I.Field
of Research: Describe the conceptual framework of your
working group activities
Our working group
addresses Non-governmental (NGO) organizations, and their participation in governance
in the states and regions addressed by NISPAcee. NGO’s operate to achieve, and sometimes to
help define, the public good, just as do institutions of government. Our broad objective is to create a forum
within NISPAcee for the intellectual and practical exploration of the role that
NGO’s play – independently and in collaboration with government institutions –
as a critical dimension for fully understanding governance processes in the
region.
The lives of individual
citizens in the public arena are shaped by more than the government along. In varying degrees from country to country,
services are provided by non-governmental organizations, public policy issues
and solutions are analyzed, interpreted and/or put forward by such groups, and
needs and expectations are conveyed to government from citizens through civil
society groups. One cannot study or
understand governance without including these dimensions.
Ultimately the goal of
studying public administration is to understand and improve the ways that
social problems are solved, that social justice is achieved, and public life is
enhanced. Invariably these objectives
require multisector solutions; and this requires understanding of the various
sectors involved, and how they engage together.
We recognize that this
topic is a broad one. We are proposing
one Working Group to address the performance of a full sector of governance –
that of non-governmental organizations.We will of course place emphasis on some themes and not on others, to
keep the work manageable. But we also
think it is important at a general level to embrace this breadth - at the
outset - to learn better where the interests of the NISPA community lie and
what unexpected questions and critical areas inquiry emerge.
We make use of the term
NGO, or nongovernmental organization, here for the entities we propose to
study. This term is a short-hand since
there is no single term that inclusively represents the characteristics, legal
identity, or function of these organizations.Other terms one might use are
non-profit, or civil society, or third sector organizations. Conceptually our interests lie in those
organizations and networks whose mission is in the public interest and pertains
to governance, social services, public policy, citizen participation, and/or
humanitarian concerns; that are guided by a voluntary board or committee of
directors; and that must find ways to organize and perform without having
either the formal authority of government or the economic resources of business.
NGO’s take many shapes as
organizations that sit between the individual and the state. One has to exert
special caution when trying to transfer this concept into diverse legal,
policy-political and cultural contexts, in which the very term "NGO” is
frequently unused, nonexistent and/or used in very different meanings and
connotations. In our usage of the term, NGO’s have varying degrees of formal or
informal organization, and derive their resources from a variety of sources
ranging from direct and targeted state funding through normative state funding
and charity based funding to international funding.
NGO’s play an important role in both the formal and
the informal economy; likewise, their role in channeling/promoting public and
political causes, values and wills may take informal shapes substantially
different from their formal statutes and missions. Informal organizations, such as those
spontaneously formed as economic cooperatives can be a stepping stone to
economic inclusion and opportunity for workers outside the protections of the
formal economy.
Similarly, NGO’s may be a bridge between the
churches and public policy or the state because in the region many faith-based
NGO’s provide social services to individuals, regardless of the beneficiaries
religious, ethnic, or other backgrounds.Religious based NGO’s might be
contracted by the government to deliver services to specialized
communities. NGO’s are sometimes a way
to integrate religious values with state policy to meet diverse public
needs. It is valuable to understand and
examine these processes.
NGO’s also transcend
national borders. There is for example growing intellectual attention to the
role of international NGO’s – organizations that function region and world-wide
shaping global agendas and collective action.These includes groups such as Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross,
Transparency International, or Greenpeace.There are many examples of how these groups have placed items on global
agendas that would not otherwise be there – such as the Red Cross role in
promoting UN action and global agreements on the definition and regulation of
contracting for private militaries.This reach outside states to global influence however is an example of
one theme we would not expect to emphasize.
NGO’s interact with the
state and with formal public institutions in a great variety of ways. Lester Salamon has written that this
relationship of the NGO/ to the state can take any of three very different
forms (perhaps all at once!): opponent
of the state, partner with the state, and agent of the state. All of these forms of relationship matter in
understanding how the public good is achieved and advanced.
The specific kinds of
interaction with the state are numerous.Some examples include ownership (nonprofit corporations established by
the government,) formal and informal partnerships of many kinds, contracting,
transfer and development of personnel as individuals move from NGO to public
sector and back, service delivery, think tank and idea transfer and so on. We are interested in what works, and what
explains what ideas are tried and what are neglected.
Finally, attitudes of the
public, the political elites and the government toward NGO’s can and do hugely
differ over time and across places.Legitimacy can be questioned in some settings, and embraced in
others. NGO’s are viewed in some
settings as worrisome entry points for external interests and threats, as well
as opportunities for citizen participation and service. State and citizen attitudes toward these
entities warrant attention by the public administration community, as they can
define what how multi-sector opportunities and challenges emerge.
As discussed below, we understand that one Working
Group cannot manage all of these questions; we are proposing a practical and
manageable agenda below. But we wish to
be open to the full breadth of questions and ideas that NGO’s and their role
bring to the study of governance and of the promotion of the public good, and
to encourage recognition of how stimulating and promising thinking about public
administration as a multi-sector activity can be.
II.Background
Information about the Working Group
Describe the previous
(if there are any) present and foreseen activities of your working group and
its - past and intended - accomplishments.
This proposed working group is a new one, and no
activities have yet occurred. However as
the above description of the field of research highlights, many of the relevant
themes for this work are pertinent to those in other working groups within
NISPAcee, and it will not seem out of place.Many scholars will find relevance in our new working group for projects
they are already working on in others.
As described in the next section of this proposal,
we hope in particular to attract scholars and practitioners with an interest in
the NGO sector from outside NISPAcee who have research projects underway. We are confident that engaging scholars and
practitioners with these interests in NISPAcee will produce contributions of
value to all of the NISPAcee working groups.We intend in this way both to advance work, via the new Working Group,
on the NGO sector’s role in governance in CEE and surrounding countries; and to
draw from and contribute to enhancing work on multisector perspectives on
public administration and governance within all of the Working Groups. Our ideas for an agenda and for research are
described below.
III.Goals
and Objectives
Identify the goals and objectives.
Define the problem which is addressed by the working group activities. Describe
the stage of a research in the area of your project proposal in the region, and
describe the importance of your working group activities and the needs what the
activities can meet. Identify benefits for the practice and scholarship of
public administration and public policy in the CEE region and for NISPAcee that
will be realized as a result of this project.
Our general interests are broad – to understand the
role of NGO’s in governance in the CEE region, to analyze performance and
consequences of this sector, and to explore multisector strategies for meeting
the public interest. As discussed at the
outset, this is a very large agenda.This will be the first NGO related Working Group in NISPAcee in some
time, perhaps ever, and a novel resource in the region as a whole. It is difficult at this stage to predict
which aspects and lines of inquiry will trigger predominant interest. The main
success criterion, at the outset where we are now, is attracting a vigorous
cohort of participants and high quality research. In subsequent phases (i.e.
from Year 2) we expect to do some focusing on particular topics and projects,
while remaining open to all relevant ideas that can advance understanding of
this topic.
There are many relevant
specific questions about describing the work of NGO’s in the region: whether they are volunteer based or employ
professionals; whether they are tied to
other organizations such as labor unions,political parties, industries, or churches; whether hierarchical with a large state-level
leadership or federated with cooperation among independent local groups;
whether the main role is related to direct provision of services, to advocating
or analyzing public issues, values or causes, or to creating a sense of, and
arena for, common, civic spirit, thinking and action; and whether they operate
on a local, regional, national or supra-/international level. .
The characteristics of
non-profit status are an important interest – whether formal or informal
organizations and, for formal organizations, what non-profit status means
within the context of state regulations.Financing and sustainability is important – are the groups supported by
individual donations, by foundations, by a rich donor, by foreign
resources. The national framework for
enabling and regulating NGO’s is of critical importance – what difference do
these laws and regulations make – if they exist at all - and how might they be
reformed.
Additionally, there is
much to understand about the size and sustainability of the NGO sector, as well
as about what it accomplishes and how it functions. What resources and capabilities actually
exist within this sector from country to country? How many people are volunteers? There are important needs for censuses of
the sector and for improved techniques for monitoring and for measurement of
its achievements.
An important theme in this
area of study is NGO commitments to social justice and human rights. NGO’s often are capable of raising issues of
rights, equity, and social justice – such as questions of fairness in
multi-ethnic societies – because they can address controversial issues and
prompt critical analysis of formal attitudes and policy.
While we wish to be open to a wide variety of ideas
in our group, as a practical matter, we intend to limit the agenda in several
ways. First of all, at the outset we
have identified four main questions on which we will invite the first rounds of
papers. These are:
-What
is the role of NGO’s in governance at the national and local level in CEE
countries, and how is this shaped by public attitudes, government policy,
legislation, and financial support? How do actual (latent) roles compare with
stated ones, and with ones usually found internationally?
-What
are examples of existing multisector models of governance in the region, in
which NGOs and government are seeking to work together?
-What
are techniques for measurement and assessment of NGO, and multisector
initiatives, performance, in general and in specific policy arenas?
-What
is the current state of teaching and curriculum development about NGO’s and
multisector governance in schools of public administration, policy and
management in the region, and what contributions can there be to improving
curriculum and teaching?
Our intention is to concentrate our focus on
organizations operating at the national and local level, within the context of
governance systems there. While there
will be instances in which this emphasis cannot be separated from those NGO’s
operating at the global level, we do not intend to make the issues of global
NGO’s a priority.
With the specific questions we wish to highlight in
the first years of the Working Group our objective is both to establish a
continuing membership base for the Working Group, to create products that will
be of value and interest to professionals leading and managing NGO’s and
planning multisector initiatives, and to engage with the academic and professional
adjunct committee teaching about these issues.As discussed above, we think that these linkages into the NGO academic
and professional community, plus linkages across NISPAcee working groups in the
public administration community, can contribute to improved understanding of
the role of NGOs and improved multisector performance in the region.