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This chapter proposes and critically discusses a principle that sets priorities for international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) in a world where their resources fall short dramatically of the needs they seek to meet. Other things being equal, an INGO should govern its decision making about candidate projects by such rules and procedures as are expected to maximize its long‐run cost‐effectiveness, defined as the expected aggregate moral value of the projects it undertakes divided by the expected aggregate cost of these projects. Here, aggregate moral value, or harm protection, is the sum of the moral values of the harm reductions (and increases) these projects bring about for the individual persons they affect.

This chapter begins with the observation that the INGO world is comprised of both principled and non-principled actors. Unfortunately, actors that work with INGOs do not know what type of organization they are facing and have to rely on signals from INGOs themselves as to their underlying motivations. This chapter takes this basic contention and uses it to develop an alternative theory for when and where we should see advocacy and service INGOs be effective actors for human security outcomes. Understanding (a) uncertainty about the motivational composition of the INGO sector, (b) the peculiarities of the domestic political structures and conditions where the work is taking place, (c) the signals that the organizations send, and (d) the responses of the domestic and international communities are all critical for understanding when and where INGOs will actually matter for human security. The empirical implications of this theory are outlined.

A few INGOs have achieved widespread authority in global politics before multiple audiences, but most have not. Scholars and practitioners have demonstrated the importance of INGOs in global politics, but have paid too little attention to differences in INGO authority and tend to only examine INGOs within particular sectors, or silos. This book shows that, across a range of issue areas, status differences among INGOs determine whether INGOs choose to compete, collaborate, or condemn their targets. Power may be an uncomfortable subject among INGO practitioners and analyses, but, the fact is that authority is concentrated in the hands of a few INGOs.

This is the theoretical chapter of the book. It outlines a theory of INGO authority, highlighting the importance of audiences and explaining the authority trap. Unlike states, INGOs are an authority, rather than in authority, where authority is defined as deference from a particular audience. Authority exists in the context of particular social relationships, in particular from the most important audiences for INGOs: states, corporations, and other INGOs. Very few INGOs successfully secure deference from multiple audiences; those that do are referred to as leading INGOs. Having received widespread deference, leading INGOs are constrained by the need to satisfy the varied values and preferences of their supporters, and thus find themselves in the authority trap, incentivized to make moderate choices.

This chapter presents measures of differences in authority among INGOs across multiple audiences and empirically identifies a list of leading INGOs. The striking evidence reveals substantial differentiation among INGOs in their level of authority. States, corporations, other INGOs, and the general public all vary in the attention they give to various INGOs. Data on a random sample of INGOs from around the world demonstrates that most INGOs are ignored. Even among a sample of “most likely” leading INGOs, attention is hard to secure. The chapter ends with a systematic identification of the leading INGOs in global politics today.

States are the “natural” target for INGOs, yet how INGOs approach them depends on their authority. In this chapter, we demonstrate how leading INGOs use different strategies to work with states, using the case studies of negotiations over the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and Financial Transactions Tax (FTT). The two cases are similar in a number of ways: the campaigns took off in the later 1990s, the issues target the practices of the United States and United Kingdom as relevant actors, and both engage issues that have traditionally been challenging for INGOs as “hard politics.” Leading INGOs are more collaborative with states than other INGOs, and prioritize easy target states, rather the most important. In both cases, the entry of leading INGOs accompanied the re-framing of the campaign’s proposals to more reformist positions. This yielded a vanilla victory in the form of the ATT and even less for the FTT.

Not all INGOs are alike, and they do not always play nicely. In fact, INGOs enjoy a diverse array of relationships with other INGOs. INGOs compete to offer specific visions of good practice for the entire INGO sector, and those visions depend on the INGO’s authority. We explore two such initiatives, both formed in 2001, the Accountability Charter (AC) and the World Social Forum (WSF). Each initiative is a mix of collaboration and condemnation, and while the AC is decidedly vanilla, neither has been particularly victorious in altering the ways the vast population of INGOs acts.

This chapter identifies the key changes in the organisational environment that fall mainly within the globalisation of governance institutions in two interrelated areas: public management and social policy. The main argument presented in this chapter is that globalisation, along with the steadily increasing urgency of humanitarian development, have forced the international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) to recognise the importance of their ‘strategy-structure configurations’. The chapter also includes a discussion on the importance of the connection between New Public Management (NPM) and multilateralism. The implications of global governance change for INGO management is studied in the latter portion of the chapter.

Condemnation of corporate environmental and human rights performance has been something that some INGOs have become well-known for, yet not all INGOs elect to be publicly confrontational. We explore strategic choices through several examples of private, cross-sectoral regulations that emerged in the early 2000s. Leading INGOs are far more likely to collaborate and be asked to collaborate than other INGOs. Two platforms, The Sustainability Consortium (TSC) and the UN Global Compact (UNGC), leveraged early collaboration from a few leading INGOs to establish their credibility. We then explore the alternatives to collaboration. Though many INGOs condemn corporate behavior, little sustained attention has resulted from their efforts. Competition is possibly more fruitful for improving corporate practice, as the example of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) shows

Our conclusion revisits the main findings in this study, but since we are hopeful that our authority framework travels to other parts of IR, we discuss extensions of and exceptions to the authority trap. For this, we both bring forth the example of the International Criminal Court, which, if anything, was not a vanilla victory. We also explore how the authority trap might work differently for non-INGOs, specifically non-state groups that use violence, and for global governance generally. What we show is that while the authority trap may be difficult to escape, it is not ironclad.

This chapter begins with some puzzling examples of the successes INGOs have had at in improving human security (“freedom from want” and “freedom from fear”) conditions on the ground in some situations and the problems of the INGO sector in other situations. The chapter then presents the debate in International Relations concerning how INGOs are motivated and their potential impact in a state-centric world. The book’s three central themes are then presented in brief. First, INGOs differ in their underlying motivations: not all are motivated to help individuals on the ground. Second, INGOs can send signals of their motivations to both domestic and international actors who can respond to them in ways that influence ultimate human security outcomes. Third, there are a variety of domestic-level conditions which also influence the likelihood that INGOs are able to improve human security. An outline of the book is then presented.

The goal of this chapter is to motivate the theoretical innovations made in this book. The chapter begins by defining the INGO sector and outlining the existing theoretical literature on INGOs, paying special attention to the dominant theoretical framework on INGOs from within International Relations and the empirical tests of the implications of this framework. After addressing this literature, the focus turns to the scholarly and practitioner critiques of INGOs. The chapter addresses how INGOs themselves have responded to concerns about their organization’s underlying motivations: these actions are presented as part of the signaling literature. This framework provides the building blocks necessary for developing an accurate theory of the conditional effectiveness of INGOs on human security outcomes.

This chapter begins the book’s empirical examination of whether and under what conditions INGOs influence human security outcomes across time and across countries. In this chapter, the focus is on only the “freedom from want” portion of human security: do development INGOs, as a type of human security INGO that focuses on service-delivery, improve development outcomes? The chapter first briefly reviews the service INGO hypotheses from Chapter 3 and the underlying logic of the theoretical argument and then discusses the basic research design utilized to evaluate these hypotheses. After this, the evidence is presented and evaluated. The empirical results provide widespread support for the derived hypotheses, indicating that development INGOs can have a powerful impact on human security service provision but that the motivations of INGOs, support from the donor community, and local conditions of the state all can condition this effect.

This chapter moves the empirical focus of the book from the conditional impact of human security INGOs on “freedom from want” service provision to the conditional impact of human security INGOs on advocacy related to the “freedom from fear.” Focusing specifically on human rights advocacy INGOs, as the subcategory of human security INGOs that concentrate mainly on outcomes related to the “freedom from fear,” this chapter explores whether, when, and where INGOs will have an influence on a variety of human rights outcomes. The hypotheses are based on the advocacy INGO game-theoretic model presented in Chapter 3. Using novel measures of human rights INGO activities, the empirical results provide much support for the framework. Advocacy INGOs can be powerful actors for human rights but their impact can vary by issue, state level characteristics, and international support.

This chapter reviews the theoretical framework and empirical findings of the book. It presents the implications of the book for International Relations scholarship and for the practitioner community. Possible extensions to this framework are outlined. This chapter reiterates the central idea that scholars do not have to see INGOs as “angels” to understand their potential impact on human security. By acknowledging the variety of motivations of INGOs, a realistic picture of the potential for improving human security emerges. Although there have obviously been some bad apples in the bunch, on a whole, the overall growth of the INGO sector bodes well for those interested in eradicating poverty and improving human well-being.