Governing Through Patronage: The Rise of NGOs and the Fall of Civil Society in Palestine and Morocco

This article examines foreign aid and government funding to NGOs as forms of patronage and explores the impact of such funding on the nature and role of civil society. Using qualitative research from Palestine and Morocco, we argue that patronage transforms NGOs into apparatuses of governing. NGOs b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inVoluntas (Manchester, England) Vol. 29; no. 5; pp. 1044 - 1054
Main Authors Atia, Mona, Herrold, Catherine E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer Science+Business Media, LLC (Springer) 01.10.2018
Springer US
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Accountability
Bureaucracy
Bureaucratization
Change agents
Civil society
Foreign aid
Government spending
NGOs
Nongovernmental organizations
Occupational roles
Original Paper
Patronage
Patrons
Political change
Political Science
Power
Professionalization
Qualitative research
Social change
Social Policy
Social Sciences
Transformation
Morocco
Civil society
Morocco
Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO)
Patronage
Governing
Palestine
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Summary:This article examines foreign aid and government funding to NGOs as forms of patronage and explores the impact of such funding on the nature and role of civil society. Using qualitative research from Palestine and Morocco, we argue that patronage transforms NGOs into apparatuses of governing. NGOs become key sites for the exercise of productive power through the technologies of professionalization, bureaucratization, and upward accountability. The article explores how this transformation of NGOs depoliticizes their work while undermining their role as change agents within civil society. The findings have implications for understanding the transformation of NGOs, the relationship between patrons and their grantees, and, finally, for exploring the limitations of NGOs as vehicles for social change in sensitive political environments.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
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ISSN:0957-8765
1573-7888
DOI:10.1007/s11266-018-9953-6