ABSTRACT

This highly topical volume, with contributions from leading experts in the field, explores a variety of questions about membership based organizations of the poor. Analyzing their success and failure and the internal and external factors that play a part, it uses studies from both developed and developing countries.

Put together by a group of prestigious editors, the contributors address a range of questions, including:

  • What structures and activities characterize MBOPs?
  • What is meant by success and what factors account for success?
  • What are the internal (governance structure and leadership) and external (policy environment) factors that account for success?
  • Are these factors replicable across countries or even within countries?
  • What are the constraints to successful MBOPs expanding, or to new ones being formed?
  • What sort of policy environment enables the success of MBOPs and the formation of successful MBOPs?
  • What types of institutional reforms are needed to ensure the representation of the poor through their own MBOs?

This is an insightful work, that will be invaluable for students and researchers studying or working in the areas of international and development economics and development studies.

part I|20 pages

Introduction and overview

chapter 1|18 pages

Membership-based organizations of the poor

Concepts, experience and policy

part III|39 pages

Trade unions

chapter 4|18 pages

Working class struggles, labour elites, and closed shops

The lessons from India's trade unions and experiences of organisation

chapter 5|19 pages

China as a world factory

New practices and struggles of migrant women workers

part IV|52 pages

Cooperatives

part V|63 pages

Small self-help groups

part VI|60 pages

Campaigning organizations

chapter 12|19 pages

Shack/Slum Dwellers International

One experience of the contribution of membership organisations to pro-poor urban development

chapter 13|21 pages

Membership-based organisations of the poor

The South African tradition

chapter 14|18 pages

Informal governance and organizational success

The effects of noncompliance among Lima's street-vending organizations

part VII|98 pages

Local power structures and MBOPs

chapter 15|16 pages

Membership-based organizations as a reflection of power structures in rural “community”

Experiences and observations from Sindh Province, Pakistan

chapter 16|16 pages

Doing things differently?

The everyday politics of membership-based organisations

chapter 17|39 pages

Voice lessons

Local government organizations, social organizations, and the quality of local governance 1