Local NGOs in national development: The case of East Timor

assess and reassess the context in which they were operating, and to adjust their
strategies and relationships to match. While they felt that donors tended to focus their
concerns on reporting and financial accountability, the NGOs were struggling to make
their community based programs work, undertake effective advocacy, manage constant
organisational change, build the capacities of their staff and volunteers to undertake
everything from basic administration to conflict resolution, proposal writing and high
level lobbying, and generate funding to sustain their activities. They used relationships
and networks, ‘accompaniment’, and learning from each other and the community to
build their capacities.
The final chapter turns to reflect on these findings in light of experiences elsewhere and
theories about NGOs and civil society in development, democracy and peacebuilding.
It demonstrates how the detail of the case studies contributes to established theory by
suggesting that civil society and development practice, which has been strongly based
on de Tocqueville’s approach to civil society, is not particularly helpful in a postconflict
setting. Instead, an adapted Gramscian approach, viewing civil and political
society as interrelated sites in which a struggle to embed non-violent means of
apportioning power is being waged, could be of greater analytic and practical value.
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