Suspiciously Supportive or Suspiciously Obstructive? – The Relationship Between Local Government and NGOs in Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia, and Macedonia

Abstract

Relations between local government and NGOs in post-communist states are often described in negative terms. Findings from 70 in-depth interviews with local government officials and 18 focus groups with NGO representatives in the West Balkans, however, suggest that relations are rather more complex. Local government officials appear to be better informed about and also more positive to NGOs than previous research suggests. Reasons for being positive differ somewhat across countries. NGO attitudes to local government officials, on the other hand, are not only determined by country-specific but also by NGO-specific factors such as scope, budget-size, and age.

Keywords:

• NGOs
• local government
• perceptions
• collaboration

Notes

3. For the sake of simplicity, Bosnia & Herzegovina is in the following referred to as Bosnia.

4. The Independent Bureau for Humanitarian Issues. The Local NGO Sector within Bosnia-Herzegovina – Problems, Analysis and Recommendations. NGO Secctor Review – Discussion Paper. Sarajevo. October 1998; 51 pp. Inadequate legislation on NGOs is also a problem in Serbia. See Jeremić, V.; Šević, Ž, Developing Local Partnerships in a Transitional Country: the Case of Serbia. Powerpoint presentation. OECD Conference on Local Development and Governance in Central, East and South East Europe, Trento, Italy, Jun 6–8, 2005.

9. The project was funded by the Research Council of Norway (Project no 15049/730) and carried out by the Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research in collaboration with Argument (Serbia), Prism Research (Bosnia), and Pro Media (Macedonia).

10. In addition, we conducted 24 focus groups with the general public and 60 in-depth interviews with representatives of the international community. Data was collected in four stages: (i) focus groups with NGO representatives (late 2002); (ii) in-depth interviews with local government officials (late 2002/early 2003); (iii) in-depth interviews with representatives of the international community (late 2002); and (iv) focus groups with the general public (late 2003/early 2004). The focus groups in Serbia were moderated by Dragana Jelovac, a psychologist with several years' experience as a focus group moderator. Focus groups in Bosnia were conducted by Elma Pasic and Dino Djipa, both psychologists with extensive experience from moderating focus groups. In Macedonia the focus groups were moderated by Iskra Evrosimovska and Irena Rajcinovska of ICPCR (Skopje). The in-depth interviews with the local government officials were conducted by Zdenka Milivojevic and Sa2a Jovancevic (Serbia), Elma Pasic and Dino Djipa (Bosnia) and Iskra Evrosimovska, Irena Rajcinovska and Marijana Nedelkovic (Macedonia).

11. According to the 1991 census, ethic Hungarians accounted for 16.9 per cent of the population of the province of Vojvodina. Svanberg, I.; Söhrman, I. Balkan. Folk och länder i krig och fred. Arena: Smedjebacken, 1996; 309 pp.

12. ‘Zajedno’ – a loose coalition of anti-government parties won control of 13 of Serbia's largest urban centres, including Novi Sad and Belgrade, in the November 1996 local elections. Milošević initially refused to accept the results, but did so in February 1997 following large-scale public protest. See Crampton, J.R. The Balkans since the Second World War. Longman: London, 2002; 278.

14. Ethnic tension broke out in Gostivar in July 1997 when the mayor of Gostivar, Rufi Osmani, was arrested and sentenced to several years in prison for draping the Albanian double-headed eagle flag over the facades of the town hall. See Philips, J. Macedonia. Warlords & Rebels in the Balkans. I.B. Tauris: London, 2004.

15. The ideal number for focus groups is somewhat lower. However, as some of the people who agree to take part in focus groups usually fail to show up and consequently to ensure that the focus groups were run with an optimal number of people, we invited a slightly larger number of people than required for the group.

16. Each focus group participant was asked to fill in a short questionnaire before the focus group started. This allowed us to verify that he/she fulfilled the criteria according to which they had been recruited.

17. Two of the six focus groups conducted in Serbia were ethnically mixed (ethnic Serbs, Hungarians and one Rusyn in Novi Sad; ethnic Serbs, Albanians and Roma in Bujanovac). The other focus groups were attended by ethnic Serbs only. As for Bosnia, in Banja Luka all focus group participants except one (a Muslim) were ethnic Serbs. In Mostar we did one focus group on each side of the Neretva river: one composed of Muslims only and one composed of both Christians and Muslims. The focus group that took place in Brcko was primarily composed by ethnic Serbs. In Sarajevo we conducted two ethnically mixed focus groups – one with “new” NGOs and one with “old” NGOs. Three of the focus groups that took place in Macedonia (in Bitola, Štip and Skopje) were composed of ethic Macedonians only. The Gostivar focus group was predominantly composed of ethnic Albanians, whereas the one that took place in Kumanovo was ethnically mixed (ethnic Albanians, Roma, Macedonians, Serbs and Vlach). No tension between representatives of different ethnic groups were observed in the ethnically mixed focus groups.

18. The focus groups with the NGO representatives consisted of seven sections: (i) General attitudes to NGOs in (COUNTRY); (ii) general attitudes to local government officials in (COUNTRY); (iii) General attitudes towards the international community in (COUNTRY); (iv) NGOs as service providers vs. builders of civil society; (v) NGOs and their interaction with local government officials; (vi) NGOs and their interaction with representatives of the international community; and (vii) NGO working conditions, resources and bargaining power: what needs to be done.

19. If impossible to organise a sample along these lines, officials from the targeted sectors were replaced by the following types of officials: officials working in the fields of information, culture, humanitarian assistance, and assistance to refugees. Some also worked in the local parliament administration. In Bosnia & Herzegovina a limited number of interviews was also conducted with court officials, and in Bujanovac (Serbia) some interviews were conducted with employees of the Serbian Coordinating Body for South Serbia. All these types of officials are providing services or engaging in activities relevant to local NGOs in one way or the other.

20. The in-depth interviews with local government officials addressed the following five topics: (i) general attitudes to NGOs in the interview location; (ii) the general working conditions of the local government officials in the interview location; (iii) general attitudes towards the international community in the interview location; (iv) NGOs and their interaction with local government officials in the interview location; and (v) how to improve relations between local government and NGOs.

21. In some cases focus group participants provided answers to one question also when answering other questions. In such cases more than one answer from one and the same focus group participant were coded at the same node. Furthermore, not all the focus group participants answered or commented on each question raised by the moderator.

22. The findings in this article are therefore also based on a count of how many focus group participants that answered the questions referred to in the paper, in the same way.

23. As can be seen from some of the tables, the number for ‘other/don't know’ is in some cases quite high. This is not a result of people not having an opinion. We coded statements that did not fit into our coding scheme as ‘other’. Such statements were often fairly general, failing to provide a specific answer to the question raised.

24. To create the independent variables we collected all statements made by all focus group participants sharing the same characteristic – for instance all statements made by all focus group participants with a high income – and coded these at the same node (“high income”). The advantage with cross-tabulating qualitative data is that it allows us to say something about why some focus group participants hold one particular view, rather than simply reporting how common a particular view is compared to other views within one or several focus groups. This, in turn, allowed us to percentage the numerical findings – i.e. the total number of text units retrieved by QSR NUD∗IST for each cross-tabulation – insert the percentages in tables and in addition conduct a content analysis of the text units derived from each cross-tabulation.

25. For an overview of the NGO sector in the Former Yugoslavia – including Bosnia & Herzegovina – see for instance Andjelic, N. Bosnia & Herzegovina. The End of a Legacy. Frank Cass: London, 2003. An account of the Serbian NGO sector is given by Bolcic, S. NGO Activities in Serbia in the Nineties: Some Lessons of Civil Activism and Democracy Development in the Balkans. 2002; 14 pp (www.watsoninstitute.org/muabet/new_site_bolcic_NGO_serbia.pdf, accessed on 2 January 2006), whereas Cook, T.J. Linking Findings and Results. Development Associates Occasional Paper in Democracy and Governance 2002, 11, 3; 9 (www.devassoc. com/occaspapers.asp, accessed on 5 January 2006), provides an overview of Macedonian NGOs.

26. The text in the brackets indicates that the quote is from one of the in-depth interviews that was carried out in Sarajevo and P3 indicates that it was made by respondent number 3. The following shortenings have been used for quotations referred to below: Be (Belgrade), NS (Novi Sad), Už (Užice), Po (Požarevac), Bu (Bujanovac), Sa (Sarajevo), Mo (Mostar), BL (Banja Luka), Br (Brcko), Sk (Skopje), Ku (Kumanovo), Go (Gostivar), Št (Štip) and Bi (Bitola). The same abbreviations are used for focus group quotations in latter parts of the text. As noted above, in some locations we conducted more than one focus group. To distinguish between them the Belgrade focus groups are referred to as follows: Be-I (focus group I) and Be-II (focus group II). Similarly, the focus groups conducted in Skopje are referred to as Sk-I (focus group I) and Sk-II (focus group II), wheras the Sarajevo focus groups have been labelled Sa-N (Sarajevo focus group with Western-type NGOs), Sa-O (Sarajevo focus group with old-style NGOs). Mo-I refers to the Mostar focus group composed of Muslims only, whereas Mo-II refers to the religiously mixed focus group.

27. MCIC is an acronym for the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation – one of Macedonia's leading NGOs.

30. We created a total of 17 independent variables. Some of these were created based on information about the NGOs that the focus group participants represented (NGO type, age, budget, funding structure, staff size, and location), whereas the others were created based on information about the focus group participants themselves. For reasons of space this article addresses NGO features only and does not explore the link between the focus group participants' personal characteristics and their perceptions of NGOs.

31. The “NGO staff size”-variable has been left out from the analysis as, reading through the questionnaires, it became clear that some focus group participants had inserted their NGO's membership size rather than staff size. We also left out the “NGO funding structure”-variable as the large majority of the NGOs included in our study are dependent on international funding rather than funding from local government, consequently reducing the relevance of this variable for our analysis.

32. We distinguished between NGOs whose total annual budget was less than $2,500, $2,500–5,000, $5,000–10,000 and more than $10,000. As the number of text units generated by cross-tabulating budget size against “local government familiarity with NGOs” was small, these findings should be treated accordingly.

33. The findings for Serbia are more difficult to interpret: while there is a difference between those NGOs whose budget exceed $10,000, on the one hand, and NGOs whose budget is less than $10,000, on the other, there is no clear pattern between NGOs whose budget equals $2,500 or less, NGOs with a budget of $2,500–5,000 and NGOs with an income of $5,000–10,000. The share of negative statements made by NGOs within the $5,000–10,000 bracket, however, is considerably lower than for the two categories below $5,000.

34. As none of the focus group participants in Macedonia representing NGOs with a total income of $2,500–5,000 and only one focus group participant from an NGO whose income was in the $5,000–10,000 bracket, it is difficult to compare findings by NGO income. Besides, NGOs with the highest and lowest incomes thought NGO attitudes to local government was equally positive and negative. Macedonia has therefore been left out of the analysis.

35. All statements made by those representing NGOs with a total annual income of $5,000–10,000 suggested that NGOs are negative to local government. However, as the total number of statements made by this group on NGO attitudes to local government is very small (only two statements in total), the higher percentage for this group than for the other three should not be given too much importance.

36. NGOs with a total annual income of $5,000–10,000 expressed positive and negative views in equal measure.

37. Focus group participants were asked to tick those activities that applied to their NGO from the following list: (i) humanitarian aid, (ii) medical assistance, (iii) care for the elderly, (iv) care for the handicapped, (v) care for the poor, (vi) assistance to refugees and IDPs, (vii) housing, (viii) education, (ix) environmental protection, (x) inter-ethnic dialogue, (xi) the promotion of human rights and (xii) lobbying political authorities. They were also asked to write down any other activities that applied. We classified (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) and other types of service provision listed by focus group participants as “service provision” and the remaining activities as “civil society issues.”

38. Findings for Macedonia are not included in the analysis due to a very limited number of text units for civil society NGOs.

40. We distinguished between NGOs founded during the Yugoslav period, NGOs founded after the break-up of Yugoslavia (during the civil war or before 1996 in Bosnia), between 1996 and 1999, and in 2000 or later. Findings for age by local government familiarity with NGOs is not included due to the limited number of text units generated by the cross-tabulations.

42. Project in-depth interview with foreign embassy staff, Belgrade, November 2002.

43. NGOs founded as citizens' associations during the socialist period thought local government officials were negative to NGOs to a larger extent than did younger NGOs. One explanation may be that these NGOs have failed to properly adjust to current political conditions and that they are therefore loosing out in terms of local government assistance. As the number of statements generated by our cross-tabulation is small (only two text units in total), this finding is not particularly strong.

47. Obtaining such assistance from government institutions at least at present appears rather unrealistic. It also seems unlikely for local business to take on this task in the near future.

51. Local government reform - including educating and training local government officials – is an issue addressed by several international donors in the West Balkans.

52. NGOs in all countries covered by our research admit that there is considerable competition between them and consequently also a fair amount of secrecy. What is more, NGOs admit that they are having some difficulty diseminating information about their activities. See Åse Berit Gr⊘deland. Public Perceptions of Non-governmental Organisations in Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 2006, 39(2), 221–246.