DEVELOPMENT, NGOs AND CIVIL SOCIETY

The rise of neo-liberalism and the so-called Washington Consensus have generated a powerful international ideology concerning what constitutes good governance, democratisation, and the proper roles of the State and civil society in advancing development. As public spending has declined, the non-government sector has benefited very significantly from taking on a service-delivery role. At the same time, non-government organisations (NGOs), as representatives of civil society, are a convenient medium through which official agencies can promote political pluralism. But can NGOs simultaneously facilitate governments’ withdrawal from providing basic services for all and also claim to represent the poor and the disenfranchised? Are NGOs legitimate political actors in their own right? Jenny Pearce introduces papers which describe some of the tensions inherent in the roles currently played by NGOs, and asks whether these organisations truly stand for anything fundamentally different from the agencies on whose “largesse” they increasingly depend.