ABSTRACT
According to the OECD, private and official sources of financing of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide increased by two-fold between 1970 and 1988. This chapter explores the claims made by and about NGOs in the literature - claims about their structure, claims about their function, and then the implied linkage of these two sets of claims to the issue of organizational democracy. It analyses the concept of organizational democracy with particular reference to participatory democratic forms, at both an analytical and experiential level. The chapter explores generally and specifically whether or not NGO workers themselves have expressed a desire to operate democratically. It also provides a number of issues, such as the feasibility of organizational democracy within the NGO sector. Referring to a range of ‘voluntary’ organizations involved in rural development work using the single all-inclusive term, ‘NGO’, is notoriously problematic.
