Issues and Priorities in Non-governmental Organisation Research

This article aims to do three things. First, it briefly sketches out the history of the recent rise to prominence of NGOs as an issue in development studies, linking this with the both the growth of and resistance to neo-liberal policy agendas. Second, it reflects on the strengths and weaknesses of NGO research to date, which although wide-ranging and diverse, has often lacked theoretical rigour, contextual understanding and empirical detail. Third, some ideas are presented for moving forward the NGO research agenda, both at the level of theory building and inter-disciplinarity, and in relation to ways that can improve the relevance of NGO research to practice. Themes included in the paper include the need for trans-disciplinary research, the importance of linking both Northern and Southern contexts of research and practice, and the need to build opportunities for providing more effective relationships between researchers and research ‘users’ in the South Asian context.