The Privatization of Public Interest: Theorizing NGO Discourse in a Neoliberal Era

Abstract

If the twentieth century represented a ‘top-down’ approach to social and economic growth, then with the dawn of a new century we have entered a new era of ‘bottom up’ growth and social improvement. In this new model, national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the primary catalysts of change rather than experts from large bureaucratic institutions (including the state). NGOs have been identified as the preeminent, if not sole, organizational forms that can implement the global commitment to ‘bottom up’ development. Indeed, the discourse of ‘bottom up’ development cannot be dismissed as a rhetorical and superficial gesture on the part of states and international donor agencies. It has truly established itself within the policy process and plans of all official agencies of development that accord a significant and often direc tive role to NGOs in development projects and programmes (Chambers 1997; Clark 1991; Gardner and Lewis 1996).1