Book Notes

The Power and Limits of NGOs: A Critical Look at Building Democracy in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Edited by Sarah E. Mendelson & John K. Glenn. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Pp. 257. $22.50, paper.

Post–Cold War euphoria heralding the inevitable diffusion of democratic norms and values throughout the former Soviet Bloc rings as hollow today as Bolshevik slogans proclaiming the triumphal march of communism in 1917. Illiberal democracies like Russia and old-fashioned autocracies like Turkmenistan outnumber the likes of Poland or Slovenia. Yet despite the halting nature of political transition in much of the post-communist world, Westerners have rarely questioned the value of international NGOs in promoting and sustaining democracy through the development of local institutions and advocacy networks. In The Power and Limits of NGOs, Sarah Mendelson and John Glenn challenge this conventional complacency through a

collection of essays by regional scholars who seek to distinguish and critically reassess strategies used by NGOs attempting to foster civil society in states that have met the challenges of post-communist, democratic transition with varying degrees of success.

The book’s seven case studies explore the development of internationally assisted public interest organizations in a variety of spheres, including women’s NGOs in Poland and Hungary, media assistance in the Czech and Slovak Republics, and environmental NGOs in Kazakhstan. The unexpected theme running throughout the diverse subject matter is that there is no direct correlation between NGO presence and the robustness of a transitional state’s civil society. Indeed, the very means and methods by which NGOs have sought to provide democratic assistance to Eastern Europe and Eurasia have often compromised their capacity to serve as a driving force of democratic change in society at large.

The case studies follow a general structure and methodological framework set out by Mendelson and Glenn in the book’s introductory chapter. Each of the authors in the book provides historical background and political context exposing common misperceptions that adversely influenced the way NGOs approached the problem of democracy building in the 1990s. V. P. Gagnon, Jr., for example, in his essay “International NGOs in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Attempting to Build Civil Society,” criticizes the failure of many NGOs to appreciate Bosnia’s pre-war experience with grassroots activism and organization both in the 1980s and under Tito’s modestly participatory political system. In Gagnon’s opinion, NGOs that focus on political party building and civic education seek to address an ignorance of the democratic process that simply does not exist in Bosnia. Bosnians are better served by NGOs like Catholic Relief Services and Mercy Corps International, which promote ethnic reconciliation on an organic level through local community participation in physical reconstruction projects.

Gagnon’s emphasis on particularized assistance tailored to meet the needs of local communities, coupled with close attention to cultural norms and historical experiences, resonates throughout the book as a whole. Whereas the editors distinguish four general types of NGO strategies—infrastructural assistance, human capital development, proactive or imported strategies, and responsive strategies—the individual authors expand upon this basic typology by addressing the tasks, targets, and terms of specific NGO activity. Most of the essays contain useful charts outlining the conceptual framework informing each case study. Despite terminological variations from chapter to chapter, patterns and parallels that cut across states and issues are not difficult to discern. Mendelson and Glenn accurately perceive the authors’ unified view that “when new institutions have emerged and a critical mass of local NGOs and other institutions has developed, reactive strategies that call for local proposals and respond to domestic needs are more likely to be effective in helping to develop sustainable institutions”

than product-oriented strategies solicitous of ideas conforming to foreign priorities and preferences.

James Richter’s study of Russian women’s organizations best illustrates the fundamental tension between organizational imperatives and local predispositions that has impeded the ability of NGOs to influence the popular mindset and political development of post-communist states. Extensive interviews with members of Russia’s activist community lead Richter to conclude that Western assistance to Russia’s independent women’s movement “has done little to foster the kind of informal connections—the positive externalities—necessary to integrate it more fully into Russian society.” Competition for Western aid has fostered an atomized association of bureaucratized, corporate-like entities more concerned with their own survival than with the kind of grassroots activism necessary to garner popular support for the feminist movement and provide tangible benefits to Russian women. Opaque and hierarchical decision-making structures have nourished traditional skepticism toward all bureaucratic in-groups, leading to accusations of Soviet-style influence peddling. Even the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, one of Russia’s most active and influential independent women’s organizations, has felt compelled to divert attention and resources away from its aggressive strategy of public demonstrations—a strategy that drew international attention to human rights abuses in the Russian military and put pressure on President Yeltsin to end the first war in Chechnya—since beginning to receive substantial Western aid in 1997.

Yet Richter, like all of the authors in The Power and Limits of NGOs, does not intend his criticism to serve as ammunition either for Western isolationists who regard the funding of NGOs as a waste of money or for post-communist populists who portray the presence of NGOs as an imperialistic tool of foreign powers. Quite the contrary, Mendelson and Glenn’s collection stresses the untapped potential of NGOs to contribute to the expansion and consolidation of democratic institutions and values in the post-communist world. The Power and the Limits of NGOs is a call for greater self-analysis on the part of the NGO community—a series of cautionary tales that demonstrate the need for activists, policy makers, and scholars to think in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. Though one would like to have seen an even greater variety of issues examined—international efforts to promote minority rights and religious freedom, for example—the breadth and depth of this collection succeed in conveying to the reader both the far-reaching implications and the multi-layered complexities of NGO activity in states that, despite having receded from the international community’s immediate view, still require responsible and responsive forms of international assistance.

—Michael Jacobsohn

Copyright © 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 16, Spring 2003