Over the past decades, the aid industry has increasingly converged around the view that democracy and “good governance” matter for development. Accordingly, donors often fund local nongovernmental organizations in the “global south” to promote and support democratization. Thousands of such NGOs worldwide are now educating voters, demanding accountability, reviewing legislation, combating corruption, strengthening the role of the media and advocating for more democratic and inclusive political, social and economic systems.
Many of these organizations do excellent work. (My personal favorite is Transparency International Georgia, a watchdog organization that excels on all fronts: watching, barking and biting.) The successes of such effective groups are widely discussed within the aid industry, and they are the only type of local NGO that citizens and taxpayers in donor nations ever get to hear about.
In contrast, the majority of pro-democracy groups fly completely under the public radar. Even in the countries where they work, only foreign donor officials and aid industry employees are familiar with their names. Local journalists don’t even know they exist. Decision-makers ignore them. And ordinary citizens couldn’t care less about what they do.