ABSTRACT
Since they first emerged in the West in the nineteenth century, NGOs have spread to all corners of the globe and are now considered visible and influential players in international politics. The proliferation in recent years of new literature on NGOs and transnational activism attests to this fact. As this book has shown, NGO emergence and growth have been uneven and heavily influenced by both domestic and international political factors, which have changed over time and across space. Returning to the original puzzles of convergence and divergence laid out in the beginning of the book, this chapter brings together the findings of the previous chapters and offers a new narrative and explanation for the rise of NGOs in world politics which focuses on changing domestic political structures and the evolution of global governance as promoted by the West.
