Ngos, Civil Society and the State: Building Democracy in Transitional Societies

Support for civil society has become a major concern for development agencies since the early 1990s. However, there has been some confusion about the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on civil society. Sometimes, the funding of NGOs has simply been rephrased as support for civil society. Yet NGOs form only one group of organisations within civil society. Often they are funded from external sources and lack local legitimacy and accountability. Futhermore, many NGOs have been reluctant to take a more political role in relation to the state and prefer to focus on service provision. NGOs, Civil Society and the State contains papers by both practitioners and researchers that examine the role of NGOs in civil society. It includes general thematic papers on civil society, case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe, and papers that analyse initiatives undertaken by Northern NGOs and donors in democratisation programmes in the South. The stimulus for this book was an INTRAC workshop that provided an opportunity to reflect on the implications of the new policy agenda on civil society for NGOs, with particular reference to countries undergoing major political transition.