NGO Politics and Insurgency: Examining Institutional Structures and Change Processes of NGO Influence

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have evolved from simpler organizational forms providing focused relief and services to complex organizations in contemporary times. Making sense of this new complexity requires an analytical framework equal to the complex environments and difficult challenges facing NGOs. In this chapter, we advocate a model of stakeholder politics and insurgency developed from institutional theorizing in organization analysis, extensive studies of social movements in political sociology, and grid-group cultural theory in social anthropology. The framework we advance includes a multi-layered model of institutional structure, includiI!g a persistent configuration of institutional logics underlying all social formations, and specific mechanisms for social change relevant for each layer of social structure. We illustrate the utility of our model by considering the lessons for NGOs that can be gleaned from prior empirical studies of comparative policy analysis. Our aspiration is that NGOs can apply our framework, developed from a rich tradition of social and administrative sciences, to strengthen civil society\u27s influence on institutional development