International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs) have emerged as important actors in two important, interconnected realms. First, at the national level, INGO's have taken on significant roles in promoting the social, economic, and political development of the particular countries in which they are operating. Their enlarged efforts provide disaster relief, deliver on-going social services, build local capacities for self-help, promote self-governance, and enhance the political and policy influence of marginalized populations (Fisher, 1993; Clark, 1991; Edwards and Hulme, 1996). Second, at the international level, INGOs have been increasingly important in creating a kind of international civil society, animating informal but powerful normative egimes, and influencing the practices and policies of international institutions (Boli, 1999; Fox and Brown, 1998; Khagram, Riker and Sikkink, 2000; Florini, 2000).
Increased prominence and greater influence expose INGOs to closer scrutiny and sharper demands for accountability. Donors demand that the INGOs be ccountable for the integrity, efficiency, and impact of programs that they have funded. Beneficiaries press INGOs to live up to their rhetoric about fostering locally-determined development rather than impose their own priorities. Staffs expect INGOs to ive up to the high purposes that drew their commitment to the enterprise. Partners whom INGO's have recruited in their efforts to achieve their national and international goals (such as other NGOs, community-based organizations, government agencies, usinesses) expect the INGOs to live up to promises they made in forging their partnerships. Even those who are the targets of INGOs demand a kind of accountability from them; they want to know to whom the INGOs are accountable and for whom the INGOs speak so that they can gauge the force and legitimacy of the claims that these organizations are making against them. In short, many different stakeholders call INGOs to account for their activities (e.g., Edwards, 2000).
The purpose of this paper is to develop our understanding of the concept of
accountability for INGOs—particularly INGOs focused on development and
environmental protection. We begin by presenting the idea of accountability as an abstract ideal. In this conception, accountability is morally good, and it is unambiguous to whom and for what INGOs should be accountable. In the second part of the paper, we present accountability not as an abstract, fixed moral ideal, but instead as a strategic idea to be formulated and acted upon by an INGO with the goal of better understanding and achieving its strategic purposes. In this conception, accountability is both morally good and practically useful. And, instead of there being one right answer of how best to structure accountability, one gives a contingent answer.
Accountability choices should advance the strategy an INGO is trying to execute. In the third part of the paper, we show how three different activities or strategies embraced by INGOs—service delivery, capacity-building, and political advocacy—require quite different structures of accountability. This suggests that as INGOs change the balance of their efforts across these different strategies, they have to change their conceptions of accountability, as ell
as the ways they make themselves accountable to their various stakeholders.
Download
Accountability, Strategy, and International Non-Governmental Organizations
