The 1990s were a golden age for nongovernmental organizations. It was a time when well-known groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Oxfam grew their budgets and expanded their global reach. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of international NGOs—not-for-profit groups that are largely independent from government and work in multiple countries in pursuit of the public good—increased by 42 percent. Thousands of organizations were founded. Many of these organizations championed liberal causes, such as LGBTQ rights and gun control. Conservative groups emerged, too, with rival policy agendas.

As their numbers grew, NGOs became important political players. Newly minted organizations changed state policies. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a coalition of NGOs formed in 1992, successfully pushed for the adoption of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention in 1997—an effort that won it the Nobel Peace Prize. Transparency International, a Berlin-based NGO established in 1993, raised the profile of corruption issues through its advocacy, building momentum toward the adoption of the UN Convention Against Corruption in 2003. Future UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights that “the twenty-first century will be an era of NGOs.” In an influential 1997 essay in Foreign Affairs, Jessica Mathews argued that the end of the Cold War brought with it a “power shift”: global civil society, often formalized as NGOs, was wresting authority and influence from states. More and more often, Mathews contended, NGOs were taking over responsibilities for the delivery of development and humanitarian assistance, pushing governments around during international negotiations, and setting the policy agenda on issues such as environmental protection and human rights.

Today, however, the picture looks remarkably different. The population of international NGOs has stagnated: between 2010 and 2020, their numbers grew by less than five percent. Over the past two decades, public skepticism about the virtues and advantages of NGOs has deepened, governments have honed strategies to undermine NGO activities, and many of the revenue streams that keep NGOs operational—such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which officially closed this week—have begun to dry up. Overall, the NGO sector has less political opportunity and capacity than it once had. And in many cases, NGOs have not just lost power relative to previous decades. States have clawed that power back. The result is an end to the era of NGOs—a great loss for the people who have relied on these organizations’ services, and a boon to autocratic governments that have seen their advocacy as a threat.

Our research over the past ten years has documented changes in the international NGO sector. In addition to collecting information from organizational directories and tax records to study trends in NGO founding, closures, and budgets, we spoke with senior staff from many different types of organizations—by fielding a large-scale survey, holding focus groups, and conducting qualitative interviews—to gather the perspectives of those that work in this sector.

What we found was a stark transformation. When NGOs first rose to prominence as international actors, their commitment to principled activity and their nonprofit character distinguished them from governments and private companies. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, for instance, earned plaudits for protecting vulnerable individuals and promoting stricter international standards for human rights. NGOs also gained legitimacy because they provided important input to global governance, channeling the voices of citizens and interests that otherwise were not well represented in international institutions. Those working within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, for example, brought perspectives from environmentalists and communities affected by climate change to high-level negotiations. Recognizing the value of such guidance, international organizations expanded NGOs’ access significantly. The services NGOs provided directly to communities, moreover, brought them into closer cooperation with national governments. From the 1990s onward, governments increasingly relied on NGOs such as CARE International and Mercy Corps to deliver foreign aid. In this optimistic time, the rise of NGOs was seen by many as a chance for organized civil society to make the world a better place, providing better service delivery and influencing progressive policy change on the environment, human rights, and arms control.

By the early years of the twenty-first century, however, criticism of NGOs was mounting. Skeptics on both the right and the left raised questions about NGOs’ effectiveness, accountability, and extensive political influence. Some NGOs made attempts at reform. They created transparency initiatives to share more information about their finances and decision-making processes. In the 2010s, many groups began to reorganize operations through localization initiatives, which were meant to devolve decision-making and spending power to partners in developing countries. But that has not stopped world leaders—including in Western countries that were key to NGOs’ initial growth—from making vehement........

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