A Review of NGO Studies from the Perspective of Critical Theory (1987-2010)

Abstract

This article reviews NGO studies over the period 1987-2010 from the perspective of critical theory. More specifically, deconstructive and postcolonial criticism are brought to bear mainly upon the influential articles on NGO studies in order to see to what extent the existing literature theorizes the power relationships between NGOs and different actors and how such relationships are formed. It is found that the naïve realistic theorizing of NGOs during the embryonic stage of NGO studies until the mid 1990s was later replaced by sharp criticisms, which were based on the more detailed empirical findings on NGO power relationships originating from donors. Moreover, given the stalemate-like situation where NGOs have been locked in this top-down aid system chain, thereby bringing some negative impacts on their beneficiaries and civil societies in the South, future research should make discontinuous leaps and look at what is happening outside such a system. Also given that the voices of beneficiaries, subalterns in the NGO aid system chain, have been mostly ignored in the last two decades of NGO studies, future research should represent their voices. Since providing possibilities of solution for the stalemate-like situation is urgent, in the short-term such an approach as abduction, an expanded and rough inductive approach, may be used for formulating hypotheses from findings on phenomena happening outside the aid system and the voices of beneficiaries. For the long-term, it seems necessary to use more thorough inductive approaches to theorize from such findings in a bottom-up fashion.