Cultivating Peace: Social Movement Professionalization and Ngoization in Croatia*

Abstract

Scholars studying social movements and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have noted a rapid expansion in the number of professional organizations dedicated to creating social change. This study uses the case of the peacebuilding sector in Croatia (1991–present) to examine central questions in both fields: where professional organizations come from, what drives professionalization, and what the consequences of professionalization are for the work of social change. I find there are actually many paths to NGO creation, and identify five types of NGOs: transformed, new, bud, seed, and clone. These five types of organizations had different paths for development, have different levels of professionalization, and engage in different types of work based on their location and history. Examining the history of a social change sector shows professionalization to be a nuanced, uneven process that can expand the social change sector even as it transforms the sector's work.

Rethinking Legitimation: Positional and Mediated Legitimation Processes for Croatian NGOs

“…It includes the frontline town of Zadar and its war-torn hinterland; the city of Knin, which served as the capital of the Serb breakaway state during the war; and the city of Split, which served as the regional center for national and international civil society interventions. In each region, I focused on NGOs in the peacebuilding sector, including those working on democracy, women’s rights, human rights, and other adjacent fields that are historically intertwined with peace organizations in Croatia (Heideman 2017, 2018).…”

“…First, the data look just at NGOs in the peacebuilding field and adjacent fields such as human rights and women’s rights. This sector was the focus of the majority of international funding during the 1990s and 2000s (Heideman 2017, 2018). The trends in the peacebuilding sector are likely to hold for other advocacy NGOs in Croatia, such as environmental groups.…”

“…Saida Hodžić (2014) argues that the NGOization thesis relies on a romanticized view of social movements, glossing over movements’ problems prior to NGOization. Elsewhere (Heideman 2017), I have argued that the NGOization thesis is a misleading way of understanding the NGO sector for several reasons. First, it misunderstands the origins of NGOs, most of which do not arise from movement roots.…”

“…During this time, NGOs faced an unfriendly environment, as both the government and society at large were hostile to the work of these organizations (Bežovan 2003; Škrabalo 2003). NGO staff, particularly those who promoted peace and human rights, faced beatings, death threats, and social ostracization for their work (Heideman 2017). NGOs also faced negative media coverage (Bežovan 2003) and a hostile legal environment (Heideman 2013b).…”

“… 4. Heideman (2017) shows that NGOs that emerged later formed as NGOs from the start; this paper examines only NGOization of pre-existing organizations during the initial period of the international intervention. …”