Article by Sarah Bush and Jennifer Hadden: “The 1990s were a golden age for nongovernmental organizations. It was a time when well-known groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Oxfam grew their budgets and expanded their global reach. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of international NGOs—not-for-profit groups that are largely independent from government and work in multiple countries in pursuit of the public good—increased by 42 percent. Thousands of organizations were founded. Many of these organizations championed liberal causes, such as LGBTQ rights and gun control. Conservative groups emerged, too, with rival policy agendas.
As their numbers grew, NGOs became important political players. Newly minted organizations changed state policies. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a coalition of NGOs formed in 1992, successfully pushed for the adoption of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention in 1997—an effort that won it the Nobel Peace Prize. Transparency International, a Berlin-based NGO established in 1993, raised the profile of corruption issues through its advocacy, building momentum toward the adoption of the UN Convention Against Corruption in 2003. Future UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights that “the twenty-first century will be an era of NGOs.” In an influential 1997 essay in Foreign Affairs, Jessica Mathews argued that the end of the Cold War brought with it a “power shift”: global civil society, often formalized as NGOs, was wresting authority and influence from states. More and more often, Mathews contended, NGOs were taking over responsibilities for the delivery of development and humanitarian assistance, pushing governments around during international negotiations, and setting the policy agenda on issues such as environmental protection and human rights.
Today, however, the picture looks remarkably different…(More)”.