Winter 2000
Day&Time:Monday, 9:00-11:50
Room: Bunche 3156
Instructor:Stephen Commins
Office:PPB5361
OfficeHours:Monday12:00-2:00
e-mail: scommins@worldbank.org; phone: 202-473-3470
Course Description:
This course presents a critical view of the work of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as they fit within the wider framework of urbanization, rural development and the trends in international development planning. In particular, it gives attention to two complex sets of relationships: NGOs and states, and international NGOs and community or grassroots organizations.
Over the past two decades, increasing discouragement with the results of the programs of mainstream development organizations has focused more attention on the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). NGOs have been viewed as offering positive alternatives to the development worldview and operational practices of the World Bank and the major bilateral donors. There has arisen a belief that NGOs are more flexible, participatory, responsive to the needs of low income groups, and less driven by a modernization worldview and a top down approach to development.
In addition, as governments, especially in Europe, have channeled a growing proportion of official assistance through NGOs, these supposedly small, creative organizations have become quite large in the aggregate, handling several billion dollars in resources each year. In the midst of this growth in size and importance, a critical question (or set of questions) needs to be asked: what difference or impact do NGOs make? Do they offer a serious alternative to the public sector agencies? Are they becoming "captured" by their popularity and supposed success? What is the nature of their relationship to grassroots or community based organizations in the "South." These questions are important for both the traditional Northern NGOs (CARE, Oxfam, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services) as well as the proliferating Southern NGO sector as well.
The purpose of this course is to critically examine the world of NGOs today and to look at both the existing impact of NGOs and potential future options for NGOs seeking to affect global development. This requires reviewing several levels of NGO work, from local programs, to relations with national governments, to the complex set of relations that exist with multilateral agencies. The course is designed to begin with an overview of NGO work at different levels, and then to look at the future of NGOs given the changing realities of the global economy (and various regional particularities). One of the great failings of many NGOs is that they operate as if their programs, however effective on the micro level, were separate from wider economic and political changes. This course will look at the problems of "scaling up" both the impact of NGOs and the thinking that needs to occur in terms of wider political and economic contexts. It will also assess the tensions that surround current and future NGO operations in the contexts of globalization, regional diversity, new demands on and from states, and the growing voice of grassroots organizations.
In addition to the four texts assigned for the course, a variety of NGO, government and multilateral (both U.N. and World Bank) documents will be provided for readings.
1. Introduction (January 10)
reading: BMB, Introduction, chapters 1-3; CC, 1-3
2. NGOs in global development (January 24)
reading: BMB, 4; CC, 4-5
3&4. NGOs and Community Based Organizations\Grassroots Organizations (January 31)
reading: FR; CC, 6; BMB, 5-12
5&6. NGOs and the state (February 7, 14)
reading: NSD, 1-8, 10, 12-16
7. NGOs and multilaterals (February 21---alternate)
reading: NSD, 9, 11; TSFA
8. Scaling up in community development and policy impact (March 6)
reading: BMB, 13-19; NSD, 17-18
9&10. Accountability and Impact/Are BINGOs becoming DINGOs? (March 13)
reading: CC, 7; TSFA
Course Readings:
Brown and Fox, The Struggle for Accountability
Edwards and Hulme, Beyond the Magic Bullet
Edwards and Hulme, NGOs, States and Donors
Sogge, Compassion and Calculation
Course requirements:
1. Two critical review essays based on one or two of the cases in the readings. (5th and 8th week)
2. A research essay that examines of one of the two key areas of the course (community level, relations with governments or multilaterals) in relation to a specific national or regional situation.