For today’s discussion, I would like to share with you the relationships between NGOs in Italy and the government. The EU government highly influences the relationships between NGOs and the private sector in Italy. NGOs cooperate with the government closely, as the government sees a valuable source of reasonable criticism and driver for change (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights [FRA], 2017). Even though more than 85% of NGOs in Italy report the private sector being the central source of financing, the government provides direct and indirect funding to NGOs. Up to 34% of all funding to NGOs in the region comes from contracts with public entities or from direct donations from the government (FRA, 2017).
The relationships between the NGO sector and the government developed similarly in Italy and the United States. The first NGOs in Italy emerged as helping entities that helped the government to address issues associated with the social problems in the country (Nothias, 2016). However, in the early 1900s, NGOs became one of the central critics of the government sector, which helped the voices of ordinary people be heard (Nothias, 2016). In the late 1900s and the early 2000s, the role of NGOs in Italy evolved from being rivals of the government to becoming the central allies in addressing social issues in the country, which is similar to the history of NGOs in the US (Nothias, 2016). However, there are significant barriers to cooperation between NGOs and the Italian government. In particular, NGOs are guided by different ministries depending on the situation, which may have a differing vision of the role of NGOs and utilize different governing principles. Thus, a clear and simple paradigm of communication between NGOs and the government is needed to overcome the problem.
The question about the relationships between NGOs and the government is, “do you think that having a designated ministry that communicates with all NGOs would solve the problem described in my post?”
References
European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. (2017). Standing and operational space of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in contributing to respecting and promoting fundamental rights in EU Member States. Web.
Nothias, J.-C. (2016). NGOs: A long and turbulent history. Web.