‘NGOs and the political empowerment of the poor: cultivating the habits of Democracy’ World Development (2012)
Recent research in Bangladesh highlights an interesting paradox: impressive development outcomes combined with extremely poor quality of governance. The country’s active development NGO sector has been credited with some of the more positive development achievements. The question that this paper sets out to address is why the sector has not made an equivalent contribution on the governance front. It draws on primary survey data to explore the hypothesis that the problem lies in the increasing homogenization ofNGOs around the delivery of services, primarily microfinance services, and its shift away from social mobilization organizations.
