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Although international administrators wield enormous power, they are not directly accountable to the populations over which they rule. Strictly speaking, a transitional administrator is accountable to the international body that appoints him or her. The lack of transparency is one way in which the issue of accountability manifests itself: key decisions may be taken by international authorities without sufficient public explanation offered for the reasoning behind them, creating the impression of arbitrary rule. Limited accountability does not, however, mean the total absence of mechanisms for local scrutiny. Discusses what mechanisms exist to help ensure that international authority is exercised on behalf of, and for the benefit of, the local population. Are these mechanisms adequate and, if not, how can accountability be strengthened?

Traditional conceptions of citizenship have privileged individuals’ relationships to the state. However, recent emphasis on civil society as a terrain of democratic empowerment suggests a shift in our ideas about what citizens properly do and the arenas in which they do it. Jaggar argues that it would be a mistake to privilege activism in civil society over traditional state-centered political activity and she contends that democratic citizenship may—and must—be performed in multiple arenas. For example, some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have come to depend on governmental support. And governments in affluent nations may be better providers than civil organizations of the critical social services, such as nutrition, healthcare, and education, on which many women and children depend. Feminists need enriched understandings of citizenship that recognize the indispensability of both national and transnational civil society but still maintain a strong focus on the state.

When development studies were born, after decolonization in the middle of the twentieth century, poverty was not an important concern of policy-makers. This chapter asks how this situation changed in the early 1970s, to launch the main question of how the interests of the poor became incorporated in policy-making. New data became available, showing that famine was still occurring and that a third of the poor were not gaining from growth; inclusive policies were presented as a means of allaying threats to state security within a cold war environment, especially in Asian developing countries; and a big boost was given to these policies by the commitment of donors – especially Robert MacNamara, the new World Bank president – to reorientate lending policies towards urban poverty and rural development. Under the stress of global crisis, poverty focus among aid donors decayed in the 1980s, but it continued among many recipients, especially in South and South-East Asia. In the 1990s, it was relaunched, first tentatively, as a means of protecting the losers from global adjustment (a process which, with the end of the cold war, now embraced Russia and the former Soviet Union) and then more decisively, a process which culminated in the Millennium Development Goals. In the 2000s, with the decay of the Washington consensus, the idea of pro-poor orientation becomes incorporated into a more state-dominated politics in a number of middle-income, especially Latin American, countries.

The chapter investigates the preferences of BRICS and NGOs with regard to the exercise of transnational private authority. Three such governance schemes are selected: the Kimberley Process, the Global Compact, and the Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) certification scheme. Transnational governance schemes are part of the liberal status quo. Yet, preferences of BRICS and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are so diverse that there is rarely joint contestation nor is there an alliance between the two groups of actors. The analysis shows that it is mainly civil society organizations (CSOs) which contest privatized governance schemes. Business-related interest groups are generally supporting such schemes, to little surprise. BRICS also show a remarkable level of support for privatized forms of governance. The clearest differences in preferences exist between CSOs and BRICS: whereas CSOs champion stronger international institutions, the support of BRICS for private governance schemes increases in proportion to the weakness of a given arrangement or to the extent of national discretion it still affords them. In light of BRICS’ and NGOs’ different preferences, on the one hand, and among the members of each of these groups, on the other hand, neither of these two ‘groups’ can be considered close to having a single shared vision of global order. As a result, there is also little potential for strategic cooperation between BRICS and NGOs when it comes to contesting the status quo of transnational private authority.

Chapter 5, “Validating Segregated Observers”, explores the intricate ways that the Israeli occupation shapes empirical observations. Through a critique of feminist standpoint theory and Donna Haraway’s work on situated knowledge, it shows how the most well meaning maps can be drastically different depending on who makes them. After 1967 Israeli settlers have increasingly moved to the West Bank, establishing diffuse but numerous settlements that dominate the landscape, engendering forms of segregation that are both rigid and complex. As a result, Palestinians see different parts of the landscape, and under tougher restrictions, than do Israelis, and vice versa. For example, cartographers in Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are able to collect map data only within Palestinian areas, and must view the Israeli settlements from without. This produces a dichotomy between, and enforces a drastically unequal separation of, Palestinians and Israelis. It also buttresses imbalances of power in international technoscience, influencing even the most apparently objective, empirical knowledge. Chapter 5 explores the (by no means straightforward) implications of this segregation in detail, while also introducing the notion of refractivity, or material and spatial reflexivity. Throughout, it seeks to understand how cartographers in organizations who use the same tools to map the same landscapes can produce different results.

The second wave of the counterrevolution is covered in chapter 7. With the election of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as president, the level and form of state repression changed again. During the second wave of the counterrevolution, the regime turned against civil society at large, including both groups that played no role in mobilizing for street protests and those who had supported the coup or the first wave of the crackdown. The objective was to silence independent civil society: nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), charities, the media, universities, researchers, and minority groups including the LGBTQ community and the Nubian minority. An NGO law criminalized normal NGO activity, including the work of those organizations that were engaging in apolitical work that supported Egypt’s development goals. As a rule, security forces took action before legislation was issued to justify the action.

This chapter identifies two overarching narratives on children’s services reform in previous research and makes the case for more in-depth research drawing on public policy theory and data collected through elite interviews. Firstly, policy reforms are often seen to follow high profile child abuse inquiries and associated media generated scandals. Secondly, the collapse of the post-war social-democratic consensus, and the subsequent dominance of neo-liberal economic and social policies, has also been highlighted as a key driver of reform. It is argued that neither of these perspectives takes full account of party-political differences and ideological tensions in English child welfare policy, or the role of individual policy actors or organisations in driving reform. Drawing on competing theories of the British policy-making process it is argued the roles played by politicians, civil servants and Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs) need to be considered. Details of the research process including those interviewed is provided.

Chapter 6 discusses the problem of external corruption—the worry that to accomplish their ends, aid agencies may often have to become enmeshed with corrupt individuals or institutions. Chapter 6 notes numerous ways that corrupt officials may get their hands on aid, and suggests that the problem of external corruption may be especially prevalent in some of the world’s most desperate regions where the need is greatest. Chapter 6 suggests that it is unlikely that the problem of foreign aid capture or diversion can be avoided simply by channeling aid efforts through NGOs (non-governmental organizations). Chapter 6 concludes by suggesting that perhaps in some cases we must simply learn to live with external corruption as the cost of foreign aid; that is, as a regrettable but necessary cost of addressing global poverty and aiding the needy in some of the world’s most desperate regions.

This chapter examines the aftermath of the famine, focusing in particular on its influences on the subsequent direction of development policy. Drawing on evidence from famines elsewhere in the world, it proposes that the bases of political legitimacy and the roots of policy ruptures were established in this moment. Chapter 6 argues that the lessons of the famine established the subsistence crisis contract, forcing the elite to recognize that protecting against such disasters was a political priority, essential to national progress and to attracting the aid necessary for the country’s survival. It also situates the focus on women and on non-state or NGO action in this turbulent period.