The Ethics of INGO Advocacy: Launching a Discussion
Posted on 11 May 2010
By Sherine Jayawickrama
Several months ago, a provocatively titled academic paper caught my eye. The Ethics of INGO Advocacy or Why It’s Okay that No One Elected Oxfam was authored by Jennifer Rubenstein, Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia. Her presentation and the discussion that followed were interesting and lively.
Chatting with Professor Rubenstein afterward, I learned that she was keen to have her arguments considered by practitioners, scholars and activists. She liked the idea of a candid discussion of her ideas on this blog. I hope this post can be the beginning of interesting exchange.
Professor Rubenstein’s full paper can be found here – and a brief summary of her paper can be found here. Her main purpose is to conceptualize (drawing from democratic theory) the role of INGOs in relation to advocacy in a way that their donors, intended beneficiaries and the public can better evaluate INGO advocacy and hold INGOs accountable.
As a political theorist, Professor Rubenstein is drawn to this subject matter because INGO advocacy campaigns are an increasingly prominent feature of global politics. She lays out the following three ways of conceptualizing INGO advocates:
• INGOs as representatives of poor and marginalized people
• INGOs as partners of poor and marginalized people
• INGOs as agents of justice for poor and marginalized people
Professor Rubenstein seeks to assess which of these conceptions is most democratic: “which conception, if adopted, would best promote and embody democratic norms?”
She recognizes that, on face value, the concepts of representation and partnership appear more democratic than the justice-based conception. If INGOs are faithful representatives, they can help poor and marginalized groups make their voices heard in important policy venues; and, if INGOs are good partners, they can work to gain respect for the rights of these groups. She argues, however, that the reality of what INGOs are (and how they work) creates two problems – the “allocation problem” and the “displacement problem” – that make construing INGOs as representatives or partners less democratic than conceptualizing INGOs as agents of justice.
First, she argues that construing INGOs as representatives obscures that fact that INGOs make deliberate decisions about whom to advocate for and do not equitably distribute their advocacy efforts among all poor and marginalized groups (or, for that matter, among groups who need their advocacy support the most). Since there isn’t a fair mechanism to guide the allocation of INGO advocacy efforts, the democratic norm of inclusion is undermined. Professor Rubenstein calls this the “allocation problem”.
Second, she argues that INGOs are “second-best” representatives compared to democratically-elected governments or local NGOs. Thus, when INGOs occupy the role of representative, they displace better representatives. Professor Rubenstein calls this the “displacement problem.”
Finally, she argues that, because conceptualizing INGOs as agents of justice avoids the “allocation problem” and the “displacement problem”, it is a more democratic way of construing INGOs and their advocacy efforts. Because the justice-based conception encourages INGOs to take a broad and impartial view when developing and selecting possible advocacy campaigns, she argues that it “makes present” those whom INGOs may otherwise overlook.
I find Professor Rubenstein’s arguments interesting and hope the concepts she sets out will promote reflection on some features of INGO advocacy. Here are some of my reactions to her paper.
• Even though many INGOs will themselves argue that they do not seek to represent poor people, INGOs’ actions often indicate the contrary. Their advocacy messaging gives the impression that INGOs are “acting on behalf of” groups impacted by certain policies; the human interest stories INGOs invoke in the policy arena seem to “speak for” a broader group of beneficiaries. Do INGOs need to be more deliberate about avoiding the appearance that they represent certain groups of poor people? Or, if INGOs leverage the idea of representation to enhance their credibility in the policy arena, should they then be held up to standards of democratic representation (or at least be transparent about how they make decisions about how to allocate their advocacy efforts – for example, how do they identify advocacy issues)?
• The language of partnership is evocative of equitable relationships among INGOs, local NGOs and community groups – and when genuine partnership is achieved, democratic norms are affirmed – but reality is often more complex. If INGOs hold the power to choose the issues on which they advocate – and these issues are often tied, to some extent, to strengthening the INGO’s brand identity, raising its public profile and bolstering its fundraising and mobilizing capacity – then is this a mere illusion of partnership rather than the real thing? Does the language of solidarity and partnership paper over (possibly) divergent interests that INGOs avoid confronting?
• In the long version of her paper, Professor Rubenstein states that “the normative implication of construing INGOs as agents of justice is that INGOs should try to act consistently with what justice really requires.” I agree. As she argues, the concept of justice provides analytical resources for principled decision making re how to allocate INGO advocacy (introducing ideas of impartiality, fairness and equal consideration) and what outcomes to advocate for. However, does this conceptualization, at the end of the day, leave it up to each INGO to decide what justice really requires and how best to advance justice? If so, how should INGOs be held accountable? Is there something inherently easier about holding INGOs accountable as representatives or partners than as agents of justice? Or is this irrelevant because there are no ways to formally hold INGOs accountable as representatives or partners in any case?
• Overall, I found illuminating (as someone who worked for several years in INGO advocacy) Professor Rubenstein’s description of the circumstances in which INGO advocacy takes place as involving “second-best actors in highly non-ideal contexts.” The best INGO advocacy work must carefully balance ambitious goals about affecting positive change at scale with the humility and consciousness of the “second-best actor in a non-ideal context.” How can this balance be struck with the reality of the aid-driven, project-based, brand-conscious business model that many INGOs have?
I welcome Professor Rubenstein and others to respond candidly – both comments to this post and separate guest posts are most welcome!
Sherine Jayawickrama manages the Humanitarian & Development NGOs domain of practice at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University.
7 responses to The Ethics of INGO Advocacy: Launching a Discussion
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Professor Rubenstein has surfaced and put in useful perspective several problems that INGOs have needlessly created for themselves. As Dr. Rubenstein points out, INGOs are not, in terms of democratic theory, representative of the poor. Nor are they authentic partners of poor people in developing oountries.
INGOs are “international” only in the sense that they are concerned with the well-being of poor people internationally. But the great majority are not international organizations. Oxfam America, Save the Children, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International are by virtue of their funding sources, the social, economic and educational backgrounds of their boards and staff, and their values and missions, very much of the political and institutional fabric of the (mainly) Western political cultures out of which they have emerged and within which they mainly operate. Their advocacy seeks principally to influence the policies and behavior of their own governments. In the context of the terrain on which they principally operate they are best thought of as domestic advocacy groups seeking to influence the development and human rights policies of their home governments. Using Rubenstein’s terminology, they would be “first-best” advocates of pro-poor and pro-human rights international policies of the United States, Europe, Australia, etc.
A radically different kind of organizational structure would be required for an INGO to meet the standards of representativeness and partnership that many aspire to and which some unjustly claim.
Thanks for the comments so far! I hope that others will chime in.
Steven Lawry writes that because INGOs seek “principally to influence the policies and behavior of their own governments,” they are “’first-best’ advocates of pro-poor and pro-human rights international policies” in their home countries. I found this observation extremely thought-provoking. For the purposes of (hopefully) stimulating more debate, I want to suggest that the home country/poor country distinction should not be the primary thing we look at when evaluating INGO advocacy.
Instead, we need to distinguish at least two variables:
1. Who is the audience that the INGO is seeking to influence: the INGO’s home government, a poor country government, an international organization, etc.?
2. Who or what is being advocated for: poor people’s interests, donors’ preferences, preferences of INGO managers and staff, etc.?
Combining these two variables (and simplifying somewhat), we get four possibilities:
A. An INGO advocates to a poor country government for donor/INGO staff preferences.
B. An INGO advocates to a poor country government for poor people’s interests.
C. An INGO advocates to its home government for donor/INGO staff preferences.
D. An INGO advocates to its home government for poor people’s interests.
A. is the nightmare scenario that might motivate some of Steven’s concerns: an INGO lobbies a poor country government, but rather than advocating on behalf of poor people’s interests, it lobbies for its own preferences or those of its donors.
But it is important to remember that B. is also a possibility. That is, it is possible for an INGO to lobby a poor country government effectively on behalf of people in that country. Displacement of local NGOs (which I discuss extensively in my paper) is a major problem here. But we throw the baby out with the bathwater if we say that only C. and D. are legitimate because they involve INGOs advocating to their home governments.
Indeed, we don’t want to conflate C. and D., either: just because an INGO is advocating to its home government does not mean that it is advocating for poor people’s interests. It could be arguing for policies that directly undermined poor people’s interests. This raises the question of whether INGOs should be held to different standards, depending on whether their audience is their own government or a poor country government: that is, will we be more lax in evaluating an INGO under D-type situations than B-type situations?
The idea that INGOs should be held to the same standard regardless of their audience is supported by what democratic theorists call the “all-affected” principle. According to this principle, people should have a say in decisions that significantly affect them, regardless of whether those decisions are made by their own government. So if a British foreign policy significantly affects Kenyans, Kenyans should have a say in that policy. (The all-affected principle can be contrasted with the authorization principle, according to which the only people who should have a say in a policy are those who authorized the entity that made the policy—e.g. only British citizens should have a say in the British government’s decisions.)
Like Steve Lawry, I admire the efforts of Jennifer Rubenstein, abetted by Sherine Jayawickrama, to stir debate on the applicability of democratic theory to the legitimation of the advocacy campaigns of international humanitarian, development and human rights NGOs
In the end, l agree with Professor Rubenstein that the legitimacy of the advocacy of these NGOs does not rest primarily on either their representation of poor people or their partnering with them. Rather, it resides in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various broadly supported human rights and humanitarian conventions, as applied to the social and cultural contexts of particular nations and communities. This legitimacy is based on a widely–although not universally–shared view of the importance of affirming the dignity of every person, reducing extreme poverty and deprivation, and empowering people to exercise more effective control over decisions that significantly affect their lives. Invoking justice does not guarantee legitimacy or accountability, but it does establish a field of discourse that can help to make the rationale for INGO advocacy campaigns more rigorous, transparent and compelling.
I entirely agree with Peter that international laws, treaties, and agreements pertaining to human rights and humanitarianism should play a bigger role in shaping the goals and methods of INGO advocacy. Foregrounding these legal instruments also helps to address Sherine’s worry, that simply talking about”justice” leaves INGOs too much leeway to interpret things as they will (although I remain equally worried about the opposite problem– that “justice” forecloses some possibilities). But I also wonder whether international human rights and humanitarian law provide enough guidance to INGOs and their interlocutors for understanding and addressing the ethical challenges associated with INGO advocacy. For instance, because the UDHR recognizes so many rights, so many of which remain unfulfilled, I doubt that the UDHR provides INGOs with adequate resources for addressing what I call the “allocation problem” (how to allocate their advocacy efforts). So while attention to HR and IHL is necesary, I wonder whether it is also perhaps insufficient?
A few thoughts stirred up by this really interesting post (thanks, Sherine) and the replies posted.
While I agree that the concept of NGOs as partners or representatives has been mis-used (and mis-denied), there does seem another option to the four possibilities Professor Rubenstein mentions above: i.e. INGOs as representatives of (global/their national) citizens concerned with issues of human rights, justice, etc. Much of the advocacy work carried out by INGOs includes a strong campaigns component, in which (hopefully informed) citizens opt in through their time and commitment. And these are not just citizens of the country where the INGO is based (e.g. the global reach of the recent Greenpeace campaign against Nestlé, and now HSBC, for activities linked to palm oil-related deforestation in South East Asia).
For the campaign at least, INGOs can claim to represent the interests of (some) concerned global citizens: to the degree to which their campaign strikes a chord with the feelings of more or less such people, they will be able to claim to be speaking on behalf of a more or less significant number. If the INGO starts to stray from advocacy issues or “asks” that no longer chime with this group, or does so less, they will be able to speak for less (or have active citizens do so with them: the so-called “grasstops” strategy many INGOs have implemented, whereby particularly mobilized “supporters” lobby politicians or other decision-makers on issues decided on by the INGO).
Clearly this decision-making process – the allocation of advocacy resources in the language of this paper – can be driven either by principles of justice that these supporters also share, so that they continue to support the cause, or by channels of representation and accountability, that enable these supporters to feel part of a more democratic process of advocacy resource prioritization.
My feeling is that INGOs do a bit of both, to greater or lesser degree, as well as self-determined advocacy priority based on their own notions of justice (and institutional space/niche – and also resource-mobilization opportunities). Which is a slightly messier picture.
Ultimately, the success of INGOs in this balancing of different drivers of advocacy, and its prioritization, would seem to depend on the degree to which they can be truly accountable to multiple stakeholders. In CARE Peru, we are trying to apply a concept of accountability that includes four components: internal monitoring of quality and compliance with standards; accessible and appropriate information to all stakeholders, but particularly the excluded populations the fulfillment of whose rights we are seeking to contribute towards; channels for participation in decision-making; and adequate complaints and suggestions mechanisms.
Finally, an attempt to apply this framework to our advocacy in Peru. We would say that we currently speak for our program experience, or the collective experience of work for poverty reduction and social justice of the organizations (national and international) in the alliances and coalitions with which we advocate. Our prioritization process is primarily an internal one, in dialogue with other stakeholders, based on an analysis of underlying drivers of poverty and exclusion, and the areas in which we feel we have the greatest potential to contribute to rights fulfillment, given this situation and our experience and capacities. That would be a variant on Professor Rubenstein`s possibility B (INGO advocates to a poor country government for poor people’s interests), but based on an analysis of issues of justice, and capacities/opportunities. But following Peter Bell`s post, it also focuses on supporting the Government and other actors, to meet specific human rights commitments, in the framework of the UDHR, other international human rights instruments and the Millennium Declaration (we deliberately try not to refer to “beneficiaries”, but rather “the excluded populations the fulfillment of whose rights we are seeking to contribute towards”).
For example, the advocacy coalition we and others (national and international organizations) set up in 2006 to get the Government to prioritize tackling chronic malnutrition in children under five, and to develop an effective multisectoral strategy to tackle the problem, was based in part on our mutual analysis of the problem representing a wide-spread violation of human rights (reproducing poverty from generation to generation for the quarter of Peruvian children affected by chronic malnutrition, at levels that had remained virtually unchanged over the previous ten years, despite significant Government spending on food distribution programs). But it was also determined based on the evidence from the programs of CARE, UNICEF and others, that with the right strategy, chronic malnutrition could be reduced by 2 to 3 percentage points per year, even in excluded regions.
We were successful in getting the ten main Presidential candidates to sign a commitment to reduce malnutrition in children under 5 by 5 percentage points over 5 years, and to close the urban-rural gap, because this justice-based call chimed with the ideas of justice – or maybe political opportunism – of political actors across the spectrum (as well as because of the concrete, clear, justice-based but widely appealing nature of the ask). But we were successful in contributing to the new Government to start meeting this commitment (malnutrition has fallen by over 4 percentage points, to 2009), because we played a role not just of external critic and advocate, but also one of technical support, at national and subnational level; and we (the advocacy alliance) have been accepted to play this role because of our program experience, the seriousness of our analysis (in annual reports on progress by the Government) and the quality of the human and financial resources we bring to this role. The framework of human rights and other commitments around this issue remain an important narrative to justify our collective advocacy prioritization, as well as the Government`s prioritization of the issue; but so also does success, and the strength of the coalition, which continues to make this an advocacy priority due to the enormous opportunities felt to contribute through this particular advocacy initiative towards social justice (the opportunities part of the prioritization analysis I mentioned above).
This combination of advocacy and technical support muddies the picture still further, as will efforts over future years to engage increasingly informed citizens in Peru to mobilize on this or other issues (efforts that will be best led by national NGOs, as first-best engagers with their citizens). But that`s how the advocacy world is…deliberately messy.
From our perspective, here in the Transnational NGO Initiative at Syracuse University, I would agree that Prof. Rubenstein’s thoughts indeed are a valuable addition to the discourse. The concept of NGOs as ‘agents of justice’ leaves me with some doubt, however: this can be a rather vague concept, and with so many rights being captured under the UDHR alone (let alone other international covenants), this concept will still give NGOs significant discretion in allocating their advocacy efforts in ways that are either democratically influenced or not.
I would also say that norms of partnership, in principle, can be helpful in how INGOs should allocate their advocacy efforts, IF the partners influence the advocacy targets, messages and strategies in significant way. Of course that may not always, or often not, be the case in reality.
To me, Prof. Rubenstein’s contribution is also related to the contributions by Clifford Bobb at the University of Pittsburgh, and those of Charli Carpenter at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which expose how NGO advocacy agenda setting in actuality may be informed — by factors that do not necessarily have to do with merit, priority needs or justice concerns.
Finally, what the paper further usefully highlights, again, is the relative lack of accountability systems in place — currently at least — for (the impacts of) NGO advocacy campaigns. This is all the more serious given the large concentration of resources in a relatively small group of development and human rights NGOs (see Lecy, Syracuse University, 2010, publication under review). I hope this discussion can lead to contributions to that advocacy accountability discourse as well.
[...] By Jennifer Rubenstein This post is a response to the comments generated by Sherine Jayawickrama’s post on The Ethics of INGO Advocacy: Launching a Discussion. [...]