UMANITARISMO COMPETITIVO:LE ONG NEI PROCESSI DELL’AIUTO E DELL’EMERGENZA

The Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are analyzed through nine dilemmas that they face in their ordinary functioning. These dilemmas rise from typical difficulties of collective action. When aid and emergency activities are carried out, they get even harder because of further difficulties which are due to the principal-agent relationship and the reduction of transaction costs. In the last section of the paper, the work of NGOs is examined in contexts of humanitarian emergencies and the new “democratic” aid conditionality which followed to the end of the Cold War.