Civil society, international donors and poverty in Bangladesh

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The recent donor emphasis on building civil society in poor countries assumes that such support will benefit the poorest sections of these societies. It therefore presumes to be readily connected to the international agency goal of poverty eradication. Unfortunately, most foreign donors define civil society using a Western liberal framework, which in many development contexts understates both configurations of power within civil society and also the enmeshment of civil society with the state. Bangladesh has a strong history of what can be described as civil society activity, but there is growing evidence that a considerable part of this activity may not necessarily lead to a reduction of poverty and may even be implicated in the ongoing reproduction of poverty.