Till Bruckner :
(From previous issue)
And the government is happy too. Why? Because as long as those pesky Western-educated fifth columnists do not listen to ordinary people, those people will not listen to what the NGO folk are saying either.
NGOs: Remember that fundamental change won’t happen because of “us.” If it happens, it will happen because of “them.”
5. Being boring and unimaginative.
Seasoned democracy NGO veterans (including this author) have typically been so brainwashed by rotating around repetitive roundtables and reading tedious donor PDFs that all imagination has drained out of them. Whatever the problem, the solution must include a roundtable, “strengthening the role of youth,” and a report. That’s a pity, because a bit of imagination can go a long way.
Take the case of Mounir Agznay, aka the “Targuist Sniper.” One sunny day, the young Moroccan climbed a hillside near his village, secretly filmed policemen soliciting bribes from drivers and uploaded the grainy amateur footage onto YouTube. The result? He sparked a national debate about corruption, several police officers were fired and the government itself started secretly filming traffic cops to curb such shake-downs of motorists.
A Moroccan policeman soliciting bribe from a motorist. The footage filmed by Mounir Agznay sparked a national debate about corruption.
When is the last time 2 million people watched something produced by a USAID grantee?
Funders: Launch a call for proposals that explicitly bars applicants from employing any standard NGO approaches or activities. No round tables, no reports, no “discussions on the implications of.” You never know, someone might have an idea.
6. Thinking like a bureaucrat.
So there you are in your NGO office, boxed in by cynical Western policymakers, risk-averse donor agency bureaucrats and a corrupt and oppressive government that is tapping your phone and forever threatening to close down your brother-in-law’s dental practice. All of these players have one thing in common: They don’t want you to rock the boat and make big waves.
And now you receive the donor agency’s latest call for proposals, inviting local NGOs to submit ideas for anti-corruption projects. If you think like a typical NGO administrator, you’ll probably see three options.
Option 1: You investigate high-level corruption, publish your findings and spend time in jail for “incitement to suicide.”
Option 2: You decide not to bid for the project, close down your NGO and start driving a taxi 12 hours a day for a fraction of your NGO salary. Option 3: You find a bureaucratic solution. You organize a series of “civil society roundtables on the implications of and opportunities in the revision process of the draft public procurement bill.” Then you write a report that nobody will ever read, and maybe print some brochures, too.
The bureaucratic solution ensures that everybody has a pleasant time: the donor, yourself, your staff – even the government and your brother-in-law are happy! The only downside is that the project will do absolutely nothing to curb corruption.
In such a situation, thinking politically can open up new avenues. For example, maybe you cannot touch the issue of “ghost teachers” because the powerful Minister for Education makes millions a month from pocketing their salaries. However, you may be able to effectively address small-scale extortion of parents by individual teachers if those bribes do not flow further up the chain. Result: Poor families’ lives improve, the minister can take credit for a no-cost improvement in public services, and if a truly reform-minded government ever takes over, there’s a successful national example of an effective anti-corruption intervention that can be adapted for other sectors, too.
(Concluded)
NGOs: Democracy is not a bureaucratic process, it’s a political process.
Another form of thinking politically is to take the money, quickly tick the donor’s boxes and then roll up the sleeves for the real work. A very politically astute local NGO boss once explained to me that “we do projects just so we have the money to do the really important stuff” – on the side, that is. However, this approach only works if NGO managers and staff are genuinely committed to their work (rather than just to their salaries) and have a work ethic that propels them along the extra mile.
Fortunately, tens of thousands of studies conducted by international development experts have consistently not identified laziness as a factor affecting the performance or impact of donor-financed programs and projects. True, NGO staff and the people they work with nearly always lack capacity and therefore forever require more donor-funded training. But until very recently at least, nobody lazy was ever spotted on the radar of the aid industry.
And that’s great news for democracy promotion. Because if there were lazy people in our industry, they could make an incredibly easy living mindlessly bumbling along and trailing donors down the road to nowhere, rotating around the occasional canapé-laden round table along the way. They could pleasantly sail through their working days, ineffectually shuffling paper in nice offices, and would never have to interact with disagreeable people, let alone deliver tangible results.
Rest assured: To date, nobody has ever spotted the L-word in any aid industry publication or report, so it’s clearly not a factor.
Thus, allow me to apologize for the misleading title of this blog. There are only six deadly sins of donor-driven democracy promotion, and laziness is definitely not one of them.
Till Bruckner is a freelance consultant who has worked extensively with and for local NGOs, including for Transparency International Georgia in 2008-2009. He is the author of the book “Aid Without Accountability:
