The Decline and Fall of NGOs
‘Civil society’ looked like the future when the Cold War ended. It doesn’t anymore.
Aug. 4, 2025
An article in Foreign Affairs, the leading voice of what remains of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment, was stark and, for some, terrifying. “The End of the Age of NGOs?” the headline asked, and the subhead brought the bad news: “How Civil Society Lost Its Post-Cold War Power.”
Authors Sarah Bush and Jennifer Hadden put their fingers on one of the most important international developments of our time. After the Cold War, human-rights, development and democracy promotion-groups, nominally private but often funded by Western governments, gained prominence and clout around the world.
These NGOs—nongovernmental organizations—and their supporters see themselves as representing “civil society,” a phrase often conflated with society as a whole that in practice means the consensus of upper-middle-class liberal opinion. Amnesty International is a pillar of civil society. The National Rifle Association isn’t.
Groups like Human Rights Watch, the Global Fund for Women, Greenpeace and Oxfam raise money primarily in rich countries to fund, among other things, efforts to change policies, provide legal services and build political movements in poor countries to support their goals. Many NGOs are funded by government grants and often provide services ranging from disaster relief and medical assistance to support for democracy campaigners against the host government.
In the 1990s, when the U.S. was a unipolar superpower and many thought history had ended, NGOs seemed to be sweeping the world. Autocrats everywhere trembled at the prospect of “color revolutions,” civil-society-led upheavals that challenged dictators from Myanmar to Ukraine. The example of Poland, where the Solidarity movement, with help from the West, broke communist power and helped bring down the Warsaw Pact, resonated globally. Chinese Communists saw how democracy movements ended dictatorships in Taiwan and South Korea and worried that the contagion could spread. The arc of history was bending toward justice, and NGOs were making it happen.
That isn’t how things look today. Instead of Russia and China worrying about liberal infiltration from the West, Western governments worry about subversion and propaganda inspired by Moscow and Beijing. Freedom House notes that 2024 was the 19th consecutive year in which the world became less free. Meanwhile, a combination of budgetary constraints and political backlash is reducing Western support for NGO-backed priorities around the world.
What went wrong?
Ms. Bush and Ms. Hadden identify a mix of causes. As NGOs gained power and prominence, they proliferated and competed for resources. They became identified with controversial political positions. There were charges of sexual exploitation in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo, damaging the reputations of organizations like Oxfam Great Britain and raising doubts about the whole sector. Polling across 28 countries by the Edelman Trust Barometer found that respondents viewed business as almost as ethical as NGOs and much more competent.
Simultaneously, the authors note, changes in international politics were creating a more hostile climate for wannabe arc benders. As antidemocratic great powers like China and Russia worked to counter the influence of pro-Western NGOs, governments in countries like Turkey, India, Indonesia and Mexico acted to limit the ability of outsiders to fund political activity on their territory. Citing political scientist Suparna Chaudhry, Ms. Bush and Ms. Hadden write that more than 130 countries worldwide have adopted various restrictions on the activities of international and foreign-funded NGOs.
Countries aren’t always foolish or evil to do so. Many so-called NGOs are largely state-funded. The National Endowment for Democracy is primarily funded by the American government. The International Planned Parenthood Federation is funded for the most part by donor governments. Even when NGOs are funded by Western foundations and billionaires, it’s unclear why governments should allow random foreign actors, however wise and well-intentioned the donors may think they are, to intervene in their societies without oversight or control.
Looking back on it all, the belief that NGOs were shaping a new, post-Westphalian world reflected the illusions of America’s liberal establishment after the fall of the Soviet Union. America was supreme in the world, and upper-middle-class liberals largely controlled American media and government institutions.
Both trends have reversed. American power is contested globally, and upper-middle-class-liberals, challenged both by Trumpian populism on the right and radical socialist and identity politics on the left, are less politically powerful and intellectually coherent than they were. The result is that the NGOs reflecting the priorities and aspirations of the liberal establishment are in disorderly retreat across a darkening world.
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Appeared in the August 5, 2025, print edition as 'The Decline and Fall of NGOs'.
Walter Russell Mead is the Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal and the Alexander Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft with the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida.
He is also a member of Aspen Institute Italy and board member of Aspenia. Before joining Hudson, Mr. Mead was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations as the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy. He has authored numerous books, including the widely-recognized Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). Mr. Mead’s most recent book is entitled The Arc of A Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People.