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Nongovernmental Organizations in International Society: Struggles over Recognition
Nongovernmental Organizations in International Society: Struggles over Recognition Summary:By Volker Heins
NGO issues are core to international relations and international organization so there is a ready market for books on this topic. According to the reviewer, the author eschews fads in his approach, which will prolong the shelf-life of the book.Based on a wealth of original information and research, this book offers both a critical introduction to NGOs and a discussion of recent theoretical approaches which have either dismissed or wildly exaggerated their political significance. CONTENTS List of Tables v Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations ix 1 Introduction: Nailing Down a Moving Target 1 2 What Is Distinctive about NGOs? 15 3 Why Did NGOs Emerge and Prosper? 43 4 What Are NGOs Actually Doing? 65 5 Where Do NGOs Seek Involvement? 113 6 How Do NGOs Succeed (or Fail)? 139 7 Conclusion: Paradoxes of Organized Goodness 159 Notes 167 Selected Bibliography 195 Index 205 This book provides a critical introduction to the study of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). “Critical” means that while I am convinced that many NGOs are forces for good in international society, I also believe it is important not to take their self-images at face value and to remain skeptical about their claims of being morally superior to governments, corporations, and ordinary citizens. The second meaning of “critical” is that there are limitations to the power of NGOs that are often ignored by social scientists sympathetic to the moral causes advanced by these groups. With this in mind, I make three arguments. First, I argue that it is wrong to interpret the prominence and impact of globally active NGOs as symptoms of the much-touted “end of sovereignty” or the rise of a post-Westphalian world order. NGOs are forces within international society that, far from undermining sovereign statehood, often contribute to its resilience. Second, to the extent that NGOs are symptomatic for a fundamental change, they signal the shift away from a politics based on national and class interests to a politics based on moral values and emotions. NGOs epitomize the rise of an “other-regarding” ethic that is increasingly taking hold in Western societies, often cutting across the divide between governmental and nongovernmental forces. The Western world has institutionalized solid patterns of self-criticism, and NGOs are a prominent facet of this pattern. I will show that the critical social theory of “recognition” provides an important tool for analyzing, comparing, and contrasting NGOs. Third, NGOs are independent political and moral actors, but they are not independent in the sense that they flourish in a distinct sphere beyond the reach of mundane forces such as governments, international organizations, donor agencies, and corporations. Quite the reverse, NGOs are social analogues to “benign parasites” that seek to “infect” and thereby change the behavior of their hosts without harming them. They are independent in that they choose their own programs and targets; but they need other, more powerful agents to support, take up, and implement these programs. Empirically speaking, NGOs have proliferated in number, grown in visibility, and gained in standing in many domestic and international arenas over the course of the last decades. They have staged public protests, lobbied for international treaties, monitored the behavior of states and firms, and participated in the “global governance” of an increasing number of policy areas. In some cases, they have directly aided official national delegations in drafting policy positions on issues from climate change to whaling to nonproliferation. Often in conjunction with international organizations, NGOs are redefining and defending the rights of refugees, children, indigenous peoples, small farmers, migrant workers, consumers, minorities, journalists, homosexuals, women, prisoners, future generations, and endangered animals. Politicians and business leaders are careful not to antagonize the new actors who enjoy high levels of public trust. Consultancies specialize in the detection of emerging reputational threats to specific business activities, financial institutions, and investment sectors. At the same time, many international NGOs active in areas such as the environment, human rights, or global poverty are emulating the entrepreneurial spirit of multinational corporations. They carefully manage their public image. Their professional structures are increasingly businesslike. In the offices of some of the bigger NGOs, visitors can see large world maps, like in corporate boardrooms, with little colored flags indicating hotspots of activity. Yet it is not easy to tell what NGOs do or what they are. People working for these organizations do many different things that do not seem to have an obvious common denominator. NGOs participate in public and private regulatory bodies that oversee food, labor, or environmental standards. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) searches mass graves from the Balkans to Sri Lanka to collect evidence of war crimes. Greenpeace alerts developing-country governments to the dangers of unlabeled genetically modified seeds sneaking into the food chain. The French group Action Against Hunger/Action Contre la Faim (ACF) runs nutritional surveillance programs in southern Sudan and elsewhere. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the South African Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) have helped to bring down prices for antiretroviral AIDS drugs. Women’s rights groups submit 2 NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY third-party amicus curiae briefs to international criminal tribunals that provide facts on crimes and often have a direct influence on the jurisprudence of these tribunals. Animal rights groups such as the Best Friends Network put pressure on the mayors of Bucharest and other East European cities to stop the killing of stray dogs. The Canadian-founded antiwhaling organization Sea Shepherd has even engaged in direct-action tactics by chasing and ramming Japanese whaling vessels in the southern Pacific. Through the effective mise en scène of all these activities, NGOs have become constant and familiar fixtures of the political landscape. Media clichés that depict NGOs as present-day incarnations of small David fighting the warrior champion Goliath have further enhanced the reputation of these organizations. NGOs are everywhere, and it is nice to be associated with them. Some people even wish to metamorphose into an NGO, like former President Bill Clinton who said one day, “Shortly after I left Office, I was shaving and I looked in the mirror and I thought, my God, I have become an NGO.”1 Please select one mirror to download
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