The articles by Susan Phillips and by Mandeep Tiwana and Clare Doube are accurate in their assessments of the state of civil society both in Canada and in the South. Certainly I would make no challenge to their core arguments. If anything, they could make these arguments more strongly—the examples of state action against citizens’ organizations, especially in the South, could be longer and harsher than the list offered here.
Citizens and residents of Canada have indeed enjoyed political space, and rights and freedoms of civic association and action, to a degree often denied to citizens and activists in other countries. One should not overstate the case: There are ample signals in this country that government is all too ready to assert that national security trumps citizens’ legal and civil rights. We should see these rights as contingent rather than assured, despite the constitutional presence of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And, the social and economic rights of the United Nations’ Charter barely register in our public discourse.
Moreover, it is clear that voluntary organizations in Canada, and Canadian CSOs active in international development, are politically and financially vulnerable. Although the numbers vary considerably from one organization to another, CSOs working in both “domestic” and international domains have had access to significant public funding from different levels of government, often dating back to the 1970s, and in some cases earlier still. Many, if not a majority, have become substantially dependent on public funds for both programming and core operations. In this respect, Canadian NGOs immersed in “the contracting culture” are not so very different from those in the South, which with few exceptions depend for their revenue on the gift and tax economies of Northern countries.
In recent months especially, that vulnerability has been sharply exposed by political and financial pressure from the federal government in the form of funding cuts, destabilizing delays in contract negotiations, and even virulent political attack. Financial pressure—the threat and reality of de-funding—may be targeted against specific organizations, but often has a wider chilling effect, encouraging self-censorship in the hope of preserving funding. The Harper government appears prepared to fund CSOs’ programs seen to be humanitarian and charitable endeavours, or contract CSOs as vehicles for low-cost service delivery. It is much less tolerant of civil society as advocate on policy issues on or human rights. This is especially so if any public monies are involved—but citizens’ movements generally, popular dissent, and public challenges to federal policies: all these are not welcome at all.
Against this background, the two articles are probably best read as describing not so much different worlds as different points on a common spectrum, as Susan Phillips suggests in her introductory paragraph. They describe a broad attack—this is not too strong a word—against citizens’ organizations, their rights and space, an incremental or a dramatic narrowing of the legal, social and even physical space in which citizens can come together, to speak out, and to organize, especially around matters of public interest.
We can identify at least two broad social and political processes at work in these different settings, both in Canada and in the South. Their specifics vary with time and place, but they tend to reinforce each other, and point towards a re-casting of the relationship between the state and civil society. If this materializes, it will be not at all promising for the kinds of creative approaches Susan Phillips calls for in the concluding section of her article, directed to Canada but of wider relevance—creative ways to secure social resources for civil society, and to establish a productive, substantive and respectful policy discourse between citizens’ organizations and governments.
The first process has been mentioned above. Formally organized and recognized CSOs in the South have become dependent on the tax and gift economies of Northern coun-tries—on grants and fee-for-service contracts from bilateral and multilateral donor agen-cies, or from their Northern counterparts in civil society. In Canada, both voluntary organizations and CSOs which are active internationally are themselves heavily reliant on various forms of public funding. Both are thus vulnerable to funders’ changing priorities, caprice, or worse.
We should remember too that all funders, including sympathetic ones, also have to contend with their own financial difficulties—witness the contraction of foundations’ funding over the last two years. If their revenue from either public sources or foundations is compromised or withdrawn, most CSOs, whether in Canada or in the South, have few readily-available fallback options.
Juxtaposed to this structural vulnerability of civil society organizations, secondly, is a widespread, powerful and frequently ruthless state security agenda. Most obviously, this is geared to respond to real or perceived threats of terrorism or insurrection, but it clear that is also harnessed to a state and corporate drive to secure natural resources. The former dimension of security has been apparent and well documented since the Septem-ber 2001 attacks on the United States; the latter is evident in systematic campaigns to ignore, displace or destroy aboriginal peoples and other rural communities who occupy lands rich in oil or minerals. Examples are legion—scarcely a week goes by without harrowing accounts emerging from the Americas, Africa or the Eurasian landmass.
When social movements or CSOs are part of the political, legal and all-too-often violent conflicts that follow, the legitimacy of civil society itself is frequently challenged, by the state, by media, or by corporations. There is a not-so-subtle dialectic at work here: the great growth of citizens’ movements and organizations across the world in the last half-century or more is a product of citizens’ responses to inadequate or illegitimate social and political institutions, policies, and practices. Nervous, unstable or vengeful govern-ments have shown little compunction in using draconian legislation, backed by force, against their own citizens. The list of examples offered by Tiwana and Doube could be extended considerably. This pattern is evident, moreover, despite the spread of democratic forms of governance in the last three decades; Mary Kaldor has described well the contradiction that citizens experience between formal and substantive democratic practice.
Civil society thus too often finds itself up against hard power, wielding its “soft power” on high-stakes issues in polarized polities. The limits of such power can be starkly evident. More than seven years ago, an article in the New York Times surveyed the worldwide street demonstrations against the impending invasion of Iraq, and observed that “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” The author misjudged the power imbalance: despite citizens’ global mobilization, the invasion went ahead as planned.
As a specific variant of this pattern, James Ron of Carleton’s Norman Paterson School argues in a recent op-ed piece in The Ottawa Citizen that a “conservative backlash” against human rights NGOs is under way in many countries. He cites as an example of this trend, a concerted effort by Israel’s right-wing government to stifle criticism of its policies by both Jewish and Arab non-government organizations. A draft bill before the Knesset would require these NGOs to register as political parties and to declare and pay taxes on foreign donations, requirements that could close down such organizations. He sees the Israeli move as symptomatic of a global pattern in which “governments from Russia to Egypt” are imposing tight restrictions on local CSOs. Ron sees this “conserva-tive offensive” as a reaction against western funding of local NGOs, especially those which are advocates for human rights. In the years following the collapse of the USSR and authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe, “civil society” became something of a buzzword among Western donors and foundations, and CSOs attracted a great deal of interest and financial support, becoming “a powerful and articulate voice on important causes.” Ron goes on to argue that “western aid rendered most non-Western NGOs entirely dependent on aid money,” so that they are now especially vulnerable to the political campaign against them.
This portrayal of a widespread political conflict rests on two key trends which are similar to those identified earlier: the financial dependence of most civil society organizations in the South, and hence their political vulnerability; and the political clampdown on civil society, especially organizations promoting civil, social and economic rights. I share his emphasis on these traits, but his portrayal of civil society has some important flaws.
Although “civil society” did acquire buzzword status in aid circles in the 1990s, the dependence of Southern NGOs on Northern funds (both from official and non-govern-mental sources) was evident at least a decade earlier. That said, a great many citizens’ organizations and movements began with and have been sustained by their members’ and supporters’ energies and resources. Some, like Amnesty International, have presserved that base, and with it, their political independence. We should remember too that, despite the marked proliferation of CSOs in the last two decades—a pattern in which public funding indeed played a role—the growing presence and influence of citizens’ organization in public affairs began much earlier. Civil society has been an undeniable presence in public life since 1945—witness the waves of peace movements, feminist movements, and civil-rights movements. Its antecedents were evident much earlier still, in the anti-slavery movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, for example, in the movements for women’s suffrage or in the welfare societies of colonial Africa, the foundations of later nationalist movements.
A not-very-encouraging picture, then, it seems. What to do? And what are people doing?
Living in Ottawa, I often hear federal public servants repeating to themselves, “This too will pass.” One can understand their frustration, and their mantra. But, it’s not at all clear that, or when, this will indeed pass. People active with citizens’ organizations and move-ments cannot—we should not—just wait for better times. In Canada, we have benefitted from public funding for civil society organizations active on matters of public interest—including policy research and advocacy in their action—as well from regular access to public institutions, no matter how uneven the practice of “consultation”. We may be at a watershed, and I would not assume a return to “normal” practice.
Basil Davidson, years ago, introducing his account of the anti-colonial struggle in Angola, In the Eye of the Storm, observed that pessimism was the property of the rich; that the poor had no choice but to act to save themselves. Not everyone, thankfully, faces such an imperative. Those of us who read The Philanthropist.ca have plenty of opportunity to act in solidarity with those who do. We know the issues, the organizations and the people, and we can offer time, skills, and money. Electronic technologies give us options for solidarity work that were barely feasible ten or fifteen years ago.
Individual choices and actions aside, it is imperative that CSOs respond collectively to the broader attack on civil society. Within Canada, international NGOs will surely face that challenge in the next few months, if—as is all too possible, if not yet assured—the federal government cuts its funding to the CCIC, either in toto or for policy research, dialogue and advocacy.
All that said, we should not abandon friendly criticism. We need not adopt the hauteur of The Economist or tolerate Jason Kenney’s cynical namecalling, but neither should we idealize NGOs, or civil society more generally. Two observations in particular seem rele-vant. First, Norman Uphoff argued in 1996 that NGOs should not be considered part of the Third Sector – rather, they are better understood as the non-profit side of the private sector, providing services to disadvantaged people. As such, they will not be represen-tative of, or especially accountable to, those they serve with their programs. In these circumstances, advocacy roles deserve scrutiny: do NGOs speak with, or for the communities they serve? How do they understand and discharge their accountability to such communities? Speaking in 2004, the Indian activist and writer, Arundhati Roy, applauded resistance movements around the world for challenging the invasion of Iraq—but also cautioned mass movements against “the NGO-ization of resistance”. She empha-sized that she was not making an indictment of all NGOs; nonetheless, she pointed to an “NGO-ization of politics [that] threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job,” and that defuses and contains challenges to injustice.
One conclusion does follow: if CSOs have social and legal space in which to operate, it seems imperative that for public advocacy in particular, and for the policy research and analysis that must underpin it, they have to find resources which are not dependent on public funding. Amnesty’s example seems especially pertinent here. This change may be achievable in the medium term; it certainly seems unlikely in the immediate future. To preserve a public voice—not forgetting the cautions just noted—CSOs will surely have to finance such work differently. No matter that advocacy by charities is acceptable to CRA, with conditions [cite] – what matters are funders’ decisions, and CSOs’ vulnera-bility. The persistent challenges of financing civil society will remain, both in Canada and internationally. As a Canadian, I see all too few signals of government’s readiness to respect or invest in citizens’ active engagement in public life, especially at the federal level. The assumptions which have underpinned the role of the state vis-à-vis citizens’ participation for the last forty-some years have clearly changed, certainly at the federal level. This is no reason for despair, quite the contrary—but we have to be clear about what we are facing.


John Saxby
Ottawa
May 18, 2010
jsaxby@magma.ca