4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST state-led versus market-led development, to an emphasis on civil society, as a response to the shortcomings of these earlier models. This has yielded an apparent consensus on civil society between revisionist neo-liberalism and post-Marxism. However, it will also be argued that both are marked by problematic tendencies towards essentialising local communities at the expense of non-local political economy. Both tend to caricature the state and romanticise local civil society so that there is little choice but to favour the latter over the former in strategic interventions. THE CONVERGENCE AROUND LOCAL CIVIL SOCIETY The new emphasis on civil society represents a major inversion in development theory and strategy. Simplified, this can be described as a transition from state and market to civil society and from centralism to localism. In the optimistic post-war beginnings of development theory, the ideology of developmentalism and the concept of the interventionist public interest state were inseparable (World Bank, 1997). Mackintosh argues that this public interest view of the state rests on three assumptions: "I. It is possible to identify a "public interest." ... 2. The state is competent to identify that public interest. 3. The state will in practice serve (or at least, can be made to seek to serve) that public interest" (Mackintosh, 1992, p. 65). The public interest was commonly defined with reference to the market and the claimed severity of market failure was used as an economic justification for granting the centralised state a key role in correcting market failures and ensuring economic efficiency, growth, macroeconomic stability and social development. The 1980s brought a dramatic shift away from this public interest view of the state. Instead of being the 'engine of development' the state now came to be seen as the central problem, both by the political left and the political right. The radical critique of the public interest view of the state has mainly attacked the first assumption; the existence of a single, identifiable public interest, ignoring class, ethnic and gender divisions in civil society. This critique leads to analyses of postcolonial state formations and politics that emphasise social relations and struggles in civil society (Stokke, 1994; Tornquist, 1999). Neo-liberals, on the other hand, focus their critique on the second and third assumptions, the competence and motivation of the state. Their critique, which can be described as a 'private interest view' of the state, asserts that governments, like markets, can fail to work. This can happen if the organisation of governments allows individuals to