ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses why and what it means to study non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from a post-positivist perspective. It suggests that it is the notion of power and structure on which this perspective rests that is particularly useful when studying NGOs. Furthermore and perhaps because of their overriding interest in demonstrating the power of ideas and norms in international politics, first-generation NGO scholars fell into the same trap as their positivist peers. First-generation scholars already acknowledged that a focus on the actors alone would be insufficient since the immaterial structures in which NGOs exist were deemed of equal importance. The influence of NGOs was frequently considered to be a product of both moral as well as material leverage. Exploring the spread of ‘managerialism’ among development NGOs, B. Cooke and J. Murphy, among others, suggest that being representative of a dominant understanding of development management nurtures asymmetrical power relations between the West and the rest of the world.
