Development, NGOs and Civil Society

Contents: Preface. 1. Development, NGOs, and civil society: the debate and its future/Jenny Pearce. 2. Scaling up NGO impact on development: learning from experience/Michael Edwards and David Hulme. 3. Help yourself by helping the poor/Gino Lofredo. 4. NGOs: ladles in the global soup kitchen?/Stephen Commins. 5. Collaboration with the south: agents of aid or solidarity?/Firoze Manji. 6. Corporate governance for NGOs?/Mick Moore and Sheelagh Stewart. 7. 'Dancing with the prince': NGOs' survival strategies in the Afghan conflict/Jonathan Goodhand and Peter Chamberlain. 8. NGOs and the state: a case-study from Uganda/Christy Cannon. 9. NGOs, the poor, and local government/Christopher Collier. 10. Let's get civil society straight: NGOs, the state, and political theory/Alan Whaites. 11. Depoliticising development: the uses and abuses of participation/Sarah C. White. 12. Birds of a feather? UNDP and action aid implementation of sustainable human development/Lilly Nicholls. 13. Strengthening civil society: participatory action research in a militarised state/Amina Mama. Annotated bibliography.

"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." (jacket)