Urban organisations amidst transnational pressures

Transnational actors and orthodoxies drive many of the negative and positive incentives influencing collective action in cities. The article pursues this journal's Forum series about NGOs and social movements by discussing some of these organisations' convergent and divergent pathways against a background of transnational forces, especially those of aid donors. Quarrels and competition between NGOs and social movements go back a century or more, but today discord has spread and gained force as elites move to frustrate emancipatory organizations and to commodify public services and shift responsibilities to the private for- and non-profit sectors. Despite the de-politicizing and de-mobilizing influence of these policy preferences, promising new cross-over organisations and new relationships between NGOs and movements are emerging in some cities. Some trends detectable in aid and development discourses point to expanding spaces and incentives for collective action for decommodification and emancipation

Collective action · Competition (biology · Economics · Emancipation · Incentive · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · International Development and Aid · Law · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Urban Planning and Governance