The Role of QUANGO in American Democratic Assistance

A Re-examination of Actors in International relations

Abstract

As an increasing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are involved in international activities and the political influence these activities bring about becomes unnegligible, we are faced with a question of these private organizations' political accountability, not only on the recipient side but on the donor side as well. Among such organizations, we find a non-traditional category of NGO, called QUANGO (quasi-autonomous NGO), which operates independently of government but still is funded almost exclusively by government. One of QUANGO's characteristics is its positioning in between the state and the civil society. This combination of the public nature and the private nature makes QUANGOs double-faced actors, thus further complicates the question of their political account-ability.
This article takes up the case of National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a QUANGO established by the U. S. government to specifically promote democracy wolrd-wide. NED is a private organization with an autonomous Board of Directers, but appropriated its fund from the U. S. government. NED was created partly to replace unpopular covert operations with open, private ones, thus avoiding the direct link between democratic assistance activities and the governmental role. NED's creation was also supported by the positive argument that democratization is best implemented by the initiative of the civil society.
The development of NED until the end of Cold War showed that the positive use of private initiatives was overshadowed by the avoidance of government's accountability question. Congress actively approved democratic assistance fundings to NED, which just passed from NED to individual NGOs. NED Board could not have much control over these policy implementations, even though it was supposed to be an autonomous decision making body. The most obvious case was the assistance activity for Poland, among which more money passed through NED than autonomously decided upon. Some other assistance programs followed the similar procedural pattern. Such pattern gave an impression that NED was only nominally autonomous, but actually delegated governmental activities without political accountability.
The end of Cold War and the wider acceptance of democracy at least on the surface, however, put an end to such negative utility of NED as QUANGO. QUANGO, in the end, is not a state actor, even though it was sometimes used as such. NED now faces a new challenge of justifying its very existance, but this seemingly ironic situation also makes a new opportunity for NED. Given its freedom from special interests, NED as a civil society actor can present that QUANGO is better positioned to autonomously balance the private interests of NGOs, thus introduces the concept of political accountability which is not necessarily enbedded in the civil society from the beginning. As the question of NGOs' legitimacy increases its importance, given their active involvement in international activities, what renewed mandate of QUANGOs may contribute to the civil society needs close attention.