Post-Marxist development praxis: NGDOs and new social movement theory

This paper examines Non-Governmental Development Organizations (NGDOs) as a new transnational social movement which acts to extend the reach of civil society within the international aid regime and to democratize new and existing public spaces at local, national and international levels. The paper concludes that the movement is divided with regard to the degree that it contests the 'orthodox' meaning of development associated with market-led/state-managed export growth strategies under the rubric of structural adjustment. The terrain of civil society, occupied by the NGDO movement within the international aid regime, is itself the site of struggle between progressive/post-marxist and neo-conservative NGDOs. Therefore, the NGDO movement has a transformative potential only to the degree that the popular sector organizations with whom they work, act on 'participatory development' ideology to effect institutional insertions within the formal political arena, on their own terms, and in a way that transforms previously non-responsive state and multilateral aid agency structures.