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Response to Amanda Murdie’s Review of NGOs, Political Protest, and Civil Society

Amanda Murdie’s new book takes on the difficult and important question of whether international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) are actually doing more harm than good in their global efforts to promote development and human rights. Murdie focuses on the impact that INGOs have on human security, defined as freedom from want and freedom from fear. Until now, the literature on NGOs has followed a common path in academic research on new global issues: first wildly optimistic, then crushingly negative. Murdie’s book is a welcome step further—a clear-eyed, thoughtful, empirical investigation of the measureable effects of international NGO activity on human well-being around the world. Murdie gently points out that many scholars yearn to love NGOs; we are disappointed if they fail to live up to our expectations. Murdie does not fall into this trap. Instead, her analysis allows the data to speak for themselves, showing evidence that INGOs generally tend to do more good than harm, but that important factors make their success more or less likely, including support from the international system, support from the domestic community, working in a country with a government relatively free from corruption, and a domestic society relatively free to engage with NGOs. This book makes several important contributions to our understanding about the impact of NGOs in developing countries. First, it is the first large-scale effort to empirically evaluate the impact of NGOs on people’s lives in developing countries. This is a challenging task—and the data available are not perfect, as Murdie is careful to note—but it is nonetheless an important descriptive and empirical effort, especially given the wildly divergent claims about the benefits and perils of NGO activities. This book offers a satisfying answer to the question of whether international NGOs do more harm than good, and NGO workers, scholars, and advocates the world over should breathe a collective sigh of relief that the answer is, “usually not.” Murdie’s analysis is rigorous and creative, and is an example of how to make the most out of limited data without overstepping. Second, and perhaps more importantly, this book lays out the important factors which condition the effectiveness of NGOs in different issue areas. Murdie distinguishes between service and advocacy INGOs, both in her game theoretic set up of hypotheses and in the empirical sections. By starting with a game theoretic model, Murdie lays out clear, logically consistent hypotheses about the conditions under which INGOs are most likely to have the impact they seek. Service provision organizations have the greatest impact (measured as access to clean water—a very compelling basic measure of “freedom from want”) when INGOs work in countries without serious problems of state corruption, where organizations are willing to signal their commitment to best practices through voluntary accountability programs, and where the international community is involved in and committed to providing resources. Interestingly, INGOs also have the greatest impact when it is easier for domestic populations to work with organizations, either because of the density of urbanization or because of having the freedom to associate. Finally, development INGOs are most likely to improve service provision in countries where there is close alignment between the goals of the organization and the goals of the community. Human rights issues and organizations are different. In this case, the issue area matters a great deal for the effectiveness of advocacy. For some issues, like physical integrity rights, INGOs have made great strides. In other areas, like women’s rights, change is less obvious. INGOs also tend to have more success in countries that are more vulnerable to pressure from internal and external forces. Similarly, INGOs tend to have the most success on advocacy issues when there are more INGOs sending signals of their commitment to domestic or international audiences, when the costs of information are low (freedom of association is high), or when the support of the international community is increasing. Interestingly, the international community is more likely to support advocacy INGOs where there are fewer domestically oriented INGOs working. This last point speaks to one of the great strengths of this book: the willingness to tackle some of the thornier nuances of NGO activity. For example, Murdie points