Useful instruments in poverty alleviation ?

The notion of good governance and participation are contested. The central themes within good governance and participation (democracy, anti-corruption and transparency) are agreed on as significant. Under neoliberal ‘hegemony’ within international policies, privatization is seen as an important instrument for good governance. In other circumstances democracy is at the heart of what good governance is, while privatization and openness are not valued as good governance per se. And yet again good governance and participation can be seen as important prerequisites for successful privatization by creating a stable civil society. The concepts of ‘good governance’ and ‘participation’ and their use in discourses and policies (in the ‘North’ as well as in the ‘South’) seem dependent on circumstances. The discussions above will be used to analyse and discuss whether the notions of ‘good governance’ and ‘participation’ are in fact useful in poverty alleviation, seen from local and national perspective. This discussion will partly take its point of departure in the results obtained by a case study of Bolivia: How do NGOs work in Bolivia and how do they interact with other groups in civil society, in this case especially indigenous peoples’ organisations in rural Bolivia. ‘Good governance’ and ‘participation’ are concepts which are embedded in northern (in a north/south perspective) liberal market economy principles. This is problematic, since the good intentions of creating good governance, anti-corruption policies and transparency could cover over a strategy of getting access to and control of natural resources in developing countries. The paper will critically scrutinize this hypothesis by looking at the