Governmentality, Foreign Aid and Russian NGOs

Abstract

During the 1990s, agencies of foreign assistance spent millions of dollars in grants to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in an effort to promote civil society in Russia. This article examines the discourse and practices behind these efforts, using Michel Foucault Os notion of governmentality as a mode of analysis. First, an analysis of the discourses surrounding civil society strategy demonstrates how it complements a neoliberal paradigm that privileges the market over the state as the site of economic development. Second, it examines how the civil society project in Russia has sought to build a cadre of NGO professionals modeled after their counterparts in the West. Finally, it argues how local activists respond to such pressures, such that the final result inevitably differs from the goals the assistance agencies set out to achieve.