Sabine Lang is Associate Professor of International Studies in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA.

• 1. David or Goliath? Situating NGOs in politics; 2. Civil society as a public sphere; 3. The NGOization of civil society; 4. Limits to NGO advocacy in the public sphere; 5. Urban development advocacy in the United States and Germany; 6. Transnational women's NGO networks in the European Union; 7. NGOs navigating inclusion in governance and public accountabilities; Appendix A. Interviews for Chapter 5; Appendix B. Interviews for Chapter 6; Appendix C. Website analysis for Chapter 6; Appendix D. Issue crawler figures for Chapter 6.

'Sabine Lang has done a fantastic service to both researchers and policy advocates concerned with civil society and civic participation. Clearly distinguishing between group policy advantages bargained in backrooms and democratic gains made by giving citizens real opportunities for public voice, Lang shows how NGOs navigate the trade-offs and synergies between these two outcomes.' Myra Marx Ferree, Alice H. Cook Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Madison and author of Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective