ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the emerging tensions between civil society and nation-building in post-conflict situations. Nation-building processes working with the underpinning of democratic values and norms have led to the inevitable outcome – NGO proliferation. In developing countries as well as in post-conflict societies, international reformers conflate 'civil society' with NGOs and then use a head count as a crude index of the health of a civil society. If numbers of NGOs are indeed a lodestar of success, then civil society in post-conflict societies such as in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan are indeed thriving. Dependency on international actors draws the focus of accountability toward the international donor and away from the organisation's social base. The functioning of grassroots NGOs suffers when the international actors overseeing the reconstruction project have the ability to hire the best and brightest local talent who might otherwise work for local groups.
