NGOs and the Bureaucracy: A Collaboration in Search of a Framework

Abstract

The article discusses the role and position of non-government organizations (NGOs) after the 1986 EDSA Uprising, when a government with popular support replaced an autocratic government. It explores the following issues: whether NGOs need to play the same active role in organizing and conscienticizing the poor, the powerless, and the oppressed, as they did when they were hostile to the government; whether there could now be a responsible collaboration between the Philippine administrative system and the NGOs; if so, what would be the rational basis for such collaboration; and, what would be the nature, form, and limits of such a collaboration? The article concludes by stating that while initiatives by the new, democratic government opened new opportunities for NGOs to collaborate with the government bureaucracy toward the positive development of the state and its constituents, the further evolution of a constructive relationship between government and NGOs is endangered by a growing perception among the latter that the government lacks the sincerity and political will to carry out reforms.