Can non-governmental organisations contribute to more socially just, alternative forms of development? Or are they destined to work at the margins of dominant development models determined by others? Addressing this question, this book brings together leading international voices from academia, NGOs and the social movements. It provides a comprehensive update to the NGO literature and a range of critical new directions to thinking and acting around the challenge of development alternatives. The book's originality comes from the wide-range of new case-study material it presents, the conceptual approaches it offers for thinking about development alternatives, and the practical suggestions for NGOs.At the heart of this book is the argument that NGOs can and must re-engage with the project of seeking alternative development futures for the world's poorest and more marginal. This will require clearer analysis of the contemporary problems of uneven development, and a clear understanding of the types of alliances NGOs need to construct with other actors in civil society if they are to mount a credible challenge to disempowering processes of economic, social and political development.

Part One: Critical challenges 1. Introduction: Can NGOs make a difference? The challenge of development alternatives - Anthony Bebbington, Sam Hickey and Diana Mitlin 2. Have NGOs 'made a difference?': From Manchester to Birmingham with an elephant in the room - Michael Edwards Part Two: NGO alternatives under pressure 3. Challenges to participation, citizenship and democracy: Perverse confluence and displacement of meanings - Evelina Dagnino 4. Learning from Latin America: Recent trends in European NGO policy-making - Kees Biekart 5. Whatever happened to reciprocity? Implications of donor emphasis on 'voice' and 'impact' as rationales for working with NGOs in development - Alan Thomas 6. Development and the new security agenda: W(h)ither(ing) NGO alternatives? - Alan Fowler Part Three: Pursuing alternatives: NGO strategies in practice 7. How civil society organizations use evidence to influence policy processes - Amy Pollard and Julius Court 8. Civil society participation as the focus of Northern NGO support: The case of Dutch co-financing agencies - Irene Guijt 9. Producing knowledge, generating alternatives? Challenges to research oriented NGOs in Central America and Mexico - Cynthia Bazán, Nelson Cuellar, Ileana Gómez, Cati Illsley, Adrian López, Iliana Monterroso, Joaliné Pardo, Jose Luis Rocha, Pedro Torres, Anthony Bebbington 10. Anxieties and affirmations: NGO-donor partnerships for social transformation - Mary Racelis Part Four: Being alternative 11. Pressures on international NGO's: Time to reinvent the system. A view from the Dutch co-financing system - Harry Derksen and Pim Verhallen 12. Transforming or conforming? NGOs training health promoters and the dominant paradigm of the development industry in Bolivia - Katie S. Bristow 13. Political entrepreneurs or development agents: An NGO's tale of resistance and acquiescence in Madhya Pradesh, India - Vasudha Chhotray 14. Is this really the end of the road for gender mainstreaming? : Getting to grips with gender and institutional change - Nicholas Piálek 15. The Ambivalent Cosmopolitanism of International NGOs - Helen Yanacopulos and Matt Baillie Smith 16. Development as reform and counter-reform: Paths travelled by Slum/Shack Dwellers International - Joel Bolnick Five: Taking stock and thinking forward 17. Reflections on NGOs and development: The elephant, the dinosaur, several tigers but no owl - David Hulme Contributors