Reclaiming development? NGOs and the challenge of alternatives

In 1987, World Development published a supplement entitled `Development Alternatives: the Challenge of NGOs`. Although this challenge now seems far more complicated, this paper suggests one way of giving meaning (and possibility) back to the juxtaposition of `development alternative` and NGOs. Where NGOs have pursued radical rather than merely reformist alternatives, this has usually been in conjunction with political programmes of social movements or developmentalist states. NGOs need to rethink the notion of development alternatives in terms of the politics and political economy of social change, a rethinking that will help define the contours for a theory of NGOs.