Redefining the Public/private Mix: NGOs and the Emergency Social Investment Fund in Ecuador

Resumen

Abstract Over the past decade, the World Bank has pressed its borrowers to include NGOs in ‘partnerships’ that range from shared design and implementation of projects, to substantive negotiation over development policy. What explains the domestic political outcome of these transnational partnership efforts? This chapter examines the case of the negotiation over Ecuador's Social Investment Fund to include substantial NGO participation and finds that these new ‘partnerships’ between NGOs and the state failed in their first iteration. Presidential concerns over patronage blocked the construction of new working relations between NGOs and the state. Yet, the initial failure was followed by reflection and renewed collaboration. Political change resulted from a process of socialization around new sets of norms regarding civil society's participation in social policy as they became embedded in new, often informal, institutions. The impact of this socialization on democracy in Ecuador is still an open question.