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This article studies the internationalization of four French NGOs (Médecins du Monde, Médecins Sans Frontières, Action Contre la Faim and Handicap International). This study relativizes the somewhat idealistic hypothesis of the flourishing of a global civil society. Indeed, the reasons for NGOs to develop foreign sections are not only based on value diffusion. The growing competition between NGOs encourages them to turn 'global' in order to adapt themselves in order to expand their ability to obtain human and financial resources, both public and private, which seems analogous to the effect that the processes of internationalization has on transnational firms. However, the analogy between NGOs and transnational firms should be carefully handled. While this analogy is surely heuristic in that it focuses attention on an often-neglected aspect of NGOs' internationalization, this analogy nevertheless has limits. States continue to maintain a strong influence on these NGOs' identities and the reasons for their internationalization. Furthermore, analyzing the internationalization of these NGOs is a way of specifying what is meant by 'globalization' as an environment constraining organizational strategies. Economic globalization certainly has an indirect role on NGOs' internationalization by the worldwide development of inequalities at the global level and the tendency for states and international organizations to subcontract social policies to the Third Sector. Yet there is a parallel, rather than a causal, relationship between the internationalization of NGOs and the growth of transnational firms. Therefore, other aspects of globalization are needed to understand the development of NGOs: these aspects include not only the growth and extension of means of communication, but also the increasingly intense competition for the comparative advantages resulting from state fragmentation. * This article reproduces numerous elements published in a shorter version entitled "Une mondialisation du sans-frontiérisme humanitaire?", in Laroche [2003: 121-133]. The reference of the book is Laroche Josepha (ed.), Mondialisation et gouvernance mondiale, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France/IRIS, 2003.

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