The paper was prepared for presentation on a conference
on democratization at Duke University October 19-20th 2001.
This paper presents some preliminary results of
a case study[1] of a Non-Governmental Organization
(NGO)[2]
called The Foundation[3],
located in Budapest, Hungary. According to it’s own information The Foundation
works to enhance democracy in Hungary and the Central-east European region. One
of its largest areas of support is civil society, through the support of which
democracy will be strengthened - so goes the logic of the text.
As many other misunderstood concepts civil
society is widely used but poorly defined. One could also argue that it has
been defined beyond meaning as there are many literary works with many
different definitions but there is little consensus about how it should or
indeed can be used. Many times civil society is used instrumentally as a means
to achieve democracy, but despite the centrality of the term few academic
writings consider specifically how or why this civil society is the key to
democracy. Many scholars attribute numerous vague qualities to the notion of
civil society, making it a mere assumption not supported by thorough research,
and this ultimately undermines their argument about its instrumentality. Thus
Civil Society becomes a magic word, an intangible idea of an order, which
secures democracy in mysterious ways.
Like civil society, democracy is also a term
that can be interpreted in numerous ways but usually its meaning is taken for
granted as most people certainly believe they understand the word. However, the
way democracy is conceptualized and its real or imagined connotations have
tremendous consequence for how this ideal can be achieved and determines what
efforts are suitable. Support for Central-
and East European civil society has created and maintained a large industry and
the way that donors and distributing organizations view the meaning of civil
society, as well as their direct influence on it, has consequences for the
political and social structures developing in transitional countries. The
criteria by which financial and other support is distributed determine how
Hungarian civil society develops. For example, it would make a difference if
all support were dedicated to sports organizations or to media in opposition to
the current government. Both can be regarded as civil society, but each one
carries widely different implications regarding the role and meaning of civil
society.
This is why, assuming democracy is the goal and
civil society the means to reach it one must specify a meaning of the two terms
in order to have some qualified guess about the direction of democracy
development. This has political as well as scientific relevance, because a
better understanding of development processes can help us understand and
improve the model for the development of democratic society. However, as we
know there is no such thing as a unified national understanding of these terms,
we cannot look for the final sense of democracy or civil society in Hungary.
What I have tried to do is on the one
hand to investigate the interpretations of and expectations to democracy of
those people that are involved in activities to strengthen civil society that
is in this case, the employees of The Foundation and its grantee organizations.
On the other hand I have looked at
the support given by The Foundation, be it financial, expertise or in other
forms, to try and understand how this support as well as the relationship
between donor and recipient influences the meaning, role, capacity and
characteristics of civil society. This paper will demonstrate how a given form
of support for a given form of civil society has a significant influence on the
kind of democracy built.
As indicated above, I work with the assumption
that the meaning of civil society and democracy is determined by those
activities that are defined as belonging under this label. I believe this to be
the case with any term, but for more consolidated ones the local differences
are not as great (these could be terms like chair, car or school). The lack of
consensus makes these terms very strong rhetorical weapons: most will
agree (at least in those states that
call themselves democratic) that they are positive.
As a result “civil society” makes it’s way into presentational material,
grant applications and political statements. When a clear definition of the
concept is omitted the understanding will depend on the recipient’s
associations and ideas.
Evidently, The Foundation is not the only
player to influence the development of civil society and democracy in Hungary.
The choice to concentrate my study on this single organization is made in the
spirit of the ethnographic discipline. Following ethnographic tradition,
participant observation, simple observation, interviews and conversation
constitute the most important methods for this study and have enabled me to
achieve thorough knowledge of the processes in play in The Foundation’s work. I
spent seven months as a volunteer with the organization in Budapest alongside
which I conducted interviews and visited recipient organizations. Using these
methods I have focused on how people understand the terms that are used in
their daily work, not least to obtain support for their organizations
activities. I have let informants define their own reality and thus I do not
claim to present absolute truths. This approach enables me to understand what
constitutes the basis for organizations’ objectives and activities. In turn I
can say something about the origin and meaning of notions of civil society and
democracy in this context.
In short, I have investigated how The
Foundation’s and their recipient organizations´ employees understand democracy
and civil society, the causal connection explained between the two, how the
organization influences civil society (as staff and activities define it)
through support and by whom or what the organization itself is influenced.
Finally, I will consider what implications these issues have for the
development of democracy.
The relationship between donors and recipients
is important because donations (especially large ones) come with expectations
and demands. The grantee is dependent on this support and must follow the
guidelines and rules given by donors[4].
This is the common logic of such relationships. During an interview with a
staff member from The Foundation it was very clearly expressed how the donor
defines the focus of activities even though the statement was made to prove a contrary
point. The question was what role the main donor plays in the selection of
grantees: “None. The [main donor] named
the main areas that it wished to support: rural development, social services,
Roma programs etc. Other than that nothing.”[5]
By naming such areas alone, donors are defining the problems that NGOs should
be concerned with. This agenda setting excludes other NGOs and activities which
have not been brought to the attention of the donor or which the donor does not
find attractive.
In this study there are four levels to consider
when observing donor-recipient relations. The following definitions follow from
my empirical finds, but would be relevant to research other NGOs:
·
Donors: foundations and state donors who give large
contributions in several countries. For example, the World Bank, Ford, Mellon,
EU, Soros, USAID and other state agencies as well as the main donor in this
study.
·
Distributing organizations: These organizations obtain their
resources primarily from the Donors mentioned above. Smaller organizations
apply for grants for specific projects with the distributing organizations. In
this way, the distributing organization is both donor and recipient. The
Foundation is a distributing organization.
·
Grantee or recipient organizations: the smaller organizations that
receive support from distributing organizations, Donors and other benefactors.
They also obtain money through contracts with the (local) government. Recipient
organizations involve the final, individual recipient or participant.
·
The individual recipient: this level is evident as it refers
to the individual person who participates in activities or receives support, in
the form of services or otherwise.
In the case of The Foundation the donor-recipient
relationship is an important issue for two reasons. First, the organization has
for a long time relied on one single donor, because it was originally a project
under this donor. When it was decided to continue activities after the initial
project was finished, they once again obtained support from the same donor. Now
the organization has more large donors, however the original one still
dominates. Second, the relationship between The Foundation and recipient
organizations is characterized by a thorough monitoring procedure run by The
Foundation staff. This allows them to strongly influence recipient
organizations.
The Foundation staff all emphasized the point,
that the organization is independent from the donor and functions as a
separate, Hungarian foundation. The funding from the donor should be seen as a
partnership between the two organizations. However, it was clear that there are
still procedures and incidents that underline The Foundation´ role as recipient
rather than partner and even more so, since it is (though to a declining
degree) dependent on support from this one donor to continue activities. I
found a general attitude of gratitude towards the donor, since there was not
any “obligation” to provide money for the foundation. This was mentioned as a
legitimizing factor when staff felt the organization had been treated unfairly
and they would generally not speak in length about uncomfortable episodes. One
important exception was the American staff member, who would be more willing to
explain things to me in detail. Mostly stories were about episodes, when the
donor had been unclear or had put pressure on The Foundation, and staff felt
they had to accept the (even quite significant) problems that followed in order
not to jeopardize their organizations chances of obtaining support again. It
was also made clear that even in small matters the Donor’s representative had
the final say about the content of programs. This is demonstrated by an extreme
example, when the representative demanded a speaker removed from the list of
presenters at a session three days before she was to speak, because he found
that she was controversial and not sufficiently professional.
Support from the main donor required detailed bookkeeping
audited by internationally acknowledged auditors. Also strong organizational
management and recording procedures had been developed to demonstrate
externally the foundations abilities as an independent organization. When the
original program for which the foundation was set up came to an end in 1998 a
thorough evaluation was completed to measure effects and results. Shortly
before this the organization went through an audit because of anonymous
accusations against The Foundation. This audit made the foundation “realize many things that they needed but
had never thought about”, as one staff member put it, and procedures for
administration, control and recording were developed.
After the evaluation was completed there was
only very limited time to apply for the next program the main donor had
announced, and it was the only chance for the organization to continue. In the
interviews this period of time is presented as an instructive and significant
point in the development of the organization. In social anthropological terms
it is well described as a transitional period and it also holds some sense of
myth in the way it is referred to. The organization faced accusations, but was
proved innocent, the head of the organization left after the audit and the
mystery remains whether she was asked to do so, during application writing
staff members worked very long hours because it was the only chance to survive. The Foundation did indeed come out of the
audit in good standing and with the experience that developing as an
organization (with more policies and procedures to make responsibilities clear
and decisions transparent) had helped it and made it stronger. Finally, the
major grant application was successful and The Foundation could continue to
operate.
The Foundation primarily supports civil or
non-profit, non-governmental organizations, defined by a staff member as a
group of people with a place, documentation and the ability to report to The
Foundation. „This was a basic criteria
for both of our grant rounds… that they have the ability to report to us in the
way we need in order for us to report to [the main donor]…” said one staff
member. In this way stating very clearly the most direct effects of the donor’s
demands. The main donor demands detailed bookkeeping and quarterly reports
accounting for the effects of the programs. This means that The Foundation has
to ask the same of its recipients.
The NGOs supported when I was involved had
applied for grants within four different areas: 1) Rural development, 2) social
services, 3) advocacy, 4) education and entrepreneurship initiatives for Roma
population. Much support was given in the form of “infrastructure” meaning
technical device such as computers, fax- and copy machines or renovation of
buildings etc. This kind of support was explained by reasoning that these are
the basic needs for an organization to function, and several times it was
mentioned that without them the organization would not be able to obtain grants
from other donors. One informant explained how this is only logical: “Because nobody in their right mind would
give a grant to an organization that has handwritten their… application,
because it doesn't look professional”. Financial support was combined with
“mentor”- assistance, which was another measure to try and strengthen the
grantees as organizations, providing consulting or training by an expert on
issues such as Public Relations, Internal Management, communication,
leadership, personal development etc.
The focus of The Foundation’s support is on the
recipients’ level of organizational development; their ability to report to The
Foundation; to make strategic planning for the future and to apply for grants.
This is understood as an effort to make them more “professional” and with this
more sustainable. “Professionalism” was a recurring theme, which referred
primarily to the organizations’ working procedures and, to a lesser degree, to
the mentality of their staff. Being “professional” was associated with skills
for proper bookkeeping, effective PR and fundraising activities and at the same
time a truly “professional” person was not expected to be corrupt or
nepotistic. Many informants used the term as a compliment for other
NGO-representatives or as an ideal for their own work. Professionalism did not
mean that NGOs should (or could) employ professionals for the different
positions. On the contrary, there is a general expectancy that volunteer and
low paid NGO staff can obtain skills (in their free time?), which professionals
in the private business sphere are paid high wages for.
Monitoring.
One of the main activities I took part in
during my time with The Foundation was monitoring. Pre-monitoring is a
procedure to determine whether applicants live up to expectations and whether
the information given in the application is truthful. After grants are awarded,
monitoring also takes place in the middle and in the end of the grant period
(final monitoring), these being both control and consulting visits. Practically
monitoring means that The Foundation staff visits the grantee organization and
certifies that their bookkeeping is in order; that devices purchased with
support from The Foundation exist; the degree of internal management is
measured and problems are sought uncovered and solved. Monitoring constitutes
the main relation between The Foundation and recipient organizations and the
double role of helper and controller is one that The Foundation has put a lot
of attention to. It was often presented as an explicit goal to carry out
monitoring visits in a way that both parties were comfortable and had trust in
each other. One staff member, an American woman (the only non-Hungarian staff)
who had played a significant role in further developing the monitoring
procedure for The Foundation talks about it as being “definitely control”, but at the same time with an “…atmosphere of friendly visitors…” She
finds this important because “Organizations
are usually poor planners financially and they shouldn’t hide that. Monitoring
lets you see and feel the problems - when you are there they can’t very well
lie to you…you can create the friendly relationship, because it is in our
interest for them to succeed. Once they feel it, they call themselves.”
The process of building relationships of trust
and friendship seems difficult to combine with that of strict control of
internal matters and financial issues. However, by referring to demands of the
main donor the monitor is able to “stay on the side of” recipients since he did
not himself demand the control but was merely obliged to carry it out. Comments
would fall about the control being mandatory and demanded by the main donor,
and were often followed by understanding remarks by recipients about it being
natural for anybody who gives large amounts of money to want to know what it is
used for. In this way the control was legitimized even if it remained a hassle,
and the monitor representing The Foundation could distance himself from this
uncomfortable function he had to carry out. Reference to a higher organ, which
was closer to the original source of support, was an effective argument for
unpopular decisions and it was found at all levels.
Recipients often described pre-monitoring as
strict and demanding and they found that it raised many difficult questions
about their organization. However, most interviewed recipients found The
Foundation´ monitors to be a supportive rather than uncomfortably controlling
and several reported themselves to have contacted The Foundation for advice or
information on different matters[6].
Monitors could always sincerely express understanding for recipients` feelings
when they were faced with the judgment that the organization was not well
developed, lacked standard procedures for even simple actions or had not
realized the importance of written policies on cash handling for example. The
Foundation could ask their recipient organizations to make changes because they
had been subject to a thorough audit themselves and staff had experienced the
benefits of more organized, well-defined procedures that made activities more
transparent. In this way The Foundation was used as an example.
It was an explicit goal to pass on some of the
lessons The Foundation had learned during from the process the foundation went
through in 1998 and hereby help recipients to become better, stronger and more
sustainable organizations. The program, which started in 1998 aimed at
supporting more developed organizations, which could become consolidated with
support from The Foundation. So focus was placed on procedures, strategies,
planning, management etc. In the questionnaire used for pre- and final
monitoring many questions were inspired by changes within the foundation
itself. For these questions monitors had good explanations and they could give
useful suggestions for organizations about how to meet the standards suggested.
Examples were taken from the foundation’s internal management: how weekly or
daily meetings concerning activities is one way to secure internal
communication, or one-year strategies could be suggested for planning purposes,
written descriptions of responsibilities for each staff-member etc. These were
all very specific suggestions that could be given because the monitor had
personal experience with the problems concerned and their solutions.
One question which is always put forward during
Pre- and final monitoring concerns the relationship to the business sector and
the municipality. Organizations are encouraged to develop ties in order to
secure funding and become more sustainable. It is assumed that better results
are reached by NGOs (alternative to the state) at a lower cost and this is why
municipalities are willing to support them. Often the municipality provides the
premises and sometimes labor or other support. This relationship, which can of
course also be seen as one of donor-recipient, causes problems for many
organizations. They feel abused by officials who expect more services than
agreed on or they believe that personal relations are determinant for gaining
support (especially if there is competition). One example is from an
organization, which operates in the village culture house[7],
where the municipality has put rooms at the organization’s disposal. The leader
of the organization is employed to manage the culture house and there is an
agreement that her job there can be carried out by combining it with her work
in the organization as responsibilities overlap. As can be imagined, this
situation causes problems for the staff and not least the leader of the
organization, because it is so intertwined with the culture house. The leader
had several complaints. First, the municipality pressured her to work for a low
salary. Second, the mayor would bring visitors to the organization and present
it as the good work of the municipality. Finally, the mayors´ office would take
advantage of the organizations services without paying for them[8]. When presented with these problems monitors
had few answers but to encourage the recipients to make sure the devices given
to or acquired by the organization formally remained in their possession. Also
it was suggested that they strengthen ties with the business sector in order to
become independent from the municipality’s council. The business sector in
Hungary, however, generally does not offer significant support to NGOs. Many
reasons can be suggested for this, one being that businesses (especially in the
country-side where most recipients are found) do not produce very large
profits. Another reason, suggested by one informant could be that those
businesses that do make large profits are mostly foreign and do not have an
interest in supporting NGOs in Hungary. Also a lack of trust is suspected to
influence the situation as NGOs have been used much as covers for tax evasion.
Generally, there were no clear recommendations about how to handle the everyday
situations when council members expected extra services for the municipality. I
find this striking, because the situation was in ways very similar to ones that
occurred between The Foundation and the main donor (as when The Foundation
handled a disaster relief program at no charge at a time when answer had not
yet been given on another application to the donor). I suggest this to be an
expression of the fact, that The Foundation itself has not achieved full
independence from its own main donor and therefore staff members do not have
experiences to refer to on this matter. Also ties with Hungarian governmental
organizations are very limited, which again means that monitors lack parallel
experiences to compare their recipient’s problems to.
More generally I see a tendency to “hand down
organizational experience”, which means that in the role of consultant the
organization (i.e. staff members) gives much better advice on issues that have
been significant (and solved) for the
consulting organization itself. This means in turn, that other issues, which
may be of great significance to the recipient organization, are left unsolved,
even if The Foundation staff is aware of them and ask about them. Mentor
assistance has been mentioned to me as a way to try and counteract this
problem. Mentors are experts on areas chosen by the given organization who work
with it to solve problems. However, even though the choice of mentor is ideally
up to the recipient organization, the focus on one set of issues during
monitoring and those suggestions given by monitors strongly guide the choice.
The focus of the donating organization becomes the focus of the recipient one
as the donor’s reasoning and the recipient adopts values. This mechanism is unfortunate, because recipients do
not choose their donors and so they do not have the option to choose those
donors, which they would like to be influenced by.
The following is an attempt to look at The
Foundation’s support alone as a definition of civil society and democracy. I do
this following one of my basic assumptions: that the meaning of a term is
defined by the actions carried out under its name. One way to try and grasp the
terms civil society and democracy is by answering the questions my friends have
asked me: What does The Foundation do
to strengthen democracy, what is this
civil society the foundation supports? Naturally, these answers are a
simplification and I do not intent to present this as the true or final
interpretation of civil society in Hungary.
One characteristic of support is that
organizations that carry out social services (such as assistance for elderly,
disabled or disadvantaged groups) are supported heavily. Such services are seen
to help create equality in society because they secure disadvantaged groups the
same possibilities in life as other people. The NGOs saw themselves filling out
the ‘gap’ left by the state when it promises social and civil rights to people
without offering services to meet peoples’ needs. Other areas of support are
advocacy and Roma population (which for this purpose could be placed either
under advocacy or disadvantaged people), which are also focused on securing
equal rights and opportunities for less privileged parts of the population.
In the area of rural development a significant
initiative is the telecottage movement in Hungary, which The Foundation helped
make popular by providing initial support for numerous new telecottages.
Telecottages are information and telecommunication centers placed in villages
or small towns, providing services to citizens at a low cost (or even free of
charge). They function as shared offices for SME[9]s,
NGOs and distance workers, as cultural and social centers and they provide
public information and counseling etc. The Foundation supported NGOs, which
applied for funds to found or run a telecottage as one (or the only) activity.
Private businesses, the municipality, a post office or library can also run
Telecottages but The Foundation limited their support to NGOs underlining an
understanding of civil society, which could just as well be called
organizational society.
The requirement that recipients must be
formally registered as “non-profit” organizations very clearly limits the
meaning of civil society in the organizations understanding. This one demand
translates into a very narrow understanding of civil society as the society of
formally registered NGOs, which is exactly the understanding most informants
had of the term. Thus I was told several times that civil society is more or
less synonymous with the sum of NGOs and oftentimes representatives of NGOs did
not understand my questions about how they play a part in civil society or how
they understand this term, because the answer to them was too obvious: NGOs are civil society.
This understanding is demonstrated by the
following abstract from an interview with a young woman, who works for an NGO.
The NGO primarily provides information to other NGOs, arranges meetings between
local councils and NGOs and also administers the annual presentation of the
Civil Price, which is given to local businesses that have shown “civil
initiative”: I asked: “You have used the
expression civil sphere several times, how should this ´civil sphere´ be
understood, now there is the civil price as well, how can a person be civil?”[10].
Answer: “Well, you know they usually
say either civil organizations or non-profit organizations.”[11]
After this the woman goes into a long explanation of what constitutes a
non-profit organization, but despite being asked several times for the meaning
even of the single word ´civil` it is not possible for her to explain it. The
Civil Price, she explains, is given to people or businesses, which have done
something extraordinary for the civil sphere. At the presentation in year 2000
prices were given for financial or other support of NGOs.
Many NGOs that are supported by The Foundation
each carry out services for one specific group of people. These can be disabled
children, refugees, Roma, elderly or unemployed people – all defined by some
disadvantage. When asked how giving assistance to such groups of people makes society
more democratic, representatives of the NGOs in question would typically
deliver an argument according to which democracy means equality: to reach
equality the disadvantaged groups must be helped in order for them to reach the
same “level” as other citizens and this will secure them the same
opportunities. This support is important, however it is also exclusive and more
importantly I question the desirability of a structure in which NGOs take on
the responsibility to carry out social services and secure equality, arguing
that such services should be secured for all disadvantaged people
regardless of geographical or other matters before any sense of equality can be
realized. My belief is that NGOs alone are not ideal for this because they do
not guarantee an equal representation in all parts of the country. Whether or
not a disabled child has access to the proper support, which will insure her an
education and later a job is highly fortuitous. It depends not only on NGOs
abilities to write grant applications, donors desire to support their
activities but also on the existence of proper professionals in the local area
who will initiate and participate in such an NGO in the first place.
The telecottages have a wider scope than most
of The Foundation’s recipients, as their services are directed at all citizens.
Furthermore, staff would often describe their role as one of “educating the
people”. They feel a responsibility not only to help their clients but also to
teach them how to help themselves, to encourage others to start their own
organizations or projects. As in other organizations though, assistance is
given on an individual basis, here helping people find a job, fill out official
forms, search for information on legal matters etc. The goal for all of The
Foundation’s recipients seems to be to provide enough information and
assistance that people can and will claim their rights and make use of
opportunities. NGOs see it as their mission to provide services and to answer
questions for the individual. One informant pointed out an inadequacy of this
approach to social problems: “The problem
is, that in Hungary many times they [NGOs] solve the tasks and not the
problems.”[12] Many
resources in the NGO sector are spent solving immediate tasks, while there is a
lack of organized attempts to change the systems that underlie inequalities and
other problems. One situation made my informant’s point clear to me in a
concrete way: The manager of one NGO had explained of length about how it was
necessary to keep her own salary as low as possible in order to be able to
obtain support from the municipality or other grants. Anyone would agree that
this salary was not enough to keep up decent living standards in her family.
This is a common problem and most people have alternative sources of income to
supplement their salary. In the NGO-sector people are further pressured by the
expectations of volunteer work. This woman was very concerned that the NGO
should live up to so-called “professional” standards. This meant that bookkeeping
should be perfect and transparent and she wanted to avoid using personal
relations to obtain support and instead insisted that the work should speak for
itself. My impression was that of a woman with very high moral standards and
strong principles. Therefore I was surprised to witness how this woman and
another informant pulled money out of the budget to supplement their own
income. However, they did not consider this immoral (even if clearly illegal),
it merely represented a way of surviving under the given circumstances. The
argument was that the salary was too low to lead a decent life and any attempt
to raise the salary officially would mean that applications for funding would
be rejected.
Rather
than attempting to unite with other NGOs and try to obtain a higher standard
salary, the individual finds ways around the system. I find this mechanism to
be a general tendency in the work of NGOs in Hungary: Great effort and skill is
directed at managing within the system as it is, while NGOs resign from
organizing to change the system itself. This may well be explained as a
cultural habit to avoid confronting the system and the individual instead
maneuvers within it or manipulates it.[13]
This behavioral pattern further enhances the effects of two other problems:
first, NGOs are dependent on a good (personal) relationship with the
municipality (and other donors) to survive, which in itself undermines their
means of pressure and ability to perform civil control. Second, recipient NGOs
are typically not part of a larger network, but only operate in their local
area. Supporting local NGOs in rural areas was explained to me as a strategy to
develop rural areas and thus oppose the Budapest-centrism, which was said to
strongly predispose citizens and NGOs in the capital. This plays into arguments
to decentralize power, something that underlies the establishment of the
current municipality model in Hungary[14].
Stronger networks or unions might be one way to diminish the, sometimes,
disabling effects of decentralism in the NGO-sphere.
The logic of support for NGOs provided by The
Foundation is completely in line with liberal theory. Thus it is assumed that
better services are provided cheaper by NGOs, because they are not the state.
Equal distribution of services will be realized as a result of market forces
(!) – where there is a demand an NGO will eventually materialize (?). The
professional, well-functioning NGOs will be able to receive support from the
business sphere and can thus maintain sustainability without dependence on the
state. The wealth created on the free market slowly distributes itself into the
surrounding society.
Comparing these assumptions to the situation I
observed the following problems present themselves: First, there is no
guarantee that NGOs will provide better services than state institutions,
especially not if one considers their often poor sustainability. The argument
is often made that NGOs are part of the local environment where they operate
and therefore they better understand the situation and can provide more
suitable services. However, this does not explain why NGOs are better suited
than the local municipality to carry out services.
Those in need of social services are typically
those who do not have many resources. Thus there is a demand, but the clients
do not posses means of payment, therefore market forces may not be the most
suitable to control the provision of social services. The liberal model assumes
that local businesses are
willing and able to support NGOs and that this is an efficient system to secure
equal access to social and other services. The problem with this argument is that the most
successful companies in Hungary are the foreign or trans-national ones and they
do not have extended interests in the local environment. In the countryside the
local businesses rarely make enough profit to significantly support NGOs. Finally, NGOs are in many Hungarians’ minds most likely
to be constructed for the purpose of tax evasion. There is a general lack of
trust in good intentions and those people who can are reluctant to give money
to NGOs. The NGOs in
this study face the task to mediate between the logic of a western, liberal
model for democracy and a population of “socialist schooled” individuals, who
for a large part have little faith in “systems” or in politics. What we can
observe is an entirely new cocktail of system and people.
I found that the term civil society was more
often than not used to refer to the sum of NGOs. I claim that the existence of
NGOs cannot in itself guarantee a strong civil society that plays a positive
role in the development of democracy, because it depends very much on the
activities and nature of such NGOs[15].
Many NGOs do make rights and opportunities more available to individual
citizens and in this way they help secure equality. Other NGOs are not
concerned with this at all, but may even require membership or in other ways
only offer services to a limited part of the population.
Generally, I found a lack of consideration and
discussion about the meaning and role of (NGOs in) civil society. Civil society
was NGOs and their role was to provide services and enable people to help
themselves. Here, as in other parts of the world the concept Civil Society has
become a catch phrase, which attracts funds, but it has largely lost meaning.
This is underlined by the fact, that even well educated informants could not
explain the meaning of the term as anything other than NGOs, nor could they explain
what it meant to be civil or carry out civil activities[16].
The rhetoric of donors is incorporated into the
language of local actors who then use terms in the simplified way found in
project proposals and announcements. However, the original meaning and
conceptual apparatus connected to the terms are not equally effectively
transferred. This results in a vocabulary of sophisticated phrases applied to
simple institutions to which the ability to create democracy is thus attributed[17].
When the NGO-sphere by it’s mere existence is expected to make society more
democratic, it is because NGOs have been identified in other contexts as civil
society actors and there is a wide consensus that a “well-developed” civil
society is crucial to democracy. By a maneuver of reversed logic it is
translated into an argument of “the more NGOs, the more democracy”.
The above does not imply that NGOs are
mindlessly carrying out activities or did not have an idea of their own role in
society and the effects of their work. Most of my informants were confident
that they delivered good and needed services and that they assisted individuals
to have a better life. They simply assumed that their own and others’ efforts
would add up to a better society on the whole, but how this will happen is left
up to the mystical qualities of the civil society. These qualities are related
to the ability and power mentioned in this citation from a staff member with
The Foundation: „Well, that's why we think
that nonprofits are the key to improving things in Hungary. If we can get them
to a point where they are professional organizations that work professionally
in a transparent way, providing quality services. Then they have a huge ability
to bring in outside resources and to bring people together and to create
resources where there weren’t any just by the shear power of being able
to bring people together which in itself is something - they can mobilize
resources bringing together… at a local level… to solve problems that are
facing local communities…”. NGOs
are thus expected to attract resources from “outside”, just because they “come
together” – but only if they become “professional organizations”. What this tends to mean in reality is, that
if people will register as NGOs and follow the guidelines given by the world’s
donors, they can obtain support for their activities in the name of democracy
because they are by these donor’s definitions civil society. The support is
distributed on the basis of grant competition, where the NGOs degree of
“professionalism” – not least regarding it’s ability to write grant proposals –
is most often determinant. The idea of competition for money is in line with
liberal, democratic logic according to which an open competition is the best
guarantee for fair distribution and most qualified winners. The system has the
disadvantage that even well functioning organizations are not guaranteed
regular support and they have to direct much energy to fundraising. Limited
access to regular funding from central, impartial organs (for example state- or
regional support distributed on the basis of services carried out instead of
grant competition) reinforce the unequal distribution of NGOs (and with that,
social services) in Hungary. Suggestions
for such centrally administrated funding are often unpopular with NGOs, who
have learned from donors that decentralism and independence from the state is
the key to “good” civil society. At the same time many NGOs are totally
dependent on their donors and have to follow their agenda closely - something
that is, ironically, not considered a problem in relation to their qualities as
civil society actors.
It is considered an inherent fact that NGOs
(because they constitute a civil society) will enhance democracy– just as the
general discourse informs us. The donor defines the possible recipients of
“civil society support” as formal, non-profit organizations and hereafter the
donor teaches the recipient how to be a good NGO, and if one should fail to agree
he looses support. It
is thought provoking, that the system, which claims to strengthen democracy
through support of civil society in it bears so dominantly such mechanisms
which clearly refuse any debate on the role of civil society or the role of it’s
constituents. One is tempted to ask whether such a system can be believed to
support democracy at all.
Feldman,
Shelley. (1997) NGOs and Civil Society: (Un)stated Contradictions.
AAAPSS 554.
Juul-Olsen, Lasse (2000) Field report: mellem
marked og borgerdeltagelse, en analyse af toneangivende miljřNGOer i Chile.
www.oocities.org/chilengo
Keane,
John (1998) Civil Society, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Musil,
Jiri (2000) The Burdens of the Past in The meaning of liberalism East
and West. CEU Press. Budapest.
Osborne,
P. Stephen & Kaposvári, Anikó (1998) Nongovernmental organizations,
local government and the development of social services managing social needs
in post-communist Hungary. Discussion Paper No.4 Local Government and
Public Service Reform Initiative, Budapest.
Richter,
James (1999) Foreign Assistance and Social Movement Organizations in Russia:
Creating Civil Society? Paper presented to the Annual Conference of the
American Political Science Association, September 2-6, Atlanta, Georgia.
Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber. (2000) Civil
Society and the Realm of Freedom. Economic and Political Weekly, May 13.
[1] This paper is the first
presentation of a field study, which I carried out as part of my degree as magister (extended MA) at The Department
for Ethnography and Social Anthropology at Aarhus University, Denmark. I plan to address the issues further
in my thesis work.
[2] NGO is used broadly in this paper
to include the terms civil and non-profit organization. In Hungary the
preferred term is non-profit organization, which is meaningful and easily
pronounced in Hungarian.
[3] All names of people, places (except
Budapest), organisations and projects are fictitious to protect those involved.
[4] This point has been made numerous
times, see for example Feldman, 1997 and Richter, 1999.
[5] Translated from Hungarian:
Question: “Mi a [main donor] szerepe a
támogatottak kiválasztásában?” Answer: “Semmi.
A [main donor] megadta ezeket a fo területeket melyeket támogatni kívánt,
vidéki fejesztés, szociális szolgáltatások, Roma, stb. - ezen kívül semmi.”
[6] It should be kept in mind that I
also represented The Foundation inasmuch as I was known to be a volunteer
there, which may have caused some to give more positive answers instead of
honest ones. I tried to counterbalance this disadvantage by explaining my role
as a researcher and guaranteeing full anonymity to all those interviewed.
[7] ”Müvelödési ház” in Hungarian.
These can be found in almost all towns and villages and is generally operated by
the municipality.
[8] This included photocopying, use of
telephone and Internet, planning of activities for festivals or meetings etc.
[9] Small and Medium sized Enterprises.
[10] Translated from Hungarian: “Többször
használtad azt a kifejezést, hogy
´civil szféra´, hogy kell azt érteni az hogy ´civil szféra´, most van
egy civil díj is, hogy lehet valaki civil?”
[11] Translated from Hungarian: “Hát ugye azt szokták mondani, hogy vagy civil szervezetek vagy hogy
non-profit szervezetek.”
[12] Translated from Hungarian: ”Az a baj, hogy Magyarországon sokszor a
feladatokat látják el és nem a problémákat.”
[13] Jiri Musil (2000) touches upon
similar “behavioural forms” to explain the hard application of democracy and
market economy in the region.
[14] I asked informants why local municipalities are so small (some are only
one village of a few thousand inhabitants) that they are unlikely to be very
cost-effective. One informant explained to me, that people have to learn to
administer the power again, because during state-socialism they forgot how to
take responsibility for their own lives. This is why municipalities have to be
small entities, to secure citizens the opportunity and responsibility to govern
their local area.
[15] See also Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
(2000) for this argument.
[16] Several times I was faced with
incomprehension to my questions about the meaning of the word civil, which
informants would use themselves. It was pointed out, that actually it just
meant civil as opposed to military and that the word was not very useful.
[17] I owe this argument partly to Lasse Juul Olsen, who observed a similar
phenomenon in Chile.