ABSTRACT
This chapter uses world polity theory to analyze changes in the organizational field comprising state, donor and nongovernmental organizations (NGO). It focuses on changing constructions of the proper duties, responsibilities, roles and actions of key organizational actors as revealed in their own discourse. The chapter uses the analytical unit of the organizational field, comprising the three and tried to demonstrate how configurations in this organizational field are constituted in important ways by enactment of and contestation over rationalized myths held as sacred in the world polity. The new institutionalism in organizational analysis is rooted in social constructionism, which posits that sets of beliefs, norms and cultural rules are formed in social interaction and serve as guides for behavior in a variety of social settings. The chapter concludes with some observations regarding the future of the state-donor-civil society organizational geometry in Mali, particularly given the pre-eminent role currently accorded to local NGOs in the state's decentralization process.
