See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/349629001

Civil Society Associations vs. So-called Non-governmental Organisations

Article · January 2020

DOI: 10.24307/psz.2020.1213

CITATIONS READS

0 83

1 author:

Csaba Varga
Pázmány Péter Catholic University
38 PUBLICATIONS 51 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Csaba Varga on 09 March 2021.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Civic Review, Vol. 16, Special Issue, 2020, xx–xx, DOI:

Csaba Varga

Civil Society Associations vs.

So-called Non-governmental
Organisations

Summary
Domestic language use makes a distinction between organisations established on the
basis of the internal needs and initiatives of civil society, and non-governmental or-
ganisations, the latter understood as formations created and operated as local agents
of international networks, from foreigners’ intent and funding. Although their pres-
ence in the world is nothing new, the current large volume of such organisations is
the product of globalism and the pursuit of global control is the cause of their wide
spread, extent and network-like set-up and operation. The one-way direction from the
starting point of the influence towards the target areas evokes the situations of classi-
cal colonisation, although using the soft and hybrid tools adapted to our era. For this
reason, as new forms of foreign intrusion and intervention, they should necessarily
deserve the national security attention and approach that was once evoked by the for-
mer forms, regardless of how this can be achieved in today’s legal situation. However,
the lack of distinction and the inherent conceptual ambiguity already a priori show the
intention to hide the genuine features of the latter.

Keywords: civil association, NGO, network, global control, undermining govern-

ments, destabilisation

Dr Varga Csaba DSc, philosopher of law, research professor emeritus, Institute for
Legal Studies founded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, professor emeritus,
Pázmány Péter Catholic University Faculty of Law ([email protected]).

198
 Civic Review · Vol. 16, Special Issue, 2020

In a state, the population – population, people, nation, civil society, including minori-
ties as part of them – is always given. By comparison, political party representation is
always random – even if it feeds on nothing but its population’s present, past and fu-
ture aspirations, while its composition and diversity are given by its structure, formed
from many strands in the field of daily events, tensions and solutions.
After the fall of the dictatorship that settled on the country after a nearly half-centu-
ry-long military occupation, the dominant political directions in our region added up,
so to speak, in a logical order. According to its main features, this is how the intention
of a radical break, on the one hand, and possible preservation, on the other, developed.
With the end of the role of the former superpower, the direction of the radical break
with the previous regime was further divided according to what would serve as a focus
or compass in rebuilding Hungary: the country’s more or less taunted and interrupted
internal own tradition and national interest, which wanted to survive and we wished to
vitalise, or the unconditional connection to the external foreign force and world of val-
ues, and alleged community of interests (in which we absolutely believed at that time),
embodied in the former official enemy of our former occupier. Obviously, these possi-
bilities did not manifest clearly at that time, and has not ever since. They in themselves
do not constitute more than a mere logical potential, and moreover, the fact of our
belonging to the West and its awareness, often questioned by our enemies, has been
the minimum of domestic aspirations for centuries. After all, politics is not only the art
of the possible, but also the need for the wisest compromises possible. This means that
any direction rarely appears in a pure or exclusive form, and most often these direc-
tions overlap to a greater or lesser extent and in one way or another.

C iv il s ociety a nd it s o rg a n isat io n s

Well, in the case of normal development, a civil society functions uninterrupted, grad-
ually giving way (stimulating momentums, and at the same time setting directions
and giving impulses, depending on social desirability and support) to party political
formations that attempt to implement civil society desiderata as a state action, parlia-
mentary or governmental, majority or minority forums, according to the outcomes of
elections, and then are further shaped at the discretion of the latter.
The essential relationship, however, is throughout the message that unfolds from the
depths of the ancient empirical wisdom of ubi societas, ibi ius: the first and final reality, and
the medium to be served, is society itself, including the human being, endowed with the
dignity of imago Dei; while compared to this, the state is nothing more than a historically
developed – and, in our experience, increasingly formalised and institutionalised – tool.
However, the collapse of the dictatorship forced on Hungary by foreign powers,
which was a collapse triggered by the exhaustion of freely available resources rather
than a fall due to conscious overthrowing factors, i.e. certain people’s merits, inevita-
bly dictated a path different from the above pattern. Because the activities of the al-
ready emerging party-like formations hastened and steered it, and in its current stage
and condition, it expressed the collapse of the dictatorship, much before civil society

199
Csaba Varga: Civil Society Associations vs. So-called Non-governmental Organisations

itself could be revived in its visible size, extent and in possession of reserves, and could
be organised into its own forms.
The consequences – which were, of course, met by the intelligentsia’s betrayal
(Benda, 1927), practically inevitably repeated at every historical turning point, which
rightly earned the distrust of the rest of society – have so far been given: civil society
actually has not come into existence.1 And what was created in its place is – nolens,
volens – was a Hungary, which seemed to be covered by already established political
parties, or in other words, this civility was created as a background, a society divided by
party politics, or rather more, activated by these established parties. After all, both the
possible directions and the directions to be followed have already been determined
by these political parties and behind them by the press, acting in their service and by
background comprising academic and university intellectuals, who mostly also play a
servile role. In this way, non-governmental organisations were compelled to adopt
some kind of correlation (or sometimes outright alignment) in their commitment to
values as well as in the aftermath of daily political scores (not accidentally seen as
apocalyptic with regard to the nation’s fate).
Given the dangers threatening the future, naturally, and this must be emphasised,
whatever has been achieved on a national level should not be underestimated. Yet,
it is not yet a civil society in the classical sense of the word. Rather, it is a necessary
product of the given antecedents, which, however, were – or perhaps have been – far
from the optimum.
For this reason, it is a self-evident consequence that even our most widely perceived
national affairs (from the chances of our survival as Hungarians to our educational pri-
orities, to our healthcare system, to the international recognition of our scientific and
artistic achievements or to our tourism organisation, in other words, in any specialised
matter) could only be perpended and formulated in such a polarised fission. A claim
made by one of us may immediately be accompanied by denial from another. More­
over, in many areas, not even the germ of often the slightest consensus can unfold,
because it is no longer the logic of co-operation in a civil society that prevails here,
but competition between the parties. However, we do have ​fundamental national inte­
rests, national issues, and among them matters to be discussed on a professional basis
and yet are social issues, which our entire society is directly interested in discussing
and resolving as far as possible. And, of course, there is a long line of actually partial
and professional matters anyone can naturally make a contribution to when they are
conceptualised and considered, but as these provide the civil society foundations of
government policies, they can best be articulated with direct professionalism by the
professions concerned. After all, one of the key national issues is that we should con-
sider as such is that even if they are competing alternatives, the individual occupations
and professions should at last formulate the optimum future visions of their own field.
I believe that the most influential step in the realisation and in the creation of a civ-
il society was taken not so long ago by the movement of so-called civil circles.2 I hope
that it will sufficiently develop, in which case it would have a good chance to play not
only a socially integrating but also a socially fulfilling and maturing role in local and

200
 Civic Review · Vol. 16, Special Issue, 2020

professional implementations, genuinely based on civil society. It can be part of any

kind of self-organisation, as anyone can participate in it, enhancing and broadening
its impact. On the other hand, of course, the party-politicum, and thus governmen-
tal action, can also promote the flourishing of a genuine civil society in Hungary in
full. In our attunement to resistance to the state – which has so far been recognised
as mainstream, and which was generated most markedly by the Constitutional Court
of the first decade, treated as the a priori privileged and pampered child of our re-
fashioned state just to grow from a servant to an insolent despot, when it absolutised
the individual’s rights and protection against the state, as (being one-time dry-as-dust
geeks with a mostly professorial background) they thought that the opportunities of
the state should be intractably restricted and controlled with suspicion (i.e. it should
be treated almost as an adversary, Varga, 1995; 2008; 2013, pp. 73–215) – we usually
belittle the expertise of the incumbent governments, despite the fact that they are the
most generous buyers of knowledge and simultaneously, they are in possession of the
most substantial knowledge through their specialisations.
Well, it is where civil society self-organisation is most encouraged, where this is made
available to the public throughout the national knowledge base. In other words, where
materials ordered or produced for any national (political or professional) cause are
made available with a dedicated library/publisher background.3 Because although the
basic units of social self-organisation and the institutional system of the state Moloch
are separated from each other in responsibility, competence and procedure, they are
united into a unified, ultimate functional community to exchange information and
impulses with each other, encouraging or weakening a possible suggestion. Of course,
part of this is that the state, with its own means, supports multifaceted and multidirec-
tional social self-development, and thus especially, civil society self-organisation.

The so- c a lled non- gover n me n t o rg a n isat io n s

In my understanding, the so-called NGOs [non-governmental organisations], encour-

aged from abroad and financed in part or in full from abroad, completely differ from
the above image of civil society (see, for example, Hann and Dunn, 1996). If their le-
gal regulation happens to be the same as the previous ones, it can hardly be anything
else than a case of either a conceptual generalisation that turns out to be erroneous,
or a case of conceptual indistinguishability according to a legal criterion.4 However,
the former is not necessarily the case, but, as described below, the resulting situation
is nevertheless down right purposeful, while the latter simply does not exist. For exam-
ple, Hungarian language also sharply distinguishes civil society organisation from the
so-called NGO. Moreover, as a term, the latter did not emerge in England, Western
Europe or the United States, which are rich in civil society organisations and historical
roles, but only as a technical concept, actually as a classification category in the United
Nations Charter (1945), and as an umbrella term for the external institutions which
may be contacted by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations under
the authority of the latter document.5

201
Csaba Varga: Civil Society Associations vs. So-called Non-governmental Organisations

The most certain common point in the literature and scientific and theoretical
processing of this mass of institutions, now officially called NGOs, which are mostly
gigantic organisations, is that they consider the name for their subject-matters uncer-
tain and ambiguous, and even the actual subject itself non-defined and downright
impossible to define. The outburst claiming that “non-governmental organisations”
is, as a term, actually misleading is not ungrounded.6 However, it immediately turns
out that this does not come by mere coincidence, some stupid misunderstanding or
an erroneous procedure, as “The term NGO is used deliberately to create an illusion
of innocent philanthropic activity” (O'Connor, 2012). In the games played by the
great powers, when it comes to a sufficiently overwhelming interest – because of a
serious territory occupation and/or profit-making opportunity – it is not uncommon
for politics, finance and business, and the so-called science and press, in other words,
the genuine forces that ultimately dominate society, to take completely co-ordinated
action, and, moreover, with intelligence support, with the naturalness as if a combina-
tion of coincidences precluded any other alternative. And its predator nature – the
literature calls it neocomprador imperialism, if it is mentioned at all (e.g. Petras and
Veltmeyer, 2001; Hours, 2002)7 – is striking exactly in the alleged model democra-
cies of the Western European and Atlantic world.8 For in the present case, too, the
name is not simply a matter of consciousness, but of the hiding of the real nature of
something in the different nature of something else, and with this, the deliberate
and purposeful falsification of both. “Actually, NGOs do not represent civil society;
they represent interest groups of varying size and often with quite specific agendas.
Nevertheless, donors, scholars and international institutions have developed a habit
of treating NGOs as if they were civil society” (Holmén and Jirström, 2009, p. 441).
And indeed, this mass of phenomena, as the so-called “third sector” between the
state and the market, has now generated a huge body of literature, which itself is al-
most embarrassed by the mass and diversity of formations and the actions arising from
them, and still manoeuvres in its material (definition, the separation of activities, the
characterisation of social weight, etc.) so that the reader does not encounter any sin-
gle adjective or statement that would be relevant to the subject of this study (typically
such as e.g. Salamon et al., 2003).
After all, the phenomenon is not new; what may be new is at most its legal rep-
resentation or, more precisely, the concealment of its essence in a consciously used
form. Its driving force was the same as that of colonisation once, and of any extension
of power and conquest since the beginning of the world. It is no coincidence that a
leading politician directly affected by its influence exemplified, “If we replace the
term ‘civilising role’ with ‘democratisation’, then we can transpose practically word
for word what the newspapers were writing 100 years ago to today’s world” (Putin,
2006). Because already at that time this was process was, and has been ever since then,
so to speak, one-way, calibrated from the centre of great powers to the peripheries,
as “systematic asymmetry” has existed and remains unchanged between the pathways
(Steinberg and Wertman, 2018, p. 3): from Western Europe and North America, the
ever-expanding and radiating impact to all parts of the world has since intensified,

202
 Civic Review · Vol. 16, Special Issue, 2020

while the vector sum, at most, in reverse order within itself, has changed to North
America and Western Europe.9 The impression of being an outsider, and thus the feel-
ing of having non-native interest, is therefore not accidental: “The question is would
you rather live in a world controlled by outside interests and forces over which you
have little if any input or control, or in a world controlled, at least to some extent, by
local considerations (Sam [VA] commented (July 18) on Steinberger, 2018)
Civil society organisations pop up in masses, because the conditions of our time
are favourable for their establishment. But NGOs are also created in characteristically
excessively high numbers as seemingly mixed phalansteries mingling in the masses of
the former, because their loose, sporadic, yet complementary and reinforcing set-like
nature and their organisation into real, although not directly perceptible networks
best serve the background purpose. It is no coincidence, then, that today’s NGOs, as
“heirs of the missionaries”, have expanded indefinitely, and are capable of penetrating
anywhere with ulterior motives. By a less literary, but more faithful mirror translation,
we right away come to a much tougher characterisation, because, according to the
same author, by “missionary penetration [...] [t]oday's NGOs are elephantine, serpen-
tine, and Byzantine” (Roelofs, 2006).10 In short: well-organised networks covering all
the targeted parts of the world (for the concept, see e.g. Ward et al., 2011; Lazer, 2011),
which work exactly like covert agencies. As at first glance they are both organisation-
ally uniform and yet not; but their co-ordination can be accurately read from their
functioning, their funding reveals their being foreign agents, and both of the previous
suggest their hierarchy, which breaks down its intended globalisation into destinations;
in summary, therefore, their substantial grounding by the foreign funding centres ac-
cording to their targeting, and the extent of their local deployment mainly dependent
on this funding – and their comparatively surprisingly low, so to speak, sporadic and
marginal local support. Therefore, ultimately, their own identity is nothing more than
“foreign agents threatening sovereignty and national identity” (Steinberg and Wert-
man, 2018, p. 8). at least as far as their fear of this very accusation and their rhetoric,
which promises transparency against this accusation, and as a possible antidote.
This explains why the other, inherently harmless, and even downright positive-
sounding features of NGOs are, upon rethinking their own purposes, significant, as no
matter how “coherent, targeted and co-ordinated activity” (Századvég, 2020) charac­
terises them, they serve, for the most part, as local agents of mostly internationalised
networks, and the essential precondition for the latter, i.e. embedding in a given place,
is the exploitation of the opportunities arising locally,11 in other words, the creation of
local variants with the involvement of those in possession of local knowledge.
Because – in today’s typical occurrences – these are primarily initiatives aimed at
mobilising some kind of dormant civil engagement not from within, but merely the
means of intrusion from abroad and the influence of foreign interests. An analysis,
not born of Hungarian antagonism, but made of the phenomenon of this worldwide
organisation capitalising on today’s globality, establishes that these are, in fact “Trojan
horses: designed to appear as gifts, but containing secret trap doors through which
hidden forces can enter the country and covertly undermine the governments” (Cor-

203
Csaba Varga: Civil Society Associations vs. So-called Non-governmental Organisations

bett, 2015). And if they are intended for an underlying purpose, they are already op-
erated by the professionalism of the initiates as a specific closed society – despite the
fact that the banners of this closed society (as we have experienced in the Bolshevik
practice of propaganda terminology),12 as well as the university sciences taught by
them in Hungary, carry the manifesto of the open society. All of this in itself explains
why it is lawful for them that “NGOs often have weak grassroots contacts and […] they
are neither democratic nor as transparent as one would like them to be” (Holmén
and Jirström, 2009, p. 443). Their approach is that they are “buying up and thus trans-
forming public debate and global politics outside the normal democratic process”
(Phillips, 2020). Accordingly, their most common goal is to artificially rearrange these
social forces by loosening and disintegrating the forces arising from within, and thus
to introduce an artificially produced mechanism of influence into social and politi-
cal processes.13 The end result is what the dictionaries of American interventionism
describe as “destabilisation” (e.g. Korybko, 2015). Thus, they require national security
attention even in their infancy, and, if necessary, such treatment, possibly a response
that reaches the boundaries of administrative intervention or criminal justice tools.14
After all, again referring only (albeit more and more exclusively today) to typical oc-
currences, there is always an undoubtedly pleasing agenda, which is the coat of arms or
the banner of a specific initiative or institution-building on the part of these so-called
NGOs; however, behind the free versions of these (or even more so, the rearrange-
ment efforts of the slogans selected because they are likeable by the recipient group15),
the logical sequence comprises the following steps, which, depending on the status
achieved, reveal the underlying goal immediately after the required heavy scripting
and practice: first the attempt to exert influence, then the intoxication of its successful
testing, and finally the implementation of the underlying interest16 – which, in these
cases, is hardly anything other than an intrusion of power from this external force.17
And even if this is the case, despite the apparent benevolent neutrality of our
government, we cannot be proud to have it written down somewhere that in our re-
gion – and thus also in our country – “the history of post-communist transformation
is therefore, to a great extent, the history of the Soros foundations” (Åslung in Dah-
rendorf 2000, p. 233; Åslung, 2002, p. 438).
This story, in addition to its direct message about the current government’s role as a
sovereign custodian in state affairs and, in our case, its failure to fulfil this role, is clear
in itself by exploring the nature of the NGO’s world, as it exemplifies that according to
the rules of the global game achieved by the globalist forces, even a single person can
keep the world at bay, and by designing the right trajectory and making the right shift
adjustments in stages, he can set a fate for the latter that will prove virtually irreversible
after reaching a certain level.18 Speaking of intervention and/or its standards, the term
soft, and when it comes to the battle tactics applied to achieve this end, the term hybrid,
refers exactly to the possibility of intervention and to artificially making the state or
national community vulnerable, defenceless and alterable at will.19 Law expresses itself
in freedoms; liberal pressure widens them unfettered; and in this respect, community
self-defence is hit hardest of all. After all, in a game like this, everything is a matter of

204
 Civic Review · Vol. 16, Special Issue, 2020

even personal ability; social feedback and receptivity are no longer relevant criteria in
this respect; and here is the realised end result: a world dominated by arbitrary NGO
activities can be the result and product of the ambition of a single person.
Our brave new world has crystallised the power of money and those who possess
money, with their experience advocated in this circle that “what in most cases would
take the social movement to achieve, they can achieve single-handedly […]. Indeed,
a single billionaire philanthropist can leverage social investment to change interna-
tional norms”.20 This corresponds not only to the terminology that widely refers to
one side of the phenomenon as an enabler in the literature, but also to the popular
response – “George Soros is the epitome of corruption: penetration and distortion
of the political process by obscene wealth” (David [Brisbane] commented (July 18)
on Steinberger, 2018) – , which defines its subject matter precisely by personal ability
to buy and buy out, viz. by acknowledging that “money is a big part of our ability to
exercise influence”.21
Thus, if the previously described civil society organisation and the type of NGO
just described here – and not only despite their fundamentally different qualities not
only from the current governments, but also from the general public – fall into the
same legal category, it may be very different from, or the result of, the fact that at
the time of drafting the law the latter did not yet exist, or at least did not appear in a
mass of systematic organisation from foreign agencies, or simply a product of political
blackmail – referring to a structural feature in their current function also denotes the
Anglo-American naming practice with the most primitive classification from ancient
times, i.e. that they are not part of the officiality of a government. Structurally, from
the point of view of legal discrimination and categorisation, this hardly differs from the
fact that, in a consciously extreme example, the legislator, for fear of an ever-roaring
chorus, could only speak of man alone, without distinctions in terms of age, gender
and capacity for action. (Of course, I might add, who knows what else the majestic rule
of Western globalism, which has now become a fundamental criterion, may still bring
train? The ambivalence, the legal ambiguity, and the indefiniteness are well illustrated
by a recent article that concludes the depressing situation in South America with a
classic German idea from Goethe: “the best slave is the one who thinks he is free”.22)
Nevertheless, the proliferation of single-stemmed and single-purpose NGOs in our
country does not correspond to the truly humanitarian, and therefore people-centred
NGO variants of the United States and Europe, which only make pressure within their
own framework, and have spread widely indeed, in large numbers in the past 50 years
especially in the third world, i.e. in Africa, East Asia and South-America. After all, the
literature based on their generalisation reports exactly the kind of features that, given
the above, can make us wonder because in our country they do not exist. An example
is that “a non-governmental organisation (NGO) is also a non-for-profit, voluntary
citizens’ group” (Kantrowitz).23 The additional features include that “They only have
to be independent from government control, not seeking to challenge governments
either as a political party or by a narrow focus on human rights, non-profit-making
and non-criminal” (Willetts, 2002, p. 1).

205
Csaba Varga: Civil Society Associations vs. So-called Non-governmental Organisations

Nevertheless, such and similar substantive ambiguities, however, have not yet provoked
either politics, science, or the press leading the way in exploration and investigation in
certain directions and case types to put their resolution on the agenda – perhaps precisely
because it is not in the interest of any of the actors. Moreover, as a decision-making body
of the Council of Europe in our narrower landscape, the Committee of Ministers declared
almost a decade and a half ago that “NGOs should be free to undertake research, educa-
tion and advocacy on issues of public debate, regardless of whether the position is taken in
accord with government policy or requires a change in the law”.24 As a result, in principle,
the so-called boomerang effect (e.g. Keck and Sikkink, 1998) prevails without constraints: in
other words, created or genuine domestic internal problems are brought to the interna-
tional arena through appropriate NGO mediation, in the framework of the “naming and
shaming” procedure (Keck and Sikkink, 1998), more precisely through the “mobilisation
of shame” (Keck and Sikkink, 1999), in order to force a change that is in line with the
current international mainstream.25 It is no coincidence then that it is worded at the most
casual, pious allusions, for example, that the wide range of activities also gives rise to a wide
range of borderline situations, “However, by today’s standards as embodied in the UN
Charter, subverting with the intention of overthrowing foreign governments law is a grave
violation of international law” (Roelofs, 2006). And the occasional news claiming that their
own experts – through regulation by lobbies – demand so-called stricter regulations in the
field of the registration of foreign agents is also sporadic, weak, and certainly unsuccessful
(Századvég, 2017, p. 9; Atieh, 2010; Smith and Kelner, 2014) because “even democratic
states in an era of universalisation set limits on activists’ external ties” (Jalali, 2008, p. 164).

C onclus io n s

My conclusion here and now can only be one: as it follows from the lessons of history,
ultimately every nation is as happy as it can be in its values and interests with the aspira-
tions of its state. More precisely, as much as its own spontaneity, self-organisation, and
ever-immeasurable and depressing mass of leisure time (since, just remember: the so-
called third sector serving it is an increasing branch in employment and in using public
funds, and an increasingly influential factor in disintegration, deviance, and moreover,
criminality) can be used for joyful actions and deeds that harmonise with the above, in
the unceasing zeal of encouragement for good. In my own understanding, there was
such an age in Hungary, during the last – interwar – period of peace.
But I hope that we will experience a new age of peace among our people, among
all of us, as a result of our further efforts, and on one of its poles, on our side, with our
civil society, we will be able to leave a lasting mark on our descendants.26

N otes
1
It is no coincidence that the Hungarian political analyst of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, who evalu-
ated the civil society self-organisation as the most important moment in it (Lomax, 1976; Lomax and
Kemény, 1986) in his late, already bitter, study (Lomax, 1997), described the death of civil society, or
more precisely the fact that, so to speak, it had never actually been born.

206
 Civic Review · Vol. 16, Special Issue, 2020

2
In previews, I remember the thrill when, during my government service – as a member of the Prime
Minister’s Advisory Board in the government of József Antall – when during a visit to Hódmezővásárhely,
I realised in the course of conversations that instead of affiliations to the various parties involved in the
skirmishes of the capital city or of the government, those people defined themselves as an affluent local
community, and as an integral part and one of the creators of a European community that has opened
up to them and was also accessible for them.
3
Just to give a single example, in Hungary, the communist regime in the state intended to save costs,
provide control and ensure public use at the same time, and consequently, all state-funded transla-
tions, i.e. practically all translations, as everything was state-owned and nationalised, were ordered from
a single agency, and tear-sheets were provided in designated specialised libraries, in the case of law
and political sciences, for example, at the Institute of Political Sciences and Law of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences, where – until the recent irresponsible liquidation of this huge body of transla-
tions – the translations of soviet studies written with the aim to set up a council system were stored
together with papers describing the various methods of coercive interrogation by the dreaded ÁVH
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Protection_Authority), and French studies summarising the
experience gained in their terror in Algeria. 
In Washington, for about a century the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service has been
responsible for providing a complete history and documentation of legislative matters. In France, a pub-
lishing company under the Prime Minister’s direct supervision, La documentation française, is responsible
for publishing summaries and analyses in all areas of government and public administration that is of
public interest, represented by 13,000 books in their national library. Currently, this state institution has
21,000 publications (including reports, books, maps, statistics and more, and in addition, 18 journals
covering each topic), and any of them is freely available for purchase and study.
Essentially another aspect of the same issue is the recommendation I first made to our then Prime Minis-
ter at around 1992 (and then again to the same – current – Prime Minister), namely that the records of
our successive governments and of the parties within the orbit should be stored in collections that simul-
taneously operate as research centres in Hungary. The exemplary German foundation solution was al-
ready known to us from the co-operation with their Hungarian branches (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Parteinahe_Stiftung). This is also a party archive (“Jede politische Stiftung unterhält das Archiv der ihr
nahestehenden Partei”). I have also drawn the attention of our government to the American institutions
called presidential libraries (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_library), which has about 400
million pages of text, 10 million photos and 100,000 hours of audio-video recordings in its 13 collections
so far, when I brought back a huge body of documentation back in 1993 about their organisation from the
head of their central headquarters in Washington. However, in Hungary, unfortunately, no progress has
been made in this; and so I subsequently handed over the bulky file compiled of all this to the Library of
Parliament. I ironically note that, in principle, the question of the fate of political background papers was
raised most sharply at the time of the scandal when Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s grandson offered
for sale the entire legacy of documents considered as a personal asset; cf. Brazier, 1996.
4
It is fundamental knowledge for a lawyer that things can be regulated and factualised if they can be de-
scribed with sufficient distinction, and, moreover, the factuality in question can be proved with sufficient
clarity by a relatively simple and quick procedure. With regard to immigrants from the various territories
of the former Commonwealth, a whole series of initiatives for the regulation of the so-called race rela-
tions and tensions,which had been forced exactly by left-wing circles, failed or became unenforceable in
England for this very reason, to the point that after so many failures this otherwise tenable case became
temporarily uncomfortable (see Allott, 1980; Varga, 1992).
5
“The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-gov-
ernmental organisations which are concerned with matters within its competence” (https://treaties.
un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf, ch. X, par. 71).
6
Because “The term »Non-Governmental Organisations« is actually a misnomer. The NGOs are financed
and directed by the various imperialist agencies, the imperialist governments and the comprador re-
gimes”, wirtes Mudingu, 2006 as a quasi-communist criticism.

207
Csaba Varga: Civil Society Associations vs. So-called Non-governmental Organisations

7
It should be noted that the originally Portuguese “compradore” once meant the indigenous service to co-
lonial enterprises in East Asia while in today’s quasi-Marxist use of the term it is usually the service of alien
imperialist powers. For such and similar approaches, see e.g. Petras, 1997; Iadicola, 2011; Douglas-Bowers,
2012 (which outlines the institutionalisation of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Freedom
House, and the Amnesty International as the underlying institution for the U.S.); Kofas, 2016 (which
discusses the adverse experiences of Russia, Ukraine, India, and China); and cf. even Sternberg, 2010.
8
Cohen, 2000 and Varga, 2007 discuss a case precisely from the practice of the United States, which
emerged a few decades ago and fortunately failed.
9
Cf. e.g. www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/
centre-periphery-model and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core-periphery_structure.
10
It should be noted that the author’s tough critical distance is a result of a few years development, as
previously, e.g. Roelofs, 2003, he had assessed this subject more positively.
11
In other words, the unspecified, worldwide generality of routine, or “buisiness-as-usual,” would be the
end itself, since the existence of such NGOs rests on the exploitation of the conditions and opportuni-
ties always given then and there; cf. Mendelson and Glenn, 2002, p. 245.
12
During my stay at Lund as visiting professor I realised with dismay from the 1973 liquidation stories of
Medvedev, which I obtained in 1977, that the accusations made by the Bolsheviks were, for the most
part, projections of their own repressive practice.
13
What Greenhill calls outright provocative behaviour (Greenhill, 2008).
14
However, in contrast to the intelligence literature, which, together with espionage, discusses not only
sabotage, but also the activity discussed here, this topic is no longer in the columns of the Hungarian
journals of either the national security division (see e.g. https://folyoirat.ludovika.hu/) or of the military
national security division (see e.g. www.knbsz.gov.hu/hu/publikaciok.html), or, unlike its predecessor,
today’s Belügyi Szemle (Home Affairs Review) (https://belugyiszemle.hu/hu/belugyi-szemle-fooldal).
15
American analysts reports on Potemkin NGOs (Hemment, 2012) and the “neocolonial hegemony” of
the National Endowment for Democracy (Sussman, 2006), which was founded for actions in foreign
countries as a US Congress funded soft power organization in 1983, at a time when the disintegration of the
soviet world power became visible. Its president, Allen Weinstein admitted openly that “A lot of what we
do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Moreover, the overt interventionism practiced today
as soft imperialism has more successes on easier ways, due to its benevolent image (Ignatius, 1991; Blum,
2000, p. 180). Corbett, 2015 opines in similar terms on the US Agency of International Development as
well.
16
According to Yilmaz, 2012, “democracy promotion” projects are never self-contained: they are merely com-
plements to the so-called “development” and “dialogue” projects, which are also predominantly American,
and their designers often support them for the most part by a strong intelligence/military background.
17
“Appropriation” is therefore accompanied by “resistance”; see Petric, 2012. Carothers, 2006, p. 64 him-
self, although his writing seeks to rebuild the self-evident American position that has exposed itself and
has thus become disliked by the world as a suspicion of interference, admits that in his practice so far,
“democracy promotion” has always entailed the provocation of “regime change” under the threat of
“US military intervention”.
18
As a reformist alternative to the radical (“revolutionary”) change of law, which was given a special extra
hue and topicality in the early 1980’s by the tension between the socialist political regime, already made
sclerotic by its own conditions, on the one hand, and the relatively wider elbowroom that might have
been opened by the so-called New Economic Mechanism, on the other, cf. Varga, 1986.
19
While a multifaceted overview is given of NGOs, including criticism and doubts about legitimacy, the
description given at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organisation defines the basic
term as intervention-like concept from the outset: it seeks to have an effect on “the lives of other people
[...] through activism and services”.
20
DeMars, 2005, p. 169, and the quote is from sociologist Paul Schervish, in Kampeas, 2011.
21
The first president of the Open Society Foundation (1993–2012), Aryeh Neier, was the one who recently
(in Stahl, 2015) made clear what was otherwise naturally known to everyone.

208
 Civic Review · Vol. 16, Special Issue, 2020

22
Goethe, 1809, Book II Chapter 5: “Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein”,
quoted by Pastor, 2019.
23
www.apa.org/international/united-nations/acronyms.pdf.
24
Recommendation CM/Rec(2007)14 of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers to member states
on the legal status of non-governmental organisations in Europe (Adopted by the Committee of Min-
isters on 10 October 2007 at the 1006th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies) (www.osce.org/files/f/
documents/7/0/33742.pdf, par. 12).
25
In any case, blackmail by shame has become a new and common element in the exercise of interna-
tional official relations, more precisely, its distortion. As, among othes, Badie, 2017 sums it up, “In
international relations some states often deny the legal status of others, stigmatising their practices or
even their culture. Such acts of deliberate humiliation at the diplomatic level are common occurrences
in modern diplomacy. In the period following the breakup of the famous ‘Concert of Europe’, many
kinds of club-based diplomacy have been tried, all falling short of anything like inclusive multilateralism.
Examples of this effort include the G7, G8, G20 and even the P5. Such ‘contact groups’ are put forward
as if they were actual ruling institutions, endowed with the power to exclude and marginalise. Today, the
effect of such acts of humiliation is to reveal the international system’s limits and its lack of diplomatic
effectiveness. The use of humiliation as a regular diplomatic action steadily erodes the power of the in-
ternational system. These actions appear to be the result of a botched mixture of a colonial past, a failed
decolonisation, a mistaken vision of globalisation and a very dangerous post-bipolar reconstruction.”
26
The first version of this extended and completely reworked article was given a lecture on October 13,
2017 in Kecskemét (Varga, 2017), and with additional literature it was published as Varga, 2018.

R ef eren c e s
Allott, A. (1980): The Limits of Law. Butterworths, London.
Åslung, A. (2002): Building Capitalism. The Transformation of the Older Soviet Bloc. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge–New York.
Atieh, J. (2010): Foreign Agents: Updating FARA to Protect American Democracy. University of Pennsylvania
Journal of International Law, Vol. 31, No. 4, 1051–1088.
Benda, J. (1927): La Trahison des Clercs. Grasset, Paris.
Badie, B. (2017): Humiliation in International Relations: A Pathology of Contemporary International Systems.
Hart Publishing, Oxford, www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/humiliation-in-international-rela-
tions-9781782256199/.
Blum, W. (2000): Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. Common Courage Press, Monroe.
Brazier, R. (1996): Who Owns State Papers? The Cambridge Law Journal, Vol. 55, No. 1, 65–88, https://doi.
org/10.1017/s0008197300097749.
Carothers, T. (2006): The Backlash against Democracy Promotion. Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 2, https://
doi.org/10.2307/20031911.
Cohen, S. F. (2000): Failed Crusade. America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia. Norton, New York.
Corbett, J. (2015): How the US Uses NGOs to Destabilize Foreign Governments. The International Forecaster
Weekly, https://theinternationalforecaster.com/topic/international_forecaster_weekly/How_the_US_
Uses_NGOs_to_Destabilize_Foreign_Governments.
Dahrendorf, Lord [Ralf] et al. (eds.) (2000): The Paradoxes of Unintended Consequences. Central European
University Press, Budapest–New York.
DeMars, W. E. (2005): NGOs and Transnational Networks. Wild Cards in World Politics. Pluto Press, London.
Douglas-Bowers, D. (2012): NGOs: The Missionaries of Empire. Global Research, www.globalresearch.ca/
ngos-the-missionaries-of-empire/29595.
Goethe, J. W. von (1809): Die Wahlverwandtschaften. J. G. Cottaische Buchhandlung, Berlin.
Greenhill, K. (2008): Strategic Engineered Migration as a Weapon of War. Civil Wars, Vol. 10, No. 1, 6–21,
https://doi.org/10.1080/13698240701835425.
Hann, C. M. and Dunn, E. (eds.) (1996): Civil Society: Challenging Western Models. Routledge, London–New York.

209
Csaba Varga: Civil Society Associations vs. So-called Non-governmental Organisations

Hemment, J. (2012): Nashi, Youth Voluntarism, and Potemkin NGOs: Making Sense of Civil Society in Post-
Soviet Russia. Slavic Review, Vol. 71, No. 2, 234–260, https://doi.org/10.5612/slavicreview.71.2.0234.
Holmén, H. and Jirström, M. (2009): Look Who's Talking! Second Thoughts about NGOs as Represent-
ing Civil Society. Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 44, No. 4, 429–448, https://doi.org/10.1177/
0021909609105093.
Hours, B. (2002): Domination, dépendances, globalisation: Traces d’anthropologie politique. L’Harmattan, Paris.
Iadicola, P. (2011): NGOs and Imperialism. www.academia.edu/1151694/NGOs_and_Imperialism.
Ignatius, D. (1991): Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups. The Washington Post, www.
washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/09/22/innocence-abroad-the-new-world-of-spyless-
coups/92bb989a-de6e-4bb8-99b9-462c76b59a16/.
Jalali, R. (2008): International Funding of NGOs in India: Bringing the State Back In. Voluntas, Vol. 19, No.
2, 161–188, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-008-9059-7.
Kampeas, R. (2001): New Philanthropy. Billionaires Decide Exactly Where Dollars Go. Associated Press.
Keck, M. E. and Sikkink, K. (1998): Activists Beyond Borders. Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Cornell
University Press, Ithaca.
Keck, M. E. and Sikkink, K. (1999): Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics.
International Social Science Journal, Vol. 51, No. 159, 89–101, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2451.00179.
Kofas, J. (2016): NGOs: Agents of Globalization or Humanitarianism? www.academia.edu/20162563/
NGOs_AGENTS_OF_GLOBALISATION_OR_GRASSROOTS_HUMANITARIANISM.
Korybko, A. (2015): Wanted: NGO Whistleblowers. Global Research, www.globalresearch.ca/wanted-ngo-
whistleblowers/5455718.
Lazer, D. (2011): Networks in Political Science: Back to the Future. PS: Political Science & Politics, Vol. 44, No.
1, 61–68, https://doi.org/10.1017/s1049096510001873.
Lomax, B. (1976): Hungary 1956. Allison and Busby, London.
Lomax, B. and Kemény, I. (eds.) (1986): Magyar munkástanácsok 1956-ban. Dokumentumok [Hungarian
Workers's Councils. Documents.] Magyar Füzetek, Paris.
Lomax, B. (1997): The Strange Death of “Civil Society” in Post-communist Hungary. Journal of Communist
Studies and Transition Politics, Vol. 13, No. 1, 41–63, https://doi.org/10.1080/13523279708415331.
Medvedev, R. A. (1973): Let History Judge. The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism [1967.] Trans. Colleen
Taylor, Vintage Books, New York.
Mendelson, S. E. and Glenn, J. K. (eds.) (2002): The Power and Limits of NGOs. A Critical Look at Building
Democracy in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Columbia University Press, New York.
Mudingu, J. (2006): How Genuine are NGOs? The New Times, www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/
article/176/31491.html.
O'Connor, J. (2012): “NGO”: The Guise of Innocence. Global Policy Forum, www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/
introduction/51688-qngoq-the-guise-of-innocence.html?itemid=id.
Pastor, M. (2019): National Endowment for Destabilization? CIA Funds for Latin America in 2018. www.
telesurenglish.net/analysis/National-Endowment-for-Destabilisation-CIA-Funds-for-Latin-America-
in-2018-20190403-0042.html.
Petras, J. (1997): Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America. Monthly Review, Vol. 49, No. 7, https://doi.
org/10.14452/mr-049-07-1997-11_2.
Petras, J. and Veltmeyer, H. (2001): Globalization Unmasked. Imperialism in the 21st Century. Fernwood Pub-
lishing, Halifax.
Petric, B. (2012): Democracy at Large. NGOs, Political Foundations, Think Tanks and International Organizations.
Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Phillips, M. (2020): Sanitizing Soros through Guilt by Association. Jewish News Syndicate, www.jns.org/opin-
ion/sanitizing-soros-through-guilt-by-association/.
Putin, V. (2006): Interview with TF-1 Television Channel (France), July 12, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/
president/transcripts/23700.
Roelofs, J. (2003): Foundations and Public Policy. The Mask of Pluralism. State University of New York Press,
Albany.

210
 Civic Review · Vol. 16, Special Issue, 2020

Roelofs, J. (2006): The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses. Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too. Counter
Punch, www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/176/31425.html.
Salamon, L. M.; Sokolowski, S. W. and List, R. (2003): A civil társadalom “világnézetben” (Global Civil Society.
An Overview. The Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies Center for Civil Society Studies,
Baltimore). Acta Civitalis series 3, Civitalis Egyesület, Budapest.
Smith, B. D. and Kelner, R. (2014): Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Report on FARA (Foreign
Agents Registration Act) Misses the Larger Point. The National Law Review, Vol. 4, No. 356, www.natlawre-
view.com/article/project-government-oversight-pogo-report-fara-foreign-agents-registration-act-misses.
Stahl, D. (2015): Lebensgeschichtliches Interview mit Aryeh Neier, March 3. Quellen zur Geschichte der Men-
schenrechte, www.geschichte-menschenrechte.de/personen/aryeh-neier/.
Sternberg, E. (2010): NGOs vs Civil Society: Reflections on the Illiberal, the Illegitimate and the Unac-
countable. Economic Affairs, Vol. 30, No. 3, 22–28, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0270.2010.02017.x.
Steinberg, G. and Wertman, B. (2018): Value Clash: Civil Society, Foreign Funding, and National Sover-
eignty. Global Governance, Vol. 24, No. 1, 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1163/19426720-02401001.
Steinberger, M. (2018): George Soros: Bet Big on Liberal Democracy. Now He Fears He Is Losing. The New
York Times, July 17, www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/magazine/george-soros-democrat-open-society.html.
Sussman, G. (2006): The Myths of ‘Democracy Assistance’: US Political Intervention in Post-Soviet Eastern
Europe. Monthy Review, Vol. 58, No. 7, https://doi.org/10.14452/mr-058-07-2006-11_2.
Századvég (2017): Az NGO-k mint politikai szereplők [NGOs as Political Actors]. Századvég Alapítvány, Budapest.
Századvég (2020): Adat- és nemzetbiztonsági kérdések – szabályozott NGO-aktivitás: Az apologetikus szemléletmód létjogo-
sultsága a magyar jogrendben [Issues of Data Security and National Security – Regulated NGO Activity: The
Raison d'Être of the Apologetic Approach in the Hungarian Legal System]. Századvég Alapítvány, Budapest.
Varga, Cs. (1986): Macrosociological Theories of Law: From the “Lawyer’s World Concept” to a Social Sci-
ence Conception of Law. In: Kamenka, E.; Summers, R. S. and Twining, W. (eds.): Soziologische Jurispru-
denz und realistische Theorien des Rechts. Rechtstheorie Beiheft, No. 9, Duncker Humblot, Berlin, 197–215.
Varga, Cs. (1992): The Law and its Limits. Acta Juridica Hungaricae, Vol. 34, No. 1–2, 49–56, http://real-j.
mtak.hu/782/1/ACTAJURIDICA_34.pdf.
Varga, Cs. (1995): Transition to Rule of Law: On the Democratic Transformation in Hungary. Philosophiae Iuris
series, ELTE “Comparative Legal Cultures” Project, Budapest, http://mek.oszk.hu/14700/14760/.
Varga, Cs. (2007): Failed Crusade: American Self-confidence, Russian Catastrophe. Central European Political
Science Review, Vol. 8, No. 28, 71–87 (and in Varga, 2008, pp. 199–219).
Varga, Cs. (2008): Transition? To Rule of Law? Constitutionalism and Transitional Justice Challenged in Central &
Eastern Europe. Kráter, Pomáz, http://mek.oszk.hu/14800/14851.
Varga, Cs. (2013): Contemporary Legal Philosophising: Schmitt, Kelsen, Lukács, Hart, & Law and Literature, with
Marxism’s Dark Legacy in Central Europe (On Teaching Legal Philosophy in Appendix). Philosophiae Iuris
series, Szent István Társulat, Budapest, http://mek.oszk.hu/14800/14861/.
Varga, Cs. (2017): Civilitás, pártvilág – professziók, politikák [The civil and the party world – professions and
policies]. In: A civil társadalmi részvétel alakulása és fejlődése Közép-Európában 1990-től napjainkig [The formation
and development of civic social Participation in Central Europe from 1990 on]. Conference paper, Alföldi
Civilekért Alapítvány, Kecskemét, 83–89, http://alfoldicivilekert.hu/alapanyagok/Zarokiadvany.pdf.
Varga, Cs. (2018): Civil szerveződések – állami politikák: Egymásmellettiségek, kapcsolatok, lehetséges tor-
zulások [Civil organisations – state policies: co-ordinations, contacts, eventual distortion]. Iustum Aequ-
um Salutare, Vol. 14, No. 1, 133–139, http://ias.jak.ppke.hu/hir/ias/20181sz/07_VargaCs_IAS_2018_1.
pdf, and abstract, http://ias.jak.ppke.hu/hir/ias/20181sz/19_SUMMA_IAS_2018_1.pdf.
Ward, M. D.; Stovel, K. and Sacks, A. (2011): Network Analysis and Political Science. Annual Review of Politi-
cal Science, Vol. 14, No. 1, 245–264, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.12.040907.115949.
Willetts, P. (2002): What is a Non-Governmental Organization? In: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. En-
cyclopedia of Institutional and Infrastructural Resources. Eolss Publishers, Oxford, www.ihrnetwork.org/
files/3. What is an NGO.PDF.
Yilmaz, S. (2012): “Democracy Promotion” as U.S. Civil Intervention Method. https://acikarsiv.aydin.edu.
tr/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11547/495/sait18.pdf?sequence=1.

211
View publication stats