ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have mapped the geographic choices of international NGOs and explained why those choices are made the way they are. This chapter assesses the potential academic and policy implications of these findings. It also discusses to what extent the determinants of cross-national geographic choices of international NGOs identified in this research can explain some of their other geographic choices. This concluding chapter is more evaluative than scientific and ought to be read as such. This research focused on five potential determinants of the geographic
choices of international NGOs: poverty and governance levels in recipient countries, back-donor preferences, concentration and NGO-specific missions. Based on the results of Probit regression, it has been found that, in 73 per cent of the cases, the five determinants combined correctly predict whether an international NGO will be active in a recipient country or not. This suggests that they cannot account for all geographic choices of NGOs, but can certainly help to explain the majority of them. The Introduction and Chapter 2 referred to some other factors that could have an impact, such as the local security situation and the strength of the local civil society, but these were not analysed systematically in this research. This chapter discusses the implications of these research findings. It
focuses on four of the five potential determinants of geographic choices; findings on the fifth determinant, the NGO-specific mission, will not be discussed in depth since they were unsurprising and have few practical implications. There is one implication, however, that merits attention. The research found that it cannot be assumed that international NGOs, if given the choice, will allocate their resources equally among poor nations. Unlike governments, non-profit organizations do not have to provide transparent justifications for their selection of target groups and hence can exercise much more discretion in selecting target groups based on certain, for instance geographic, characteristics (Lipsky and Smith 1990). This has an impact on the equity of the distribution of international NGO aid. The research found, for example, that international NGOs with a Christian background invested significantly more in countries where the majority of the population is Christian and that organizations were much more
home country. will equitably spread among poor countries, as the relatively limited presence of international NGOs in the Middle East and Francophone Africa exemplifies.
