NGOs, politics, projects and probity: a policy implementation perspective.

The article focuses on non-governmental organizations (NGO). The argument in this paper are based on the assumption that, whether NGO will like it or not, their developmental activities in the Third World will remain substantially defined by the demands of project-related work, and that, therefore, such work should be accepted as an opportunity rather than defined as a constraint. If the central contention of this paper--that the indirect political impact of discrete NGO projects is cumulatively rather than individually significant--is correct, there is certainly ample available evidence indicating the growing quantitative impact of NGO project-related activities across most of the states of the South. Lacking institutionalised consultative mechanisms for influencing policy at the stage of formulation, those affected were forced to present their particularistic demands retrospectively, at the implementation stage, to the administrators whose remit it was to apply and enforce the policies and programmes arbitrarily defined and selected by national governments.