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554 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 8 (1997)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0554 and id is 1 raw text is: INTRODUCTION NGOs BETWEEN STATES, MARKETS, AND CIVIL SOCIETY During the past few decades, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have increased in number, size, and scope and have established themselves in pivotal positions in social, economic, and political landscapes across the globe. According to the Year Book of International Associations, the total number of internationally recognized NGOs is well over 16,000.1 The Human Develop- ment Report, 1994 estimates about 50,000 local NGOs operating in the South.? Although the precise amount of external resources transferred through NGOs to the developing countries is unavailable, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates the total amount of funds allocated to NGOs at US$6 billion in 1994. About 10 percent of public development aid was channeled through NGOs in recent years, a significant increase. These organizations provide assistance to millions of people around the world. The local, regional, and global networks organized by NGOs function as new venues for dialogue on social transformation and for influencing forums that are traditionally dominated by state actors. The visibility and impact of the NGO movement was evident at the Other Economic Summit (1984), orga- nized parallel to the annual summit of the G-7, and also at the Conference on the Environment in Brazil (1992), the Population Summit in Cairo (1994), the Social Summit in Copenhagen (1995), and the International Women's Conference in Beijing (1995). Protagonists argue that the increasing influence of NGOs is evidence of a historical break from the conventional wisdom that social development is primarily the responsibility of the state and the markets. NGO activity presents the most serious challenge to the imperatives of statehood in the realms of territorial integrity, security, autonomy, and revenue. Lester Salmon, describing the phenomenon, comments that NGOs may constitute the significant economic and social development of the twentieth century, much as the nation-state was of the nineteenth century' Critics are suspicious, skeptical, and sometimes outright hostile to NGOs because, from their perspective, the social processes that these organizations generate are reactionary in content, elitist in terms of the interests they represent, and insensitive to the real interests of the poor and dispossessed. 1. Year Book of International Associations (Brussels: Union of International Associations, 1993-94). 2. United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1994 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 3. Lester Salmon, The Rise of the Non-Profit Sector, Foreign Affairs, 73(4):34 (1994). 8

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