ABSTRACT
By any standards, the 1980s and 1990s have seen an explosion in the numbers of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and grassroots organisations (GROs) active in relief and development. 1 The number of development NGOs registered in the OECD countries of the industrialised ‘North’ has grown from 1,600 in 1980 to 2,970 in 1993 (Smillie and Helmich 1993), and over the same period the total spending of these NGOs has risen from US$2.8 billion to US$5.7 billion in current prices (OECD 1994). The 176 ‘international NGOs’ of 1909 had blossomed into 28,900 by 1993 (Commission on Global Governance 1995)! Similar figures have been reported in most countries in the ‘South’ where political conditions have been favourable, with a particularly rapid increase over the last five years. For example, the number of NGOs registered with the government in Nepal rose from 220 in 1990 to 1,210 in 1993 (Rademacher and Tamang 1993, p 34); in Bolivia the figure increased from around 100 in 1980 to 530 twelve years later (Arellano-Lopez and Petras 1994, p 562); and in Tunisia there were 5,186 NGOs registered in 1991 compared with only 1,886 in 1988 (Marzouk, 1995).
