Between Clients and Bureaucrats: an Ambivalent Position of NGOs in the Social Inclusion Agenda in Czech Statutory Cities
Abstract
This paper examines the changing landscape of policy work conducted by NGOs with respect to the social inclusion agenda. Based on qualitative case studies of integration policies of Czech statutory cities, it is focused particularly on the role of institutionalized NGOs and informal activist groups in the subnational policy work and ways to deal with both policy bureaucrats and local citizens.
Particularly, the paper intends to answer following questions: In what way might NGOs at this level be considered to have expertise and how their expertise is being constructed? Czech institutionalized NGOs generally do not have a broad membership base; hence their legitimacy does not result from active membership. Rather they need to seek for different sources of legitimacy.
Indeed, the access to and use of expertise and professionalization is of crucial importance. We explore the sources and methods NGOs use to identify, formulate and advocate their positions toward local policy makers and public bureaucrats and citizens who are both strategic partners to push their policies and objects of their critique or empathy.
We will discuss the differences between the character of policy work employed in formal and informal processes of influencing public policies and the differences between strategies and accounts used by institutionalized both nationwide and local NGOs as well as informal activists groups.