NGO Protocols

Next month, the Australian government will be presented with my report, "The Protocol:  Managing Relations with NGOs", which will argue for the establishment of a protocol between the Australian government and all non-government organisations with whom it deals.  NGOs are defined as non-government non-profit groups that mobilise resources, provide information, and advocate for changes in certain areas.  The protocol is an agreement to publish details of the standing of each NGO that has access to, and receives resources from, government.  Its aim is to inform the electorate of the relationship between the two groups -- elected representatives and civil society activists -- who purport to speak on their behalf.

The genesis of this report is work I undertook on the rise and influence of NGOs on government policy.  The protocol is the suggested policy response and is based on three arguments.  First, NGOs should be as free as any citizen to lobby government.  Second, NGOs undertake valuable work in aggregating public opinion and advancing policy.  Third, NGOs should not have a privileged relationship with a government, without a justification and without disclosure of their credentials.

NGOs "represent" only some public opinion.  The collection of all possible NGOs does not constitute public opinion.  To some extent, politics is a contest between organised and unorganised public opinion, between particular interests and the public interest.  More recently, many NGOs purport to represent universal interests, which they argue, represent the public interest, for example, human rights and the environment.  NGOs give "voice" to the public, which in liberal democracies in an age of extraordinary ease of public communication is not a difficult task.  The hard task is to decide who is right and who is wrong.  When laws are to be framed and public funds allocated, only politicians should make such judgements.  Moreover, politicians need to make these decisions in a way that does not expand the universe of government by "buying off" of all interests with taxpayer largesse.

A close relationship between government and NGOs, in the European context, the "social partners" -- now a much broader group than organised labour and organised capital -- and the European Commission is not necessarily in the public interest.  Only elected representatives, elected at large, can formally determine the public interest.  There is some tension between two conceptions of democracy -- representative and participatory -- at work in all of this.  Representative democracy is thought to be a crude version of the latter.  It is allegedly inadequate because it relies on the infrequent input of the "median" voter at general elections.  Participatory democracy is thought to allow and indeed encourage many citizens to take an active part in their governance.

What if the citizens do not want to play politics?  What if they would rather delegate that task to those whom they elect, just as they delegate a thousand other tasks to specialists in their daily lives?  The citizen at large is not represented by NGOs;  NGOs do not fill the vacuum created in the alleged absence of the "active citizen".  Only political activists rush into the vacuum in representative democracy.  Almost by definition, and certainly in my experience, such activists do not share the same views or values of many other citizens.

The activist "fallacy of representation" is exaggerated in the EU, because the EU, as hard as it tries, is not a federation of peoples.  It is barely a federation of states.  Only nation-states after some considerable period of settlement, in a political and geographic sense can achieve -- in a beautiful phrase -- the "daily plebiscite" between citizens and representatives.  The EU is a construct where there is no daily plebiscite at work.

Hence, the difficulty of allowing NGOs privileged access to a forum, where the citizen is more than usually displaced.  Elected representatives who vote to fund NGOs and vote to have NGOs sit on committees of considerable influence are giving power away and betraying their constituencies.  "A voice yes, a vote no" is a favoured line of the NGO lobby.  It seeks to underplay their influence by denying their desire to have more than a say in proceedings.  But at what point is the voice so readily incorporated, that the vote is a mere rubber stamp?

In most legislatures, the need to hear from "the people" is great, and the desire to consult is genuine.  How then to resolve the tension between activism as an aid to decision-making, and activism as privileging the activist?  The answer lies in ensuring that the elected representatives inform the public at large about those with whom they deal.  Relevant questions about the process of how NGOs gain that status are:

• was there public advertisement of the opportunity to gain such status?
• what were the qualifications required to gain such status?
• what was the basis of selection of those NGOs that did gain such status?

Relevant questions about the benefits provided to NGOs by such status are:

• what are the benefits gained by NGOs?
• what is required of NGOs in return for the benefits?  are the benefits disclosed?

Relevant questions about the NGOs themselves that have such status are:

• what information about the NGOs is disclosed?
• how do the NGOs account for their benefits?

Just as in a court of law where witnesses are asked to prove their standing, so too should NGOs be asked to prove theirs at the EU.  The data can be easily gathered and presented in a form that the electorate can access and interrogate.  In this way, the tension between representative democracy and participatory democracy may be managed in favour of the electorate.