4 - NGOs and Advocacy

Summary

This chapter uses a single case study – the NGO response to calls for a new imternational economic order (NIEO) – to analyse the mechanics of the global justice movement in the 1970s and the future it created for non-governmental aid. This NIEO ‘imaginary’ had a long history, rooted in the ethical consumerism of the anti-slavery movement, nineteenth century consumer ‘buycotts’, and the rise of alternative trading organisations in the aftermath of the Second World War. But it was also the product of the very specific ideological environment from which the NGO sector emerged. As this chapter shows, the debate surrounding the NIEO produced a conflict between welfarists and economic liberals about the kind of world they wished to build. Along the way, however, it also revealed much about the moral foundations on which non-governmental aid was constructed: its hierarchical nature, its politics and its ideological base. The chapter ends with a reflection on the NGO sector that this commitment to fair trade made. Put simply, it rooted its success in a commitment to reform rather than revolution – and an approach that was fundamentally incompatible with the radicalisation of aid.