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Worlds Apart But Much Alike: Donor Funding and the Homogenization of NGOs in Ghana and Indonesia

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Abstract

In the field of civil society and democracy promotion, the relevance and effectiveness of donor strategies is often linked to their ability to adjust to local contextual factors. Despite the importance attached to tailor-made approaches, donor-sponsored democracy promoting NGOs in such different parts of the world as Ghana and Indonesia have very similar organizational characteristics. This paper explores the question of why they are so similar. We draw on institutional theory and use the concept of organizational isomorphism to illustrate how different pressures result in the homogenization of organizational characteristics. We find that besides the more commonly identified unequal power relation between donor and recipient, homogenization also stems from the NGOs themselves and from the relation between their various organizational characteristics (i.e., mission, staff, strategy, and structure). Furthermore, we argue that the process of homogenization can be seen as the institutionalization of trust between donor and recipient. In our discussion, we reflect on the limitations of our findings and on what they mean for donor support to NGOs and democracy.

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Notes

  1. Some of the NGOs are also supported by other types of donors, such as foundations and private aid agencies. ISODEC for instance has a long term funding relation with the NGO Oxfam NOVIB, and Elsam is supported by a consortium of international NGOs, including EED (Germany), MISEREOR (Germany), HIVOS (Netherlands) and 11.11.11 (Belgium).

  2. Anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to express our gratitude to anonymous reviewers for useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Also, we would like to thank our respondents for their time and for providing us with information on their work. Finally, we thank the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for funding this research project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500, HE, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Jelmer Kamstra & Lau Schulpen

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  1. Jelmer Kamstra
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  2. Lau Schulpen
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Correspondence to Jelmer Kamstra.

Appendix

Appendix

Overview of interview data

Table 2 Overview of interview data Ghana
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Table 3 Overview of interview data Indonesia
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Kamstra, J., Schulpen, L. Worlds Apart But Much Alike: Donor Funding and the Homogenization of NGOs in Ghana and Indonesia. St Comp Int Dev 50, 331–357 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-014-9169-8

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