Commentary: Donor Networks and NGOs: A Strategic Response Model

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12870
• Author: Lamia Moubayed Bissat
• Date: 01 January 2018

Donor Networks and NGOs: A Strategic Response Model 137

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 1, pp. 137–138. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12870.

Lamia Moubayed Bissat heads

the Institut des Finances Basil Fuleihan,

a Lebanese civil service learning center

specializing in public financial management

and governance. She also provides expert

consultation for the World Bank.

E-mail: lamiam@finance.gov.lb

Commentary

K haldoun AbouAssi and Mary Tschirhart

deserve considerable credit for developing

the strategic response model in their article

“Organizational Response to Changing Demands:

Predicting Behavior in Donor Networks.” In a

simple yet straightforward framework, they assert

that funding recipients respond to changes in donor

priorities through exit, voice, adjustment, or loyalty .

The choice of response depends on the degree of

the recipient ’ s financial dependence on and well-

established relations with the donor. The tenets of the

strategic response model resonate with our experience

managing externally funded projects for public

institutions in pursuit of cooperation agreements with

donors. In a way, the strategic response model tells us

what we have always sensed—that our responses often

reflected the donor ’ s financial commitment and the

depth of their relationship with us.

The authors quite reasonably chose to focus on

nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Lebanon

in building their case. In a context in which

environmental concerns are increasingly paramount,

how do NGOs concerned with environmental policy

and preservation react to downscaling or changes in

priorities? The article may usefully inspire further

steps, taking into account the fact that NGOs

and government institutions are and will become

increasingly intertwined as partners, acting not only

as donors but also as recipients as progress is made

toward sustainable development goals. Such research

might ask whether the strategic response model

applies to government agencies, which are often

granted special autonomous status while remaining

funded primarily or in part by their governments.

In light of an administrative and regulatory context

in which exit is an impossible option and loyalty is

stipulated by law, are public institutions and agencies

able to solely adapt or voice their disagreement, and

what are the implications of such a context for the

model altogether?

As practitioners, we often make decisions pertaining

to adjusting or reviewing cooperation arrangements.

The strategic response model works well to illuminate

the constraints that require our exit from cooperation

agreements with donors with whom the relation is

weak, or at least the voicing of our objections to shifts

in the agendas of partners with whom we maintain

strong and historical ties. Network ties, however,

matter little in our reaction to changes in the priority

areas of our main funding source, that is, our “mother

administration,” where the only viable option is

loyalty and, subsequently, adjustment. In fragile states,

where government institutions attempt to streamline

policies across the civil service, loyalty to the mother

administration inevitably impacts relationships with

external donors. It acts as an independent variable

with already-established partners and molds the

response to changes in the priorities of external

donors, as national policy priorities take precedence

and may conflict with the agendas of external donors.

In this case, the strategic response model may not

fully account for the existence of national priorities

as an independent variable directly impacting and

conditioning the response of public entities to changes

in the priorities of external donors.

AbouAssi and Tschirhart have built a strong

foundation for work on the next big question in this

regard: whether the strategic response model predicts

our own responses to central governments, or whether,

in the absence of the exit response and the imperative

for adjustment rather than voice, the model can be

applied to situations in which weak ties and strong

dependence on financial resources prevail, often in

challenging and fragile contexts. We also need to

find ways of assessing how our relationship with our

“mother institution” will model our relationship with

other donors, as well as how national policies impact

our response to external donors and decisions to either

follow through, adjust, or sever ties. Expanding the

model to see how changes in national policies impact

Lamia Moubayed Bissat

Institut des Finances Basil Fuleihan , Lebanon

Donor Networks and NGOs: A Strategic Response Model