Common good and collective action

Abstract

If we focus on the condition sine qua non for the existence of a non-governmental organization, we easily come to the logical deduction that without one distinctive part of the term, government, we cannot outline the scope of this organizational form. This has created a need to look into classical forms of government or governance structures and search for what we could call the roots of the NGOs. That is why, before looking at the modern definition, a discursive path is proposed for collecting elements, performing a trial reconstruction of the ontos of this modern organizational form, along with a social origins approach (Salamon & Anheier, 1998).