ABSTRACT
Like the closely associated ‘civil society’ and ‘new social movements’, ‘nongovernmental organisations’ (NGOs) have recently enjoyed increased attention from both the media and scientific communities. In many ways NGOs have been stylised as bearers of hope for emancipatory social changes, as guarantors of democratic and ‘civil society’ development. This discourse has become particularly relevant in the current age of globalisation, with its rise in importance of international levels where until recently it was barely possible to speak of democratic relations. Although some disillusionment has crept in, the democratic potential of NGOs is still regarded with high hopes and associated with farreaching normative attributes and ambitious expectations. Underlying this is the fact that NGOs are well suited to the political projections and the self-legitimation strategies of social scientists who are not only in direct contact with the NGO milieu but are also close to them in socio-cultural terms. Last but not least, the increased scientific and political focus on NGOs has mirrored a fading of belief in the possibility of a more basic societal transformation, intimately connected with the dashing of perhaps inflated political hopes which had been invested in the so-called ‘new social movements’ (such as a now fragmenting women’s movement). This situation has been spurred on by difficulties in political orientation which are traceable to the successful neoliberal offensive, the collapse of state socialism, and the apparent historical victory of capitalism after 1989. As in the ‘civil society’ debates at the end of the 1980s, the focus on NGOs can in some ways be considered an expression of political resignation, a resignation to be content with a pragmatic feasibility vis-a-vis the seemingly non-transformable basic structures of existing society (Narr 1991).
