Negotiating for Autonomy: How Humanitarian INGOs Resisted Donors During the Syrian Refugee Response

More autonomous humanitarian international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) have greater capacity to determine who receives aid among conflict- and crisis-affected populations than their donor-following counterparts. The latter are more likely to become instruments of states seeking geostrategic influence in places like Syria and Ukraine. Drawing on more than 120 interviews with INGO and donor agency workers, 10 months of political ethnography among INGOs working with refugees in Lebanon and Jordan after the war in Syria, and content analysis of organizational documents, this article investigates the ways that INGOs secure autonomy from donors. In a theory-building exercise, it introduces the concept of negotiation experience to explain why some INGOs develop skills and strategies that allow them to resist donor demands. It also identifies some of the tactics used by experienced negotiators to do so. The findings have implications for who controls and is accountable for humanitarian policy and practice, as well as the abilities of state donors to influence humanitarian behavior. They call into question expectations that INGOs “scramble” for funds under conditions of funding scarcity.