RevUE of Alexandra Ana’s Book Talk by Alexandre Cimetiere

« The NGOization of Social Movements in Neoliberal Times », march 20, 2025 with Alexandra Ana (Université de Montréal), Pascale Dufour (université de Montréal), Nora Nagels (Université du Québec à Montréal) and Danielle Coenga-Oliveira (Université de Montréal).

“The NGO-isation of politics threatens to turn resistance into courteous, reasonable, paid work, limited to 35 hours a week. With a few bonuses on top. True resistance has real costs. And no salary,” declared Arundhati Roy in a 2004 speech, quoted by Alexandra Ana, author of the book presented today. In her work, Ana explores, in her own way, debates already well developed in the scholarly literature on social movements, LGBTQIA+ communities, and feminist groups, analyzing the phenomenon of NGO-isation affecting them since the 1980s. This ambitious dissertation, at the intersection of two countries with very different histories—Romania and Belgium—invites us to study the topic through a multidisciplinary lens, from the sociology of organizations to historical institutionalism and comparative politics.

Alexandra Ana gives the example of the consolidation of institutional feminism, as states were pushed to create gender equality agencies, allowing activists to engage in official politics and influence public policy. These transformations have drawn much criticism, with the process often seen as co-optation and the result of institutional and market logics. In this book, Alexandra Ana seeks to understand the processes of NGO-isation, bureaucratisation, institutionalisation, precarisation, and co-optation. To this end, she conducted a comparative study between Romania and French-speaking Belgium, organizing interviews and fieldwork that inform her analysis and are central to her dissertation.

On one hand, Alexandra Ana explains that the return of mass mobilizations (Argentina in 2015, Poland in 2016, MeToo in 2017) challenged this demobilisation. On the other hand, we have witnessed the consolidation of anti-gender campaigns (“La Manif pour tous” in France, bans on gender studies in Romania and Poland, bans on sex education, etc.): some speak of a selective closure of civil society space. The author thus invites us to rethink the notion of co-optation in social movements.

Nora Nagels, professor of development and international politics specializing in gender equality objectives in social policy in Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Costa Rica), found Ana’s approach very original. Indeed, access to international funding was the driving force behind the NGO-isation of certain feminist movements in Peru and Bolivia. Nora Nagels thus highlights the transnational nature of a process visible “in both the Global North and South.” She congratulates Alexandra Ana for remaining “close to historical institutionalism and attentive to the agency of actors and the structures that frame them.” She concludes by emphasizing the central role of professionalisation on this topic (creation of master’s programs in gender/feminist studies; development of the profession of gender expert in Romania).

“Community groups have gained political and financial autonomy from the state,” noted Pascale Dufour, professor of political science and specialist in social movements and collective action. This debate remains questionable when it comes to financial autonomy, according to Danielle Coenga Oliveira. Pascale Dufour concluded with an interesting comparison with Quebec, where the institutionalisation of social movements does not necessarily mean deradicalisation, particularly in the postsecondary education sector.

Alexandre Cimetière.