Suchergebnisse

In most post-conflict countries nongovernmental organizations are everywhere, but their presence is misunderstood. In The NGO Game Patrice McMahon investigates the unintended outcomes of what she calls the NGO boom in Bosnia and Kosovo. Using her years of fieldwork and interviews, McMahon argues that when international actors try to rebuild and reconstruct post-conflict countries, they often rely on and look to NGOs. Although policymakers and scholars tend to accept and even celebrate NGO involvement in post-conflict and transitioning countries, they rarely examine why NGOs have become so popular, what NGOs do, or how they affect everyday life.After a conflict, international NGOs descend on a country, local NGOs pop up everywhere, and money and energy flow into strengthening the organizations. In time, the frenzy of activity slows, the internationals go home, local groups disappear from sight, and the NGO boom goes bust. Instead of peace and stability, the embrace of NGOs and the enthusiasm for international peacebuilding turns to disappointment, if not cynicism. For many in the Balkans and other post-conflict environments, NGOs are not an aid to building a lasting peace but are part of the problem because of the turmoil they foster during their life cycles in a given country. The NGO Game will be useful to practitioners and policymakers interested in improving peacebuilding, the role of NGOs in peace and development, and the sustainability of local initiatives in post-conflict countries.

In most post-conflict countries nongovernmental organizations are everywhere, but their presence is misunderstood. In The NGO Game Patrice McMahon investigates the unintended outcomes of what she calls the NGO boom in Bosnia and Kosovo. Using her years of fieldwork and interviews, McMahon argues that when international actors try to rebuild and reconstruct post-conflict countries, they often rely on and look to NGOs. Although policymakers and scholars tend to accept and even celebrate NGO involvement in post-conflict and transitioning countries, they rarely examine why NGOs have become so popular, what NGOs do, or how they affect everyday life. After a conflict, international NGOs descend on a country, local NGOs pop up everywhere, and money and energy flow into strengthening the organizations. In time, the frenzy of activity slows, the internationals go home, local groups disappear from sight, and the NGO boom goes bust. Instead of peace and stability, the embrace of NGOs and the enthusiasm for international peacebuilding turns to disappointment, if not cynicism. For many in the Balkans and other post-conflict environments, NGOs are not an aid to building a lasting peace but are part of the problem because of the turmoil they foster during their life cycles in a given country. The NGO Game will be useful to practitioners and policymakers interested in improving peacebuilding, the role of NGOs in peace and development, and the sustainability of local initiatives in post-conflict countries

While a great deal is made of the international community's inability to prevent ethnic violence in Yugoslavia, little attention has been paid to international efforts to manage ethnic conflicts in the years since. With an emphasis on the spearheading initiatives of the CSCE/OSCE, this article fleshes out the meaning of the so-called 'Bosnia effect'. It contends that, by the middle of the 1990s, a transnational network of governmental and non-governmental organizations had adopted overlapping, reinforcing strategies and principles to encourage ethnic cooperation in Eastern Europe. While this transnational network focused on ethnic conflict management did not prevent violence everywhere, this article explains the unique networking behaviour of transnational actors and demonstrates its effect on the transformation of ethnic politics in a case study of Latvia.(Ethnopolitics)

The role of transnational organizations in the expansion of minority rights in Romania is examined. A review of relevant literature reveals that three determinants -- conditionality requirements stipulated by the European Union, the conflict prevention activities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, & the international promotion of democracy -- are responsible for the improvement of interethnic relations with specific European nations. Three aspects of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that made it an effective nucleus for the formation of a transnational network are discussed; for instance, it is stressed that the organization has always emphasized cooperation in enhancing human security. Data collected via Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe & European Union documents & unstructured interviews with key officials (N = undetermined) is analyzed to ascertain how transnational networks augmented minority rights in contemporary Romania; specifically, it is demonstrated that international & local nongovernmental organizations made substantial contributions to the extension of minority rights during the late 1990s. Three general conclusions are reached, eg, determining the impact of any single transnational group upon the rights expansion process is essentially impossible. 1 Figure. J. W. Parker