From Development In Practice
Development, NGOs, and Civil Society
Deborah Eade (editor)
The rise of neoliberalism and the so-called Washington
Consensus have generated a powerful international agenda of what
constitutes good governance, democratisation, and the proper role of
the state and civil society in advancing development. As public
spending has declined, the NGO sector has massively benefited from
taking on a service-delivery role. At the same time, as civil society
organisations,, NGOs are a convenient channel through which official
agencies can promote political pluralism. But can NGOs play these roles
simultaneously? Can they both facilitate governments’ withdrawal from
providing basic services for all and also claim to represent the poor
and the disenfranchised? Are NGOs legitimate political actors in their
own right? Jenny Pearce introduces papers that describe some of the
tensions inherent in the roles being played by NGOs, and asks whether
they truly stand for anything fundamentally different from the agencies
on whose largesse they increasingly depend.
J. Petras, Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America
From Monthly Review
By the early 1980s the more
perceptive sectors of the neoliberal ruling classes realized that their
policies were polarizing the society and provoking large-scale social
discontent. Neoliberal politicians began to finance and promote a
parallel strategy "from below," the promotion of "grassroots"
organization with an "anti-statist" ideology to intervene among
potentially conflictory classes, to create a "social cushion." These
organizations were financially dependent on neoliberal sources and were
directly involved in competing with socio-political movements for the
allegiance of local leaders and activist communities. By the 1990s
these organizations, described as "nongovernmental," numbered in the
thousands and were receiving close to four billion dollars world-wide.
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| UN: World Economic Situation
and Prospects
World Economic Situation and
Prospects 2010
The global
economy is on the mend …
The world economy is on the mend. After a sharp, broad and synchronized
global downturn in late 2008 and early 2009, an increasing number of
countries have registered positive quarterly growth of gross domestic
product (GDP), along with a notable recovery in international trade and
global industrial production. World equity markets have also rebounded
and risk premiums on borrowing have fallen.
… but recovery is fragile
World
Economic Situation and Prospects 2009
It was never meant to happen again, but the world economy is now mired
in the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. In
little over a year, the mid-2007 subprime mortgage debacle in the
United States of America has developed into a global financial crisis
and started to move the global economy into a recession. Aggressive
monetary policy action in the United States and massive liquidity
injections by the central banks of the major developed countries were
unable to avert this crisis. Several major financial institutions in
the United States and Europe have failed, and stock market and
commodity prices have collapsed and become highly volatile. Interbank
lending in most developed countries has come to a virtual standstill,
and the spread between the interest rate on interbank loans and
treasury bills has surged to the highest level in decades. Retail
businesses and industrial firms, both large and small, are finding it
increasingly difficult to obtain credit as banks have become reluctant
to lend, even to long-time customers. In October 2008, the financial
crisis escalated further with sharp falls on stock markets in both
developed and emerging economies. Many countries experienced their
worst ever weekly sell off in equity markets
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