Transnational aid for civil society development in post-socialist Europe: Democratic consolidation or a new imperialism?

Abstract

Civil society development programmes are perhaps the most tangible aspect of transnational assistance to post-socialist Europe, yet the experience of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) suggests that the impact, rationale and function of such assistance is problematical. Despite the specific political context of BiH, there is continuity with post-socialist Europe in terms of the logic governing NGO development assistance. What has become a core component of international intervention in war-torn regions evolved in post-socialist Europe during the 1990s under the rubric of democratic consolidation and civil society development.

Introduction

Assistance from international donor agencies to local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in post-socialist states is perhaps the most salient expression of transnational linkage. Although the impact and extent of such aid has tended to be exaggerated, professional NGOs competing for externally funded donor projects have become a generic feature of post-socialism.1 Indeed, for most multilateral agencies, philanthropic foundations and national donor organizations the provision of grants to NGOs is the cornerstone of their developmental aid to post-socialist Europe. Such assistance is framed in the language of ‘democratic consolidation’ and ‘civil society development’, or increasingly in terms of ‘capacity building’ and ‘sustainability’.

In recent years a reasonably extensive critical literature has emerged challenging the rationale of donor aid, questioning whether the NGOs supported and developed by donors are fulfilling the role and functions of civil society, and pouring considerable scorn on the suggestion that a tier of professional elite-level NGOs should be seen as a hallmark of democratic consolidation.2 Fundamental questions have been raised concerning whether Western notions of civil society can be equated with donor-dependent NGOs, or indeed can be successfully transported beyond the specific context of established liberal democracies.3 International donors and philanthropic organizations have responded by placing greater emphasis on sustainability and capacity building as strategies to strengthen NGOs and ensure that some legacy of their involvement will remain once the funding has ceased and the donor agency has moved elsewhere. Yet this still does little to address the fundamental question of what function NGOs have been developed to perform. The overriding rationale governing transnational intervention in NGO development – over and above the objectives and missions of individual donor organizations – requires further critical examination. This study sets out to consider the logic of transnational intervention for NGO development in post-socialist Europe and how it has evolved since the early 1990s. The specific empirical focus of the article is NGO development in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH).

Civil society development aid began to shift from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the Balkans in the second half of the 1990s. This was in response to the specific crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but also due to the realization on the part of donors that scarce resources had to be deployed in less stable parts of the post-socialist world. As will be shown below, short-term project grants as the basis of donor support for local NGOs had begun to arouse controversy and criticism, largely because NGOs had become dependant on international donors. Critics were concerned that the availability of donor money stimulated competition rather than co-operation between NGOs, encouraged organizations to change the focus of their campaigns in response to potential sources of new funding, and dissuaded NGOs from developing the financial links with local communities that would offer future sustainability. Whilst it was hoped that in their assistance for NGOs in BiH foreign donors would learn the lessons of their involvement in CEE, in fact the NGO development programmes of USAID (United States Agency for International Development), the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) and others were still based on the provision of short-term projects and the development of professional organizations. Thus, while fieldworkers within the Soros Foundation in Prague were expressing their frustration with the failings of a decade of civil society development initiatives, the Foundation's office in Sarajevo was embarking on precisely the same strategy for BiH.4

While the persistence of project grants and the emphasis on professional NGO development in BiH suggests that little has altered in terms of transnational civil society development aid across post-socialist Europe in the past decade and a half, there has in fact occurred a fundamental shift in the logic and rationale governing donor intervention. This change began to occur in CEE in the second half of the 1990s, and has come into full fruition in the reconstruction of Bosnia since the Dayton peace accord of 1995. It represents a distinct ideological shift within the politics of liberal intervention and has gained particular resonance in the context of the current reconstruction of Iraq. Although NGO development represents only part of what might broadly be referred to as international intervention, it remains a particularly significant component on which many aspects of regime change and state construction are seen to hinge.

In the immediate aftermath of 1989, donors were reluctant to engage with national governments and state institutions.5 Beyond helping new elites to establish electoral systems and democratic institutions, all aid was channelled through NGOs, which were seen as vehicles for ensuring economic, political and social change. With the hegemonic discourse of neo-liberalism cautioning against international donors having too great an engagement with the post-socialist state, the newly created NGOs were funded to develop their professionalism and to work on contained projects broadly, although by no means entirely, within the realm of the policymaking process. In the spirit of de Tocqueville their remit was to maximize representation, offer expertise and provide services as the state withdrew.

As the 1990s drew to a close, and the prospect of EU accession became a reality for the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, foreign donors rationalized their aid, and the logic governing NGO development began to alter. Fearful that the CEE states would not meet the criteria of the acquis and that there would be a significant implementation deficit, the EU, by now the main source of NGO development aid in CEE, framed its support for civil society in terms of good governance, policy development and administrative efficiency. The Commission's anxieties about compliance were reflected in the types of projects that NGOs were being funded to work on. For instance, concern about the progress in the implementation of environmental laws, and the treatment of the Roma in the Czech Republic meant that a significant number of project grants were available for work on these issues.

In the context of rebuilding war-torn Bosnia, NGO development was from the outset conceptualized much more in terms of state building. As Chandler has noted, the reconstruction of BiH has in reality involved developing administrative capacity, legal frameworks and economic regeneration rather than focusing on empowering citizens and entrenching democratic accountability.6 Involving organizations is seen as a mechanism for strengthening the effectiveness of the state and entrenching the rule of law, rather than as a measure of substantive democratic change. On the surface a distinct shift in emphasis appears to have occurred in the context of civil society development in BiH. The emphasis is more overtly on NGOs as policy partners and agents of good governance rather than vehicles for citizen empowerment. This has been justified in terms of the context of ethnic conflict and the agenda of reconstruction, as well as the presence of so many international organizations and aid agencies after the war.7 The shift in emphasis also reflects the view held by some of the staff within the international agencies still operating in BiH that the country is not sufficiently ready for democracy.8 However, the core argument of this article is that in fact such an apparent shift in emphasis actually began to occur during the course of transnational intervention in CEE during the late 1990s, but found its full expression in the assistance delivered to BiH by international aid agencies and donors. It is a change that reflects a more fundamental shift in the politics of liberal intervention and indeed the ideological tensions within the neo-liberal camp regarding the role of government and state regulation. What had occurred was a shift from an outright contempt for government in the immediate post-cold war era to an emphasis on partnership and governance. The EU and other transnational donors in CEE effectively established a framework logic for future international intervention, in which NGO development formed a key component, during the second half of the1990s.

We begin with an overview of the logic governing international assistance for NGO development in CEE. The analysis will highlight the evolution of the rationale, from neo-liberal anti-state philosophy in the early 1990s to a focus on NGOs as part of good governance and partnership with the state in the run-up to EU accession in 2004. The discussion will then focus on Bosnia and consider the conceptualization of civil society development in the context of state building and reconstruction by the international community.

The rationale and logic of NGO development assistance in CEE

The two core and highly contentious assumptions on which donor aid and assistance have been delivered in CEE states are that NGO development must start from scratch, and that all post-socialist societies required the same tutelage and assistance.9 Donors have all based their programmes on the tacit assumption that in terms of civil society development there was nothing to salvage from the socialist past. Existing informal networks and patterns of social interaction derived from the socialist period have simply been ignored.

That citizens of the new democracies lack experience of the type of political engagement required in a democratic system is, of course, indisputable. The notion of autonomous organizations engaging in overt and legal political advocacy was alien to the socialist systems. Adaptation to the norms of democratic politics has undoubtedly been required and has presented a significant challenge, particularly to the organizations that emerged at the time of the 1989 revolutions.10 However, the tutelage offered by donors has been narrow and very specific, and has not been based on any kind of existing skills audit. The focus has not been on how organizations should develop linkage within society, mobilize local resources and adapt community-based networks from the socialist period to the new context, but on developing competence in organizational management and fund-raising know-how. For instance, USAID Democracy Network (Dem Net) training, which NGOs across the region have undertaken, is typical of the type of knowledge transfer offered. NGOs that ‘graduate’ from its programmes have been tutored in basic organizational management training, including auditing skills and financial management.11 Other donors, in particular the EU, have based their training on developing grant application expertise, thus enabling NGOs to obtain matching funds.

The ability of an organization to obtain foreign donor grants and its capacity to run projects and secure additional funding have become the key indicators of successful NGO development. Such management criteria form the basis of civil society aid allocation. The social or political worthiness of an NGO's activities, the organization's links with community and the salience of the issues on which it works are of less significance than the capacity and track record of the NGO in completing and managing a short-term project. It is not surprising therefore that the same NGOs gain the bulk of funding in each grant round, and that it is extremely difficult for smaller or new NGOs without a ‘track record’ to break into the donor circuit; more-established NGOs are a safer bet for donors.12 Although ‘sustainability’ and a capacity to raise revenue are important skills that many Western NGOs have developed, civil society in established liberal democracies cannot be reduced simply to professional NGOs operating within the realms of the policy process. The strength of Western civil society is its continued and evolving linkage with communities and its diversity in form and function. In their quest to develop professional NGOs, international donors have ignored and dismissed the realm of non-market relations and overlooked semi-formal networks of post-socialist society that could potentially form the basis of a substantive civil society.

The emphasis placed by donors on building fund-raising expertise and managerial competence has intensified in recent years as many of the original civil society donors have withdrawn from CEE and the pool of available resources has shrunk considerably. By 2004 most foreign governmental assistance for NGOs, such as DFID (Department for International Development (UK)) and USAID, had been withdrawn from CEE states in consequence of accession to the European Union. This withdrawal had begun in the mid-1990s and it was feared then that NGOs would collapse once the donors had gone unless they gained access to state funding or private local sources of revenue. Nearly a decade on, NGOs across the region have made little headway in realizing the latter, and certainly not enough to compensate for the reduction in foreign donor revenue.13 What has in fact occurred is that the EU has stepped in to provide NGOs with resources. In the period prior to accession, the EU grants and projects were increasingly geared towards realizing the accession criteria and strengthening the policy-making and regulatory function of NGOs. The Commission was particularly concerned about the social, political and economic exclusion of the Roma in the Czech Republic and channelled a significant proportion of its civil society development aid to Roma projects.14 Elsewhere it placed emphasis on developing the competency of NGOs within specific policy frameworks such as transport and agriculture.

The situation today in CEE is that NGOs remain dependent on a much-reduced pool of donors, mainly the EU but also including other smaller international and bilateral foundations. One of the most significant developments has been the creation of the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE Trust). This was launched in January 2001 as an independent endowment trust offering support to non-profit organizations. The money comes from US and European private grant-making foundations. The rationale is that pooling of the resources of foundations will maximize benefit and reduce programme duplication.15 The revenue is distributed through short-term grants via local foundations in the various CEE states. The aim is to allow local input into the processes of allocation and distribution. The CEE Trust has distributed sizeable sums of money and has made up much of the shortfall from the withdrawal of bilateral donors. However, revenue from the trust tends to favour non-profit and voluntary sector projects that aim to provide public benefit. In other words the conception of civil society at the core of this aid is third-sector development rather than political advocacy. While trust money has benefited certain advocacy campaigns, these have tended to involve campaigns to reform tax laws or strengthen the legal environment for the third sector. The main thrust of the assistance typically involves developing corporate philanthropy for charities, developing voluntarism, and offering organizational management and the provision of training for local grant-makers. A key aspect of the assistance is the development of good governance of NGOs. Several articles written by the directors of local foundations aligned to the trust illustrate the conception of the role of NGOs; an article on the development of governing bodies within NGOs, states that

Civil society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has achieved remarkable success over the past decade. Yet notably absent among its achievements is an appreciation of the importance of boards and the governance function. Boards may exist as a registration requirement or as a source of social prestige, but the ways in which they strengthen accountability and promote organizational effectiveness are often untested and misunderstood.16

Developing governing boards as the basis of NGO accountability is seen as a solution to claims that NGOs are unaccountable and disconnected. NGOs will ideally then look and operate more like businesses, be accountable to the board of governors rather than to a constituency within civil society, and generally operate in a more efficient and cost-effective way. The conceptualization of NGOs as corporate entities is blatant:

Yet even as the vocabulary of accountability has entered the NGO vernacular, governance, understood as the work of governing bodies or boards, is rarely included in the discussion. This is in sharp contrast to the region's business sector, where the recent wave of corporate scandals was quickly attributed to lax and incompetent boards.

Visions of civil society within the policy process, and the role of NGOs within the framework of governance, are made explicit in an article detailing the CEE Trust's project ‘Strengthening the Basis for NGO-Government Cooperation in Romania’. The preamble states that

Civil society organizations (CSOs) in Romania still have major development needs, both in terms of institutional and operational capacity, which directly affect their ability to act as reliable partners of the government in the process of developing and implementing public policies, including the acquis communautaire.17

The Romanian project is designed to help establish an appropriate framework for the government to grant ‘public utility status’ to NGOs working in designated areas of competency. Closer relations between NGOs and the Romanian government are conceptualized in terms of enhancing the transparency of decision-making and improving dialogue.

The trust is a very significant donor for NGOs in CEE states – it provided $4 million for Slovak NGOs in the period 2002–418 – and its influence in shaping NGO development is increasing and should not be underestimated. Working in tandem with the EU's agenda for civil society development in the region, the trust's interpretation of NGOs as part of good governance and as public benefit organizations providing franchized services in the community draws on a particular interpretation of civil society. In particular, the notion of accountability is defined in a highly subjective way to imply that NGOs must be first and foremost accountable to donors and to their boards, which invariably include representatives of local and international donor foundations. What this means is that the link of accountability between NGOs and society, so central to normative conceptions of civil society, has been tacitly dropped.

The rationale of NGO development has evolved quite significantly since the early 1990s. The framework of governance has imposed new criteria and a new language – capacity building, public benefit, partnership and competency. Compared to the early 1990s the available revenue for NGOs is much reduced and the objectives are much clearer and honed. All donor projects are linked to developing the capacity of NGOs within the context of governance and policy making. The rather vague initial logic of civil society development assistance – that NGOs were good for democracy and were required to provide services to the community – has been replaced by an instrumental interpretation of their role as functionaries of good governance and state building.

The context of NGO development in BiH

It is easy to overlook the fact that the notion of international organizations providing aid and assistance for local NGOs in Bosnia began not as a quest for improving democracy, but as part of a wider aid package during the 1992–95 war.19 The main international donors that provide assistance to NGOs in BiH today – OSCE, USAID, Soros Foundation, C.S. Mott, Catholic Relief Services, UNDP, the World Bank and the EU – began their operations as providers of emergency aid and relief to war-torn communities, particularly in besieged Sarajevo. Democracy promotion became for many donors a post-Dayton objective and a means to justify and rationalize their continued presence in the country once the war had ended.

Since the Dayton agreement of 1995, the core aim driving civil society assistance has been to move local NGOs away from service provision towards advocacy and political engagement. The perceived role of civil society is a complex one: although it is about NGOs becoming more politically engaged, it is not about them becoming agents of political contestation in the new left Gramscian sense. Nor are local NGOs conceptualized in terms of the representation of apolitical interests reflecting the social diversity of society. Assistance is geared towards local NGOs becoming a political opposition to balance the influence of nationalist elites, vehicles for pro-Western political change that will weaken the ideological grip of the nationalist politicians who continue to be elected and dominate party politics. Rather than focusing on relief and needs, the vision is of NGOs helping to devise policy frameworks, working across the two entities,20 and engaging citizens from across the three communities (Serb, Croat and Muslim (Bosniak)) in alternative political rhetoric and engagement. In contrast to CEE in the early 1990s, civil society is not being developed to help consolidate democratic politics and complement political parties, but is being strengthened in order to counteract the influence of nationalists within formal political institutions. Advocacy here means direct involvement and responsibility, partnership and governance.

The concept of civil society is being used in BiH as a framework to incorporate a multitude of processes, ranging from enforcing the rule of law, healing ethnic wounds, weakening the power and influence of nationalist politicians, regenerating the economy and facilitating the eventual withdrawal of the international community. The role of NGOs as democracy promoters is thus diluted amid a whole array of different functions. In gaining an additional rationale, NGO development programmes are able to be much more overt in terms of the functions that organizations are to perform: NGOs need to engage government to help end corruption, to weaken the grip of nationalists, and to represent the interests of non-majority communities. NGOs are the key players in the World Bank's poverty-reduction strategy for BiH; they form the basis of EU reform initiatives as well as acting as core service providers in healthcare, education and welfare.

Unsurprisingly, this interpretation of civil society and NGO development propagated and developed by international donors has aroused considerable criticism. Aside from the conceptual corruption – stretching the concept of civil society considerably beyond its liberal normative foundations – the charge is that this type of intervention has little to do with democracy and a great deal to do with control.21 Donors stand accused of using the discursive frame of civil society as a veil to hide an uncompromising intervention reminiscent for some of colonial power.22 For Chandler, intervention is about prioritizing the rule of law over political processes and sovereignty. Transnational NGO development is the key component of what he describes as ‘[a] doctrine of nation-building [that] posits the “rule of law” in opposition to self-government’. Reflecting on the lessons of such intervention for post-war Iraq, Chandler concludes: ‘[t]he experience of Bosnia would suggest that this legal idealism undermines the political process, the standing of the law and the transition to self-government’.23 Critics of international donor assistance for civil society development in post-socialist Europe have framed their criticism in a not dissimilar language.24 In BiH the context of post-war reconstruction has allowed the objectives of intervention to become far more blatant and overt; the distrust expressed by foreign donors regarding the ability of local people in post-socialist Europe to run their public organizations and to operate within the new political structures is taken to new heights in Bosnia, where the international community sees itself as protectors of the brokered peace and present in the country to prevent a return to bloodshed. There is little apparent regard for local political capacity.

A decade since the Dayton agreement the type of NGO that has emerged in BiH reflects the objectives of the international community. In terms of engaging NGOs with the policy process, getting them to talk to government and contribute to the process of governance, there has been significant change since 2000. The following section will provide a detailed overview of the rationale employed by the main international donors with regard to NGO development. The main donors have established a normative framework for NGO support, similar in many ways to the rationale governing project grant allocation to NGOs in CEE, but with far greater emphasis placed on engaging government and advocacy. For those organizations and protest networks that remain outside this framework and wish to articulate their demands differently, there is no support available. In other words, external assistance comes with stringent conditions that dictate the type of strategies, internal organization and political engagement civil society activists employ.

Donor rationale: A framework for strengthening good governance in Bosnia

The international donors and organizations that remain involved in NGO development in BiH operate according to a broadly similar rationale. In action reminiscent of a similar development in CEE during the second half of the 1990s, the EU has gradually extended its influence in the realm of NGO development in BiH, to the point where it now represents the main international donor supporting civil society development. The Delegation of the European Commission to BiH has played an instrumental role in establishing a core elite of advocacy NGOs and NGO networks. Although the intervention is framed in the general context of eventual EU accession, which is unlikely for the foreseeable future, the EU's involvement is part of the regional Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization programme (CARDS) and the more specific Stabilization and Association process (SAp), a precursor to a pre-accession strategy, established by the European Commission to support economic and political development within the Western Balkan countries. Supporting NGOs is part of a €71.9 million four-year programme for Bosnia and Herzegovina announced in May 2002 to develop democratic stabilization (€23.5 million); administrative capacity building (€9 million); economic and social development (€13.4 million); environment and natural resources (€6.5 million); and justice and home affairs (€16.5).25

On the strength of such provision, the EU is now the largest donor in BiH, for both government and NGOs. It typically offers grants in the region of €50,000–€100,000 to organizations for specific projects. It does this not by initiating specific projects as such, but by identifying broad areas it wishes to support. It then invites NGOs to submit applications for projects that fall in line with these designated national objectives. Funded projects thus provide the delegation with a mechanism for realizing its objectives in terms of NGO development and activity. Through its issue focus it can dramatically shift NGO activity towards aspects of policy development, legal enforcement, or social transformation. In recent months the delegation has, for example, begun to focus on environmental protection.

It is somewhat ironic that, despite the emphasis placed on sustainability, the focus of EU funding changes quite often, and the provision of funds for specific projects is only ever likely to be short-term, no more than two years. This does little to develop the long-term presence of specialist NGOs working in certain fields. Instead, it encourages professional organizations to switch the focus of their activities in response to the latest issue agenda.

However, it is the EU's funding application process that acts as the greatest mechanism for shaping local NGOs. The application process for such funds is extremely complicated. It involves the applicant organization having a basic knowledge of project psycho-management tools. NGOs are required to submit a detailed account of exactly how the overall objectives of the proposed project would further EU national objectives for BiH. The specific objectives of the project must then be identified with reference to the sustainable development of the organization and to the methodology for measuring outcomes and identifying indicators of achievement. Applicants are requested to identify quantitative and qualitative base-line assessments against which the EU will measure success on completion of the project. Submissions can end up being 150-page documents and the product of many hours of work.

Paolo Scialla, the team coordinator for the Democratic Stabilization Programme of the Delegation of the European Commission to BiH, concedes that this is an extremely difficult process. He acknowledges that ‘such complex management tools are not easy for people who have been using them for years’. It is recognized that the reason that funds repeatedly go to a few larger NGOs, with whom the EU has worked over the past three or four years, rather than to newer local organizations, is connected with the complexity of the process and the insistence that NGOs obtain matching funds. Invariably this rules out smaller NGOs and benefits those that have already established contacts with USAID, the OSCE or some other large international donor. In other words, an NGO has to be well established and connected in order to gain access to EU funds. Not surprisingly perhaps, the EU found it hard to allocate funds for the current network-building round. The quality of the applications was considered poor, and out of a potential €7 million, only €1.5 million could be allocated. The local delegation has concluded that the process is too complex for most local NGOs and that there is a lack of capacity to develop the kind of projects that the EU wishes to support. However, the solution to this is seen to lie in providing more training for NGOs to develop the specific technical skills required to complete grant applications rather than to change the application process.26

The process of applying for EU grants is particularly complex for NGOs, but it is by no means untypical. Local NGOs applying for USAID, OSCE or World Bank projects must demonstrate a proficiency in organizational management concepts. The World Bank's strategy for civil society development in BiH, and its ideological commitment to the notion of governance and stakeholder partnership, has been critical in shaping the local NGO sector. The bank views civil society organizations as two-way transmission belts: as stakeholders they have a role to play in inputting the views of society, but they must also then help in the economic restructuring and the acceptance of ‘reforms that must be taken, but are sometimes rather painful’.27 World Bank aid to NGOs favours those organizations working with socially and economically marginalized groups – the Roma, people with disabilities and youth – in order to assist these groups with economic restructuring. In other words, the civil society development strategy is part of the bank's new thinking on poverty reduction and inclusion as a basis for long-term economic regeneration. Devolving responsibility to local NGOs to act as agents for the provision of services in communities, such as micro-credit schemes that deliver clear economic benefit, is held up as a model for NGO activity. A further example cited is the role NGOs have played in skills training for former soldiers. According to Goran Tinjic, Operations Officer for the World Bank country office for BiH, NGOs have proved to be ‘very competitive’. But the World Bank does not just promote NGOs as service providers; it has played a key role in developing links between government and NGOs within policy frameworks ranging from environmental protection to legal reform. It does this by effectively forcing government officials to work with NGOs as a condition for receiving World Bank aid. It is this aspect of the bank's influence that has delivered the most noticeable change in NGO activity in BiH in recent years.

In contrast to the situation in the late 1990s, when the first detailed analysis of civil society development in BiH took place,28 the willingness of certain government authorities (municipal, canton and entity levels) to work with NGOs marks a significant change in the behaviour of both officials and NGOs. Aalthough politicians may be co-operating with NGOs under pressure from the international community, and although there is indeed significant variation between individual municipalities and cantons, this is undoubtedly a positive development.29 Earlier research recorded that NGOs operated entirely within the orbit of the international community, worked on projects proposed by donors, and paid little attention to the local administration. This was seen as a rational response on the part of local NGOs, who identified the international community – rather than municipalities and state authorities – as the source of real power and influence. In the initial post-war period NGOs were treated with suspicion by government officials – the term ‘non- governmental’ (nevladina) was interpreted as opposition to government, and the issues that NGOs worked on were perceived as contentious and threatening. The situation has altered; today there are several examples of new links having been forged between networks of NGOs and government. This has occurred because of the requirements imposed by the World Bank and the EU on both NGOs and government to work together as a requisite for receiving aid. The approach has been twin-track, with pressure exerted simultaneously on NGOs and on state authorities to establish such partnerships.

Critically evaluating such a change is complex. Through their assistance, the EU and the Bank have reoriented NGOs away from the international community towards the local administration, and away from the notion of NGOs as vehicles for the provision of emergency foreign aid towards partnership and an advocacy role. This is undoubtedly a positive democratic development. After all, NGOs need at least to engage with government and acknowledge it as a source of authority if there is to be any hope of their ultimately contesting political power. Compared to the situation five years ago there is evidence today of youth organizations, displaced persons' associations and women's organizations being in consultation with government. Although this is confined to the municipal or canton level rather than the level of the state or the entity, it does seem to suggest that NGOs are becoming more embedded and localized and that change at the grassroots level is taking place.

However, the terms of such engagement, which are essentially dictated by the World Bank and the EU, embroil NGOs within the process of governance. While in the longer term NGOs working with officials and challenging local decision making may well improve their standing within communities, deliver substantive political change, and help legitimize local political elites, these are not the main objectives of donor aid. For the World Bank, drawing NGOs and government together is about maximizing efficiency, better implementation, and developing expertise and professionalism. Summarizing the bank's involvement in civil society development, Goran Tinjic observes rather candidly:

basically we contract NGOs as implementing agencies, as implementing partners. Our client is the government of BiH and our purpose is to help create an enabling environment for development, which includes also creating an environment for co-operation [between the government] and the third sector.

That such intervention can easily be packaged as democracy and civil society promotion obscures the bank's true purpose and objective. Tinjic concludes:

[The] need to boost employment requires tough actions and it is important to build consensus around it … by making sure that there is a sufficient understanding amongst stakeholders about the importance of these reforms.30

A somewhat different picture of international intervention for civil society development emerges from the OSCE mission to BiH. This organization has been involved in democracy promotion since the mid-1990s and has invested considerable sums in NGO development under the rubric of civil society assistance during the past decade. The OSCE was instrumental in formulating a developmental model for local NGOs after the Dayton agreement, whereby organizations would move away from emergency aid provision towards playing a more constructive advocacy role in developing policy.31 NGOs were seen as a crucial counterbalance to the nationalist-dominated political institutions, a means of countering the electoral success of nationalist parties by mobilizing local communities round different issues and agendas. For the OSCE a political role for NGOs clearly meant participation in the policy process, and the training and advice they offered to organizations reflected this ideal. The Democratization Branch of the OSCE mission to BiH was responsible for strengthening civil society. Its approach was initially to organize civic groups and to bring different organizations together. The basic assumption driving the assistance in the mid-1990s was that a new type of NGO needed to emerge, working on certain issues and in a particular way.

Nearly a decade later the OSCE's civil society assistance initiatives appear to be somewhat in disarray. The Bosnian mission has had its funding cut and it is widely voiced that the OSCE will remain in the country only until the end of the decade. Representatives of the Bosnian mission point to a series of strategic blunders, many of which are immediately reminiscent of problems experienced elsewhere in post-socialist Europe. These range from the duplication of initiatives by donors, the false growth in registered NGOs in response to the availability of grants, and the absence of any critical reflection of intervention by the organization. Surprisingly, the OSCE gathers no information regarding the success of its projects. Even if staff identify procedural or logistical problems and make recommendations, these are rarely acted upon. With a rapid turnover of staff there is a lack of institutional memory, which perhaps explains why the same errors are apparently repeated, not just within the mission to BiH but elsewhere. After a series of re-launches, the OSCE's current thinking (as of November 2004) emphasizes a much more hands-off approach towards NGO development. Rather than specifying project areas and providing targeted training, the approach now is to allow local communities and organizations to identify priorities and for the OSCE to support such initiatives. A key aspect of the OSCE's civil society development programme is training for municipalities in how to use their resources earmarked for civil society most effectively, how to ensure fair competition among NGOs, and how to monitor progress.

Despite the shift towards a less interventionist approach, the basic impetus remains unchanged: to mobilize local citizens against corrupt nationalist-dominated elites and for NGOs to help drive political and legal change through their engagement with government. The difference is that today the OSCE is concerned not just to stimulate the growth of new NGOs in response to its initiatives, but to nurture community organizations and networks that already exist and to develop their capacity. OSCE fieldworkers have begun to connect with small local groups and community organizations in rural communities in Republika Srpska, or in areas where there has been virtually no international assistance available in the past, with the aim of getting such aggregations working with government and providing them with what are deemed to be the necessary skills. The rationalization of assistance has meant that the training offered by the OSCE is entirely based on developing either advocacy ‘know-how’ or problem-solving skills. No alternative project funding or development assistance is available. Under the ‘Successor Generation Initiative’ programme, young activists and those wishing to work on a particular community issue can approach the OSCE for assistance. But the help they will receive will be based on developing their advocacy skills, helping them to co-operate and work with government and to develop their expertise. In other words, they will not be allowed to devise their own strategies, and neither will they be supported in articulating their demands in other ways.

While aspects of the OSCE's support are to be applauded, particularly the emphasis placed on supporting local initiatives, the organization's approach remains entirely based on developing advocacy and policy expertise, albeit at a local level and in a less interventionist way than in the past. Those involved in civil society development in the OSCE mission to BiH admit that fundamental strategic errors have weakened the impact and legacy of the organization's investment over the past decade. Although civil society development has been a long-term mission for the OSCE, it has always been a subordinate issue, a function of another objective rather than an aim in itself. Indeed, the OSCE's recent re-launch of its various support initiatives for civil society has been a response to wider concerns expressed by the international community in BiH regarding the continued electoral success of the nationalist parties, and low levels of voter turnout, particularly among the young. The OSCE has, from the outset, responded to the reform agenda of the OHR (Office of the High Representative), and its initiatives have to be viewed in this context. The initial post-Dayton emphasis on elections was replaced by an overriding emphasis on municipal reform and the rule of law. It is only very recently that Lord Paddy Ashdown, the present High Representative, has made explicit reference to the importance of civil society as a developmental issue: previously it was referred to only in the context of other objectives.32

The legacies of donor programmes and the rationale governing civil society development initiatives in BiH are evident among the elite of NGOs in Sarajevo, Tuzla and Mostar. Compared with the situation five years ago, there is greater engagement with government and an increased level of operational professionalism. Although there are still areas of the country in which NGO activity is undeveloped and which donor influence has not reached, local NGO networks, such as the Tuzla Reference Group, are emerging and they use project grant money to empower smaller organizations and maximize influence within policy processes at the municipal and canton level.33 However, the bulk of NGO activity still involves service provision and substitution for the absence of basic welfare services that should be provided by the state.34 The advocacy organizations that exist survive entirely on foreign donor revenue and work on specific short-term projects. In the environmental sector, NGOs working with municipalities to help develop recycling schemes, or on waste-management services and legislation, or as advisers to government, can access donor revenue. The competition is fierce and the process of application daunting. There is much duplication of projects and very little exchange of information among organizations, or between donors. Nevertheless, funding is available to cover operational costs. Conversely, for small campaigning organizations set up within local communities to oppose particular development projects, to challenge illegal construction schemes, or to force the government to implement environmental audits, there is no money or support available. Only if such organizations wish to develop their advocacy skills or their strategic management skills will they be able to receive assistance.

The recently established NGO network Support Group Green (SGG: Grupa za podrska) offers a very good illustration of the difficulties faced by NGOs that wish to challenge power openly rather than participate within the policy process or act as advisers.35 The network was established with the aim of stopping the construction of a canyon road through the Rakitnica canyon forest located in the southwest of the country. The canyon has been a protected area since 1966. The formation of SGG was a response to the fact that this ecologically destructive scheme had no apparent legal authority and was being undertaken for the commercial gain of the state forestry company. The SGG network has proved extremely effective at mobilizing support and challenging the authorities over the construction. But the case of the canyon road is yet to be resolved; what it has brought to light is a host of similar situations in which legal statute is being ignored by the state in the interests of profit. Those involved in SGG feel that the most effective mechanism for challenging such incidents is to pursue the authorities through the courts, including the European Court if necessary. Such a strategy is of course costly and SGG has no budget, nor has it obtained project funding in the way that other ENGOs (Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations) in BiH have done. So far the network has mobilized resources largely through personal contacts and friendship networks. Expert advice has been obtained from various scientists and lawyers involved in the network, but increasingly they have had to seek advice beyond the network, particularly legal advice, which is proving costly and is seen as the main future constraint.

When SGG activists contacted the Regional Environmental Center (REC) – an international organization funded largely by the EU and set up to develop environmental capacity in post-socialist Europe in the early 1990s – seeking assistance with the campaign they were refused on the basis that this was a ‘political campaign’ and REC as an international organization has to remain ‘politically neutral’. Yet REC does give money to the federal ministry of the environment and has employed both the minister and deputy ministers of the environment as advisers. REC has also supported an array of other ENGOs in BiH, but in the context of less controversial campaigns that involve partnership and co-operation with the authorities rather than direct confrontation.

The case of SGG is highly illustrative of the rationale governing NGO support and civil society development. With regard to campaign strategy, SGG acts as a professional protest organization.36 Typical of Bosnian ENGOs in general, SGG does not engage in direct action and frames its actions carefully to incorporate local concerns and interests. As an initiative, it would appear to represent the basis of an embryonic and spontaneous civil society that any development strategy should seek to support and nurture. SGG activists are articulate and have an eclectic mix of skills and do not need USAID democracy network training, or EU tutelage on project management.

Conclusion

Support for NGOs has become an increasingly critical aspect of transnational intervention and external assistance on which various aspects of regime change are seen to hinge. In the realm of development aid, ‘civil society’ is invariably defined in terms of formal professional NGOs operating at elite level within policy processes. In the context of what Caplan refers to as the ‘new interventionism’37 international administrations for regime change in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere place considerable emphasis on NGO development as mechanisms for reforming elites, establishing good governance and developing policy. In the absence of a functioning state, they are also seen as vehicles for the delivery of basic social and welfare provision.

What this article has sought to demonstrate is that in fact such a model of NGO development has its roots in the aid and assistance delivered to post-socialist Europe in the 1990s. Despite the different context – peace not war, and the need to reform rather than re-create state authority – the model and rationale of NGO development that evolved in CEE established a logical framework for the kind of assistance that was then deployed in BiH and elsewhere. From the perspective of BiH, the empirical analysis within the article illustrates the rationale of NGO development as well as documenting its limitations and contradictions. To a large extent the types of NGOs that the international agencies and donors set out to create have emerged, although the process has been slow and not without strategic errors and inefficiencies. The organizations that constitute what is widely referred to in BiH as the ‘NGO elite’ are new, they have no traceable roots within pre-war Bosnian society, and they focus on policy advocacy, on service provision and on developing their status as advisers and practitioners. Many of the younger members of such NGOs reiterate the narrative of international donors: civil society needs to be developed from scratch, there is a ‘know-how’ deficit, and professionalism is the hallmark of a successful advocacy organization.

It is difficult to contest the view that many of the elite-level NGOs perform valuable functions across post-socialist Europe. The problem is when such functionaries of governance are equated entirely with ‘civil society’ and are held up as emblems of ‘democratic consolidation’. The transformation of the concept of civil society in the context of post-socialism has now been well documented.38 What this analysis suggests is that the language of governance and policy that framed civil society development in CEE in the 1990s was in fact more than just a different conceptual interpretation of civil society; it represented the basis of a framework logic for international intervention that has subsequently been developed to form the basis of regime change and the ‘new interventionism’ of post-Cold War security.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam Fagan

Adam Fagan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Queen Mary, University of London. His research interests embrace the development of civil society and social movements during the democratization in Central and Eastern Europe, and he is the author of Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic: The Environmental Movement in the Transition Process (2004).

Notes

1. See Kevin F.F. Quigley, ‘Lofty Goals, Modest Results: Assisting Civil Society in Eastern Europe’, in M. Ottaway and T. Carothers (eds.), Funding Virtue: Civil Society Aid and Democracy Promotion (Washington, DC: Carnegie, 2000), pp.191–216.

2. This is an extensive literature. See, in particular, R. Mandel, ‘Seeding Civil Society’, in Chris M. Hann, Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia (London: Routledge, 2002); J. Wedel, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989–1998 (New York: St. Martin's, 2001); B.A. Cellarius and C. Staddon, ‘Environmental Nongovernmental Organizations, Civil Society and Democratization in Bulgaria’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol.16, No.1 (2002), pp.182–222; S. Sampson, ‘The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania’, in C.M. Hann and E. Dunn (eds.), Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (London: Routledge, 1996), pp.121–42; Quigley, ‘Lofty Goals, Modest Results’.

3. C.M. Hann, ‘Introduction’ in Hann and Dunn (eds.), Civil Society; see also M. Kaldor, ‘Civil Society and Accountability’, Journal of Human Development, Vol.4, No.1 (2003), pp.5–27.

4. This information is based on interviews with representatives of the Soros foundation (Open Society) in the Czech Republic in 1998, and an interview with Hrvoje Batinic, Programme Director (Roma and civil society), Open Society Fund, Sarajevo, 24 March, 2004.

5. Quigley, ‘Lofty Goals, Modest Results’, p.192.

6. D. Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton, 2nd edn (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p.143.

7. See R. Caplan, International Governance of War-torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

8. D. Chandler, ‘From Dayton to Europe’, in D. Chandler (ed.), ‘Peace Without Politics? Ten Years of International State-building in Bosnia’, International Peacekeeping, special issue, Vol.12, No.3 (2005), pp.336–49.

9. This assertion is based on the pronouncements of various officials and staff members of international donor agencies working to support NGOs in BiH. It is frequently asserted that civil society development has to begin from scratch. That the rationale of NGO development pursued by the main donors is indistinguishable from country to country is evidence of a ‘one-model’ approach. The information on and the opinions expressed regarding donor funding of NGOs are based on empirical research carried out in the Czech Republic by the author during the period 1993–2003.

10. A. Fagan, Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic: The Environmental Movement in the Transition Process (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004).

11. D. Petrescu, ‘Civil Society in Romania: From Donor Supply to Citizen Demand’, in Ottaway and Carothers (eds.), Funding Virtue, pp.223–7.

12. R. Kay, Russian Women and their Organizations: Gender, Discrimination and Grassroots Women's Organizations, 1991–96 (London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin's, 2000), pp.202–3.

13. While some NGOs in certain sectors have begun to develop strategies for financial independence and self-sufficiency, the vast majority of NGOs across the region remain dependent on foreign donors: see T. Anderson and J. Stuart (eds.), The 2003 NGO Sustainability Index for Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia (USAID, 2004).

14. Fagan, Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic, p.90.

15. Donors include: Atlantic Philanthropies, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Ford Foundation, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Open Society Institute, Pfizer Foundation, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

16. M. Wyatt, ‘New Approaches to Governance in CEE’, The CEE Trust (News and Analysis section), at <http://www.ceetrust.org/news/62.html>.

17. Anca Giurgiu, ‘Strengthening the Basis for NGO–Government Cooperation in Romania’, The CEE Trust (News and Analysis section), at <http://www.ceetrust.org/news/62.html>.

18. Anderson and Stuart (eds.), The 2003 NGO Sustainability Index, p.179.

19. The information on BiH included in this paper was obtained as part of a British Academy research grant on civil society development in BiH, January 2004–May 2005.

20. Bosnia-Herzegovina is divided into two entities, the Muslim (Bosniak)–Croat Federation (FBiH), and Republika Srpska (RS). The federation is divided further into ten cantons, broadly reflecting majority ethnic communities within particular areas.

21. B. Deacon and P. Stubbs, ‘International Actors and Social Policy Development in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Globalism and the New Feudalism’, Journal of European Social Policy, Vol.8, No.2 (1998), pp.99–115, and J. S. Sorensen, ‘Pluralism or Fragmentation’, War Report, May 1997, p.35.

22. Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan (London: Vintage, 2003).

23. D. Chandler, ‘The Problems of “Nation-Building”: Imposing Bureaucratic “Rule from Above”’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol.17, No.3 (2004), p.589.

24. See Quigley, ‘Lofty Goals, Modest Results’.

25. Figures obtained from EU CARDS Program review, 2004 (pp.2–3).

26. Interview with Paolo Scialla, team coordinator, Democratic Stabilization Programme, Delegation of the European Commission to BiH, Sarajevo, 24 March 2004.

27. Interview with Goran Tinjic, operations officer, World Bank Country Office Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 8 Nov. 2004.

28. Initial studies of civil society development in Bosnia include D. Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy, p.143; Y. du Pont, ‘Democratization Through Supporting Civil Society in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, Helsinki Monitor, 2000, No.4, pp.11–25; S. Freizer and M. Kaldor, ‘Civil Society in Bosnia and Herzegovina’, unpublished paper, 2002; B. Deacon and P. Stubbs, ‘International Actors and Social Policy Development in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Globalism and the New Feudalism’, Journal of European Social Policy, Vol.8, No.2 (1998), pp.99–115.

29. Not surprisingly, such linkage between local politicians and NGOs has occurred mostly within Sarajevo and Tuzla, where international donors are prominent and NGOs are most developed.

30. Interview with Goran Tinjic (see note 27).

31. For a full and detailed analysis of the OSCE's early vision of civil society and NGOs in BiH, see Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy, pp.135–53.

32. Interviews with Caroline Cliff, information officer, Zinaida Delic, deputy spokesperson, and Nikola Yordanov, civil society coordinator, OSCE, Sarajevo, 24 March and 8 Nov. 2004.

33. The Tuzla Reference Group is a local support network for NGOs operating in the Tuzla region.

34. Interview with Milan Miric, network coordinator, ICVA (International Council for Voluntary Associations), Sarajevo, 24 March 2004.

35. Information on SGG is based on interviews with Kenan Muftic, co-ordinator, SGG, 21 Feb. 2005.

36. M. Diani and P. Donati, ‘Organizational Change in Western European Environmental Groups: A Framework for Analysis’, Environmental Politics, Vol.8, No.1 (1999), pp.13–34.

37. Caplan, International Governance of War-torn Territories, p.5.

38. For a discussion of the extent to which notions of civil society at the heart of democratization in post-communist Europe have departed from normative models, and indeed from the conception held by dissidents prior to 1989, see Gideon Baker, ‘The Taming of the Idea of Civil Society’, Democratization, Vol.6, No.3 (1999), pp.43–71.