See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/23992470

The International Aid System and The Non-Governmental

Organisations: A New Research Agenda

Article  in  Journal of International Development · July 2006

DOI: 10.1002/jid.1304 · Source: RePEc

CITATIONS READS

68 975

1 author:

Terje Tvedt
University of Bergen
54 PUBLICATIONS   631 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

History of Water Project View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Terje Tvedt on 04 October 2019.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Journal of International Development
J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jid.1304

POLICY ARENA

THE INTERNATIONAL AID SYSTEM

AND THE NON-GOVERNMENTAL
ORGANISATIONS: A NEW RESEARCH
AGENDA
TERJE TVEDT*
Centre for Development Studies, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

Abstract: NGO researchers have rarely understood the reasons for the growth of NGOs
across the world. This paper sets out the parameters for an improved framework for NGO
research. Beginning with a short description of the history of the international aid system, the
paper then argues that a set of concepts are needed that can establish a greater analytical
distance for NGO research from a policy area that has for decades enjoyed an unusually high
degree of moral and political legitimacy. In conclusion, the article argues that the institutional
architecture and world views developed within this policy field will need to be integrated
analytically in narratives of the general historical development of societies in the era of
globalisation. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: development NGOs; donors; international aid system; Dostango; civil society

1 INTRODUCTION

This article makes three main points. Firstly, it argues that the dominant NGO research
tradition has misunderstood and been unable to comprehend how and why development
NGOs have mushroomed all over the world, including in the donor countries.1 Secondly, it

*Correspondence to: T. Tvedt, Centre for Development Studies, University of Bergen, Nygaardsgt 5, N-5015
Bergen, Norway. E-mail: terje.tvedt@sfu.uib.no
1
This article builds on Tvedt (1998) but develops the analyses there in two further directions; (i) it focuses more on
the research community’s structural position and role as producer of dominant concepts in the international aid
system and (ii) it aims to present new analytical concepts that can be useful in deepening our understanding of this
world historic phenomenon. It draws heavily on the empirical and theoretical work undertaken in connection with
a book written for the Norwegian Power and Democracy Study on the ‘Norwegian model’ of development aid and
foreign policy (Tvedt, 2003).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

678 T. Tvedt

contextualises this argument within a short description of the history of what is here termed
the international aid system, with a particular focus on the close relationship between non-
state actors and state donors within the system. Thirdly, based on the above arguments, the
article argues that it is necessary to formulate a set of concepts that can establish an analytical
distance from the normative and conceptual power dimensions of this policy arena that for
decades has enjoyed an unusually high level of moral and political legitimacy.

1.1 Some Dominant Conceptual Traditions

In order to understand its importance and complexities, the whole NGO-phenomenon, its
rise, growth, ideological legitimacy and political position, has to be reconceptualised. One
must first abandon a dominant ahistorical and non-contextual research tradition that has
been heavily influenced by a mixture of normative-political agendas (see Lewis and
Opoku-Mensah, this issue). This tradition has always been concerned with how to
improve the work of NGOs,2 and has often carried an analytical perspective that has been
limited to the impacts of NGOs at project level, to the advocacy capabilities of individual
NGOs or to the capacity of NGOs to work for the poor.3
This prevailing orthodoxy can be challenged by adopting a double-edged strategy:
criticism of hegemonic paradigms or perspectives, and discussing and testing new ideas.
Utilising reflection on the persisting problematic nature of basic concepts as a heuristic
device may help to illuminate some promising vistas as well as other possible dead ends in
understanding the linkages between states and development NGOs, and the ways these play
out as part of broader historical processes. The prevailing patterns of thought into which
research has been locked need to be unlocked, since they have maintained and reproduced
sterile blockages to scientific inquiry. The NGO-research/consultants community will
continue to be an immature research community, if researchers simply change positions,
adapting to new dominating trends, escaping a much-needed self-reflexive process.
In the mid-1980s, in the heyday of what was then called the ‘NGO decade’, the idea that
NGOs had comparative advantages as a group compared with states was widely publicised
by NGO researchers and activists and won worldwide acceptance. This theory was falsified
more or less at the very moment that it was first promulgated.4 In spite of much factual
evidence to the contrary, however, the idea found its way into the development strategies of
many countries and into scholarly discussions (e.g. Fowler, 1988; Bratton, 1989; Brown
2
Some recent examples of this normative agenda: Fowler (2005) deals with how NGOs in today’s world should
develop well thought out strategies and identifies questions for NGOs to strengthen their identity and improve their
activities in order to fulfil their mission. Brehm et al. (2004) deals with the concept and practice of ‘partnership’
between NGOs in what is called the ‘North’ and ‘South’, based on an ahistorical concept of what is a ‘Northern’
and what is a ‘Southern’ NGO, and takes as a starting point the normative viewpoint that autonomy is to be
searched for. Mawdsley et al. (2002) are concerned with another basically political agenda: how can Southern
NGOs have more of a voice in determining the work they do, and how can they get more of their ideas onto the
international development agenda?
3
What Uvin and Miller wrote about this research in 1994 is still accurate: ‘Most of the literature on NGOs is
normative in nature; the rest is largely anecdotal. It is as if the usual laws of scientific enquiry, verification and
experimentations do not apply when dealing with [NGOs]’ (Uvin and Miller, 1994, p. 1).
4
See Tendler (1982) for the first study to conclude that the ‘articles of faith’ about NGO activities could not be
substantiated by research findings. Tvedt (1992) demonstrated by case studies that these ‘articles of faith’
functioned as a legitimation strategy for fund raisers and donors alike. When Stewart and others still 15 years later
said that the ‘NGOs do it cheaper, better, faster’ (Stewart, 1997, p. 13) they had no evidence backing it up.
Similarly, the dominant notion in much NGO-research during the last couple of decades—that of NGOs as the
backbone of democracy and civil society—has always been more propaganda than science (see Tvedt, 1998).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
 Rethinking NGOs and Aid 679

and Korten, 1991). Since NGOs and states within this perspective were seen as being
locked in a kind of comparative advantage contest, empirical research on the systemic
relationships between donor states and NGOs and on how these had developed was
naturally discouraged. NGOs were simply located within this dogma, regarded as one
group, and characterised as having comparative advantages as compared to their conceived
adversary, the bureaucratic, authoritarian state.
In the late 1980s it became more common for NGO researchers to define the development
NGOs as a sub-group within the largest category of ‘third sector’ organisations. The tripartite
distinction between sectors made the third sector a kind of residual category, lying
somewhere between the state and the market, and this naturally implied that research on the
linkages between state and the NGOs was further discouraged. The popular talk of the
upsurge of non-profits as a global third sector was based on a theoretical idea that highlighted
the contradictions between donor states and NGOs, supported by unsubstantiated empirical
notions about financial and political independence of NGOs. It was logical that NGO
researchers-cum-NGO-advocates downplayed, or were uninterested in, how the growth of
development NGOs was in reality and primarily a direct result of increasing state funding.
The 1990s saw the publication of a series of analyses that discussed NGOs in general as
‘civil society organisations’. To be meaningful, this idea entailed a dismissal of the empirical
fact that the great majority of the most influential organisations were financed by states and
worked in accordance with regulations issued by them. These descriptions neglected that
close to US$10 billion a year since 1990 had been given to NGOs by states. A dependency on
state funds of 85–95 per cent has become common and many NGOs in developing countries
would collapse without donor support (Tvedt, 1998).5 But in spite of these facts, the term
‘civil society organisations’ was by the late 1990s on everybody’s lips, and NGOs were
portrayed as independent voices of the people or as forces of democracy and civic courage.
Since the whole discourse portrayed the civil society actors and the state as playing opposing
roles in a binary relation, it was not a climate that encouraged research on state/NGOs
relations. The influential Civil Society Yearbook (Anheier et al., 2001, p. 177) was one such
example. This is how the global civil society was conceived—a ‘planetary alliance’ from
below without state funding as its prerequisite: ‘Despite extreme heterogeneity and
fragmentation, much of the activity in the sphere of global civil society consists of what Falk
(1999, p. 30) has termed ‘‘globalisation from below’’: a project whose normative potential is
to conceptualise widely shared world order values—minimising violence, maximising
economic well-being, realising social and political justice, and upholding environmental
quality’. One main weakness of this approach is that it has tended to cover up the role of states
in creating the civil society they hail. Consequently, questions about the power of international
and national donors in shaping development NGOs and their relations to states and entire civil
societies in different countries have seldom been raised and never in a systematic manner.6

5
This trend is not uniform—many NGOs in Britain, for example, explicitly aimed during the 1990s to reduce their
donor-dependency while many Nordic NGOs at the same time accepted that 80–90% of their funds came from the
state. In the United States the government during this period became almost twice as significant a source of income
for American non-profit organisations as was private giving, despite the presence there of numerous large
foundations and corporate giving programmes. See Salamon and Anheier, 1994.
6
The literature on civil society and NGOs does not draw an analytical distinction between the international aid
system and the NGOs being part of that and the civil society at large. A typical example can be Fisher, 1998. When
she writes about ‘the Nongovernmental Movement in the World’, she is making no distinction whatsoever between
development NGOs and other organisations in civil society (see p. 6). The neglect of this issue fits in with what she
describes as the political ‘purpose’ of her book, which is ‘to present the considerable evidence that the cultivation
of civil society, propelled by NGOs, can contribute to political development in the Third World’ (p. 29).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
680 T. Tvedt

Furthermore, and crucial for failing to grasp the history of this phenomenon, the most
influential theories of the growth of the sector underlined the fact that the growth of NGOs
was a functional necessity: it was a function of state failures. It was explained as a kind of
natural ‘adaptive response to the constraints of the majority rule and equitable distribution
criteria of the state’ (Paul and Israel, 1991, p. 4).7 That the NGOs were filling niches created
by ‘government failure’ was the dominant but empirically unsubstantiated message of the
research community, but the fact on the ground was that governments were often paying
NGOs to do the work they did not want or could not do.
The historiography of research on NGOs in development can be summarised as a history
of NGO activism, producing ideology in favour of what has been conceived as a
progressive NGO agenda. Most researchers have put their research in the service of the
NGOs (more or less in the same way as the hegemonic ideas of the 1950s turned
researchers concerned with development aid into ‘state activists’ (see Migdal, 1988, for
this term). From its inception, the field has been populated by researchers with a political
and ideological mission. Dominant funding structures for research have also been an
incitement for this kind of research: research on development NGOs has been financed
either by the NGOs or the donor states.8 Many of the most publicised books and reports
have been commissioned or financed or produced by institutions such as the World Bank
and the UN, or Oxfam, Save the Children, SIDA, CIDA etc., often explicitly seeking to
promote NGO agendas. But also the political leaders of donor states, state bureaucrats and
diplomats have had an interest in promoting this ‘independent’ image of the NGOs, since it
is this conceived ‘independency’ that has made them useful politically and given the
system as a whole added legitimacy.
Researchers located outside the aid system, and trained in the dominant schools of
foreign policy studies, have tended to neglect relational analyses of state/NGO-relations
because realist viewpoints will argue that the only subject of interest is the autonomous
state, engaged in a life and death struggle to maintain its security and autonomy. This
implied reductionist view regards international systems simply as institutionalisations of a
fixed hierarchical structure. This is not apt in our case, and we cannot reduce international
politics to ‘interest defined as power’.9 A policy field in which states work in close alliance
with value-driven NGOs is not easily grasped within this tradition. Constructivists on the
other hand, rejecting the idea that actors are calculating or optimising units, explaining acts
only by the social contexts in which they take place and are influenced by, will not easily
understand how state and NGO actors are calculating and optimising units at the same time
as they operate within a field whose rhetorical justification is to work for the good of the
poorest of the poor. The consequence of this situation is that the NGO researchers/
consultants within the aid system have enjoyed a virtual monopoly when it comes to
interpreting this world historic phenomenon.
One step in improving our understanding of how the donor state/NGO relationship
works would therefore be to study what has hardly been researched at all: the connections,

7
These observations were clearly and explicitly influenced by the works of Hansmann (1980), Hood (1990) and
Weisbrod (1977 and 1988)—originally formulated to explain domestic non-profits in welfare states and not
development NGOs in development aid.
8
We still do not know very much about funding structures for this type of research in different countries. I have
done detailed empirical research on the Norwegian system. My hypothesis would be that most research on
development NGOs and their work, in all countries of the world, is predominantly paid for either by the NGOs
themselves, or by donor offices supporting NGOs.
9
See Morgenthau and Thompson (1985, p. 5) for this view.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
 Rethinking NGOs and Aid 681

networks and alliances between NGOs, donor states and NGO researchers/consultants.
This would also help to stimulate a self-reflective exercise within the research community
about positioning, historiography and values. The empirical analysis must be able to
identify and analyse how some of the most influential researchers have themselves been
instrumental in creating the very language with which system actors—as a communicative
entity—have tried to measure their achievements. The analysis should also be able to
describe how other researchers have moved in and out of central administrative-political
positions while still maintaining their status as researchers, thus giving administrative-
political decisions and processes added legitimacy.

2 THE INTERNATIONAL AID SYSTEM

In order to understand how countries all over the world have been impacted by and have
impacted on this new relationship between development NGOs and states, the processes
have to be analysed within a much broader historical and institutional context.
I think the term ‘international aid system’ is useful. Its basic ethical foundation and some
of its central institutions were established after World War II. The whole policy field has
gradually developed into a complex mixture of development aid, emergency assistance,
financial institutions and instruments, and foreign policy initiatives.10 It is crucial to think
about this system as something much broader and more complex than a donor/receiver
relationship for the transfer of funds from rich to poor countries, although it is also this.11
This relational focus will also make it possible to study comparatively how the system has
developed as a state-directed amalgamation of two policy fields with originally competing
value agendas: on the one hand, development aid, historically constructed on the value
dichotomy of what creates ‘good development’/does not create ‘good development’; and,
on the other, traditional foreign policy, based on considerations about what serves the
interests of the state/does not further the interest of the state. Any analysis has to take into
consideration this unique, multi-vocal rhetorical context in which the actors have
legitimised themselves and justified their actions.
Within this policy field, all actors in all countries have communicated the same official
aim—to help and assist what is now called ‘the South’—and in the common institutions
and at the common meeting places the same development language has basically been
shared by all actors. The term used here suggests the existence of a more complex
phenomenon and has fewer normative (and negative) connotations than the more common
10
The term ‘system’ as used here does not imply support of system theories in general or particular theories of
social systems, nor does it presuppose organic analogies. The way it is used is not intended to highlight social
order to the detriment of conflict or contradictions. The concept as used here reflects and should be able to
explain continuity as well as change. The system is conceived of as having a concrete, substantive content, based
on empirical observations. For example it maintains rigid material boundaries at the same time as these
boundaries are continuously shifting and open (that is why it will be rewarding to study what takes place on this
borderline vis-à-vis other globalisation processes and the rest of society; see below). The usefulness of the
term can only be evaluated according to its fruitfulness in explaining this, as I regard it, world historic
phenomenon.
11
To be able to analyse and describe how this international aid system always has varying national manifestations,
it might be fruitful to develop different concepts in different countries, reflecting both national traditions and the
influence of the aid system. I have, for example, termed the Norwegian sub-system the ‘South political system’.
The term reflects its particular communicative strategies, the unique way foreign policy and aid initiatives have
been mixed, and the policy field’s relative position as compared to other relations Norway has developed with the
non-European world.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
682 T. Tvedt

term ‘aid industry’. It carries with it, however, a similar attention to financial,
administrative and conceptual structures with powerful impacts and enabling capabilities.
This system has organised development aid as a form of state-led global philanthropy for
the first time in history, but has also diversified national foreign policy instruments in new
ways, in its course unintentionally de-monopolised the traditional state monopoly over
foreign policy initiatives. It has institutionalised and regulated relations between states,
between societies and between states and societies in new ways. On the one hand, it has
done this in a manner that has reflected global power relations (donor/receivers etc.) but, on
the other, the system has had as an official justification the need to challenge these very
same global power relations.
Politically, the World Bank, the UN, the major donor states and the biggest and most
influential development NGOs have propagated and implemented the most dominant
development strategies and thinking about development on the global arena at any given
time, while the system simultaneously has been influenced by all kinds of social
movements working outside the boundaries of this system at local level. This system
should not be interpreted as simply a new form of Western imperialism, but its power
relations, its concepts and the resource flows cannot be understood without being seen in a
long time perspective, and where Western imperialism was a necessary forerunner. When
these interrelated factors are taken together, it becomes evident that we must conceive of
this system as a distinct historical innovation and as a new international social system. Only
when NGOs and the NGO-researchers/consultants are located in this broad context will it
become possible to assess the roles and impacts of these actors and the historic importance
of the system as a whole.12
The term ‘international aid system’ may be fruitful since it enables us to draw some
fundamental and clear-cut analytical and empirical distinctions. For example: it enables us
to study the general forces of globalisation and societal variables in international politics
after World War II, on the one hand, and a normatively justified system, on the other.13
Second, it allows us to recognise and integrate the importance of the specific financial
relationships (gift economy and the patterns of accountability) and the particular flows of
moral, cultural and conceptual power and how these have contextualised what the actors
have done within the system and how the system has justified itself to the rest of the world.
Third, it will shed light on fundamental issues dealing with the development of civil
society, since it distinguishes between those organisations in civil society that have been
and are receiving money from donors, and those that are not. It will also highlight the

12
One important aspect of how the system functions, is that the financial resources available to the system
participants have continuously increased and most likely will increase more or less independently of achieve-
ments. The level of development aid continues to increase. In nominal terms official development assistance
(ODA) from DAC countries rose from USD 58.3 billion in 2002, to USD 69.0 billion in 2003, and to USD 78.6
billion in 2004, its highest level ever. Taking into account inflation and the fall in the US dollar, this represents a
4.6% rise in real terms from 2003 to 2004 and follows a 4.3% increase from 2002 to 2003 (OECD statistics, see
htttp://www.oecd.org/document/3/0,2340,en_2649_34447_34700611_1_1_1 _1,00.html). Over the years, thou-
sands of billions of dollars have been spent. Tens of thousands of bureaucrats have been involved, and even more
NGO-activists, and thousands of researchers. There are no accurate estimates of the size of this system and the
number of actors that have taken part in it. In Tvedt (2003) an estimate of the size of Norwegian South Political
system was made. In the coming years, the financial resources most likely will increase more than ever.
13
The new policy field was based on an ethical and normative argument that is very difficult to contest on moral
grounds: ‘It is morally right that people who have a lot should give some of what they have to those who have far
too little’. Unlike other international systems, this system thus has a moral foundation that is morally impossible to
question. This makes this system unique, and it is partly this uniqueness that gives its actors their moral and
political capital. Consequently, it is absolutely essential for researchers to try to distance themselves from the
conceptual and analytical influence of this system.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
 Rethinking NGOs and Aid 683

segmentation of states, since it makes it possible to analyse the relationships between those
segments of the state administration that have been and are part of this system, and those
that are not.
By regarding the system as a distinct part of a much wider process of globalisation and
set of relationships between societies, a deeper analytical and historical contextualisation
becomes possible. The term enables us not only to describe and understand how this system
is influenced by forces outside its own boundaries, but also how those parts of the
organisational landscape and civil society that do not receive donor funds have been
influenced by this particular relationship between donor states and NGOs.14 Within this
perspective, it becomes possible to consider and analyse inherent contradictions between
the system’s transformative logic and justification, and its role as a reproducer of power
relations.
By analysing the NGOs within the socio-political context of an international aid system
rather than seeing them as some sort of autonomous representatives of an ‘international
civil society’ or as anti-state actors within an ‘international civil society system’, a new
understanding of the phenomenon of the rise of NGOs not only in numbers but also in
political importance can emerge. NGO/state relations are organised and can be seen here as
forming a truly global system. It is one that is much broader and more complex than can be
embodied by using terms like ‘international civil society’ or ‘planetary alliance’ of
progressive idealists, as some NGO researchers-cum-activists claim is the case.15 The
approach draws attention to how this system has introduced the concept of civil society as a
dominant concept in the global development discourse, and at the same time influenced
both the workings of a great number of organisations in the civil society and the whole
political and ideological culture of civil societies in their relations to national and foreign
states.
The term ‘global’ in this context implies the existence of a phenomenon that spans the
entire globe, thus pointing to the system’s spatial dimension that is also always necessary to
integrate in analyses of national and local developments. ‘Global’ also therefore reflects
empirical reality in a significant way, since the system has produced and constantly
reproduces its own ‘systemness’ in clearly demarcated boundaries all over the world. At
the same time it is possible to conceive of the term as a highly abstract spatial
representation of ‘global’, in the sense that the political agenda that justifies the system’s
activities is phrased in global terms. ‘Global’ thus refers simultaneously to a spatial
dimension, an abstract system, a particular structure and a set of interactions that span
national boundaries, and all of these meanings of ‘global’ must be given sufficient weight
when analysing the role of development NGOs. Such an understanding of this global
system makes it essential to consider how studies can best tackle the intricacies of the
spatio-temporal dimensions, since it continuously raises problems of a level-of-analysis
and a level-of-observation kind.

14
The system concept focuses on new patterned relationships among units that have developed within it—
relationships that reflect to various degrees constraints imposed by the system’s history and structure. Influenced
by Durkheim and his ideas that whenever certain elements combine and thereby produce, by the mere fact of
their combination, new phenomena, this upsurge of development NGOs, the establishment of a NGO research
and consultancy community, donor offices in state ministries etc, mean that they reside not in their original
elements, but in the totality formed by their union, or as part of this new totality (Emil Durkheim, quoted in
Ruggie, 1998). The structure of this system is composed of relational elements such as state/NGO relationships,
donor/recipient relationships, gift economies, and the production of legitimacy vis-à-vis the rest of
the world.
15
See Korten (2000).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
684 T. Tvedt

3 THE ‘DOSTANGO-SYSTEM’

The international aid system organises encounters between cultures, states and religions,
produces broad narratives of world historic development and theories of development,
influences state budgets and ministries all over the globe, and it also affects the relationship
between states and societies and how these are conceived.
To underline and understand further the argument of this article, the term ‘Dostango-
system’, which I have coined, may be helpful. It draws attention to particular relational
issues between states, organisations, civil societies, and the ever-changing institutional,
financial and conceptual interactions that take place between DOnor STAtes and NGOs.
The Dostango concept focuses on one very important aspect of the international aid
system, and may encourage contextualised research on how these specific relationships
have developed internationally as well as on the particular types of linkages that can be
found in each country between this system and other parts of civil society and the state
apparatus.
The term is non-normative, descriptive, and empirically grounded. It should not be seen
as a term that degrades the NGOs because of their dependency on state funds or their
closeness to states.16 The Dostango-term does not carry with it the conventional, saddening
story of organisational decay because of state connections, where formerly independent
and strong NGOs gradually became co-opted by states and therefore inevitably and
gradually degenerate.17 This is primarily because there is no such simple one-to-one
relationship between financial dependence and autonomy, or ‘closeness’ to states and
development potential. The use of the term thus also implies a rejection of essentialist
distinctions between relational and organisational categories, like GONGO, QUANGO or
AGONGO, and instead encourages historical analyses of state/NGO relations in different
countries and regions, based on an understanding of the NGOs as living, ever-changing and
not sedimentary phenomena, in relation to states and ‘beneficiaries’.18 It makes, however,
much of the literature on social movements rather irrelevant, because this tradition has not
been particularly interested in how donor states or the international aid system have
impacted and formed national organisational landscapes.19 This tradition should, however,
be very useful in comparative and historical analyses aiming at understanding how social
movements originating outside the system have related to, influenced and been influenced
by the aid system.

16
Researchers and NGO activists within the system have—in line with dominant understandings of NGOs as a
group with comparative advantages vis-à-vis states, or as being the functional (necessary) response to state
failures—tended to consider ‘nearness’ to states as something intrinsically bad. This ideologically influenced
opinion is well put in Hulme and Edwards (1997). They state that if the NGOs grow ‘too close to comfort’, NGOs,
like Icarus before them, may plummet to the ground when the heat of the donors ‘melts the wax in their wings’.
Such consequences cannot be substantiated empirically, and by overstating and simplifying the problem, the
systemic, detailed relations will be more difficult to observe and analyse.
17
Willetts, Peter, What is a Non-Governmental Organisation? UNESCO Encyclopaedia of Life Support Systems,
Section 1 Institutional And Infrastructure Resource Issues, Article 1.44.3.7 Non-Governmental Organisations, see
Willets (2002).
18
The ‘social origin approach’ advocated by Salamon et al. (2000) is not appropriate, because this approach too
tends to downplay the relational issues and the role of donor states in the system’s power game (see Salamon et al.
(2000)). The Third World’s Third Sector in Comparative Perspectives: 25.
19
For an empirical analysis of how donors have impacted national organisational landscapes in an African context,
see Tvedt (1994) and (1998), and in European context, see Tvedt (1995) and (2003).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
 Rethinking NGOs and Aid 685

4 THE SYSTEM AND ITS BOUNDARIES

It is particularly useful to study NGOs and actors at the ‘borderline’ between the system and its
external world. The material boundaries of the Dostango-system are delineated by the flow
and transfer of funds and by the character of this transfer of resources. The flows of donor
money have produced a closed system, in the sense that new members have formally to apply
to be included in it, or are invited into it. The sign of membership is that the organisation is
positioned to receive, use and dispense donor state money. Understanding how this boundary
has changed over time and the organisational adaptations and negotiations taking place in
relation to it in specific countries would be a useful point of entry for carrying out broad
analyses of the historic impact of this new international system.
The boundaries delimiting ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ tend to be seen in social sciences as
being socially constructed. Here, however, there is a concrete, material boundary,
normatively and socially justified, and reconfirmed by self-referential communication. The
‘shifting’ of borders from time to time and from place to place also reflects the policies,
traditions and political-economic contexts of individual donor states. In Scandinavia,
unlike in the EU, for example, for-profit firms have traditionally not been allowed to join
the NGO-system. This borderline is more literally a ‘donor-line’, delineating how far the
power of the donor, whether directly or indirectly, affects the organisations’ accountability
mechanisms, organisational formalities, reporting mechanisms and the language they
employ to justify their existence and policies.
The system approach may avoid the conceptual influence of normative NGO
definitions.20 It makes it possible to employ a universal definition of NGOs, that is all
organisations within the aid channel that are institutionally and formally separated from the
state apparatus and that do not distribute profit. At the same time, this broad definition will
overcome one of the most striking blind spots in the dominant NGO research tradition of
the past few decades: the fact that religious, missionary organisations have only
sporadically been integrated into the analytical and conceptual picture (some of them
obviously do not, even according to themselves, fit into normative definitions of NGOs as
being flexible, progressive or voices of democracy).21 This system perspective thus allows
for an acceptance of organisational heterogeneity, since the definitional criteria are of a
formal-structural kind rather than being political and normative.

National subsystems
To regard the international aid system as a new international social system is useful also
because it will encourage research on how this global system has affected different nations
and how national systems with their particular institutional architecture and dominant
world views have related to the international system and to other countries. In this context, I
think it is useful to think in terms of national subsystems, not as distinct ‘islands’, but as a
form of internationalised national traditions and as nationalised international institutions
and ideas. What are the differences between the US, the Swiss or the French systems, for
20
A long tradition of normative NGO-definitions is clearly seen in some World Bank documents. The World Bank
has defined NGOs as ‘private organisations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the
poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development’ (World Bank,
Operational Directive 14.70). They also stress the independence of NGOs as definitional criteria: the ‘term NGO
can be applied to any non-profit organisation which is independent from government. NGOs are typically value-
based organisations which depend, in whole or in part, on charitable donations and voluntary service.’ If these
definitions are to be taken seriously, the number of NGOs would be very, very few, indeed.
21
See Tvedt, 2005.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
686 T. Tvedt

example, and how are these played out in the UN or in coordination conferences in
different recipient countries? How do they differ in approach and why, and what kinds of
constraints and possibilities do actors, including NGOs relating to different donors,
experience in the field? It is important to break with the ‘missionary’ research agenda on
behalf of a global civil society and its neglect of national variations in donor state/NGO
relations. But it is equally important to analyse how the amalgamation of the authority of
the international system and the legitimacy of national traditions within this particular
policy area impact on state/society relations. One consequence is that terms like ‘Southern
NGOs’ can be identified as a term reflecting political strategy (and to access funds) rather
than describing a clear-cut empirical fact.22
Furthermore, the national forms of the Dostango-system, as a foreign policy instrument,
are often rooted in domestic politics, and are thus antithetical to realism. At the same time the
system is strongly influenced by the international system of which it forms a part. This
approach encourages research that trespasses on methodological nationalism, and evades
theories arguing that the organisational structure and landscape in a particular country should
be seen as a reflection of that country’s cultural and historical characteristics. There is no
doubt that a given national organisational culture influences particular organisational
landscapes and their political power and orientation (DiMaggio and Anheier, 1990, p. 137).23
But to give this national tradition too much weight, or to claim that it is possible to ‘predict the
legal form of most organisations if one knows the industry and nation-state in which they
operate’ (ibid, p. 139), means downplaying the formative power of the international system.24

5 A STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION REGIME

The international aid system has available huge funds and a complex institutional set-up for
information campaigns and fund-raising vis-à-vis the public in donor countries and the
beneficiaries in the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In order to describe and
analyse this unique global phenomenon with its national subsystems it is fruitful to use the
term strategic communication regime. This powerful and globally oriented communication
regime can be defined in the following way: it is an institutionalised mixture of a tightly
coupled network in which communication and development and policy interventions are
highly connected, regulating the regime internally and promoting its agenda externally.
It has established a meaning-producing arena with a set of implicit and explicit
principles, norms and rules around which the various actors of the Dostango-system share
converging expectations and it possesses a shared language through which conflicts over
control, over who enforces standards, and who reaps the benefits of the activities are
regulated. It is a system in which the notion of NGOs as the voices of the poor, the
grassroots, democratic forces etc., have been systematically promoted. This promotion has
been bestowing legitimacy on the system as a whole; it has achieved for the system as a
whole a humanitarian do-gooder legitimacy that the state actors had not been able to obtain
22
A society’s cherished values are found in its ‘social-political institutions’ (Waltz, 1959, pp. 40–41) and these,
together with history and geography, make up particular ‘national situations’ (Hoffmann, 1966).
23
See for example Hood and Schuppert (1990), Salamon and Anheier (1992). The ‘national style approach’ is
discussed more extensively in Tvedt (1998, 2002).
24
The term indicates the shortcomings of different versions of the ‘national style approach’ (see, for example,
Hood and Schuppert (1990)), which suggests interpreting the organisational structure and landscape in a particular
country as a reflection of its cultural and historical characteristics (see Salamon and Anheier, 1992a).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
 Rethinking NGOs and Aid 687

by themselves. The NGO research and consultancy community has over the years helped to
establish the system’s self-referential language that at the same time promotes the influence
of the system as a whole vis-à-vis the external world. Its importance must be understood in
a particular context: this international system and communication system do not develop
according to general laws or rules in the marketplace or in political life, but to a large extent
according to how the system manages perceived political and moral dilemmas and conflicts
within the system itself. Studying the relationship between communicative practices and
development interventions over time one may give us a better understanding of the
relationship between NGOs, researchers, the donor states and the beneficiaries.
What should be focused on is a particular type of system-speak, that is a language shared
by all actors in the system irrespective of traditional interests and values, be they donors,
researchers, consultants or NGO activists. This system-speak, or language, has at the same
time both a unifying and legitimising character, both internally and externally. This
perspective enables analysis of the relationship between the construction of collective
identities and the construction of a shared language, both of which help to manage and
cover up differences and conflicts.
A focus on this communication regime as a structural property and its language as a
system generating and maintaining structure then opens the door for studies of the complex
and, in a world-historic perspective, important issue of institutional and ideological
isomorphism. The international aid system and Dostango-relationship are manufacturing a
tactical consent reconciling political positions among countries, regions and worldviews.
In the course of relatively few years, tens of thousands of NGOs have been mobilised to
work for basically the same secular development language, although the leaders of some of
these organisations may be religious fanatics. We need to understand better what has been
the importance of this globalising communicative regime on institutional choices and
institutional isomorphism. Hence it is crucial to distinguish between isomorphism and
‘apparent isomorphism’, since the concept of a strategic communication regime also
provides an analytical framework for investigating how different actors exploit the
opportunities offered by the system’s shared language.

6 ELITE CIRCULATION, AND A CONCLUSION

Another important point of entry to the understanding of the modus operandi of this global
system and its national sub-systems is the character of the circulation of elites within
this system. Important sections of this elite are increasingly coming not from traditional
elites in societies. It is recruited from NGOs, research institutions, different kinds of grassroots
activism as well as from the bureaucracies in different donor and UN-organisations. This
international aid system and its national sub-systems are moreover marked by a distinct
elite circulation, where the circulations have not been primarily a matter of organising a
firm cooperation of more lasting, rigid relationship between leaders of different
organisations or institutions directed against the rank and file of these same organisations
and institutions.25 Instead of having an elite based upon lasting, rigid relationship between
25
This concept is employed in a quite different way and serves quite different analytical ends than Pareto’s concept
from the beginning of the 20th century. He employed it to characterise the eternal exchange between system-
conservative and innovative elites. I use ‘circulation of the elite’ to refer to a concept that describes the existence of
a fairly small elite which circulates among an extremely limited number of central institutions in society, and thus
tends rather to limit the exchange between a system-conservative and an innovative elite (see Pareto, 1986).

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
688 T. Tvedt

leaders of different organisations or institutions, what happens within this system is rather
the opposite. The term elite circulation in this case reflects and catches the fact that persons
here circulate from one institution to another and back again (i.e. researcher one year, NGO-
activist the second, politician the third year, and perhaps again researcher or NGO-activist the
fourth year, etc.) within the same system, and are thus to be found on all sides of the table, not
simultaneously, but almost simultaneously. Successful exercising of power within this system
is related to the ability to exploit the range of top positions within a fixed institutional
partnership. The legitimacy of the circulation of the elite within the system is maintained by
the fact that the same type of circulation takes place at all levels among the different
organisations and institutions within the aid system.
The past few decades have seen the creation of a pattern that is well known and can
easily be documented both on an international and national level: researchers have left
research on NGOs in aid to become politicians or organisational leaders and bureaucrats,
only to return afterwards to research posts. Leaders of non-governmental organisations
have left for employment in the state or as political leaders, and then went back again as
leaders of ‘civil society organisations’. Among the prerequisites allowing this practice to
continue un-questioned, are that participants and outsiders regard the protagonists as
participants in a good, morally commendable project, and therefore other rules should
apply and one should be prepared to accept continual breaches of various types of rules
regarding conflicts of interest.
This elite circulation reflects another development; the state has gradually invaded the
organisations and the research institutes, while the leaders of the organisations and the
researchers have broken the state’s monopoly of foreign policy. Unlike the rest of modern
society, which is continually hiving off new sub-systems, according to scholars like Niklas
Luhmann and Pierre Bourdieu, developments in this arena are moving in a contrary
direction: the smaller systems are transformed into a new whole—a national project,
which, in turn, is a sub-system of the international development aid system.
The importance of the international aid system in the organisational and political life of
countries varies, but globally it has crucially influenced the discourse on development
strategies, and how the relationship between states and societies has been conceived. The
international aid system has exerted a conceptual and ideological influence far beyond its
own boundaries. As colonialism impacted the colonies as well as the colonists, the aid
system has affected both those who give and have received aid. A whole new research field
should be opened up in relation to development NGOs, and should focus on how the
institutional architecture and the world views developed within and by this global system of
state-led philanthropy have impacted not only Africa, Asia and Latin America, but also the
so-called donor countries.

REFERENCES

Anheier HK, SeibelW (eds). 1990. The Third Sector. Comparative Studies of Nonprofit Organization.
Walter de Gruyter: New York.
Anheier H, Glasius M, Kaldor M. 2001. Global Civil Society 2001. Oxford University Press: Oxford.
Bratton M. 1989. The politics of NGO—Government relations in African. World Development 17(4):
569–587.
Brehm VM, Harris-Curtis E, Padräo L, Tanner M. 2004. Autonomy and Dependence: Case Studies of
North-South NGO Partnerships. INTRAC: Oxford.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
 Rethinking NGOs and Aid 689

Brown LD, Korten DC. 1991. Working more effectively with nongovernmental organizations, 44–94.
In Nongovernmental organizations and the World Bank.
DiMaggio PJ, Anheier HK. 1990. The sociology of nonprofit organizations and sectors. Annual
Review of Sociology 16: 137–159.
Falk RA. 1999. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Polity Press: Cambridge, UK. Blackwell:
Malden, MA.
Fisher J. 1998. Nongovernments: NGOs and the Political Development of the Third World. Kumarian
Press: West Hartford, Conn.
Fowler A. 1988. Non-governmental organizations in Africa: Achieving comparative advantage in
relief and micro-development, Discussion Paper, 249, Institute of Development Studies, Sussex.
Fowler A. 2005. Aid Architecture: Reflections on NGO Futures and the Emergence of Counter-
Terrorism. OPS 45.
Hansmann H. 1980. The role of the Non-profit enterprise. Yale Law Journal 89 (April): 835–898.
Hoffman S. 1966. Obstinate or Obsolete? The Fate of the Nation-State and the Case of Western-
Europe Daedalus 85: 872–877.
Hood G, Schuppert F. 1990. Para-government organizations in the provision of public services: three
explanations. In The Third Sector. Comparative Studies of Nonprofit Organization, Anheier H,
Seibel W (eds). 93–106.
Hulme D, Edwards M. 1997. NGOs, States and Donors: Too Close for Comfort? International
political economy series. Palgrave in association with Save the Children: Basingstoke.
Korten DC. 2000. Civilizing Society: The Unfolding Cultural Struggle. ISTR Meeting, Dublin 2000.
Mawdsley E, Townsend J, Porter G, Oakley P. 2002. Knowledge, Power and Development Agendas:
NGOs North and South. INTRAC: Oxford.
Migdal JS. 1988. Strong States and Weak Societies. State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in
the Third World. Princeton university press: Princeton.
Morgenthau HJ, Thompson KW. 1985. Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace,
6th edn. Knopf: New York.
Pareto V. 1986. The rise and fall of the elites. Ayers, Salem, NH.
Paul S, Arturo I (eds). 1991. Nongovernmental Organizations and the World Bank: Cooperation for
Development. World Bank: Washington DC.
Ruggie JG. 1998. Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalism. Routle-
dge: London.
Salamon LM, Anheier HK. 1992a. In search of the non-profit sector I: The problem of definition.
Voluntas 3(2): 125–153.
Salamon LM, Anheier HK. 1992b. In search of the non-profit sector II: The problem of classification.
Voluntas 3(3): 267–309.
Salamon LM, Anheier HK. 1994. The Emerging Nonprofit Sector: An Overview. Johns Hopkins
University Press: Baltimore.
Salamon LM, Anheier HK. 1997. The Third World’s Third Sector in Comparative Perspectives. In
Working Papers of the John Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project 24, Salamon LM,
Anheier HK (eds). The Johns Hopkins Institute for Policy Studies: Baltimore.
Salamon LM, Sokolowski SW, Anheier HK. 2002. Social Origins of Civil Society: An Overview,
John Hopkins University: Working papers of the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit sector
Project.
Stewart S. 1997. Happily ever after in the market-place: NGOs and uncivil society. Review of African
Political Economy 71: 24.
Tendler J. 1982. Turning Private Voluntary Organizations into Development Agencies: Questions for
Evaluation. Programme Evaluation Discussion Paper no. 12.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid
 690 T. Tvedt

Tvedt T. 1992. Private organisasjoner som kanal for norsk bistand, Oslo: Norwegian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.
Tvedt T. 1994. The Collapse of the State in the Southern Sudan after the Addis Ababa Agreement.
Internal Causes and the Role of the NGOs. In Harir and Tvedt. 1994.
Tvedt T. 1995. Non-governmental organisations as a channel in development aid. The Norwegian
system. Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Evaluation report, 3/1995.
Tvedt T. 1998. Angels of Mercy or Development Diplomats? NGOs and Foreign Aid. Africa World
Press: Trenton, NJ, James Currey: Oxford.
Tvedt T. 2002. Development NGOs: Actors in a Global Civil Society or in a New International Social
System. Voluntas 3(4): 363–375.
Tvedt T. 2003. Utviklingshjelp, utenrikspolitikk og makt. Den norske modellen, (Development Aid,
Foreign Policy and Power. Norwegian Model), Oslo: Gyldendal akademisk.
Tvedt T. 2005. The paradox of silence: The international aid system and religious NGOs. Paper
presented at NGOs and Civil Society Conference ‘Religious NGOs and the International Aid
system’ in Oslo, April 7–9, 2005.
Uvin, Peter, Miller D. 1994. Scaling Up: Thinking Through the Issues, The Alan Shawn Feinstein
Hunger Program Research Report. Brown University, Providence R.J.
Waltz KN. 1959. Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis. Colombia University Press: New
York.
Weisbrod BA. 1977. Towards a theory of the voluntary nonprofit sector in a three sector economy. In
The Voluntary Nonprofit Sector. An Economic Analysis, Weisbrod BA (ed). D.C. Heath: Lexington
MA, 51–79.
Weisbrod BA. 1988. The Nonprofit Economy. Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA.
Willets P. 2002. What is a Non-Governmental Organization? UNESCO Encyclopaedia of Life
Support Systems. Section 1 Institutional And Infrastructure Resource Issues, Article 1.44.3.7, Non-
Governmental Organizations.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 18, 677–690 (2006)
DOI: 10.1002/jid

View publication stats