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Articles authored by Whaites, Alan

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Let's get civil society straight: NGOs and political theory
NGOs are using `civil society' to mean different things: the author argues that the wide definition means that any potential partner organisation becomes a civil-society organisation, and that consideration of the conditions that are central to a community organisation becoming a civil organisation may be useful in helping NGOs focus on the quality of the associations they choose. This article is freely available as a chapter in Development NGOs and Civil Society.
NGOs, civil society and the state: avoiding theoretical extremes in real world issues
The standard models of the state and civil society balancing each other, as propounded by de Tocqueville, Hegel and Gramsci, are no longer useful in all cases when thinking about the relationship between the state, civil society and NGOs. The emergence in many countries of a weak state and relatively strong civil society organisations has led to NGOs filling the gaps in the provision of services which should nominally be provided by the state.

Articles

Pursuing partnership: World Vision and the ideology of development - a case study
This paper examines the role of ideology in underpinning the operations of major development movements. As a confessional NGO, World Vision presents a useful case study; and this article examines the influence on this NGO of the interaction between ideology and wider development trends.
NGOs, disasters, and advocacy: caught between the Prophet and the Shepherd Boy
Is it preferable for aid agencies to listen to their prophetic calling and risk their hard-earned credibility by engaging in advocacy that is intended to avert disasters, or should NGOs instead be wary of calling wolf too often? Written from the perspective of an advocacy practitioner, this article looks at the conflicting pressures on NGOs both to scale-up and to limit advocacy during disasters.