Elites today are faced with a series of seemingly unsolvable problems. Chief amongst these is how they will establish any sort of moral basis for their rule, given the absence of any hope for basic increases in living standards or any other kinds of material achievements, or any positive political programmes across the developed world. Even the avoidance of nuclear war can no longer be taken for granted. The traditional political actors in Western democratic politics – notably political parties – have largely vacated the ground of political struggle; what initially seemed a propitious development for elites, who felt themselves relieved of the burden of democratic accountability, has now turned rather sour, as the complete dysfunction of contemporary politics becomes a problem that can no longer be ignored. The most striking example of this is the German government’s orchestration of protests against the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in order to distract from the failure of the entire political class. Parties, evidently, are now largely if not completely unable to mobilize the citizenry, as voting remains low and citizen disengagement high across the continent.
The traditional political actors in Western democratic politics – notably political parties – have largely vacated the ground of political struggle.
As Peter Mair describes it, a “void” has emerged where once representative politics functioned: political participation – centrally through party membership and voting – no longer connects the state to the people. In the European context, the solution to this void proposed (and successfully executed) by elites has largely fallen under the rubric of “European integration”. That is, the older legitimation mechanisms of political accountability of representatives to the citizenry have been replaced by a dense network of policy, diplomatic, and lobbying relations between the elites of different nations. This is the political role of the European Union (EU).
Despite its partisans’ deepest wishes, the EU alone is not sufficient to legitimate a decaying European political system; other methods for justifying palpably unsuccessful political classes across the continent are in high demand. In this context, we can see that the stage is set for a new model of post-democratic politics to emerge – one built on the ideology of environmentalism and the institution of the non-governmental organisation (NGO).
The older legitimation mechanisms of political accountability of representatives to the citizenry have been replaced by a dense network of policy, diplomatic, and lobbying relations between the elites of different nations.
Over and above the attempt to delegitimize dissent through overheated denunciations of “misinformation” or “disinformation”, it has for some time seemed increasingly likely that environmentalism will be the main tool that elites use to discipline and control populations in the void. As Malcom Kyeyune and Philip Pilkington analyze, “climate change” is at the core of contemporary legitimation efforts by ruling classes across the globe, already driving significant economic and political decisions while also providing an ideological core that unites the planet’s “knowledge workers”. Environmentalism docks nicely into other forms of moral minoritarianism and anti-humanism that look above all to discredit the decision-making capacities of the masses.
If environmentalism – what Mary Harrington has called the “Omnicause” of contemporary politics – is the content that fills the void where representative democracy once sat, the vehicle for the delivery of the new politics will be the NGO. Staffed by operators from the professional managerial class (PMC), NGOs are poised to take the privileged role once afforded to the party: that of the core actors in modern politics.
The stage is set for a new model of post-democratic politics to emerge – one built on the ideology of environmentalism and the institution of the non-governmental organisation (NGO).
Although the term “NGO” describes a very wide range of types and sizes of organisation, with a heterogeneous set of goals, from the perspective of democratic politics, the NGO has two features of particular interest. First, it is based on a trustee rather than a delegate model of representation. While the political party (at least formally) is based on a delegate entering the political process as a representative of the collective will of his or her constituents, the trustee suffers no such restriction. The trustee, that is, instead answers to the higher authority of his own judgement and his individual moral conscience; there is no necessary link between the political will of the represented and the representative in a trustee model of representation. Second, the NGO offers what we might call a constrained model of participation. Leaning on the importance of voice and deliberation, the NGO attempts to empower beneficiaries to participate in the political process – or constructs a city on an explicitly “participatory” basis while emptying out that “participation” of any meaningful content. In a manner reminiscent of a Nathan Fielder show, a lot of work is put into constructing the appearance of a spontaneous reality that does not exist. Political decision-making, in other words, is evoked, but stage-managed in such a way that any binding decision-making remains absent.
There is no necessary link between the political will of the represented and the representative in a trustee model of representation.
In these ways, NGOism is able to appear to reproduce the older democratic categories of representation and participation at the same time that it makes both impossible. The ultimate justification of the NGO model of trustee-based representation and pseudo-participation, we can note, lies in the distinction between the expert judgement of the NGO operator (inevitably a member of the PMC) and the vulnerable subject of the beneficiary (usually described as “marginalised” or “disadvantaged” rather than in class terms). The vulnerable subject at the heart of environmentalism is also at the core of the NGO-humanitarian approach to politics. The first premise of contemporary politics becomes to protect the vulnerable at all costs.
The vulnerable subject at the heart of environmentalism is also at the core of the NGO-humanitarian approach to politics. The first premise of contemporary politics becomes to protect the vulnerable at all costs.
As the collapse of traditional modes of representative politics continues, we may come to see the true NGOization of advanced industrial societies. This would be an NGOization (as the term was originally deployed) referring not just to the actions of international NGOs (INGOs) in influencing the political trajectories of developing economies overseas, but a deeper contribution of NGOs to the transformation of domestic politics, and even of the whole social psychology and self-awareness of entire societies. Indeed, if “NGOization” today more commonly refers to the professionalization and bureaucratization of social movements, inevitably under the leadership of the PMC, today the term names not just the co-optation of Arab or Latin American women’s movements, or the channelling of humanitarian aid to Jeep-driving INGO bureaucrats in Africa or India, but rather a wholesale shift in the character of politics in the West. NGOization, it seems, has come home from the periphery to the core.
NGOization has come home from the periphery to the core.
The political stakes of this advancing NGOization are high. Specifically, we can suggest that the NGO is the cell form of PMC society: the playing-out of politics through the competition between NGOs, rather than through political battle between political parties, is the structure of a society more and more reorganised around the interests and contradictory class position of the PMC. This might sound like a bleak future indeed. However, one particular feature of the class position of the PMC renders the NGOization of society an unstable development in progress: the tendency for this class to undermine its own bases of cultural and political authority. This is shown clearly in PMC-led attacks on its own cultural institutions, from Polish art galleries to the very foundation of colonial capitalism; in each case the cultural traditions and values that grant the PMC their privileged position are attacked by ambitious members of the PMC in the hope of individual advancement. Given the intense competition among individual members of the PMC, this tension between the imperatives for individual advancement and the interests of the PMC as a group is likely to continue to drive forward an uneven but growing NGOization of the West.
