Bounded altruism: INGOs’ opportunities and constraints during humanitarian crises and the US intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo

^†The views expressed herein are the authors' alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Caerus Associates or its clients.

Abstract

International humanitarian nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and government donors have grown increasingly close in the past two decades as they responded to conflict and post-conflict situations, with effects on each other that remain unclear. We advance a dynamic understanding of the opportunities and constraints that international NGOs (INGOs) experience in their relationship with the US government in conflict zones, arguing that shifts in INGOs’ potential to influence US responses are situationally determined. We offer three explanatory variables (aid market structure, bureaucratic regulatory environment, and US government demand for INGO services) to explain when and why INGOs possess opportunities for autonomy, and when their actions are constrained by donors. Applying this framework to the conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, we conclude that INGOs possess the greatest opportunities during violence-induced humanitarian crises and experience many more constraints during peacekeeping scenarios.

Keywords:

• Kosovo
• civil society
• Bosnia-Hercegovina
• NGOs
• USAID
• foreign aid

Funding

Andrew Halterman's work was supported in part by a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Kosovo, 2011–2012, and the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development (KIPRED).

Notes on contributors

Andrew L. Halterman is an analyst at Caerus Associates, a research and consulting firm in Washington, DC. He was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Kosovo in 2011–2012, studying nationalist mobilization and international funding to local NGOs. He researched US humanitarian interventions and civil society promotion efforts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and while a student at Amherst College.

Jill A. Irvine is Presidential Professor, Director of Women's and Gender Studies, and Co-Director of the Center for Social Justice at the University of Oklahoma. She is author of The Croat Question: Partisan Politics in the Formation of the Yugoslav Socialist State and co-editor of State-Society Relations in Yugoslavia 1945–1991 and Natalija: Life in the Balkan Powderkeg 1880–1956. She has written numerous articles, book chapters and government reports about political mobilization and democratic transformations in the Balkans. She is currently co-editor of Politics & Gender, a journal of the American Political Science Association.

Notes

^† The views expressed herein are the authors' alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Caerus Associates or its clients.

1. A note on terminology: The term “NGO” is famously vague and ill-defined, used at different times to indicate: international charitable organisations involved in advocacy, service provision, or both; “local”, i.e. non-American or Western European versions of such groups; groups that are based outside the USA; and other distinctions. Others use the alternative terms “private voluntary organisations” or “civil society organisations” to refer to the same organisations. Our work focuses on INGOs, that is, groups with bases in Europe or the USA, but which conduct operations around the world. For an early discussion of this onomastic difficulty, see Vakil (1997).

2. The US military has been at least as active as INGOs in compiling “lessons learned” from its interactions with INGOs in Bosnia. See Godlewski (1996); Seiple (1996); Joint Task Force Commander's Handbook (1997); Wentz (1997); Hinson (1998); Olsen and Davis (1999); Osborne (2000); Currey (2003); Hollen et al. (2003); and United States Institute of Peace, InterAction, and United States Department of Defense (2005).

3. For a discussion of aid lessons not learned, see Brown (2006).

4. The Department of Defense is a second location of interaction between INGOs and the US government, through its Office of Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Affairs (DOD/PK/HA) and commanders in the field. The US military rarely funds INGOs directly, but INGOs have gained increasing attention from US military planners and commanders, and missions since the beginning of the 1990s have often included working with INGOs. The office (DOD/PK/HA) makes many in-kind donations of material and transportation capacity to INGOs, but rarely makes grants. The Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration in the State Department also interacts frequently with INGOs dealing with its area of responsibility, as well as with the International Committee of the Red Cross and various UN agencies.

5. OTI's willingness to work with local organisations raises questions about the complex dynamics of competition and partnership between local and international NGOs, which is a topic for another piece.

6. Indeed, the level of involvement can extend to the point that INGO workers' CVs, sent to USAID for approval, are still held in USAID's archives from its late-1990s Bosnia projects.

7. See also DeMars (2005, 127).