Democratic Legitimacy of Philanthropic Foundations: US Grant-Making in the Middle East

Abstract

This chapter addresses the transnational agency of philanthropy. It focuses on philanthropic foundations¹ rather than on philanthropists and limits the analysis to the case of US philanthropy and its international grant-making activities in the Middle East. Foundations have largely escaped the contemporary debate of democratic legitimacy and democratic credentials of transnational actors (TNAs) in the arena of global governance. However, substantial debate on foundation legitimacy within the US exists (cf. Prewitt et al., 2006). As ‘actors abroad,’ foundations have also been studied empirically and theorized as agents of US hegemony, particularly with reference to science and knowledge networks, Cold War foreign policy, and economic development (cf. Ahmad, 1991; Dezalay and Garth, 1998). In the current discourse on ‘the accountability of world politics’ (Keohane, 2006), foundations have still to be located as agents leaving their mark on global governance institutions and civil society organizations (CSOs) (cf. Price, 2003; Scholte, 2004; Jönsson, 2008). It is indeed difficult to find a single policy arena at the global level — be it human rights, environmental policy, or health and anti-poverty initiatives — where foundations are not participating. A recent example as to how foundations network in order to ‘remake’ whole societal subsectors can be seen in the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, an initiative launched in 2000 by Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller, Ford, and MacArthur foundations, to develop higher education in the wake of democratic and economic reforms for the first time in 30 years across many African nations (http://www.foundation-partnership.org/).

‘It is foundations alone that are effectively accountable to no one.’

(Fleishman, 2004: 114)