ABSTRACT
In the field of international development cooperation, there are strong academic and policy calls to ‘shift the power’ from civil society organizations from the Global North to those from the Global South and to build equitable partnerships with enhanced local ownership and Southern-led programming. However, the continuing debate on partnerships seems to suggest that (unequal) power relations are remarkably resilient. This chapter proposes a framework of enablers and constraints that explains change (or lack thereof) in partnerships. Considering that smaller, voluntary development organizations may be particularly suitable for developing equal partnerships because of their people-to-people approach, the chapter applies this framework to the relationships between Dutch private development initiatives (PDIs) and their Southern counterparts in Uganda and India. In contrast to the expectation that personal relations facilitate the building of equal partnerships, the findings indicate that PDIs’ personal character and collaboration with local organizations hinder a shift of power from North to South, appearing to reinforce the other impediments described in the analytical framework. While these findings shed a sobering light on the potential to ‘shift the power’, this research also indicates that formal rules of engagement might unexpectedly be an important accelerator of change.
