French NGOs in the Global Era: Professionalization 'Without Borders'?

This article asks whether French NGOs have fallen into line with the wider trend towards professionalization that has marked the Northern nonprofit sector, most notably Anglo-American NGOs, over the last two decades or so. It shows how French NGOs, particularly those engaged in longer term development work, were characterized by militancy over the early post-colonial decades. It then demonstrates how, over the global era, the French state has encouraged developmental NGOs (NGDOs) to undertake bureaucratic forms of professionalization. Next, it looks at how these organizations have, in response, adapted their staffing, structures, and procedures, whilst stopping short of overly standardized forms of development. Finally, it shows how French NGDOs have, in eschewing “technical professionalism”, been acting in line with resource dependence theory and responding to the demands of their critical resource, which is not the French state but the donor public and their grassroots supporters