NGO performance and accountability in the post‐cold war world

Sectarianism and the Ambiguities of Welfare in Lebanon

“…Unlike international NGOs, which are a relatively new actor in world politics and have received extensive attention in research on development (see Bebbington, Hickey, and Mitlin 2008;Edwards and Hulme 1996;Korten 1990;Lewis and Kanji 2009;Salamon and Sokolowski 1999;Smith and Lipsky 1993), sectarian parties emerge out of a long historical tradition of religious charity in the Middle East. However, they are not mere reincarnations of the religions institutions that supplied services under Ottoman or colonial rule (Fawaz 1994;Hanssen 2005;Singer 2008).…”

Engagements with a Productively Unstable Category: Anthropologists and Nongovernmental Organizations

“…During the period of the mid-to-late 1990s, which some researchers have termed an "NGO boom" period (e.g., Agg 2006;Alvarez 1999), a view had emerged of the NGO as a "magic bullet" (Edwards and Hulme 1996), while NGOs entered the social science sphere with great fanfare. When the astronomically high expectations placed upon NGOs failed to materialize, scholarship turned increasingly critical, rejecting NGOs, particularly within anthropology.…”

“…There was also a third factor that informed the modern rise of the NGO: the post-Cold War rediscovery of the idea of "civil society" among citizen activists, particularly in Eastern Europe and Latin America (e.g., Cohen and Arato 1992;Comaroff and Comaroff 1998;Hann 1996;Pelczynski 1988;Schechter 1999). There was an intertwining of this new interest in the concept of civil society with the idea that NGOs could serve as catalysts for people-centered developmental change, and as a result, official funding to NGOs skyrocketed during the 1990s as part of the new good governance policy discourse (Edwards and Hulme 1996).…”

“…For example, Michael Edwards and David Hulme's series of edited volumes (e.g., Hulme 1992, 1996;Hulme and Edwards 1997) were based on a series of development studies conferences held at the University of Manchester. Here, academic discussions were informed by the presence of NGO practitioners and donors and produced conversations that were focused on actually existing dilemmas of aid agencies: the role of the state, multiple stakeholders, accountability, and autonomy.…”

From shouting to counting: civil society and good governance reform in Cambodia

“…In the same year, the influential Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), began to recognise the existence of a 'vital connection between open, democratic and accountable political systems, individual rights and the effective and equitable operation of economic systems' (DAC 1997). With the ending of the Cold War, a new paradigm began to emerge with the export of liberal democratic political systems and private sector market principles to developing countries; focusing heavily on state bureaucratic reform and good governance to ensure success (Robinson 1993;Edwards and Hulme 1996b;Crawford 2001) In its early format, the good governance agenda, tended to focus heavily on promoting an efficient, professional and accountable state public administration in an attempt to provide an enabling environment for private sector led growth (see Nelson and Eglinton 1992;Leftwich 1993). These reforms emanated from the increasingly popular ideas of new public management; a form of public sector management synonymous with the idea of an 'entrepreneurial government' that introduces a more private sector oriented approach with its preference for quality, productivity, market-style incentives and performance management (Lynn 2006).…”