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The INGO Accountability Charter is the only global, cross-sectoral regulatory initiative for international NGOs. This is the first independent study of perceptions of its effectiveness, based upon 26 in-depth semi-structured interviews with key individuals from 11 leading international NGOs. Firstly, it analyses interviewees’ beliefs about the motivations of NGOs in joining the Charter. The findings contribute to the scholarly debate about the key drivers for voluntary regulation between ‘club theorists’ and ‘constructivists’ by demonstrating that NGO behavior in this regard is both self-interested and norm-guided. Secondly, it investigates the extent to which the interviewees believe that the Charter has been effective in enhancing the accountability of its members. Their responses further underline the applicability of club theory and constructivist explanations of NGO behavior, and lead to several policy recommendations about the future direction of Charter.

This chapter interrogates the listening practices of NGO workers in headquarters and in-country today. On the basis of a wide range of interviews with NGO staff working for four UK-based INGOs, it examines the role of languages and cultural knowledge in the construction of NGOs’ listening efforts. It records the voices of NGO staff as they describe their listening experiences and the challenges and uncertainties they face as actors at the core of development projects who attempt to listen to a complex mix of voices, including those of local communities, partner organisations, NGO colleagues and international donors. The chapter examines NGO workers’ responses to questions related to listening as they emerged in interviews: firstly, listening as an institutionalised practice, linked to accountability, monitoring and evaluation, mainly taking place in English, and secondly, listening as an informal practice that takes place outside paper-based frameworks and in a mix of languages and through informal translation practices. The chapter underlines the relevance of the framework of the Listening Zone, which enables a conceptualisation of listening as a complex and hybrid process, in which various actors listen in a variety of languages, motivated by a range of different aims.

The research on which this volume is based was originally stimulated by conversations with practitioners during a workshop held in January 2014 on the theme, ‘Do NGOs need a languages policy?’ At the end of the discussion, practitioners called for some evidence-based research which would raise awareness of these issues and contribute to vital policy change. Whilst the research was taking place, NGO colleagues contributed in an Advisory Group, and in well-attended open workshops. They also commented on ongoing papers from the project, so that the recommendations in the final report, ‘Respecting communities in International Development: languages and cultural understanding’ were directed, as they requested, at raising awareness of languages and stimulating changes in policies and practice. This chapter will outline these recommendations for donors and for INGOs. As writers of this book, we see discussions around the role of languages and cultural understanding in development as part of an important ongoing conversation in the sector, and the chapter will briefly outline what immediate responses there have been to the recommendations since the publication of the report in June 2018, and what directions conversations might conceivably take in the future.

For decades now NGOs have faced a battery of criticism from development scholars for perceived failings in delivering their missions of empowerment and social justice. It is widely held that NGO strategies and activities are distorted by donor priorities, often in ways that directly undermine their supposed mission and erode their credibility in the target community. This chapter looks at the ways in which the voices of these local communities and the encounters between Northern NGOs and Southern groups are represented in contemporary development scholarship. Communication, it argues, is a two-way process in which listening to the ‘other’ is a vital, but as yet largely unexplored, component. The chapter addresses this gap by drawing on research in fields outside Development Studies and International Relations—Listening Studies, Cultural Studies and Translation Studies—in order to propose a new theoretical framework, ‘The Listening Zones of NGOs’, as a structuring principle. By adopting the Listening Zones framework, the book aims to position languages and cultural awareness as key elements in addressing an alleged disregard for local communities on the part of NGOs.

This article investigates perceptions of the extent to which non-governmental organization (NGO) peer regulation initiatives have been effective in enhancing accountability in the humanitarian sector. It is based upon semi-structured interviews with individuals with responsibility for accountability policy from leading NGOs and focuses on two of the best-known initiatives: Humanitarian Accountability Partnership and Sphere. It finds that the initiatives have prompted positive changes in practice, but there are significant concerns about their deleterious impacts. Participants describe a host of challenges, including the tendency of peer regulation to become excessively bureaucratic and labour intensive. They cast some doubt on the potential of the initiatives to assist NGOs to be more accountable to affected communities. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The literature on nonprofit management has embraced the concept of “accountability” to target urgent challenges related to NGO probity and integrity, and there have been attempts in the literature to use rational-choice-based governance approaches to solve them. Although the existing principal–agent frameworks provide important insights, they are limited to the analysis of financial relationships between NGOs and donors. We contribute to the literature in developing a comprehensive rational-choice-based governance approach to analyze all stakeholder relationships of NGOs. Applying the research program of ordonomics, we unpack two fundamental interaction problems: (a) the “stakeholder dilemma” between the NGO and a single accountability holder as a one-sided social dilemma and (b) the “competition dilemma” among rival NGOs as a many-sided social dilemma. We show that improving NGO accountability in relation to intended beneficiaries, peer organizations, and the general public also requires identifying the underlying governance problem as a competition dilemma focusing on collective self-regulation as a solution.

This article examines the emergence of two waves of reforms across the international non-government organization (INGO) sector in accountability discourse and practice. The first wave accountability model was narrowly framed around the demands of powerful stakeholders such as donors and governments, whereas the second wave was a more holistic approach that prioritized the obligations of INGOs towards their ‘beneficiaries’. It is argued that INGOs should embed critically reflective accountability by pursuing further reforms in three thematic areas. First, words such as ‘beneficiary’ should be expunged from the language of accountability, since it is encoded with norms that implicitly undermine the rights of people and communities to expect that INGOs should be answerable for their actions. Second, listening to marginalized stakeholders should be facilitated by inclusive discursive arenas that enable and empower people ‘to speak and be heard’. Lastly, INGOs need to use feedback to become a learning organization, and collaborate with peers to engender a culture of reflective learning across the sector. Points for practitioners The article offers several policy recommendations structured around three core themes. These include suggestions for the training of field staff, issues concerning the design of participatory exercises, and proposals for a strengthened regime of peer-regulation.

This paper investigates perceptions of the extent to which NGO peer-regulation initiatives have been effective in enhancing levels of accountability across the humanitarian and development sector. It is based upon semi-structured interviews with individuals with responsibility for accountability policy from leading NGOs and focuses on two of the best-known initiatives: HAP and Sphere. It finds that the initiatives have prompted positive changes in practice, but there are significant concerns about their deleterious impacts. Participants describe a host of challenges, including the tendency of peer-regulation to become excessively bureaucratic and labor-intensive. They cast some doubt on the potential of the initiatives to assist NGOs to be more accountable to people and communities.

Conventional public sphere theory is ill-placed to evaluate the import of cross-border communicative flows, as it presupposes an alliance between political territory and the circulation of dialogue. This fit once seemed so close that some have made the extrapolation that public spheres require a physical locale and proximate interlocutors. This misapprehension is perhaps partly encouraged by the terminology of public sphere theory. It is unfortunate that the imagery of face-to-face interaction is encouraged by repeated allusions to reflexive dialogue. In fact, virtuality has been a central feature of the public sphere in most of its historical manifestations, that is to say that discourse has been conducted at a distance (Warner, 2002). Mediated dialogue is a necessary feature of any large-scale, complex social organization, providing the only means of interaction between spatially dispersed actors. Therefore there is no a priori reason why transnational mediated communication should be incompatible with critical publicity.

Critical international theorists such as Edward Comor and Stephen Gill have convincingly argued that a theoretical approach underpinned by a critical epistemology can aid in the explanation and understanding of the sociopolitical implications of ICT (Comor, 1994; Gill, 1995). However, they have not developed a comprehensive research methodology. Nor have they explicitly considered the utility of public sphere theory in conceptualizing these issues, despite the evident thematic relevance. Critical-theoretic issues such as the moral-political validity of law, the legitimacy of governance, and the extension of dialogic participation are central to the public sphere perspective. Indeed, it is possible to argue, as Nancy Fraser does, that “something like Habermas’ idea of the public sphere is indispensable to social theory” (Fraser, 1992: 111).

Globalization is paradoxical: it enhances the prospects for both domination and emancipation. On the one hand, neoliberalism is concentrating material resources in a transnational elite, exemplified by the growing disparity in global wealth distribution. A geographically disparate band of individuals and transnational corporations (TNCs) form an identifiable nucleus of significant structural power in current world order. Herman and Chomsky (1988) argue that this hegemony is partly sustained by the “manufacturing of consent” amongst citizens by a handful of global media conglomerates. Yet on the other hand, globalization has facilitated resistance by offering new opportunities for transnational dialogue, cross-cultural engagement, and grassroots political participation. It is often suggested that media and migration trends have weakened the role of the state in people’s political horizons in favor of a growing cosmopolitanism (e.g., Held, 2003). This is partly evidenced by increasing participation in international civil society initiatives, such as the anticorporate movement, or the Make Poverty History campaign. Globalization, then, may be conceived as a dualistic phenomenon, a process of dynamic tension between oppositional tendencies.