NGOs management and the value of ‘partnerships’ for equality in international development: What’s in a name?
研究揭示了国际发展领域“伙伴关系”话语的修辞与现实脱节，在乌干达的实证表明这种关系实际复制了不平等，并提出了政治化的理论解释。
‘Partnership’ is a buzzword for agents delivering policy solutions, funding and implementation strategies for effective international development. We call such an ensemble of policies and practices the ‘partnership discourse’. We explore the value of the term ‘partnership’ in international development with an empirical focus on the African context and issues of equality in relations between international and national non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are routinely characterized as partnerships. The results of our research in Uganda indicate that a hiatus exists between the rhetoric and reality of such partnerships. Partnerships on the ground reproduce relations of inequality characterized by subordination and oppression. The retroductive explanation we offer for such an emergent picture is to recast partnerships not as neutral management tools, but as political processes actualized in a terrain that is contested and uneven. Our theoretical contribution is to develop a political theorization of inter-organizational relations that allows us to explore the social consequences, specifically on inequality, associated with the partnership discourse. Our substantive contribution is to elaborate the value of the term ‘partnership’ in the international development domain. Its value is to smooth over antagonism and co-opt dissent by proposing a solution to effective development that is both ethically and managerially good.