Development cooperation projects are implemented by Swiss development NGOs beyond Switzerland’s borders. But what happens to these efforts when political priorities change at home? My Master’s thesis explores how Swiss development NGOs navigate shrinking budgets, changing expectations and competing ideas about what development cooperation should achieve.

What connects parliamentary debates and subsequent decisions in Bern to a vocational training or a women’s empowerment programme overseas? The Swiss development NGOs implementing them. Decisions about public spending, national security and migration as well as trends and shifts of public perceptions in Switzerland shape which and where development activities of NGOs receive funding, how they explain their work to various audiences and what counts as success to them.

In my Master’s thesis in Political Geography, I examined how domestic political shifts affect the strategies and practices of Swiss development NGOs. Between August and October 2025, I interviewed nine senior representatives from across the sector, mostly at their offices in several different Swiss cities. Their accounts reveal that NGOs respond and adapt, resist and show resilience in various ways to these changes, aiming to preserve their purpose while the conditions surrounding them change.

Connecting political change and organisational responses

To connect these experiences to wider political changes, I developed a multi-scalar conceptual framework combining approaches and theories from human geography scholars. Assemblage theory (see Dr. USP (2023); Little (2012)) helped me understand NGOs within shifting relationships between Swiss political institutions, donors, public narratives and administrative requirements, rather than treating each pressure separately. Brokerage (see Komito (2026)) highlighted how NGO representatives mediate between competing expectations. Cindi Katz’s concepts (see Hughes et al. (2022)) helped distinguish pragmatic adjustments within existing constraints, efforts to challenge those constraints, and practices that sustain organisations and their commitments. Together, these perspectives made it possible to examine not just what pressures NGOs face, but how they negotiate them and why adaptation does not necessarily just mean acceptance.

More than a question of money

One of the most striking findings was that development cooperation is increasingly evaluated not only according to needs abroad, but also according to whether it serves Swiss national security and economic interests. At the same time, aid funding competes more directly with defence/military and other domestic spending priorities. These frictions and pressures challenge NGOs to justify their work in novel ways and also reach into everyday practice. Increasingly detailed financial reporting requirements for donors and other stakeholders can improve the quality of projects but also consumes more staff time and favours measurable outputs over less tangible empowerment processes, such as strengthening political agency and civic participation.

Adapting without abandoning the mission

NGOs respond through forming alliances, advocacy work, diversifying funding and strategically reframing projects. One NGO representative described how an agricultural programme can be framed to alternatively emphasise food security, gender equality or climate change, so that to domestic funding priorities are acknowledged, but activities remain similar in reality. Such flexibility can protect ongoing work but raises questions about where adaptation ends and compromising organisational purpose begins.

My central conclusion is that adaptation involves ongoing negotiations over values, relationships and priorities – not simply organisational survival. Although the interviews capture senior NGO perspectives rather than those of local partners, they show how NGOs adapt not just by responding to people’s needs abroad, but also by acknowledging and reacting to donor country dynamics. Development cooperation’s future in “intervention countries” therefore depends to a large degree on how solidarity is debated and defended at home.

This research was conducted as a Masters thesis with the Political Geography Group (PGG) and supervised by Dr. Shona Loong and Dr. Asebe Regassa. The full thesis can be found under this link.

Bibliography Dr. USP. (2023). What is Assemblage Theory [Video recording]. Youtube. Hughes, S. M., Murrey, A., Krishnan, S., van Teijlingen, K., Daley, P. O., Nowicki, M., Fannin, M., & MacLeavy, J. (2022). Interventions in the political geographies of resistance: The contributions of Cindi Katz, 15 years on. Political Geography, 97. Komito, L. (2026). Brokerage. Britannica. Little, D. (2012). Assemblage theory. Understanding Society.

Severin Johnson