ABSTRACT
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have enjoyed a phenomenally rapid rise on the world scene. Those who resist the assertion of NGO power are perhaps most resistant to their participation in formal international decisionmaking. The accountability card often conflates two types of accountability: internal and external. Internal accountability confronts the agency problem of representation of memberships by a necessarily limited numbers of leaders. External accountability addresses the responsiveness of organizations to larger systems of which they are a part. NGOs are perhaps more appropriately compared to corporations for accountability purposes. In the corporate context, shareholders play the role of NGO members; shareholders may control the corporation as a formal matter, but as a practical one, they are often powerless to control directors and management. Accountability and agency problems are central to corporate law, but are confronted as a challenge amenable to at least incremental amelioration.
