What is going global? The internationalization of French NGOs 'without borders'*

Review of International Political Economy 12:5 December 2005: 851–883 What is going global? The internationalization of French NGOs ‘without borders’∗ Johanna Siméant University of Paris 1, Sorbonne (CERAPS-Lille 2) ABSTRACT This article studies the internationalization of four French NGOs (Médecins du Monde, Médecins Sans Frontières, Action Contre la Faim and Handicap International). This study relativizes the somewhat idealistic hypothesis of the flourishing of a global civil society. Indeed, the reasons for NGOs to develop foreign sections are not only based on value diffusion. The growing competition between NGOs encourages them to turn ‘global’ in order to adapt themselves in order to expand their ability to obtain human and financial resources, both public and private, which seems analogous to the effect that the processes of internationalization has on transnational firms. However, the analogy between NGOs and transnational firms should be carefully handled. While this analogy is surely heuristic in that it focuses attention on an often-neglected aspect of NGOs’ internationalization, this analogy nevertheless has limits. States continue to maintain a strong influence on these NGOs’ identities and the reasons for their internationalization. Furthermore, analyzing the internationalization of these NGOs is a way of specifying what is meant by ‘globalization’ as an environment constraining organizational strategies. Economic globalization certainly has an indirect role on NGOs’ internationalization by the worldwide development of inequalities at the global level and the tendency for states and international organizations to subcontract social policies to the Third Sector. Yet there is a parallel, rather than a causal, relationship between the internationalization of NGOs and the growth of transnational firms. Therefore, other aspects of globalization are needed to understand the development of NGOs: these aspects include not only the growth and extension of means of communication, but also the increasingly intense competition for the comparative advantages resulting from state fragmentation. ∗ This article reproduces numerous elements published in a shorter version entitled “Une mondialisation du sans-frontiérisme humanitaire?”, in Laroche [2003: 121– 133]. The reference of the book is Laroche Josepha (ed.), Mondialisation et gouvernance mondiale, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France/IRIS, 2003. Review of International Political Economy C 2005 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0969-2290 print/ISSN 1466-4526 online  http://www.tandf.co.uk DOI: 10.1080/09692290500339842 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y KEYWORDS NGOs; emergency relief; internationalization; globalization; ECHO; French doctors. INTRODUCTION Despite the ever-increasing number of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and the expansion of existing INGOs’ activities, the phenomenon of the ‘internationalization’ of NGOs is seldom taken into account by theorists of globalization.1 While it may seem redundant to talk about the ‘internationalization’ of INGOs, the ‘fuzziness’ surrounding the term ‘international non-governmental organization’ does nothing to clarify the specific issues this phenomenon entails. The term covers many different dimensions with regards to the ‘internationalization’ of NGOs. First, these NGOs take part in projects abroad. Second, they take part in campaigns that are ‘globalized’, in the sense that they address global topics by targeting both multilateral organizations and states, which involves the coordination of actors at the international level. Third, these organizations, originally founded within a single state under its national laws, have in some cases undergone a process that has resulted not only in the internationalization of their personnel, but also the creation of foreign sections authorized to carry out assignments in their name as well as collect funds. Finally, this process of internationalization has involved the creation of international coordinating entities intended to harmonize the actions and discourses of national organizations that generally carry the stamp of specific national features.2 This process is presented by its advocates as a necessary development that makes it possible to take action as ‘global players’ on topics that are ‘global’ in nature, in the name of a universal vision of what ought to be done.3 There is an abundant literature on the emergence of a multinational civil society. Yet, INGOs are seldom analyzed in terms of an organizational imperative to acquire resources. Since they claim an associative, non-profit status, INGOs are almost automatically identified with the development of a multinational civil society4 and of a ‘multinational public space’ or, in more optimistic studies, with the diffusion of ‘global culture’ promoting values such as universalism, individualism, volunteerism and the idea of world citizenship (Boli and Thomas, 1997; Senarclens 2001: 43). Yet, although INGOs are motivated by principles, taking ideals as the sole factor underlying this process of internationalization runs the risk of overlooking other critical imperatives driving INGO behavior, and reproduces the omnipresent legitimizing discourse regarding the emergence of ‘global’ associative actors. Indeed, for want of the aims of these organizations, in many ways, the internationalization of NGOs shows fundamental similarities with the expansion of multinational corporations (MNCs) in several ways, most notably in the search for new markets, expressed by resource 852 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S acquisition in the case of NGOs, brand promotion at the worldwide level,5 the internationalization of personnel and the de-territorialization of the organization (Ryfman, 2001: 36).6 Yet, how far can this analogy between INGOs and MNCs be taken without slipping into caricature?7 And to exactly what are these NGOs adapting to by developing on an international scale? By tracing the development of four French humanitarian NGOs – Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), Medecins du Monde (MDM), Action Contre la Faim (ACF), and Handicap International (HI) – we analyze how NGOs tend to adapt to an unstable, highly competitive environment through internationalization. Following Cooley and Ron (2002: 39), who stress the importance of taking into account the material incentives and financial pressures that drive NGOs towards internationalization, this paper highlights the search for resources, a dimension usually ignored in the literature on NGOs. Yet being attentive to the fact that the promotion of values presupposes material resources does not mean ignoring those values. Rather, by retracing the history of the internationalization of NGOs, we aim to draw attention to ways in which this competition for material resources between NGOs has forced them to become global, an adaptation necessary to facilitate the acquisition of human and financial resources, both public and private (McAdam and Tarrow, 2003). Furthermore, this internationalization has resulted in adoption of homogeneous practices and organizational cultures across INGOs’ range of national and local associations, strongly structured by states and international organizations, particularly the European Union. However, this adaptation has led to considerable problems, in face of the fact that INGOs still target the policies of states which possess highly particular practices and cultures themselves. T HE I NT E R NAT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O s The sans-frontiérisme approach8 of the ‘French Doctors’ emerged in France at the end of the 1960s, with the main aims of providing emergency relief and sending doctors into the field, fundamentally different from the then-existing Third World charities, mostly religious in character, and to the silent, ‘bureaucratic’ position of the Red Cross. This orientation is represented today by the four main9 French international aid organizations – Médecins Sans Frontières, Action Contre la Faim, Médecins du Monde and Handicap International – all established in the 1970s and early 1980s. These organizations remained primarily French in both identification and organization until the 1980s and 1990s, morphing into what the Union of International Associations considers an international non-governmental organization (INGO): ‘an association made up of representatives from several countries, which is international in its functions, the composition of its leadership and the sources of its financing . . . (,) is non-profit and benefits from consultant status with an inter-governmental organization’ (Laroche, 2000: 134–5).10 853 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y This internationalization – the establishment of entities set up abroad for purposes of resource acquisition and representation11 – occurred in quite different ways in each organization. MSF established ‘delegate offices’ while MDM set up ‘representative offices’.12 In terms of entities which lead international missions in the field by sending volunteers, MSF set up ‘operational sections’ and MDM set up ‘delegations’. While MSF and MDM claim a roughly comparable number of foreign entities – 18 and 16, respectively – the ratio of operational and non-operational entities differs. Where MSF has only five operational sections, MDM has 12 delegations. MDM delegations are responsible for a variable, and sometimes very low number, of international missions, numbering between two and 20, and their budgets are of unequal size, with none reaching the size of the budget of MDM’s French delegation, which maintains a significant influence both financially and in terms of decision-making for the MDM network as a whole. Conversely, the budget of MSF-France has recently been almost equaled or even exceeded, depending on the years by MSF-Belgium or MSF-Holland, which each totaled 68 m in 2000. HI and ACF have been internationalized on a more modest scale: HI has eight international entities, including two non-operational offices in the United States and in Denmark (HI-Germany and HI-United States do not carry out missions abroad), and ACF has only four operational sections. Yet, the history of this internationalization process has followed a variety of patterns. The first wave of the internationalization of MSF was initiated by former expatriates from the French section, creating MSF-Belgium and MSF-Switzerland, followed by The Netherlands, Spain and Luxembourg sections. Furthermore, the executives of the French section were, in some cases, associated with these creations: Claude Malhuret, the head of MSFFrance co-drafted the by-laws of MSF-Belgium with one of its founders, Philippe Laurent. Likewise, HI-Belgium was founded in 1986 by three Belgian physical therapists who were HI-France alumni.13 The proliferation of MSF sections, the last being MSF-Greece,14 resulted in the creation of MSF-International in 1991 an attempt to provide some order and coordination to the anarchy that seemed to reign amongst sections. The internationalization of MSF was initiated by the Paris headquarters, in a ‘top-down’ approach, as illustrated by the concordance of the creations of six delegate offices in 1993, motivated primarily oriented by the search for resources. Even if it ultimately formed a very different network, the reasons for the internationalization of MDM were quite similar to that of MSF: they all sprang from the activist imperative. T HE R E A S ONS F O R I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N Lindenberg and Bryant (2001) argue that globalization has generated six constraints relevant to NGOs: new forms of global poverty, new 854 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S waves of complex emergencies, new pressures for greater efficiency and accountability, weak global institutions, a decline in the capacity of national governments, new pressures to respond globally and greater financial competition (Lindenberg, Bryant, 2001: 19 sq.)15 It is hard to make the case that the phenomenon of ‘globalization’ is solely responsible for the internationalization of NGOs. Not all of these constraints are new: some of these have always been present, and thus cannot be argued to have been the motivation behind the internationalization of French NGOs. Furthermore, the development of complex political emergencies is due less to recent economic developments than to the end of the Cold War, which occurred after the initial waves of the expansion of MSF, MDM, HI and ACF. Nevertheless, some aspects of globalization do explain the pressures towards competition for human and financial resources that developed among NGOs which led to the creation of foreign entities and thus the claim to a ‘global’ status. Increased competition, pressure to shift scales and the claim to a ‘global’ status The internationalization of NGOs began in the 1980s, but was hastened by the 1990s with the founding of the European Commission Humanitarian Office (ECHO) in 1992. ECHO was tasked to coordinate and monitor EU emergency relief activities, and became the main sponsor of European humanitarian NGOs. The 1990s also witnessed the conflict in Bosnia, to which the EU devoted considerable relief resources as well as the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. During the period from 1980 to 1990, institutions such as the World Bank (Nelson, 1995; Cleary, 1996; Fox, 2000) and the International Monetary Fund increasingly relied upon NGOs in terms of the allocation of international aid. Consequently, this decade saw a dizzying increase in public and private funding directed towards humanitarian NGOs, and in the process, a corresponding increase attempts to obtain these funds. However, the multiplication of NGOs resulted in many which were disorderly and often inefficient gave rise to a wave of criticism with regard to certain NGOs, which was followed by a rather sudden rationalization of the sector. This rationalization entailed the ‘professionalization’ of NGOs and the adoption of the internationalized agency model perceived as capable of acting on a large scale. In a process similar to Elias’ law of monopoly (1990), French NGOs, competing in a number of dimensions,16 sought to accumulate and concentrate resources. Yet, as the scale of the competition increased, the number of organizations which possessed the size and capability for action required of playing on a large scale diminished. This process resulted in the emergence of a small number of NGOs that were judged to possess the capacity for effective action, whether from the perspective of the press, the public, 855 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y private donors or the many international bodies that assess and support humanitarian action. Indeed, the ‘quality versus quantity’ approach recommended in the early 1980s by Bernard Kouchner and the founders of MDM, which entailed a small number of dedicated, volunteer personnel and in taking on a small number of missions, was only tenable as long as it enhanced a distinctive MSF identity that contributed to its visibility on the humanitarian action stage. Yet this approach became problematic as this ‘small is beautiful’ approach threatened MSF’s viability. Rather, in response to competitive pressures and the ‘demand’ for professional, large-scale organizations, MDM came close to multiplying its resources a 100-fold between 1980 and 1990, rising from ff1.5 m to ff138 m This increase in funding in the 1980s characterized all four of the French humanitarian NGOs, which became structured, enlarged their physical headquarters and took on a salaried executive staff. The question of extending organizations to the international level with a view to resource acquisition became all the more relevant at the time as the ‘parent organizations’ had amassed sufficient bureaucratic skills at their headquarters to be able pro-actively to consider how they could support this process.17 This ‘professionalization’ of NGOs is most notable in terms of their expectations of high standards of quality of its personnel. The mission of the non-operational offices was therefore to recruit personnel. Yet this became increasingly more difficult, given the increase in the number of missions and the competition from Anglo-Saxon NGOs. While it was easy to find a volunteer surgeon in France for a short mission in a former colony (which often eliminated the language obstacle), it was less easy to find an experienced public health specialist who could speak English and Spanish in addition to his or her mother tongue, who was prepared to go out in the field for two years. It was harder still if the specialist were not paid decently, yet salaried employment meant having comfortable financial resources available, and added a new function to non-operational offices and headquarters to recruit qualified personnel, which also required additional funding to support a full-time human resources staff. Furthermore, as a result of the growing difficult of finding medical expatriates for medium- and long-term assignments, foreign countries came to be considered as ‘hunting grounds’ for volunteers and were then in charge of orienting recruits to the parent sections. This internationalization of humanitarian NGOs enhanced their credibility and authority, and legitimized their ‘voice’ at the global level, recognized as full-fledged representatives in discussions with international organizations. It was this global expansion of NGOs that gave them the right to speak out from the front ranks in international bodies, and to demand a role in making the strategic choices of the European Union and UN agencies. Save the Children, PLAN International, Oxfam, CARE, World 856 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S Vision, CIDSE and MSF dominated the international NGO scene (Smillie, 1995), and their combined budget amounted to over 1.5 billion dollars,18 making them global players. Similarly, the access of the international network of MDM in 1996 to a Category 1 Consulting Status at the Economic and Social Council of the UN is due to its internationalization.19 It is not surprising that among the eight members of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, one of the chief coordinators of humanitarian NGOs, are some of the largest INGOs: Care International, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent associations, International Save the Children Alliance (UK), Lutheran World Federation, Oxfam International, the World Council of Churches and MSF-International. The process of internationalization, which MSF initiated in France, resulted in giving these NGOs a claim to carrying weight at the international level,20 which distinguished the ‘big’ organizations from those of moderate size, often less-internationalized, that made up Voluntary Organizations in Cooperation in Emergencies (VOICE)21 and International Council of Voluntary Associations (ICVA).22 Nevertheless, in this search for resources at the international level and the desire to be a global player was stamped, each of the French NGOs remained faithful to its own style: MSF was characterized by a combination of political and economic liberalism,23 rigorous management and virtuous public display of private fund-raising. MDM was distinguished by a call for the development of civil society and a sensibility directed more towards countries of the South24 as well as tendency to reply more than MSF on public funds. The differences in these styles are not only ‘cultural’, for these associations are interest groups (Wilson, 1990: 134–41, Offerlé, 1998), which, as such, are structured by the ties they maintain to national and inter-governmental public authorities and by the forms of aid for which they show a preference. International development as a search for new avenues of private fund-raising MSF is the one that claims the highest percentage of private funding in its overall budget and insists on this financial independence as a principle of its identity. This has affected the character of its internationalization, which has resulted in a low number of its operational delegations and a sizeable number of delegate offices, the latter of which are systematically linked to sections to which they must transfer all or part of the funds raised. Thus, MSF-France has delegate offices in Japan, the United States, Australia and the office of the United Arab Emirates; MSF-Belgium in Italy, Sweden and Hong Kong, among others; MSF-Netherlands in Germany, Canada and the United Kingdom. This division shows to what extent the search for resources at the international level has been experienced as a potential 857 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y source of conflict among operational sections, insofar as it conditioned their expansion, and hence the possibility for some to exceed the budget of the French founding section and thus claim to be ‘the’ representative of the MSF movement. It is particularly significant that this relationship with the international level, especially the division of delegate offices among operational sections, has been described as a ‘Yalta’, in the words of members of MSF. Given the size, wealth or reputation of an ‘El Dorado’ for fund-raising enjoyed by some countries, such as the United States, United Arab Emirates and Japan, establishing offices in these countries responsible for resource acquisition but not authorized to carry out missions held out the promise of a considerable return on the investment. As stated by a salaried executive of MSF MSF-USA in the beginning was set up to look for funding . . . every time offices were set up somewhere, there was a question of influence, of areas of influence, and whenever France set up a section somewhere, there was a very strong fund-raising aim behind it, of achieving financial independence . . . people don’t talk about that very much, because naturally those who are working in the offices didn’t want to be reduced to that, because it’s the dirty side of things, but in the United States it was relatively clear, even so . . . MSF-France invested heavily in the United States for a while, particularly taking risks to pay for offices that were not at all profitable in the beginning, precisely with a longer term view. . . and there are the agreements between MSF-France and MSF-United States . . . MSF-United States is de facto independent, except that there is a board that is completely controlled by MSF-France, owing to the fact that the president of MSF-France is a member by right. There is (also) a return on the investment . . . MSF-France took it very seriously and invested significantly, and that also made it possible for 50% of their resources to come from private US funding25 because it is written in the bylaws . . . of MSF-USA, 50% of private funds are to be given by right to MSF-France . . . in recognition of its initial investment . . . 50% of private funding is brought in by the Americans . . . that’s why MSF-USA has become something of a problem, because it now has such financial power that all the sections need MSF-USA and that private funding.26 Raising private funds is facilitated by internationalization. Private funding necessarily obviates the dependence on public funds, which runs the risk of unforeseeable national complications, and makes it possible to maintain the association’s claims of financial independence. Yet, securing private funding is another matter altogether. However, the internationalization of NGOs offers the specific advantage of showing the funds raised by foreign sections as net financial contributions while excluding the expenses necessary to maintain the foreign organization. Thus, it is possible to present an 858 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S exceptionally favorable ratio of fund allocation to the social mission of the association versus its administrative costs as proof of its virtue in the eyes of the French public. The status of these organizations as non-profit means that they are subject to increased surveillance by the State from a financial standpoint, including audits of NGOs’ donation income, operations expenditures and administrative (including fund-raising) costs, carried out by the Auditor-General. By obtaining an official ‘stamp of approval’ on the veracity of a greater expenditure on missions than on administrative costs, the perceived greater ‘social return’ on donations gives an incentive for individuals and corporations to contribute to the NGO. The case of MSF-Belgium exemplifies this dynamic. This association, given the small size of the Belgian population which limits the amount of collectible private funds and its proximity, MSF-Belgium27 also benefits from transfers from nearly all the MSF sections, and not only from its own delegate offices. Private donations and bequests to MSF sections thus accounted for 55% of its resources in 2000, while 17% was received in public financing.28 But not all French NGOs were able to consider the strategy of private funding. Indeed, taking into account the French regulations for granting subsidies, the development of international offices could only be financed by their own funds, which came from private fund raising. Only associations like MSF that were older and already enjoyed a significant amount of private funding could undertake the long-term financial effort involved in investing in private fund raising, which was far more costly than merely paying rent and the salary of the representative. Rather, private funding creates a ‘virtuous circle’ that serves to bring in more private funding. Thus, other French NGOs did not take quite the same route; they depended instead on public funds, the search for which was likewise shaped and facilitated by internationalization. Interest groups structured in their internationalization by their relationship with public sponsors Unlike MSF, Action Contre la Faim is far more dependent on public funding, thus faced considerable internal conflict over its internationalization. The investment in foreign sections was viewed as too great an expense compared with its available private funds. Where it had set up foreign sections there was access to a source of funding: ACF’s US foreign section recourse to USAID financing. Médecins du Monde also had trouble making the switch to private funding. Though raising private funds was a goal of MDM, it was not achieved. The financial crisis it weathered after its intervention in Kosovo29 considerably disrupted any additional investment in foreign sections. In addition, MDM had a method of international development that gave it less control 859 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y over its foreign entities’ desire to become something other than mere fundraising appendages, both in terms of its capacity to do so and the fact of the associative identity it claimed. As a result, its internationalization benefited less from raising private funds than from access to new public financing. As evidenced by a salaried executive of MDM in an August 2002 interview with the author: Belgium has never been profitable, and then they wanted their autonomy. . . and the day they became an international delegation, they flew on their own strength, but it is clear that there never was any return on the investment . . . Today, let us say that they have achieved profitability not in resource acquisition for us, but from the standpoint of public financing, because, if you want to engage in action in Timor, obviously Médecins du Monde Holland is in a good position to obtain funds from the public authorities of the Netherlands, who are very sensitive to Timor, whereas for the French government, Timor is something rather foreign . . . the same holds for a number of actions through Médecins du Monde Germany. Germany has agreements with a number of countries, and the German ministry of foreign affairs will finance actions that France would not finance, so that is why subsidies are given. [Authors note: MDM’s non-operational offices in Denmark, Switzerland, the US and Germany do not carry out international missions and come under the French delegation.] Question by author: And does that mean the missions will be implemented instead by MDMFrance? Response: ‘Oh yes, only by MDM-France . . . Absolutely. . . ’30 It is obvious that the NGOs play a strategic game in the establishment of foreign sections in terms of benefiting from different countries affinities for different humanitarian missions based on different national affinities due to colonial legacy, historic ties or foreign policy concerns, corresponding to a great propensity to mobilize resources in terms of this affinity and national publics’ perceptions of a legitimate use of public funds. Jean-Baptiste Richardier of Handicap International emphasizes, ‘some governments and sponsors see humanitarian initiatives as a safe investment, where national preference is willingly given’. Thus, MSF and MDM-France are believed to be particularly wary of financing from the French coopération (Voluntary Service Overseas) when such legitimacy is absent, whereas certain MSF projects can mobilize joint financing from ‘acceptable’ voluntary service overseas programs that are often viewed as alternatives, such as those in Switzerland, Norway or Sweden. Thus, internationalization as a logical outgrowth of the search for institutional financing has resulted from diversifying public sponsors and the attempt to obtain funding from the most varied ministries of volunteer service overseas. Internationalization must also be understood from the standpoint of the workings of ECHO. The fact that, as Philippe Ryfman notes (2001: 37), 860 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S this internationalization was in large part tantamount to the process of Europeanization is related to the way financing of humanitarian efforts is handled by the European Commission. For, from a legal point of view, there is no international status for NGOs31 that separates them from their country of origin. An NGO always remains an association of a particular country and the leaders of ECHO found themselves in the position of indicating that the subsidies they distributed were being given out for a nationally identified organization. Again, as a salaried executive of MDM stated: Today the European Union says, with regard to its subsidies, ‘All right, for France, we have given out as much as we can to Médecins du Monde France, we can’t do more, we have to maintain a balance among the countries’, so what do you do, you have to do what MSF has done and set up a sham organization, e.g. MSF-Portugal [the example is fictitious Author’s note] to carry out a mission in Angola, but in reality, it will be subcontracted to MSF-France. The European Union will know that, but officially, the subsidy has been attributed to a Portuguese NGO. We can’t give 90% of humanitarian subsidies to France (. . . ) the European Union is the biggest sponsor, that’s why we always refer to it . . . The EU is going to calculate how much it has given to national NGOs, since there are no European associations. The fact, perhaps, of having the Belgian status of an international association is a sort of pre-positioning, since we are told that in the coming years, now that the problem appears to have been settled with the German mutual insurance organizations, we should move quickly to the status of a European association. I don’t know, perhaps it’s true . . . and at that point, why not slip into the mould, since . . . perhaps the relationship with the European Union will be different. But for the moment, the European Union knows that it has given 50 million to Médecins du Monde France, an association under French law and that the Portuguese are complaining because Portuguese NGOs have nothing. So, in terms of balance, we are still at the . . . it’s still a Europe of nations, I would say, for the moment.32 This gives a glimpse of the way in which certain imperatives to internationalize humanitarian aid in the 1990s, particularly in the case of NGOs more dependent on public funds than MSF, were especially oriented towards ECHO, and more broadly, towards structuring their interests at the European level. This highlights that, in the face of subsidies supposedly divided up equally among nationalities, the importance of adopting the format of the sponsoring institution, not only in terms of aid content, but also in terms of the entities likely to receive it.33 While the imperative behind the creation of ACF-Spain (Accion Contra el Hambre) in 1994 resulted from a desire to create a base focused preferentially on Latin America and an investment in a fund raising market perceived as still untouched, it was 861 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y the wish to benefit from ECHO funds that was to be fulfilled beyond their expectations. Nevertheless, the search for public funding by increasing the number of foreign entities created by NGOs that claim a significant portion of private funds required for their independence, may contribute pressure towards internationalizing private resource acquisition in order to re-establish a balanced ratio between them. If this cannot be done, the solution is to leave more room for operational sections in the network so that each member entity can carry out its missions without overwhelming headquarters with public financing raised abroad. That also explains the form of internationalization taken by Médecins du Monde, and to a certain degree by Handicap International. This form involved less the transfer of private funds to the parent company than new entities that had or attempted to gain financial autonomy, responsible in each case for balancing the ratio of public to private funds.34 In the end, this made it possible to claim all the missions implemented through the network, even though they are far more scattered at MDM than at MSF. But the number of missions carried out at the worldwide level by the entire network is a compelling argument in support of NGOs presenting themselves as global players. GL OB A L P L AY E R S O R P O LY P H O N I C N E T W O R K S ? One might think that the forms of the international development of these NGOs are irrelevant. After all, when we talk about MSF-France or MSFNetherlands, are we not talking about ‘MSF’? To believe that would presuppose, however, that the process has been completed, which is not the case, and perhaps it may never be. Furthermore, sometimes there is as much difference between two MSF sections as between two different NGOs of the same nationality. The definition of an organization cannot be limited to its charter. Of course, claiming to adhere to common principles, requesting as a Spanish or Greek association to become MSF-Spain or MDM-Greece, suggests that the conflict with MSF-France or MDM-France is beside the point since they assert that they share its values. But despite all the prophecies concerning the globalization of civil society, in the absence of an international NGO status, as we have seen, an ‘INGO’ is actually the sum total of organizations under national law with more or less loose ties, and the right to speak in the name of the group and the capacity to embody it is not evenly distributed among them.35 In addition, it would be naive to believe that this process could take place without conflict simply because it is economically necessary or because it is in line with the movement of history. At MSF and HI, it is even one of the main issues discussed within the association. It is significant that MSF should be less troubled than its younger counterparts by the two major debates in the associative world – the question of ‘professionalization’ and of 862 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S ‘activism’, debates that it has already settled in large part – than by the question of its internationalization and the possibility of ‘operationalizing’36 new sections. Understanding what makes internationalization a source of conflict therefore presupposes reconsidering the unique social formation constituted by an international NGO network under the same name, the definition of its identity and the choice of a more or less centralized form. This will make it possible to understand the very different approaches to control and coordination adopted within these formations, ranging from interpersonal ties to flexible charters as well as commercial control of the brand. Between uniformization and renewed particularization Internationalization tends to move these associations away from a sense of belonging to the country of their founders and to encourage a ‘universal’ identity. This is evidenced by the uniformity of operating methods, especially characteristic of MSF, the uniformity of the acronym and of the slogan at the worldwide level, the presentation of the values as shared by the whole movement (MSF, ACF and MDM37 all have charters to which their sections adhere), the use of English as the working language of MSF, the simple image referring to medicine, the internationalization of volunteer recruitment, the capacity to intervene all over the world and the circulation of expatriates among sections. This is underscored by the awarding of the Nobel prizes38 to the network of associations rather than a single organization with a specific national identification, such as that in 1997 to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which included Handicap International, and in 1999 to MSF as a worldwide movement. There remains, however, an important nuance regarding the question of internationalization as ‘uniformization’ in terms of economic imperatives. First of all, it is necessary to understand that the increased effectiveness obtained through internationalization is relative. It is a commonplace to tack economic vocabulary onto the development of these organizations at the international level, and to talk about the search for a ‘critical mass’ or ‘economies of scale’. The latter are indeed a factor which enhances effectiveness, if only as a result of an existing expertise that is transmitted to the other entities in the movement. These NGOs, which are sometimes described as ‘organised like companies in a network’ (Stangherlin, 2001: 135), may in fact make many transfers among their entities, whether it is the transfers of projects (the project of a given section will be presented in the brochures of all the entities raising funds) and, obviously, transfers of funds in case of temporary problems affecting a member of the network (Smillie, 1996: 100–1), greatly facilitated in Europe by the switch to a single currency. Nevertheless, the most far-reaching attempts at technical coordination designed to achieve ‘economies of scale’ between operational sections 863 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y have failed. Of course, there has been mutual exchange of technical work and training programs between sections, but any attempt at major coordination has so far been thwarted. This failure is exemplified by such occurrences as the failure to set up the Emergency Team (ET) of MSF, which was intended to achieve better international coordination of emergency actions; the recurrent problems of logistical coordination when expatriates in the French section of MSF in the field refuse to call upon MSF-Holland for logistical support despite it being requested by headquarters); and finally, the existence of two logistical platforms, Lésignan for MSF-France and Anvers for MSF-Belgium, despite the fact that personnel were assigned in vain for two years to a project to set up a common logistical base. Thus, it would seem that the internationalization of fund-raising and rallying around a single logo and a single charter do not signify a uniform transition to economies of scale in all dimensions of these organizations’ action. A limit to standardization results from economic causes linked to the logics of private donations. A Canadian donor will identify with a project implemented by MSF-Netherlands all the more when the particular Dutch features of the project are obscured and ‘re-Canadianized’, either by sending a Canadian volunteer on that particular mission or even by indicating the names of all the Canadian expatriate volunteers at MSF. The NGOs that have the best control over their emergency communication from the field obviously direct expatriates before the media according to their nationality and language, hence Americans speak on US TV channels, etc. Similarly, the websites of the delegate offices of MSF-Austria, MSF-Denmark or MSFGreat Britain present the list of names of expatriates of Austrian, Danish or British nationality, sometimes with their photos, along with the name of the country in which they are working, but without indicating the nationality of the operational section. Similarly, the membership of the boards of the associative bodies in charge of resource acquisition is comprised of mainly personalities recognized in the country where fund-raising takes place, even when the salaried staff of the organization is largely Francophone. The same phenomenon can be observed in certain projects financed by a number of volunteer-service-abroad organizations, such as the MSFFrance project co-financed by Norwegian and Danish volunteer service abroad programs staffed by only one Norwegian and one Dane. Finally, the choice of the location of operational sections still reveals a distinct national affinity with the recipient nation, stemming from historical affinities such as colonialism. Potentially conflictual internationalization As such, it can hardly be claimed that the internationalization of NGOs has produced a uniform, seamless identity or global organization imposed by economic necessity. Rather, this multiplication of NGOs of the same name increases, almost by definition, the occasions for divergences or even 864 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S conflicts among them. Humanitarian volunteers never fail to point out that this contradicts sans-frontiériste values. It is rare that these conflicts pertain solely access to resources, although the operation of Action Contre la Faim, which has adopted a hierarchical firm-like operating structure in which the Paris office desires to maintain control over all of the ACF associations, combined with the financial problems at headquarters, have given rise to this type of conflicts. Thus, ACF-France and ACF-United States clashed without mincing words over access to OFDA funds, or the attribution of missions considered to be ‘profitable’.39 For example, in 2002, Paris was bitterly criticized for having ‘reserved’ the interior of Afghanistan for itself. This example, for which we could doubtless find equivalents – CARE Australia and USA are regularly in conflict over major projects – shows to what extent sections that are already in conflict crystallize their opposition on the issue of distribution of missions at the worldwide level, rather than affirming that the search for access to ‘profitable’ projects creates the conflict. Each section is more or less marked by national and organizational conceptions as well as those relating to its financing methods, conflicts and legitimate, priority aid. These oppositions may arise over different ways of analyzing a conflict, the most characteristic example being that of MSFGreece at the time of the NATO intervention in Kosovo. Without referring to the other sections, MSF-Greece distinguished itself by giving priority support to Serb victims of NATO forces, particularly in Belgrade, in early 1999. The Greek organization was then brushed aside in the MSF movement. MDM-Greece did not go quite as far, although an MDM-Macedonia project was considered and similar debates took place within the MDM network. When one section speaks out, its partners are often in a position to react, above all when it affects them in terms of resources or security. Obviously, taking a position that calls into question a state that happens to have accepted a fund-raising section may be perceived as a disaster by another section. When Jean-Hervé Bradol, president of MSF-France, denounced in a press release after September 11, 2001, US ‘propaganda’ concerning Afghanistan, and the information was broadcast in a loop on CNN, the representatives of the US section, which had not been consulted, had reason to reproach the French section for proceeding in this way and to worry about the effect it would have on resource acquisition. The challenge of speaking out in public is especially complex in organizations that in some cases now claim the duty of temoignage – acting as witnesses – as a central component of their public image and their identity, such as MDM and MSF.40 While public statements are frequently linked to debates or to the internal operating imperatives of each national section (thus, a statement denouncing a political regime is often linked to the fact that the section has decided to withdraw from the country), they 865 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y are likely to affect all the others. This is obviously the case when a section of MSF withdraws from an area, whereas others remain, whose safety could be compromised by the declarations of the defecting organization, such as the withdrawal of MSF-France from the Rwanda refugee camps of Kivu when the other sections remained in the region. MSF-Holland was especially critical of the MSF-France témoignage on the situation, an especially delicate question since the ‘security veto’41 allowing one section to oppose the publication of a report had fallen into disuse, a fact that that the French section took advantage of, as Pascal Dauvin reminds us (2004). These public statements are reappropriated in the memory of volunteers as marks of what distinguishes one section from another. Oppositions are gradually consolidated and become filters through which the others are perceived: the French are rebellious and noisy, quick to denounce certain situations, eager to act as witnesses and engage in emergency intervention, but considered by the others as seeking too systematically to distinguish themselves by their positions and excessive media attention; the Dutch are ‘too clean’, ‘formalists’, and ‘we don’t see the MSF approach in their projects’, and their standards are too slanted towards ‘public health’ and ‘development’, and in addition, closer to an Anglo-Saxon ‘human rights approach’ than a true process of joining medical care to speaking out; the Belgians are ‘formalists’, more interested in staying in the field to carry out projects in silence and negotiate with local authorities to improve the situation of the people in their care, but they are criticized for acting like ‘a European Union service agency’, incapable moreover of responding to real emergencies because ‘when faced with a crisis, MSF-Belgium is not going to respond until ECHO funds have been released’. These oppositions have become especially complex to manage as the NGOs diversify and have long since ceased to be organizations made up only of doctors, which could consequently solidify its organizational culture around a professional identity. These oppositions, which are at the core of the issue of témoignage – historically the major challenge within the organization – can be reduced not only to a form of symbolic competition that drives the sections to differentiate themselves, but also to the question of financing, more than to what are held to be national temperament. Indeed, internationalization brings out different degrees of section dependence on public funding and the fact that some sections are more permeable than others to the pressure of institutional sponsors. It is no accident that the Belgian sections of MDM and MSF are more sensitive to the influence of the European Commission than the French sections which were founded earlier, have a far more substantial donor file and hence possess resources allowing them to be independent and take more head-on positions towards major sponsors, i.e. countries or the European Union. 866 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S Some positions taken by MSF are the result of the loose relationship between sections.42 Internationalization, because it gradually widens the scope of the association’s definition, makes it very sensitive to changes of position resulting from varying degree of recourse on the part of the sections to public or private funding. Because the positions taken by MSFBelgium are linked particularly to its recourse to public funds, this association will tend to adopt a different definition of MSF than the one held by MSF-France. We can thus understand that, beyond the defense of témoignage – said to be a substantial characteristic of the French – what is at stake is also the ability of the historic section to maintain a dominant role in defining the association. Nothing indicates, incidentally, that the ‘purity’ of the founding principles is destined to be monopolized by the historic section: today, Accion Contra el Hambre in Spain no doubt demonstrates more associative enthusiasm than ACF-France which is undergoing a crisis. One can easily imagine that, once the American and Spanish sections have acquired the resources to ensure their financial independence, they will decide not to report to Paris any longer, and claim they both embody Action Contre la Faim at the worldwide level.43 Hence, it is easier to understand to what extent the sometimes anarchistic development of these internationalized associative networks can be anxiety-producing and that some associative leaders sought to control their potentially uncontrollable internationalization. This was obviously the case when the sections are set up without the agreement of the historic section, like HI-Luxembourg in 1997, or when still young sections, such as MSF-Belgium in the mid-1980s, venture to contradict the parent organization. Whereas the members of the latter felt that, since they were using the MSF name, they should obtain its imprimatur, resulting in the arousal of serious tensions arose among MSF-Belgium, France and Holland between 1984 and 1988. Conflict between sections can be especially turbulent when two sections are working in the same country and the latter is central to the association’s identity. The relationship between HI-Belgium and HI-France, both of which were present in Cambodia went from a virtually symbiotic bond to conflict. In 1994, their budgets were still presented jointly. In 1997 there was a systematic refusal to pay for shared services, resulting even in the sudden suspension of those services, with the headquarters in Lyon proclaiming the death of HI-Belgium in an open letter to the association. The divorce between the two sections was finally confirmed, ending in a modus vivendi that focuses today on two organizations which are associated in name only. These pressures thus actually serve to keep the social formation constituted by an internationalized NGO in a state of perpetual instability and transformation, with the process of the competition for resources transforming the strategies of those organizations that belong to the network. When the birth of some of these associations took place by leaving 867 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y an organization – the founders of MSF included volunteers from the ICRC in Biafra and MDM was founded by secessionists from MSF – there is sometimes a strong temptation to repeat endlessly the inaugural scene of an activist breakaway or seize independence from the bureaucracy, if only by preserving the same name, when the resources of potential secessionists increase and the bureaucracy they denounce is located several hundred or thousand miles away. Yet, while the humanitarian organizations often have a very keen awareness of their opposition in the eyes of the general public, nothing resembles a humanitarian organization more than another humanitarian organization with the same name, since none of the donors see what differentiates them in the field, as their projects are faraway, whereas their fund-raising campaigns are highly uniform, emphasizing above all emergency aid and children. The equilibrium of the international network is all the more unstable as the representatives of entities created for resource acquisition gradually aspire, once they begin to expand, to directing something besides ‘cash cows’, while other sections reserve for themselves the noble task of taking action in the field. Since these sections are furthermore intended to recruit volunteers, the growing success of their recruitment efforts encourages these aspirations to autonomy and a shift to the operational level, which creates the risk of depriving the parent section of a sizeable source of revenue. The financial contribution represented by some of them would, moreover, be likely to transform completely the balance of power within the network. That is in fact the concern generated today by the financial power of MSFUnited States, the pillar of fund-raising not only of MSF-France but also of the entire network, since it would obviously have the resources to initiate and implement its own projects. Consequently, this conflictual dimension implies – at least potentially – the need to study the mechanisms of coordination within the internationalized networks that some NGOs have become. Approaches to coordination and control within the movement Like the Socialist International described by Guillaume Devin (1993), an internationalized NGO can be viewed as a network of affiliates, a team of representatives and a source of resources. This view, however, presupposes an understanding of how the ties between these entities function. What are the power relationships between entities that originally did not enjoy the legitimacy of the parent NGO and the parent NGO, despite their formal equality of their legal status? How is consensus achieved? The increase in levels of intervention, which could be expected to call for greater consistency among the sections and between headquarters and the field, often takes place with very fragile instruments. Moreover, these types of coordination oscillate between centralization, which can obviously generate criticism of the parent section and be seen as contradicting its associative identity 868 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S and competition among sections, the effects of which would obviously be disastrous. The internal regulations of the international network of MDM, which calls for simultaneous presence at the same site and agreements relating to the search for funding, clearly shows the possible points of conflict between sections. Coordination may, first of all, presuppose achieving consistency among the actions taken in a single region or field. It has been more or less successful, depending on the organization: in 1998, MDM-France and MDMSpain, both of them present in Mali in different areas, had practically no contact. Similarly, there was little communication between HI-Belgium and HI-France in Southeast Asia. Conversely, in areas requiring emergency aid or still in conflict, sections are sometimes led to maintain more frequent contact, if only for reasons of safety. Thus, in 1998, Liberia had three sections of MSF which were set up at different times during the 1990s, which later benefited from coordination in the capital, with a ‘country policy’ defined through considerable efforts at harmonization. Nowadays, when MDM has several projects under way in a single country, the association plans for ‘mobile’ coordinators in the field. In the end, while operational coordination appears to be variable, often but not systematically linked to safety for the teams, ad hoc and temporary organizations tend to be set up to handle international NGO campaigns, such as that concerning access to essential medicines at MSF. Finally, there are indeed international coordinating bodies. We have already mentioned the entities set up by some of these NGOs: MSFInternational and the international secretariat of MDM. MSF-International is an international association under Belgian law based in Brussels, with a salaried staff of six. Its main body is the International Council, which has included the presidents of each section since 1997. Its role is presented as consisting in ensuring compliance with the Charter and coordinating operations. Similarly, the international secretariat of MDM organizes the international board of directors and the international executive board of MDM, which is required to meet at least twice a year and unifies the operational delegations. In the same vein, there is a council of presidents of Action Contre la Faim. In 1996, the representatives of Handicap International began the process of setting up the Handicap International ‘Federation’. Most of these bodies are financed collectively using allocation criteria that take into account the resources of organizations members. Nevertheless, this formal definition of the international bodies tells us nothing about the weight they actually carry or about how they are used. The members sections of MSF have made a minimum investment in MSFInternational, for fear of seeing it become a body that robs them of their autonomy or paralyzes decision-making by seeking consensus. Similarly, while coordination is provided for by MDM regarding emergency aid missions through an international exploratory mission, each delegation 869 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y is then free to set up its own program, even at the risk of foreseeable redundancy in the case of emergencies given special attention by the media. Above all, the international secretariat of MDM, which does not have separate legal status, is based on the premises of MDM-France and is still perceived, though much less than in the beginning, as an expression of the latter. As for ACF, the council of presidents has not met for seven years. It is striking that the methods of coordination and control within these internationalized NGOs seem to show only limited confidence in the collegial bodies of international coordination. Furthermore, the methods used within the network vary from one organization to another, between the degree to which: the parent section holds influence, the practices that combine across-the-board coordination and a policy of fait accompli that takes other sections into account, the claim to accept common principles is in fact a reality, and certain techniques that would not be out of place in a business entity are utilized. First of all, however, styles of ‘charters’, concerned with references to value, and of ‘contracts’ with ‘partners’, concerned with the more strictly financial dimension, are mobilized to designate the relationship between sections. Cross-invoicing of expenses between sections, ties between national sections based on by operating contracts and common implementation of strategies44 are examples of coordinated intervention. That these associations refer so frequently to their charters is due to that fact that these charters contain so few constraints, for they proclaim general principles of neutrality and the universal nature of aid, which define their sense of belonging to a single organization more than regulating their practices. They can, if necessary, be used to justify exclusions or attempts to reassert control, which does not ensure that such attempts are successful. Another traditional form of regulation or even control by the founding section is exercised by the board of directors or the management of foreign entities, which sometimes have by-laws guaranteeing the right of the presidents of the parent organization or the international section to sit on their boards. These types of control are obviously much stronger in the case of organizations assigned mainly to fund-raising than in the case of operational entities.45 Thus, Jean-Hervé Bradol, the president of MSF-France, is a member of the board of directors of MSF-United States. Even when the associative side of the organization is made up of nationals,46 the nationality of salaried staff is also an indicator of control or of the legitimacy retained by the parent section. Thus, the executive director of MSF-UK since 2001 is French, a member of MSF since 1995. For a long time, the director of ACF-United States was Jean-François Vidal, also French, a salaried employee called back to Paris at the peak of the conflict between ACF-France and ACF-United States by Jean-Luc 870 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S Bodin, director of ACF-France, who then took over the direction of both the Paris and New York sections. Even putting aside nationality and control through payment of salaries, it would suffice to track the associative itinerary of those occupying occupy positions in the international bodies of these NGOs to reveal a sizeable proportion of former volunteers from the parent company, accustomed from experience to its practices and expertise. The example of ACF-France, which manifested the clearest determination to control its sister sections, nevertheless shows that putting French salaried staff at the head of the US section does not guarantee that the latter will take orders. Furthermore, through successive votes to enlarge their boards of directors, these administrations have every chance of becoming autonomous. In the face of this phenomenon, MSF and MDM have adopted two quite different methods of coordination and control. The MSF approach can be characterized by the very limited authority granted to the international section, and informal, ad hoc coordination, which is held to be one of the marks of the lack of bureaucracy at MSF. One might be tempted, if the expression were not hackneyed, to evoke it ‘the power of weak ties’ (Granovetter, 1973) to account for the way MSF has clearly retained its capacity to respond and innovate through the highly flexible use of its label. Thus, as soon as sections have the capability to invest in common projects and manifest a desire to do so, it does not matter if some of their counterparts do not wish to follow suit: MSF-Germany was opposed to the project of a research laboratory for medicinal products for neglected illnesses, developed by MSF within the scope of its campaign in favor of access to essential medicines, which did not prevent other sections from investing in it. Thus, ‘coordination’ implies avoiding, as far as possible, taking positions that can cause harm to the sister sections. Yet, because this principle is only feebly respected, managing the label results, above all, in differentiating the organization as quickly as possible from a sister section when its behavior is viewed as reprehensible, or when that behavior could end up calling one’s own section or even the entire movement into question. From this standpoint, it is easy to understand the handling of the case of MSF-Greece. It was important for the other sections of MSF to demarcate them from the latter by declaring it ‘excluded from the MSF movement’. MSF-Greece was deprived of access to the shared resources of the network, although it retained its own funding and its name. While MSF-Greece disappeared from the reports of the association and the international website msf.org, which no longer lists it among the national MSF sections, no attempt was made to withdraw47 the use of the MSF name from the still active Greek section, and indeed, the ‘banished’ section is now trying to make a timid return to the fold. 871 Table 1 Notes founding dates of entities operating today1 (in bold) and representative entities of MSF, MDM, ACF and HI 1971 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 Founded in France de Founded in France – MSF-Belgium – MSF-Switzerland Founded in France Founded in France 872 – Artsen zonder Grenzen (the Netherlands) 1985 1986 – American Friends of AICF – MSF -Luxembourg2 -Medicos Sin -Fronteras (Spain) 1987 1990 – ŴIATPOI X PI YNOPA (Greece)4 – Doctors without Borders USA HI Belgium – Doctors of the World (United States) – Médicos del Mundo (Spain) – Giatri tou Kosmou (Greece) R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y HI Budget: about 40 m ACF Network MDM Missions in about 88 MSF Missions in about 85–90 countries, 2,500 volunteers, total countries, 1,200 volunteers, total euros in 2000, missions budget: 75 m euros in 2000 in about 40 countries budget 55 m euros in 2001 budget 322 m euros in 2000 1992 1993 873 1994 1995 1996 1997 – MSF-International – MSF-Canada – Aicf USA – Læger uden Grænser (Denmark) – Ärzte ohne Grenzen (Germany) – Medici Senza Frontiere (Italy) – Läkare Utan Gränser (Sweden) – MSF-Hong Kong – MSF-UK – MSF-Australia – Ärzte ohne Grenzen (Austria) – MSF-United Arab Emirates5 – Medici del Mondo (Italy) – HI-USA –Giatri tou Kosmou (Cyprus) – Läkare i Världen (Sweden) – Leger Uten Grenser (Norway) – Accion Contra el Hambre (Spain) – Action Against Hunger (UK) – HI-Switzerland – Dokters van de Wereld (the Netherlands) – HI-Luxembourg Continued on next page S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S 1991 Table 1 Notes founding dates of entities operating today1 (in bold) and representative entities of MSF, MDM, ACF and HI (Continued) HI Budget: about 40 m ACF Network MDM Missions in about 88 MSF Missions in about 85–90 countries, 2,500 volunteers, total countries, 1,200 volunteers, total euros in 2000, missions budget: 75 m euros in 2000 in about 40 countries budget 55 m euros in 2001 budget 322 m euros in 2000 1998 1999 874 2000 2001 2002 1 Some – Medicos del Mundo (Argentina) – MDMSwitzerland – MDM-UK – MDM-Belgium – MDM-Canada – Médicos do Mundo (Portugal) – Ärzte der Welt (Germany) – MDM-Japan – MDM-Mexico ? – HI-Denmark (or 98) – HI-Germany – HI-UK6 (two new sections are under preparation in Canada and in Italy) sections did not carry out field operations when they were founded, but later on were given the capacity and authorization to do so. 2 MSF-Luxembourg carries out joint actions with Belgium. It does not exactly have operational status, although it cannot be reduced to a representative office. 3 Date of the foundation of the Belgian branch, then in 1992 the foundation of HIB with autonomous status. 4 MSF-Greece still exists under this name and still carries out missions, but following what was considered its unilateral support for the Serbs during the intervention of NATO forces in Kosovo, it did not appear in MSF documents as taking part in the movement until 2004, before reappearing in 2005. 5 This entity is presented in a slightly different way from the other sections: it is the only one to be described by MSF as an ‘office’, and contrary to the other partner sections of MSF-France (Japan, United States, Australia), it has a majority of French directors on its board of directors. 6 The British office was founded in 1999, but HI-UK was not recognized as a charity until 2000. R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y 1998 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S This aspect introduces a final component which is more characteristic of other associations: the question of control over brand identity. Indeed, one of the main tools that make it possible to regulate the ties among these NGOs in the case of a serious disagreement remains the use of commercial rights by controlling the trademark, here again, usually by the French association. It is no doubt in this instance that the economic metaphor of the ‘parent company’ is most justified. Very often, commercial rights protecting international trademarks still remain the only real weapon in the case of a serious conflict, as long as the associations took the trouble to establish them in the beginning. Médecins du Monde distinguished itself in this regard from its counterparts, owing to the fact that when Bernard Kouchner left Médecins Sans Frontières, he immediately registered the Médecins du Monde as an international trademark. In contrast, Action Contre la Faim registered its trademark only in France, which explains why Accion Contra el Hambre now has the resources to ensure its autonomy. Thus, when MDM decided to separate from its Polish section in the 1980s because the latter refused to engage in combating AIDS by distributing condoms, the association was entitled to suppress the brand.48 Ultimately, brand ownership remains the means by which the parent section can set itself up as the authorized depository of a special responsibility for the association. In 1998, the leaders of HI-France strove, in their opposition to HI-Belgium, to separate the legal conflict over brand ownership from the operational side, emphasizing that even if it were to make matters worse, the only viable way to avoid the ‘Balkanisation’ of the movement lay in brand ownership. Thus, two very different formal channels can be used to regulate the relationship between network entities: a deliberative channel that lays down the principle of equal voting for all the delegations or operational sections and a channel of regulation through the right to contracts and licenses, in which the parent organization temporarily transfers the trademark license, which in itself cannot be transferred by the license-holder, and through which the parent organization can even oppose a decision agreed upon between delegations and operational sections. Thus, perversely, representatives of ‘civil society’, held to be antithetical to economic actors, thus regulate some of their relationships through the use of the same instruments multinational corporations use, just as when confronted by the same problems as moneymaking companies, they were led to adopt some of their practices. CONCLUSION When all is said and done, it would seem that by observing the internationalization of these NGOs, we are better able to specify what is globalized as well as how and why when we talk about ‘globalization’. In any case, from the standpoint of values, to speak of a ‘globalized’ NGO is only convincing 875 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y if we exclude most of the planet from a process that federates Europeans above all, followed by North Americans, Australians and the Japanese. The patterns of internationalization adopted by these NGOs are not solely, and sometimes not at all, modeled on an idealized order of a ‘global civil society’. Rather, they border on being a coalescence of various fragments of national civil societies. However, nothing prevents us from considering these NGOs as driven by imperatives of resource accumulation that transform their scope of action, through a process in which the forms have a certain kinship with those of economic globalization as described today. It is important, however, to exercise caution in referring to economic imperatives that may put constraints on organizations that are not centered on profit. It is no way a question of superimposing a model of the multinational firm on other organizations by reducing the motivations of the actors of these NGOs to motivations identical to those of company heads. The many similarities, both empirical and semantic (label, parent-company) may make the analogy tempting, especially as private organizations have a number of points in common at the international level (Ronit and Schneider, 2000: 5). But highlighting the economic dimensions of a process does not mean reducing it to the economic sphere. Economic imperatives are never ‘disembedded’ from the social world, as Max Weber reminded us in showing that the expansion of business in the United States required confidence that was built up by membership in Protestant sects. The parallel does, however, allow us to qualify the theses that emphasize transcending the state and the novelty of the phenomenon. The first point is that it is undoubtedly not so new, even though the flows of personnel, funding and the opportunities resulting from increasingly dense multinational relationships have intensified. But internationalization as a fund-raising strategy between competing actors, regardless of its unintended effects, is not a new phenomenon, although it is easier today: Caritas became internationalized in the 1920s to avoid leaving the international sphere in the hands of the Red Cross, and the internationalization of Anglo-Saxon humanitarian organizations preceded what is described today as economic globalization. Indeed, far from predicting the transcending of states, the internationalization of NGOs is still highly structured by states. The choice of sponsors in terms of the allocation of public funds creates occasions that encourage the internationalization of humanitarian NGOs. The populations of the various countries have differing attitudes towards donating to aid organizations. Thus, it is indeed because national compartmentalization exists that ‘economic’ and ‘associative’ actors can hedge their bets according to the differences between states (Merle, 1985), in what one might well describe as the international division of labor of NGOs. 876 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S NOTES 1 ‘The globalization of the NGO sector is now too prominent and fast paced to be ignored. Yet the growing multinational sector appears to be a seriously understudied topic’ (Lindenberg, Bryant, 2001: 5) 2 Lindenberg and Bryant indicate the same process when they refer to the ‘journey that many of these Northern organizations are making – due to external forces as well as deliberately – to become more multinational as part of a process of globalization of the non-profit sector. There is extensive debate today about the meaning and impact of ‘globalization’; we use the term to mean the increasing spread of NGO governance structures, resource acquisition, information sharing, staff, and service delivery across national boundaries. The globalization of Northern NGO relief and development service providers often involves a transition from their export of relief to their broader multinational governance, staff, information flows, resource acquisition, and service delivery’ [Lindenberg, Bryant, 2001: 7–8]. I use the term ‘internationalization of NGOs’ to avoid confusing the internationalization of NGOs with globalization as a general phenomenon. 3 Thus, as we read in one association document that: ‘To fulfil its vocation, Médecins du Monde is expanding on an international scale in order to: contribute to universalising the values of humanitarian medicine, in keeping with our ethic of responsibility, integrate a multicultural dimension into its approach to the world to cope more effectively with humanitarian realities and, in particular, to compare the approach of the countries of the North with those of the South, consolidate the area of international citizenship created by its very existence, and foster the emergence of a civil society on a planetary scale, increase tenfold and extend its capacity to provide care for the most vulnerable populations in situations of crisis and exclusion throughout the world, particularly by seeing to it that we work more closely to them, widen the field and reach of testimonies of infringements and violations of human rights, and especially to denounce impediments to treatment access.’ (Document presenting the MDM’s project, 2002). 4 For a critique of the notion of international civil society, see the report in Critique Internationale directed by B. Pouligny (2001). 5 Smillie insists on the corporate dimension of this process: ‘To compare wellrespected private-aide agencies with transnational corporations will be regarded by some as heresy, but there are many real similarities between the two entities – in corporate behaviour and global ambition, and in the exercise of trust and control’ (Smillie, 1996: 97). 6 Indeed, it is as if only multinational corporations could be viewed from a political economy approach and considered as economic actors. Furthermore, this view often misses the fact that MNCs are also the locus of social life and the transformation of values, because the economy is inherently embedded in society. 7 Such a caricature can be seen in the emphasis of these material dimensions with the sole aim of criticizing NGOs for political reasons. See for instance Clifford, Bob, ‘Merchants of Morality’, Foreign Policy, 129, March–April 2002, p. 36–45. and the mission of the NGO Watch initiative, launched at the instigation of two conservative organizations, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. 8 The French term sans-frontiérisme can be translated by ‘no-borderism’ and designates the ideology of these NGOs that for a long time claimed to give more 877 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y 9 10 11 12 13 14 importance to victims than to respect for the sovereignty of states, such as in the case of aid to Afghans in the face of the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. Due to its very idiomatic character, we have chosen to keep it in French. ’Main’ from the standpoint of the budget, public visibility and the number of employees and missions. In 2001, MSF-France claimed to have a budget of 90 million euros and MDM-France 41 million, HI-France and ACF-France claimed 35 million and 49 million euros in 2000, respectively. The internationalization of French humanitarian NGOs during the 1980s and 1990s took place late in comparison with major Anglo-Saxon organizations, or with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) set up in 1863, followed by the development of the International Red Cross Movement and the Red Crescent. The British organization Oxfam, now one of the largest international humanitarian organizations, founded in Oxford by Quakers in 1942, developed its Canadian branch in the mid-1960s, before expanding to Europe, Japan and Australia. World Vision, the American evangelical organization, launched a Canadian branch, which then financed an Australian entity, which in turn financed its New Zealand branch. The expansion of CARE was no less considerable: its fund-raising branch, founded in Toronto in the early 1940s, collected 74 million Canadian dollars in 1994. The directors of Save the Children, the British organization established in 1919, followed the same strategy in the period between the First and Second World Wars. These figures are taken from Smillie (1996: 97–98). See also the indispensable book by Lindenberg and Bryant (2001). And which, in a few extreme cases, are not given associative status but that of subsidiaries, when certain organizations choose to develop for-profit organizations and control their trademarks. But we should keep in mind that there is no equivalent for subsidiaries under association law: the notion refers to commercial law, and setting up a subsidiary, which is possible for an NGO, exposes it to criticism for adopting “corporate” behaviour. The rules governing international bodies can, by the way, provide for a distinction between these two types of entities: thus, Article 2 of the internal regulations of the international MDM network dedicated to delegations provides that “a National Delegation belonging to MDM-International is an association recognised by the law of its country, which is non-profit and non-commercial. it is based on the unpaid, voluntary commitment of the majority of its members”, whereas Article 1 of the appendix to the Internal Regulations accepted by the national delegations of MDM at the International Committee meeting in Stockholm in June 1997 and modified by the International Committee meeting in Delphi in November 1997, provides that a representative office of Médecins du Monde “is a body without associative activity, which reports directly to the Delegation of Médecins du Monde that generated it”. However, the offices of MDM, all assigned to France with the exception of the Mexican office that was assigned to Spain for a while, can lead internal missions in their countries. The creation of these organizations also reflects the search for autonomy on the part of their founders, some of whom preferred to be the leaders of a national section rather than merely executives of the parent section, which seems to have been the case, in particular, of the founder of MSF-Belgium, Philippe Laurent. The foundation of which was regretted by many members of MSF, who were put before a fait accompli, just as MSF-Luxembourg and HI-Luxembourg were created without authorisation from the French association in the case of MSF– L (at the initiative of MSF-Belgium). The ‘anarchic’ development of these sections was sometimes due to the fact that not all the headquarters had registered 878 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 their trademarks and logos in France and abroad, as it was a costly procedure and at the beginning, these organizations did not yet possess the legal skill and entrepreneurial spirit that were to characterise them later on. Moreover, as we shall see, legal protection of the brand also makes it possible to guard against flagrant fraud – but not necessarily to obtain the closing of a section that claimed to adhere to the same values. ’The challenge of globalization presents an inescapable reality. No organization interested in relief and development can be successful alone. The scale of the problems is too large; the issues are too overwhelming, and the structural pressure too debilitating. For organizations committed to the ideal of genuinely global human improvement and mutual obligation, the imperative to develop global approaches is unavoidable’ (Lindenberg and Bryant, 2001: 152). French NGOs competing among themselves as well as with Anglo-Saxon NGOS which were internationalized earlier, which they encountered in the field where they discovered their power for action. Given the scale of prestige of humanitarian tasks, which valued above all action in the field bringing relief to victims, the bureaucratic assignment of structuring sections abroad was, by contrast, difficult to entrust to humanitarian volunteers or unpaid staff. It is no doubt much more, taking into account the fact that the overall budget of MSF alone is more than 320 m. Even if, Table 1shows, for a number of countries of intervention at the worldwide level (about 90) equivalent to MSF, the budget of the international network of MDM is five times lower, with twelve delegations (compared with five operational sections at MSF) sharing out these interventions, two-thirds of which are overseen by MDM-France. The SCHR drafted the code of conduct signed by nearly 150 NGOs in the North and South. A European network of more than 80 humanitarian aid NGOs working in the areas of emergency aid, rehabilitation aid and catastrophe prevention. It also includes the other French NGOs mentioned (MDM, ACF, HI) and national sections of Save the Children, Oxfam and Caritas. International Council of Voluntary Agencies. The members of MSF range from the far left to the moderate right, but the organization displays a strong sensibility favourable to the private sector and an entrepreneurial ethos. Behind the foundation of MDM-Argentina, the only case in the networks of these four organizations of an entity ‘in the South’. A recent MSF entity in Brazil appeared, with few indications, on MSF’s web site in 2005. It seems to be mainly focused around the work of a representative of MSF in the Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, a topic on which Brazil represents a strategic country. In 1999 MSF-received 93m ff from MSF-USA. In an August 2002 interview with the author. Belgium has considerable weight within it: ‘With a total budget of 44,776,086 Euros in 1999, the NGO along represents 25% of the total budget 156 NGOs in Belgium’ (Stangherlin, 2001). MSF-Belgium has considerable weight within the EU: ‘With a total budget of 44,776,086 Euros in 1999, the NGO along represents 25% of the total budget 156 NGOs in Belgium’ (Stangherlin, 2001). MDM-France received considerable attention from the French television media on this occasion, and in the ebbing of private donations following 879 R E V I E W O F I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 the end of the crisis in Kosovo was a harsh blow from a financial standpoint. Interview with author August 2002. More precisely, there are as many forms of status as there are international organizations, creating an ad hoc NGO status recognised by them. The mechanism that comes closest to an international status for international NGOs is Agreement 124 of the Council of Europe, which was ratified after the internationalization of the NGOs in question here. Belonging to this framework would have meant dissolving the associations and recasting them afterwards in this new form. Interview with the author in June of 1999. In this respect, the European Union plays a highly structuring role concerning the representation of interests on its territory, particularly as regards NGOs. Thus, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) saw its influence gradually grow and its national branches multiply, and it succeeded in finding new EU sources of financing since the opening of a new branch in Brussels in 1989 (Long, 1995). It should be recalled that the NGOs we are discussing, especially MDM and MSF, insist on the fact that the large portion of private financing guarantees their independence. It is evident that we are not extending to the international level an observation that has long been made concerning parties or other organizations that, even within a single country, are also competing associations. This is apart from the fact that, due to several factors (particularly law that is guaranteed by force far more than international law), national areas enable stronger control and in any case more immediate use of these organizations. Thus, in the case of a split, the leader of a party will rather quickly succeed in prohibiting those that leave the organization from using its resources, or even merely its name and the advantages that go with it, more quickly than a humanitarian organization in relation to a dissident foreign entity retaining the name and the capital of recognition connected with it. For convenience, we will use this “indigenous” term, which, for a network entity, expresses the fact of attaining a status that authorises it to carry out international missions. To which is added, in the case of MDM, its ‘Declaration of Krakow’. On this question, see Laroche (1994). Missions can be more or less profitable, depending first on the portion of administrative expenses that the sponsor of public funding will tolerate, secondly, the size of the overall budget allocated to a mission (which makes it possible to replace equipment, etc.) and finally, the media attention given to a crisis and the amount of private funds they generate in the process. The imperative of intervention is then often the argument ‘we can’t not be there’. Which in no way means that the duty of acting as witnesses is systematically performed. It could be used by one section to avoid putting teams in the field in danger by making a public denunciation. But the French feel that warning the other sections of a témoignage is sufficient, provided they are given time to leave the country before any retaliation . . . which gives them the task of assessing the risk but no possibility of eliminating it. That is what is shown, for example by Pascal Dauvin (2004) regarding the production of the MSF France report on Kosovo, even though MSF-B, -F and H were operational at the time in Kosovo: there was no international decision by MSF but rather a “coup” by the French. 880 S I M E A N T: T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L I Z AT I O N O F F R E N C H N G O S 43 Action Contre la Faim registered its trademark only in France, whereas the Accion Contra el Hambre trademark was registered in Spain. 44 HI tried particularly to find an original model between centralisation and competition. 45 Often considerably supported and controlled at the beginning but with its autonomy gradually developed by the parent section, especially in the case of MDM. 46 Who may, in any case, have ties to the parent section, particularly after having been former volunteers of it: the executive director of MSF-United States is thus a Swiss who used to belong to MSF-France. 47 That would, by the way, have been very difficult from a legal standpoint, inasmuch as MSF-Greece consistently maintained it adhered to the MSF charter and was made up of doctors. 48 An international trial did not ensue, however, and MDM-Poland ceased to exist under that name by mutual consent. 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