What Are INGOS?

The term "Non-Governmental Organization" was popularized by the United Nations Charter (Chapter 10, Article 71), which gives a consultative role to organizations that are not part of the structure of government. An International NGO was broadly defined by the UN Economic and Social Commission (ECOSOC) as "any international organization that is not founded by an international treaty." During the several decades following the establishment of the United Nations Organization in 1945, and especially since the end of the Cold War, International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), typically headquartered in the developed countries of Europe and North America, have become major players in the global system, engaging in such activities as relief, service delivery, development, and advocacy.

As Robert Keohane, a recent President of the American Political Science Association notes: "In the last decade of the twentieth century, the number of international NGOs (INGOs) grew from 6000 to 26,000." Today, the number is estimated to be about 46,000. These INGOs have come to fill societal gaps and failures and to do what governments were once expected to do: assure literacy; attend to nutritional needs and public health; provide for sustainable development; build roads; protect the environment; assure the rights of children and women, as well as support the more general human rights, political rights, civil rights, and social rights throughout the world.

INGOs take advantage of newly rescaled supra-national spaces, in arguing for new forms of international regulation proceduralism and reflexive governance modes and in developing multilayered networks of transnational advocacy. The latter are networks of transnational voluntarism, ideationally based on causes, principles and norms. Some INGOs and multinational corporations (MNCs) Ð like NIKE, Reebok and Mattel -- have voluntarily agreed upon codes of conduct regarding labor standards and social performance audits for their subcontractors in lesser developed countries. These voluntary code authorities provide baseline self-regulation and disciplined self-monitoring Ð more like early 20th century protocolism regarding labor practices and wage scales than 1930s corporatist compulsory code setting (as in the National Recovery Act Codes in the US).

INGOs range in size from a thousand or so to five million members. Some influence agenda-setting and lobby inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. Some have been involved in negotiations over global climate change, others in treaties on chemical weapons and landmines. In pushing for voluntary standard-setting proceduralism, INGOs, IGOs and private financial firms like MoodyÕs and Standard & PoorÕs often work together to develop protocols, conventions and rules not necessarily existent in private law. Furthermore, governments often turn to INGOs when they fear that national legislation or IGO rule-setting could take too long to respond to dynamic needs for technical standards regarding Internet operability/inter-operability generated by the ever-accelerating practices of globalized capitalism.

INGOS are thus involved in

• providing benefit to people who are not necessarily its members;
• providing technical training and retraining;
• empowering people through local socioeconomic development projects;
• constituting transnational advocacy networks;
• educating diverse publics;
• lobbying for policy change; and
• monitoring international/ transnational agreements.