Can NGOs Make a Difference? The Challenge of Development Alternatives

This book brings together papers that reflect on what NGOs have contributed to creating development alternatives. It follows on from a number of earlier edited books (which, like this one, have all drawn on conferences) that have helped to share and deepen thinking about the role and activities of NGOs working on a range of development issues. These include: Making a Difference? NGOs and Development in a Changing World (Edwards, M and D Hulme (editors), 1992, Earthscan); Beyond the Magic Bullet: NGO Performance and Accountability in the Post-Cold War World (Edwards, M and D Hulme (editors), 1996, Earthscan); NGOs, States and Donors, Too Close for Comfort? (Hulme, D and M Edwards (editors), 1997, Macmillan); New Roles and Relevance: Development NGOS and the Challenge of Change (Lewis, D and T Wallace (editors), 2000, Kumarian Press); and Global Citizen Action (Edwards, M and J Gaventa (editors), 2001, Earthscan). This volume begins with a paper by the editors, which argues that NGOs have been too willing to be integrated into the aid industry and have, perhaps, been too unambitious in what they have sought to do. It offers an historical review of NGOs and development in recent decades.

The book is divided into five main sections. The first sets the stage, combining the editors’ chapter and one by Mike Edwards, a key contributor to previous conferences. He argues that NGOs have taken insufficient heed of warnings to protect their integrity and that organizational self-interest has become too dominant. The next three sections are organized around three organizing principles that emerged from these two background papers and the conference itself: the sense that the scope to pursue alternatives is currently under particular pressure; the experiments with different ways of engaging in social transformation and development that NGOs continue to pursue; and the attempts by different NGOs, North and South, simply to be different, to organize themselves differently and stand for a different way of thinking about development. The book closes with a short retrospective chapter by David Hulme, who identifies some key but, he argues, neglected areas.