Description
Civil society organizations (CSOs), including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), are important actors to international development and peacebuilding efforts, frequently involved in democratization processes in post-conflict settings. The literature on CSOs in authoritarian states underlines the restrictive environment CSOs face and the strategies they develop in return to counter these restrictions. Less discussed are the trajectories that lead to this polarization, especially in the context of the relationship between internationally funded CSOs and NGOs, and ‘institutionally weak’ post-conflict and post-colonial states. Drawing from the history of Burundi after the 1993 civil war, this paper discusses how the relationship between CSOs, NGOs and the government in Burundi has been intertwined through cycles of façade cooperation, cooptation and repression. It paints a more complex picture of the co-constitutive relationship between these sets of actors, in a context where development and peacebuilding projects have served to drive economic and symbolic competition. The paper explores whether popular perceptions of CSOs as instruments for resource capture have helped legitimize the restriction of their work as well as the rise of parallel government-backed CSOs.
