Building Democracy in Contemporary Russia: Western Support for
Grassroots Organizations, Sarah L. Henderson, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2003, pp. xii, 229.In this well-researched and provocative book, Sarah Henderson asks to
what extent Western aid can facilitate the emergence of civil society in
countries where civil society is domestically weak. Through an in-depth
study of Western aid to Russian women's organizations, she argues
that foreign assistance has dramatically affected NGO development in
Russia, but not always in expected or positive ways. On the one hand, she
finds that external funding “made a tremendous difference in
improving and increasing the short-term financial viability,
organizational capacity, and networking skills among recipient
groups” (9). On the other, she argues that foreign aid contributed
to at least four pathological developments within the NGO community.
First, funded groups tended to copy the aid agencies' top-heavy and
bureaucratic organizational structures. Second, funded groups lacked
grassroots constituencies because they shifted their policy agendas to
reflect aid agencies' preferences rather than objective domestic
needs. Third, foreign aid encouraged the development of a “civic
elite” among the domestic NGO community, exacerbating the
differences between those groups that received funding and those that did
not. Finally, the competition for foreign aid dollars encouraged
uncooperative behaviour among funded Russian NGOs rather than bridge
building and information sharing. She argues that these problematic
unintended consequences were the result of avoidable mistakes in the
foreign aid process, and states bluntly that “NGO development is not
synonymous with civil society development, and the development of one does
not necessarily imply the advancement of the other” (11).
Does Foreign Aid Make a Difference? A Critique from a Civil Society Organisation in Lesotho
