THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF NGOS AND INFORMATION SHARING

To a large extent, information sharing is what nongovernmental organiz ations (NGOs) do, and the costs of sharing information are falling dra matically. Joining politics and economics, this paper builds an analyt ical framework to illuminate how these falling costs are affecting inf ormation-intensive NGOs in Latin America. Case studies describe the va rious information-sharing outputs and inputs of nonprofit, NGO product ion. I argue that the participatory activity of NGOs affects both poli tical and economic realms, and that as the costs of sharing informatio n fall, NGOs will be a more powerful link in the changing balance betw een states, markets, and civil society. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.