Without embedded organizations that draw their support and sustenance from communities, political change is not likely to happen at depth, in any sustained manner and it is that political action that we need.

I think one thing that needs to be done is work harder to get the word out there about how civil society can really make a difference in development. The development industry’s most well-known and most widely publicised development success stories are usually centred around the likes of East Asian Tigers, China and now, as you mentioned, Ethiopa.

Whilst these are fascinating and extremely important case studies for analysing and demonstrating the importance of active states in facilitating a successful development process and driving widespread poverty reduction, one could be forgiven if one only considered these examples that civil society is just simply not an important component of the development component. And I think this is the real danger when so many institutions within the development industry put so much time and effort into putting up such examples as the shining beacons of successful development.

So I think to counter this we really need to put more effort into putting examples out there of just how powerful civil society can be in achieving equally impressive development results. It’s not like there aren’t countless such stories out there – Porto Alegre, Kerala, even the history of the trade union movement in the Scandinavian countries. And there’s lots of great academic work we can draw on to – the Citizenship DRC’s 10 years of work, UNRISD’s Combating Poverty and Inequality report, and your own book Duncan.

So in sum, I think more needs to be done to get the word out there on the importance of civil society in development in order to tip the scales away from those that have enabled the development discourse to become too heavily focused on the likes of Rwanda, Ethiopa, China etc

‘That has produced a shift in resources towards advocacy and influencing, as a complement to more direct programming and humanitarian work, and in the best cases, a fusion of the two.’

I think that there is a risk that Oxfam in particular forget that advocacy and influencing needs to complement, not replace, a significant level of direct work at the community level. My team are regularly being asked to revisit project plans, developed by Southern staff in close consultation with partners, government and communities, on the basis that they are too much about direct assistance. But without the real direct and ongoing grounding in communities with partners and staff in southern countries, we’re cruising on empty, relying on our past reputation and experience, academic perspectives and engagement with elites rather than learning directly on an ongoing basis with the people and communities that we ultimately aim to empower.

It’s not just governments that are reducing our space to operate – communities, in an environment where they often have choices about who they engage with from a wide range of NGO actors, are understandably less and less willing to engage unless they can see a return on their investment in time and knowledge sharing. This favours ‘truck and chuck’ operations that are hardware only (and have better admin-to-program cost ratios) and reduces the space for more sophisticated approaches.

Usually there are multiple agendas, but an element of government restrictions is usually a reflection from national ministers of what they hear from local counterparts and communities about ‘No-Good Organisations’ that talk and talk but deliver nothing.

If we want to influence effectively, we have to listen to our stakeholders, and create the space (through the fusion approach you describe) to take communities and other stakeholders with us.

Tearfund has many partners across the world, engaging in advocacy in their own countries, on their own issues, in ways that are appropriate to their contexts. What they have consistently been telling us over several years now is that civil society space is not just shrinking, but it is shrinking because of government legislation.

This has given rise to challenges – When to speak out against such legislation? When not? When is the risk too great? Who decides? Etc …

However, what we have found to be important is understanding the rationale behind the governments who are bringing in this legislation. As you say, some of it is “legitimate government oversight”. However, it is also linked the long global war on terror. (See here for a good rationale about this: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/13205/). It is also linked to a sense that legislation somehow ‘legitimises’ government control of civil society.

Within Tearfund, our way of dealing with this growing trend has been to continue to support partners who are willing to hold their governments accountable, even in the most risky and politically challenging contexts. But also to facilitate peer-to-peer learning, so that they share good practice with each other about how they do this, and to link them (where we can) with CIVICUS and others who are seeking to defend, maintain and open civil society space.

Maybe – as you suggest – there could be room for us to advocate on their behalf to make this a foreign policy issue? However, in my experience, the most effective way of standing up to these governments’ trends is to mobilise and empower those courageous people who are prepared to speak out and hold them accountable.

Great piece on the above subject. I have had regular meetings/conversations with Embassies here in Canada and for many of them, they still see CSO/NGO activities as politically motivated to influence vote. When Tanzania recently imposed a new visa fee structure for volunteers, it was very hard for a group of NGO in the USA to come together and lobby for a reversal in the decision because they could not mutually demonstrate the impact of their combined activities.

I am recently back from Central America where we have secured the hosting of two events to discuss “Open Data” and “Finance” in the perspective of a host country.

The idea of the two events is to look at the basket of outside revenues that developing country receive and how do they complement national strategies and local CSO.

I hope that we will be able to discuss our plans with you and identify areas of synergies.

Yet we roll up with less and less money and tell them to behave! It won’t wash anymore.

BTW, any research on how cost-effective advocacy is?