A political economy of non-governmental organizations in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

This dissertation explores the agency of Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) in social change in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The roots of organizations similar to contemporary NGOs are traced to Christian missionary organizations in the early Nineteenth Century. Since then, NGOs have been engaged in a diverse array of activities. They gained a high level of social visibility during periods in which a given State formation faced a serious legitimacy crisis and showed signs of fundamental change. I have identified four such \u27moments\u27 during which NGOs acted as arenas for debate on social change. NGO activities during these periods have contributed to the centralization and domestication of State power. In other words, once the State consolidates its hegemonic position the vitality of NGOs fade until the next legitimacy crisis emerges. While aspects of evangelism, nationalism, democracy, and development have interactively shaped the agency of NGOs, what transcends these social processes is the continuous expansion and consolidation of capitalist development. NGO activities have contributed to this evolutionary process. The impact of micro-credit on the empowerment of women demonstrates that the counter-hegemonic agendas of the NGOs that have voiced the interests of subordinate groups have failed. NGOs do not reach the poorest of the poor and their systems of management are bureaucratic and top-down. These failures are attributed to; first, the institutional identity and legal boundaries for NGO activities are defined and legitimated by the State. Second, NGOs do not advocate nor have a mandate to work towards a form of the State fundamentally different from the one that characterizes emerging neo-liberal political economy. Third, NGOs\u27 reliance on local institutions, authority and power relations to ensure the financial self-sufficiency of micro-credit programs do not provide much space for NGOs to transform the institutions that are oppressive to women. Instead, they further strengthen them. Fourth, whatever influence NGOs have on the State is derived from the support received from their international donors, rather than from a social base comprised of their members. In the final analysis the autonomy and capacity of NGOs to challenge State power has progressively declined since the Nineteenth Century. They have become the means through which state-society relations are disciplined to facilitate capitalist development on a global scale