INTRODUCTION

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The notion of the 'Post-Governmental Organisation’ is obviously an ironic variation on the now well established concept of
the NGO, the Non-Governmental Organisation. Over the past twenty or so years, NGO's have become important actors in the
arena of national, international and global politics. The role of NGO's in the struggle for human rights, the ecology, debt re-
lief, migrants’ rights, humane working and living conditions, etc., is in creasingly recognised by offi political bodies.
As a result, NGO's are now regularly represented at global eco- summits, they advise different UN institutions and are used
as experts in court cases. Thus, NGO's are taking over tasks that traditionally were the domain of nation states, whether
democratic or not. They become part of what Saskia Sassen has referred to as a ‘crisis of governance’, in which political
decision-making and co ntrol is shifting away from national governments towards private and public NGO's of all sorts and
types.

NGO's which do not only survey, criticise and complement such governmental structures, but which take on an active role
in replacing government functions, can be called PGO's. The PGO theme will focus specifically on new non-institution-
alised ways in which people organise themselves around cultural, social, and political concerns that emerge in the inter-
nationally networked communication environments.

This implies that the PGO cannot be seen as generally good or bad. Rather, the hypothesis of the PGO suggests that for
many independent initiatives and organisations, the question of responsibility and power is changing in a fundamental
way. Whereas they used to be able to define themselves as the ‘other’ of given power structures, the erosion of hierarchi-
cal political structures has created a more heterogeneous political arena in which public agency is ‘up for grabs’. Much of
the political vacuum is created and filled by unholy alliances between political and private actors, who make sure that
they benefit from the retreat of the nation state. But many well-meaning, morally sound, independent PGO are also finding
themselves in a position where they have to switch from strategies of protest and campaigning, to strategies of political
agency and the building of organisational structures.

The PGO theme at the N5M3 tries to straddle the double-sidedness of the theme. It tries to formulate a constructive critique
of the PGO, pointing out its dangers and, at the same time, analysing the most creative and inspiring models for building
PGOs. After all, there is a continuing need for new, critical and independent organisations that are able to challenge the
debilitating and exploiting political structures that stifle large parts of the world. And why not learn from the successes
and failures of Saatchi & Saatchi, Soros, the IMF, financial consulting companies and informal networks of independent
radio producers?

Experience has shown that, in many ways, organisations like Greenpeace and Amnesty International are better equipped
to deal with the conditions the new system of power create. This is partly due to the fact that they have always been or-
ganised as distributed, international entities, relying heavily on their communications infrastructures. They also seem to
be more fit for the new environment because they are organised around spheres of interest rather than traditional geo-
graphic and socio- political structures. However, while the NGO's have become important actors in the arena of interna-
tional and global politics, they have also become bureaucratic structures that often act as a ‘state without the state’, with
little or no democratic accountability or legitimisation.

The PGO is neither East nor West, North or South, nor Post East/ West/Modern, it is rather an attempt at an answer to the
contradictions and the syndromes of globalisation. Therefore, some people prefer to translate PGO as Post Global
Organisation. For them, the crucial question at this stage is not so much the relation with governmental structures, but how
we can get over the myths of globalisation, and what the necessary organisational structures for this era beyond the ide-
ology of globalism would be.