World Development Vol. 27, No. 5, pp.

855±864, 1999
Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd
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Four Criteria of Development NGO Legitimacy

IAIN ATACK *
Irish School of Ecumenics, Dublin, Ireland
Summary. Ð The increasing prominence of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as
agents of development raises normative questions concerning their involvement in this
process. These questions can be grouped together as issues of ``legitimacy.'' This paper
suggests four criteria of development NGO legitimacy, explained as either formal-
procedural or substantive-purposive. It concludes by arguing that NGOs and govern-
ments each have distinctive roles and responsibilities in the development pro-
cess. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. INTRODUCTION the merchant, representing economic power;

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
have become increasingly important agents of
the development process in the countries of the
South, in all of their main areas of work: hu-
manitarian relief, long-term development, pol-
icy formation and political advocacy. This
raises questions concerning the normative basis
of NGO involvement in the development pro-
cess.
In this paper, I argue that these normative
questions can be grouped together under the
concept of ``legitimacy,'' which concerns moral
justi®cations for political and social action.
Furthermore, there are two di€erent types of
criteria of legitimacy: formal-procedural and
substantive-purposive. In the case of NGOs,
these provide four criteria of legitimacy for
their involvement in the development process.
These are representativeness and distinctive
values (formal-procedural), and e€ectiveness
and empowerment (substantive-purposive). I
conclude that NGOs and the state can be
complementary rather than contradictory
agents of development, understood as bene®-
cial social and economic change.
and the citizen, who embodies people's power''
(Korten, 1990, p. 96). Civil society has been
further identi®ed as the public space between
individual citizens and the state, in which their
activities occur collectively and in an organised
form (Stewart, 1997, p. 1).
As their name indicates, nongovernmental
organizations, including development NGOs,
are an important part of civil society, along
with churches, trade unions, special interest
associations and the media (MwMakumbe,
1998, p. 305). As part of civil society, and
therefore distinct from both the state and pri-
vate enterprise, NGOs are nonpro®t as well as
nongovernmental.
There is a great heterogeneity and variety
among development NGOs. This diversity de-
pends upon a wide range of factors, such as
geopolitical base (North or South), size, type of
activity (operational, educational, campaigning
etc.), and ideology or motivation. One of the
crucial distinctions, especially in terms of le-
gitimacy, is ``between membership organiza-
tions, that help themselves, and service
organizations, that help others'' (Bratton, 1989,
p. 571). Most of my remarks concerning criteria

2. NGOS AND THE DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS
Western political theorists sometimes divide
society into three basic components: the state,
private enterprise and civil society. This has
been represented by the metaphor of ``the
prince, who represents governmental power;
855
* A version of this paper was presented at the ``Confer-
ence on Ethics, Development and Global Values'' at the
University of Aberdeen, 25±28 June, 1996. I would like
to thank my colleagues at the Irish School of Ecumenics
for their help with various drafts of the paper. I would
also like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers at
World Development for their helpful comments and
criticisms. Final revision accepted: 14 November 1998.
856 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
of NGO legitimacy are especially relevant to
Northern-based development NGOs, which
almost invariably fall into the latter category.
David Korten refers to these as ``third-party
organizations,'' because they base ``their social
legitimacy on the premise that they exist to
serve the needs of third partiesÐpersons who
are not themselves members of the organiza-
tion'' (Korten, 1990, p. 96).
In a much-quoted classi®cation, Korten
identi®es three (or perhaps four) generations of
development NGO strategy, which can be used
to classify or analyze the work of particular
development NGOs. He refers to these as ``(a)
relief and welfare; (b) local self-reliance; and (c)
sustainable systems development'' (Korten,
1987, p. 147).
``First generation strategies involve the NGO
in the direct delivery of services to meet an
immediate de®ciency or shortage experienced
by the bene®ciary population, such as needs for
food, health care or shelter'' (Korten, 1990, p.
115). Such strategies are particularly relevant to
emergency or humanitarian relief in times of
disaster or crisis, such as famine, ¯ood or war,
when immediate human needs must be met.
Local self-reliance, on the other hand, con-
cerns NGO involvement in long-term develop-
ment work or capacity-building, ``with the
intent that bene®ts would be sustained beyond
the period of NGO assistance'' (Korten, 1987,
p. 148). ``Second generation strategies focus the
energies of the NGO on developing the capac-
ities of the people to better meet their own
needs through self-reliant local action'' (Kor-
ten, 1990, p. 118).
The third generation of NGO activity, ``sus-
tainable systems development,'' concerns in-
volvement in ``the larger institutional and
policy context'' a€ecting development NGO
work, or participation in the process of policy
formation by governments and multilateral
organizations (Korten, 1987, p. 148).
Third generation strategies look beyond the individual
community and seek changes in speci®c policies and
institutions at local, national and global levels. Self-re-
liant village development initiatives are likely to be
sustained only so long as they are linked into a sup-
portive national development system (Korten, 1990,
p. 120).
In addition to these three generations of de-
velopment NGO strategy, Korten has also
identi®ed a fourth, involving support for
``people's movements'' promoting a broader
``social vision'' (Korten, 1990, p. 127).
There is an alternative way of categorizing
an additional fourth generation of NGO ac-
tivity. This involves political advocacy and
campaigning on issues such as Third World
debt, military spending and international trade
regimes, insofar as these a€ect the develop-
ment prospects of particular communities,
countries or regions. It has been argued that it
is a particular responsibility of Northern-
based development NGOs to initiate such
political advocacy, because of ``the prepon-
derant control exercised by industrialised
countries in the multilateral system and in the
management of the global economy'' (Brod-
head, 1987, p. 4).
Korten refers to these as generations of de-
velopment NGO strategy, because he claims
that one type of involvement leads on to the
next, and that this can be seen historically in
the evolution of NGO development work.
Many development NGOs began in response to
a pressing human catastrophe or crisis, and
their activities moved from one generation to
the next as their understanding of the com-
plexities of development issues and problems
became more sophisticated.
He argues that NGO participation in the
policy formation process is necessary for ®rst
and second generation activities to be e€ective.
In the same way, development NGOs today
could argue that lobbying or campaigning on
issues such as Third World debt is necessary if
the trend toward increasing poverty in sub-Sa-
haran Africa and other parts of the Third
World is to be reversed.
At the same time Korten acknowledges that
all remain important strategies for development
NGO activity, and co-exist both within the
larger NGO community and even within indi-
vidual NGOs. He suggests that they are per-
haps ``more appropriately tied to individual
programs than to whole organizations'' (Kor-
ten, 1987, p. 149).
Development NGOs are becoming increas-
ingly important in both the operational or
service-provision (®rst and second generation),
and the policy formation and political advo-
cacy (third and fourth generation) areas of their
work. In the areas of humanitarian relief and
long-term development, both governments and
the UN rely increasingly on NGOs to deliver
services, for example. NGOs have become re-
sponsible for delivering more than 10% of of-
®cial development assistance (ODA) compared
 DEVELOPMENT NGO LEGITIMACY
with only 0.2% in 1970 (Gordenker and Weiss,
1995a, p. 372).
One caveat connected to this increase in of-
®cial funding for NGO activity is that it has
often been directed toward emergency relief
operations, especially in recent years. The
danger is that the availability of such funding
has promoted a return in prominence of ®rst-
generation NGO activity, at the expense of
other areas of work, from support for capacity-
building or long-term development programs
through to campaigning or lobbying on global
justice issues. It can also undermine NGO au-
tonomy and their ability to act as independent
and sometimes controversial agents of social
change.
For these reasons, Korten distinguishes be-
tween what he calls ``voluntary organizations''
(VOs), and ``public service contractors'' (PSCs),
which tend to compete for and bene®t from this
increased channeling of ocial development
assistance (ODA) funds through NGOs.
``When donors talk about engaging NGOs as
implementors of donor projects, they are usu-
ally looking for a PSC rather than a VO''
(Korten, 1990, p. 103).
NGOs are also becoming increasingly active
in their e€orts to in¯uence the development
policies of both governments (North and
South) and multilateral institutions or inter-
governmental organizations (third generation
activities). UN agencies such as UNHCR and
UNICEF not only rely on NGOs for service
provision, but also try to involve them in pro-
ject formulation and policy consultations, for
example. The Overseas Development Institute
refers to ``the reverse agenda whereby the ap-
proach and methods of the NGOs are now in-
¯uencing the activities and perceptions of
donors and ocial aid programmes.'' They
claim that the in¯uence of NGOs is felt through
the concern for poverty alleviation, the envi-
ronment and the status of women as ocial aid
objectives (ODI, 1995, p. 4).
Korten's distinction between PSCs and VOs
reveals the care with which ®gures concerning
NGO development assistance need to be inter-
preted. At the same time, his analysis of the
four generations of NGO work shows the
continuing importance and increasingly com-
plex nature of Northern-based NGO interven-
tions in development processes in the South.
This in turn demonstrates the need for a closer
examination of the legitimacy or normative
basis for the role of NGOs, as civil society or-
ganizations, in these processes.
857
3. NORMATIVE CRITERIA FOR NGOS IN
THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
The increased importance and in¯uence of
development NGOs raises normative questions
concerning their involvement in the develop-
ment process. These questions can be grouped
together perhaps under the concept of ``legiti-
macy'', associated with moral justi®cations for
political and social action. Legitimacy as a
moral term is conventionally applied to the
state, in Western political theory, but it is also
relevant to organizations or political actors
within civil society, such as development
NGOs.
Bratton has outlined the normative dimen-
sion of state-NGO relations in the context of
questions of legitimacy.
At base, the relationship between governments and
nongovernmental organizations is a policy question
that impinges on the legitimacy of various types of in-
stitutions to exercise power. Who has the right to as-
sert leadership, to organize people, and to allocate
resources in the development enterprise? (Bratton,
1989, p. 570).
It is this concern with the right of di€erent in-
stitutions (states or NGOs) to involve them-
selves in the development process that raises
normative questions concerning the legitimacy
of particular types of political and social action.
In connection with the state, two di€erent
types of legitimacy criteria can be provided:
formal-procedural and substantive-purposive
(Flathman, 1995, p. 529). Formal-procedural
criteria apply to the principles according to
which the state operates, while substantive-
purposive criteria concern the results it is able
to achieve.
Examples of formal-procedural criteria of
legitimacy relevant to the state might be the
conventional ones of authority and popular
consent. The authority of the state consists of
its right to command and to be obeyed. Such
authority is content-independent, in the sense
that it is not contingent upon the content or
impact of particular commands or laws.
Nonetheless, since Hobbes at least such au-
thority has been derived from the consent of
the governed, so that, according to Beetham,
``the principle of popular sovereignty is now an
almost universal condition of political legiti-
macy'' (Beetham, 1991, p. 39).
The function of state authority is to de®ne
and provide procedures by which the widest
858 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
range of goods can be pursued, while preserv-
ing social order. ``Its laws are indi€erent to ends
and purposes; they do not tell us what to do,
they tell us how we may go about doing what-
ever we do'' (Flathman, 1995, p. 529).
In contrast to this, substantive-purposive
criteria tend to be concerned with the pursuit of
common or shared goods, or the actual results
of state authority beyond its formal conformity
to established or accepted procedures or laws.
Examples of substantive-purposive criteria of
state legitimacy might be distributive justice or
the welfare of its citizens.
Like states, NGOs claim to promote public
or common goods or values, such as develop-
ment. Unlike states, however, NGOs are pri-
vate and autonomous in form rather than
public and de®nable in terms of popular con-
sent or sovereignty. This is particularly true for
Northern-based development NGOs, most of
which are not membership-based, and would
not include their supposed constituency in the
countries of the South directly in any of their
organizational structures.
As Gordenker and Weiss point out:
NGOs themselves are not necessarily democratic,
which raises the question of who represents what to
whom....NGOs do not function the way representative
governments do (Gordenker and Weiss, 1995b, p.
553).
NGOs demand a right to participate in inter-
national forums, for example, without neces-
sarily examining the moral basis of this claim,
in terms of their own relationship to those they
claim to represent. Even intergovernmental
organizations such as the United Nations, the
World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) have a mandate, through their
member governments, that NGOs cannot
claim. This raises normative issues for NGOs,
at least in terms of formal-procedural criteria of
legitimacy.
In addition, NGOs may seek to in¯uence
government policy disinterestedly, to support
generally bene®cial changes to the development
process, but they can also lobby governments
for more self-interested reasons, such as in-
creased funding for their own work. This raises
questions concerning substantive-purposive
criteria of legitimacy, as applied to develop-
ment NGOs.
It would seem that both formal-procedural
and substantive-purposive criteria raise nor-
mative questions of legitimacy concerning the
role of NGOs in the development process. The
next step is to provide some content to these
two types of criteria that is particularly relevant
to NGOs.
In a recent book, Edwards and Hulme stress
two criteria of NGO legitimacy, performance
and accountability:
Performing e€ectively and accounting transparently
are essential components of responsible practice, on
which the legitimacy of development intervention ulti-
mately depends (Edwards and Hulme, 1995, p. 6).
Building on this I would suggest two formal-
procedural criteria, and two substantive-pur-
posive criteria of legitimacy, that are rooted in
the development process and apply particularly
to development NGOs. The two formal-pro-
cedural criteria are representativeness (includ-
ing accountability) and distinctive values. The
two substantive-purposive criteria are e€ec-
tiveness (or performance) and empowerment.
(a) Representativeness
Formal-procedural criteria of legitimacy,
when applied to development NGOs, concern
their methods of operation. Representativeness
as a criterion involves the same standards
NGOs often use to criticize both governmental
and multilateral development programs on
procedural grounds: transparency, account-
ability and participation. Edwards and Hulme
claim, for example, that ``even if voluntary or-
ganizations are not member-controlled, they
can still gain in legitimacy by being transparent,
accountable and acting in a spirit of genuine
partnership with others'' (Edwards and Hulme,
1996, p. 967). In other words, Northern-based
development NGOs can still achieve a measure
of representativeness through being account-
able to and dealing transparently with their
constituencies, partners or bene®ciaries in the
South, even though they are not membership
organizations. ``NGOs do not have to be
member-controlled to be legitimate, but they
do have to be accountable for what they do if
their claims to legitimacy are to be sustained''
(Edwards and Hulme, 1995, p. 14).
NGO representativeness does not have to ®t
within a formal, legal framework since their
structures and their performance are so often
supported by a web of informal, personal
connections (Gordenker and Weiss, 1995a, p.
375). The risk is that informal structures easily
conceal covert divisions of power and control
 DEVELOPMENT NGO LEGITIMACY
within organizations, and this danger probably
increases with their size.
Gordenker and Weiss suggest that this in-
formality is re¯ected in NGO reliance on net-
works, as ``¯at or horizontal organizational
forms.'' This is in contrast to the state as a
vertical and hierarchical organizational form,
because its formal-procedural legitimacy rests
upon claims of sovereignty and authority.
``Whereas hierarchy is the natural organising
principle of states, and markets are the natural
organizing principle of business organizations,
networks are readily associated with NGOs''
(Gordenker and Weiss, 1995a, p. 375).
There are at least theoretical limits to the
representativeness of NGOs in comparison to
the state. States ``reach society as a whole, both
in social and in spatial terms,'' whereas NGOs
respond to the speci®c interests of discrete parts
of civil society (Frantz, 1987, p. 122). Further-
more, one should not be too utopian in as-
sessing the relationship between NGOs and
those most directly a€ected by their involve-
ment in the development process. Northern-
based development NGOs can bypass existing
local organizations when either setting up their
own projects or selecting partner agencies, for
example. This sort of problem is particularly
acute where NGOs take on the functions of
local government, without any mechanisms of
accountability or appeal for the local popula-
tion (Crowley, 1995, p. 37).
The supposed bene®ciaries of the develop-
ment process, the economically impoverished
of the Third World, are not always the most
important constituents of Northern-based de-
velopment NGOs in particular. Niall Crowley
of Irish Mozambique Solidarity refers to three
other groups to which development NGOs feel
themselves more immediately accountable in
these days of ``market-led aid.'' This market is
de®ned in terms of the funding public, donor
governments and multilateral agencies, and the
international media, each based mostly in the
North (Crowley, 1995, p. 40).
This illustrates the potential for con¯ict be-
tween NGO accountability to donors (in the
North) and to partners or bene®ciaries (in the
South). Edwards and Hulme refer to this issue
of ``multiple accountabilities±`downwards' to
their partners, bene®ciaries, sta€ and support-
ers; and `upwards' to their trustees, donors and
host governments,'' as a problem for all NGOs,
in terms of their representativeness and legiti-
macy. ``Many of the concerns expressed about
the weak accountability of NGOs relate to the
859
diculties they face in prioritising and recon-
ciling these multiple accountabilities'' (Edwards
and Hulme, 1995, pp. 9±10).
The tendency of Northern governments to
direct more funds to NGOs and rely increas-
ingly on them to deliver services, noted above,
can compromise NGO representativeness and
hence legitimacy. Charlton identi®es the para-
dox whereby ODA funding trends prioritizing
NGOs encourage them to replicate state insti-
tutions and behavior, and weaken their links
with those parts of civil society they claim to
represent (Charlton, 1995, p. 570).
Edwards and Hulme claim that this is a
crucial problem for NGO legitimacy in this era
of the so-called new policy agenda of ocial aid
agencies, through which NGOs become pre-
ferred vehicles for development assistance.
Indeed, the New Policy Agenda thrusts the question
of legitimacy into centre stage, for if NGOs are be-
coming more responsive to external concerns, what
is happening to the links±to their values and mission,
and to their supporters and others±through which
they claim their right to intervene in development?
(Edwards and Hulme, 1995, p. 14).
In other words, increased state funding may
undermine the legitimacy of NGOs as agents of
development, if it weakens their ``downward
accountability'' to their bene®ciaries or con-
stituents, because of the increased claims of
``upward accountability'' to their funders or
donors.
(b) Distinctive values
A second formal-procedural criterion of le-
gitimacy for development NGOs could be a
reliance on distinctive values associated with
their work. Thomas suggests solidarity as a
normative principle of regulation for NGOs, as
distinct from ``the market principle of price and
the state regulatory principle of authority''
(Thomas, 1992, p. 132). This parallels the dis-
tinction between networks, markets and hier-
archies as organizing principles of NGOs,
business and the state. NGOs deal with each
other on the basis of common interests and
needs, rather than coercion or a desire to ex-
tract as much money as possible from a rela-
tionship of exchange.
Bratton suggests ``voluntarism'' as a similar
NGO characteristic or motive, as distinct from
authority and pro®t (Bratton, 1989). In other
words, NGOs are voluntary associations, de-
860 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
pendent upon the cooperation or participation
of their members, constituents or partners,
whereas the authority of the state over its citi-
zens rests ultimately on its coercive power.
Korten emphasizes the importance of shared
values as the basis for such voluntarism.
``Voluntary organizations....depend primarily
on appeals to shared values as the basis for
mobilizing human and ®nancial resources.''
Furthermore, such ``value commitment is the
distinctive strength of the VO'' (Korten, 1990,
p. 2). NGOs, as civil society organizations, rely
primarily on value-based commitment for their
organizational or institutional impetus and ex-
istence, in a way that other sectors of society do
not.
Solidarity involves relationships based on the
recognition and promotion of the rights or
moral claims of others, such as or including
``development rights'' or the right to participate
in and bene®t from social and economic
change. As such, solidarity can be both a
characteristic of NGO styles of working, and a
value to be promoted more generally through-
out society by NGOs. Relationships of soli-
darity can extend to other NGOs or civil
society organizations, or to communities or
particular target groups within those commu-
nities.
NGOs may be in a unique position both to
behave in this way, and to promote solidarity
as a basis of social and political relationships
more generally, because of their underlying
ethos of ``voluntarism,'' which is compatible
with the recognition of the rights or moral
claims of others in a way that relationships
based on authority (or coercion) or exchange
are not. It is in this sense that the values of
solidarity and voluntarism provide a distinctive
source of NGO legitimacy, providing norma-
tive support or moral justi®cation for their role
as agents of development.
The distinctive values at the root of devel-
opment NGO work and legitimacy, are often
dicult to maintain in the face of the
perceived need to ``scale-up'' the scope and
e€ectiveness of their operations, connected to
pressures from donors, who are interested
in them primarily as PSCs or vehicles for of-
®cial development assistance. As Korten
points out:
Dealing with growth is more complex for a VO than
for a business organization, in part because of the dif-
®culty faced in managing the values consensus that de-
®nes its distinctive nature. That diculty increases
geometrically as the organization grows. Consequent-
ly, VOs may be inherently ill-suited to large-scale pro-
gram operations (Korten, 1990, p. 104).
Furthermore, he claims that PSCs ``are driven
by market considerations more than by values
and therefore are more like businesses than
VOs'' (Korten, 1990, p. 102).
This reveals a tension so often at the heart of
development NGO work, between the values
that inspire and motivate them, and their ef-
fectiveness as agents of development measured
in terms of scale, replicability and sustainability
of impact. Clarity concerning the appropriate
roles of NGOs and governments as agents of
development may help NGOs resist some of
these pressures, and support their e€orts to
maintain their distinctive values and their vol-
untary ethos. This issue is discussed further in
the conclusion.
(c) E€ectiveness
A substantive-purposive criterion of NGO
legitimacy would be their e€ectiveness in
achieving development goals such as poverty
alleviation and improvements to human devel-
opment indicators such as education, health
and life expectancy. One reason for the en-
hanced role of NGOs in the development pro-
cess is their presumed eciency and
e€ectiveness in terms of program delivery and
meeting the needs of the poor. This is compared
favorably with the failures and problems of
state, multilateral and private sector e€orts to
promote development.
NGOs have a comparative advantage over the private
sector and government in relation to sustainable pov-
erty alleviation arising out of their access to the poor,
their relations with intended bene®ciaries, and their
organizational freedom (Jennings, 1995, p. 26).
NGOs possess development capacities and ca-
pabilities that states and governments lack, and
are accepted as a necessary part of the devel-
opment process on this basis.
Korten suggests that the ``legitimacy and
credibility'' of NGOs are based on their e€ec-
tiveness ``in the service of a social need ne-
glected by the prince and the merchant,''
combined with their role ``as an instrument of
voluntary citizen action'' in accordance with
their distinctive value commitments (Korten,
1990, p. 96). Furthermore, NGO values such as
solidarity and voluntarism provide the moti-
 DEVELOPMENT NGO LEGITIMACY
vation or incentive for NGO e€ectiveness as
agents of development.
Their operational success, experience and
basic competence in turn contributes to the
credibility of NGOs when they engage in third
and fourth generation strategies, such as par-
ticipating in the formulation of government
and multilateral development policies and
campaigning on issues such as debt relief or
cancellation. ``The capacity to in¯uence gov-
ernment policy will only come when the NGO
has developed a track record and some sym-
pathetic contacts inside government as a result
of its work in the ®rst two generations'' (Hol-
loway, 1989, p. 220).
Much recent literature has argued that NGO
e€ectiveness as agents of development has been
exaggerated, or largely assumed rather than
demonstrated. One problem here concerns ar-
riving at agreed standards and methods for
evaluating the results of NGO activity. More-
over, as Edwards and Hulme point out, it is
often very dicult to measure the e€ectiveness
of NGO development interventions because
``NGOs are rarely able to control all (or even
most) of the factors which in¯uence the out-
come of their work'' (Edwards and Hulme,
1995, p. 11).
Another issue concerning the e€ectiveness of
NGOs is the problem of ``scaling-up'' the im-
pact of their development interventions. NGOs
can be innovative and responsive when dealing
with particular conditions at the local level, for
example. On the other hand, precisely because
of this local focus, and their limited resources,
they ®nd it dicult to replicate or repeat suc-
cessful projects or programs on the wider scale
that is so often needed to have a major devel-
opment impact.
NGOs concentrate on particular areas or
communities, so excessive reliance on NGO
involvement can reinforce a lack of uniform
and reliable social service provision for all the
residents of a country. NGOs work well at the
micro level, but cannot replace governments at
the macro level. This simply reiterates the need
for third generation NGO strategies, to create
the ``appropriate institutional and policy
framework'' to protect local NGO initiatives
and promote them on a wider scale (Brodhead,
1987, p. 2).
(d) Empowerment
A second substantive-purposive criterion for
NGO legitimacy in the development process
861
can be referred to as ``empowerment.'' Ac-
cording to Thomas:
Empowerment is a desired process by which individu-
als, typically including ``the poorest of the poor,'' are
to take direct control over their lives (Thomas, 1992,
p. 132).
The concern with poverty alleviation and hu-
man development indicators are important in
themselves, but also because they are essential
conditions of this broader development goal of
empowerment.
Brohman has suggested three aspects to or
components of empowerment in the context
of processes of development: self-help and
self-reliance, collective decision-making and
collective action, and participatory methods. A
participatory methodology is the key to ensur-
ing that people ``become actively involved at all
levels of decision-making.'' Furthermore,
participation must be seen as an end in itself,
because of its crucial contribution to the em-
powerment of local communities, and not
merely as a means for completing projects more
eciently (Brohman, 1996, p. 265).
On the basis of these three features, we can
see how NGOs, as civil society organizations,
seem particularly appropriate as vehicles of
empowerment in the context of processes of
development. They are seen as ``an instrument
of empowerment that will enable ordinary folk
to take control of development decisions''
(Bratton, 1989, p. 569). They can also enhance
the capacity of local communities to determine,
and achieve, their own development objectives,
rather than rely on or be in¯uenced by external
factors or forces only. More generally, NGO
values such as solidarity and voluntarism are
certainly compatible with empowerment as a
goal of development.
NGOs are often distinguished from states on
the basis of their concern for empowerment.
This is because the normative source of state
legitimacy is its authority, with the corre-
sponding organizational form of hierarchy.
According to Bratton: ``Whereas the state is
driven by the organizational imperatives of
administrative command and control, NGOs
generally seek to inculcate autonomous and
participatory action.'' The basic role of the
state is to govern, and this requires political
order. Where the goals of empowerment and
development con¯ict with governability, the
state will invariably choose political order
(Bratton, 1989, p. 573).
862 WORLD DEVELOPMENT

Participation as a component of empower- that they themselves have neither the capacity nor the
ment may present particular diculties to local skills to bring about the empowerment strategies
NGOs as agents of development. Brohman their rhetoric says is now necessary (Marcussen, 1996,
p. 421).
points out that participation is often a problem
``not only in the relations between outside de-
Putting the rhetoric of empowerment into
velopment agencies and local communities, but
practice may require that Northern-based
also in the internal relations of those commu-
NGOs become junior partners in relation to
nities themselves'' because of a tendency ``to
Southern NGOs. It may also involve Southern
conceptualize communities in homogeneous
NGOs doing the same in relation to the com-
terms'' (Brohman, 1996, p. 271). Class, ethnic,
munities, social groups or grassroots organi-
gender and similar social and political divisions
zations they claim to be representing.
within communities and households are ig-
I have suggested diculties confronting
nored, so that development projects or pro-
NGOs around each of the four proposed cri-
grams involve only local elites or speci®c social
teria of legitimacy. NGO representativeness can
groups, and end up reinforcing rather than
be impeded by their ``multiple accountabili-
subverting local structures of inequality and
ties,'' for example. There are tensions between
discrimination. Brohman also points out that
the distinctive value commitments that form
genuine participation is ``a dicult and time-
the basis of development NGO work, and
consuming process for the poor,'' and that this
pressures to ``scale-up'' their impact. There are
is not always recognized by outside develop-
practical problems with measuring the e€ec-
ment agencies, including NGOs (1996, p. 266).
tiveness of NGO interventions in the develop-
With a value and a goal as broad, and in
ment process, and empowerment as a goal of
some ways as vague, as empowerment, it is
development is easier to espouse in rhetoric
important not to allow NGO aspirations or
than to achieve in reality.
justi®cations for action to cloud our assessment
Such diculties suggest that the four criteria
of their actual behavior. It is important, in
of development NGO legitimacy are more
other words, not to confuse rhetoric or ideo-
prescriptive than descriptive. That is, they refer
logy with reality, or e€orts at legitimation with
to ideals or standards to which NGO practice
genuine legitimacy. Rahnema suggests that
should attempt to conform, rather than the
proponents of empowerment, in the name of
current nature of such practice. Having said
participation, may be doing just this. ``The
that, many if not most NGOs are doing their
notion of empowerment was intended to help
utmost, explicitly or implicitly, to enact at least
participation perform one main political func-
some of these ideals in their development
tion±to provide development with a new source
practice. This is not easy, and there are many
of legitimation'' (Rahnema, 1993, p. 122). Due
practical and political obstacles confronting
to their lack of success in achieving measurable
NGOs seeking to embody such criteria in their
goals such as poverty alleviation or economic
development work, given the substantial de-
growth in many parts of the Third World,
mands and pressures on their limited resources.
guardians of the development process, includ-
The point is simply that the normative basis for
ing NGOs, have adopted ``empowerment'' as
NGO involvement in development processes in
their latest objective. This does not mean that
the countries of the South becomes stronger the
the goals associated with empowerment are
more these four criteria of legitimacy are ful-
without value, merely that we must be careful
®lled.
to specify them and also be wary of misuses of
the term.
Empowerment may be the most dicult of
these four criteria for Northern-based devel- 4. CONCLUSION
opment NGOs to meet. At most they can play a
supporting role, although even this must be NGOs are increasingly important agents of
handled with great care, because they tend to the development process in the countries of the
have access to far greater ®nancial and logisti- South, sometimes through challenging and
cal or organizational resources than their sometimes through complementing the role of
partners in the South. As Marcussen concludes, the state. At the same time, NGOs and the state
have di€erent functions within organized soci-
what is needed is that northern NGOs accept a sec- ety as a whole as well as the development
ondary role in relation to indigenous NGOs: to accept process in particular. It is on this basis that we
 DEVELOPMENT NGO LEGITIMACY
can search for speci®c criteria of normative le-
gitimacy for NGO involvement in this process,
within the broader categories of formal-proce-
dural and substantive-purposive criteria of le-
gitimacy. I have suggested two formal-
procedural criteria, representativeness and dis-
tinctive values, and two substantive-purposive
criteria, e€ectiveness and empowerment, for
assessing, in normative terms, the role of NGOs
in Third World development.
The question remains as to the extent to
which state and NGO roles in this process,
while distinguishable, are complementary or
contradictory. It has been suggested that NGO
development activity must be seen as part of a
wider process that includes states or govern-
ments ful®lling their development responsibili-
ties. Thomas argues, for example, that ``a
general model for development needs to go
beyond the actions of NGOs alone to include
the place of NGOs in public action in relation
to other development agents, particularly the
state'' (Thomas, 1992, p. 145). Similarly,
Charlton claims that the most e€ective re-
sponses to Third World poverty involve inter-
action and cooperation between governments
and NGOs (Charlton, 1995).
Korten suggests that instead of substituting
second generation NGO activity for the per-
ceived inadequacies of the state, NGOs would
be better to support government e€orts to
initiate appropriate policies and institutions
with which to meet long-term development
needs through third generation activities
(Korten, 1987, p. 148). This is particularly
relevant for Northern-based NGOs. Hanlon
argues that in the case of Mozambique, for
instance, ``if we want to be e€ective in reducing
poverty and empowering Mozambicans, we
should not try to work directly with peasants
or the poorest.'' Instead, international NGOs
``should concentrate on capacity building of
Mozambicans to do that work,'' either through
government or their own organizations (Han-
lon, 1995, p. 27).
Such complementarity does not require
NGOs to become either a substitute for or a
servant of the state. This is especially important
given the trend, discussed in the ®rst section of
this paper, for both governments and multi-
lateral institutions to look to NGOs as channels
of ocial development assistance. As much as
possible, NGOs must be partners of, and not
merely contractors for, such funders. This
could help alleviate the problem of the pres-
sures of ``upward accountability'' to the state
863
undermining the autonomy of NGOs as agents
of development.
NGO-state cooperation may be a crucial
factor in ``scaling-up'' the impact of develop-
ment NGO activity. This in turn is important in
ensuring NGO e€ectiveness as agents of de-
velopment, a substantive-purposive criterion of
their legitimacy. As Marcussen writes:
In order to scale up development impact, NGOs nec-
essarily will have to relate to the larger political and
socio-economic processes, in which at least the state
plays a crucial determining role. Increasing the impact
of even small NGO projects thus has nothing to do
with scale as such, but rather with strategy-bridging
to larger structures (Marcussen, 1996, p. 413).
Development NGO legitimacy may be at least
partly based on their e€ectiveness in contrib-
uting to a more broadly applicable strategy or
approach to development, in which states and
governments also play a vital role. Such an
approach to scaling-up NGO impact, without
also increasing the size and scope of their or-
ganizations and operations, may also help re-
solve the tension between distinctive value
commitments and e€ectiveness as criteria of
NGO legitimacy.
It is important to note, of course, that the
potential for state-NGO cooperation depends
to a great extent on the type of state or gov-
ernment attempting to rule a country or soci-
ety. Obviously NGOs will ®nd it easier to
cooperate with democratic states, which accept
their autonomy and independence as civil so-
ciety organizations, than with authoritarian
states, which seek to repress or eliminate them
as enemies of elite interests or political stability.
Perhaps it is best to see development NGOs
and states as complementary in institutional
terms, however much they might agree or dis-
agree over service provision or development
policy. They have distinct roles and sources of
legitimacy, as separate components of society
and as complementary agents of the develop-
ment process.
Gordenker and Weiss refer to ``the mixture
of con¯ict, competition, cooperation and
cooptation'' characterizing state-NGO rela-
tions in the context of the development process
(Gordenker and Weiss, 1995b, p. 551). These
four features of state-NGO relations need not
threaten their underlying institutional and
functional complementarity, however. Some
competition, as well as cooperation, at the op-
erational level can be healthy if it improves
864 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
service delivery in general, for example. Con-
¯ict over development policy can be bene®cial
if it ultimately enhances the ability of commu-
nities to participate in or control the develop-
ment decision-making process, whether
through local government or indigenous orga-
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