the very antiestablishmentarian appeal that draws many to them.

This is an excellent book. Well-researched, clearly written and organized, and pleasantly compact, GG participants worried about NGO credibility will find it indispensible. While Brown’s solutions face democracy and bureaucracy problems, he has filled a major gap, and NGOs who follow his advice will find their voices less doubted and questioned.