participation

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Participation

Participatory Approaches

	Five one-pagers prepared towards the end of 1994.
	Get in touch if you have ideas that push the concept maps in other directions - ggclark@compuserve.com

Participation	941012b
Participation and Decentralisation	941122b
Principles of participatory practice	941209
The Building Blocks of Participation	941111b
Dilemmas of Participation	940917b (ggcdop)

941012b

Participation

Loosely based on Rahnema M in Sachs W (1992 Ed) The Development Dictionary; Zed Books

	The word "participation" is used in many ways.
	A person may participate actively or passively and, in either case, may be doing so willingly or unwillingly.
	Participation may happen spontaneously or it can be subtlely stage managed from outside.

The concept of participation has been part of the development theory lexicon since the 1950s and has had two main meanings:-

Mainstream Participation (passive)

The mainstream concept considers participation to be the act of partaking in the objectives of the economy and the societal arrangements related to it. In this definition a person has to be part of an economic project in order to qualify as a participant.

Popular Participation (active)

In this more radical view the purpose of participation is to achieve people's power. Here participation is seen as a process of dialogue and interaction which should replace the existing subject/object relationship between intervenors and the intervened; this would enable the oppressed to act as the free subjects of their own destiny.

The Impasse in Participation theory

The concept of participation became acceptable in mainstream thinking when it became clear that,

	with the increasingly economization of people's lives, it was relatively easy to control its "unruly abuses", and
	more could be achieved with less through a "bottom up" approach to development.

The concept remains popular in mainstream thinking but has not helped in any major way to prevent development interventions from proving unsuccessful.

The popular participation movement used such techniques as "dialogical interaction", "conscientization" and "participatory action research". It was originally thought to be an alternative approach to development but the "change-agents" tended to force an alien paradigm on the participants and thus dis-value their indigenous knowledge. This movement is now seen as a "more refined and deceitful means of action and persuasion which was added to the paraphernalia of development institutions".

Beyond Participation - Spontaneity

It was part of the hegemonic enterprise for the purveyors of participation to arrogantly assume that the indigenous people were powerless and moribund. It could, however, be said that the "failure of development" is due to the "power of resistance" of the indigenous people. The so-called un-empowered had many quiet ways of power which they used to resist and subvert change and control.

In various parts of the world there are spontaneous local initiatives which are proving developmentally successful. They come in various shapes and sizes but all include a "spiritual" dimension and a sense of the sacred.

Often there is a charismatic leader whose forward looking vision of society is rooted in the local traditions; but even when there is no spiritual leader to offer a grand vision, there is a sense of the sacred in everyday life which affords a sense of inner freedom and fearlessness which motivates the participants.

It is only our own society which we are in a position to change without the risk of destroying it.

[Claude Levi Strauss]

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941122b

Participation and Decentralization

Laski H (1931, 1961) Introduction to Politics; George Allen and Unwin

"Men who have not been consulted about a change which affects their lives never feel the same confidence about its rightness, or even the same goodwill about its possibilities, as men who feel that, even when their experience has been rejected, a genuine effort has been made to take full account of their attitude".

"Because society is federal in its nature, the more widely power is dispersed in a state, the more effective are its operations likely to be."

Laski reckons there to be three reasons for this:

Ownership of the idea brings committment to it.

"The more men have responsibility for the result of law, the more likely they are to be interested in its result. Obedience is rarely creative in a highly centralised state."

Decentralisation allows for variety, spontaneity and local relevance

"Centralisation makes for uniformity; its lacks the genius of time and place. The scale of its operations makes experiment a difficult matter, for the cost of failure is usually too great to make novelty attractive to an administrator whose first rule is the need for a minimum of error."

Having the time to cope.

"Centralisation means an inability to cope with the problems of time in government. Bodies like a cabinet and a legislative assembly can only work so many hours per day. In a centralised system they are overwhelmed by the number and variety of issues with which they have to deal."

NB The parliament which had responsibility for the Colonial Empire could, normally, only find two days a year to discuss its problems!

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941209

Principles of Participatory Practice

Oakley P et al (1991) Projects with people - the practice of participation in rural development; ILO/ World Employment Programme

	Changes in the process of development project planning are to be observed through time.
	Oakley has listed these changes in terms of three more or less universal principles and five increasingly common ones.

The Primacy of People

People are coming to be seen as the active subjects rather than passive objects of development. Robert Chambers talks of "putting the last first" and this is recognised as a challenge to old-style "development professionals". Facilitating people in their development is "in" - external domination of the development process is "out".

People's Knowledge

An external expert tends to be a specialist and thus has a narrow field of interest. Local people deal with the environment in its totality and can thus have different criteria for judging utility and value. It is now common to be positive about the creative tension which can arise between the two knowledge streams.

People include Women

Women are always major influences on the health and education of the young - and they are often major forces in production. They are increasingly being targeted as part of the development strategy.

	Five other principles, while not being universal, are becoming more common.
	They are not listed in a systematic way and are not presented as any kind of checklist of project performance.

Long term as opposed to short term	The importance of projecting a project over the long term and not merely structuring it in order to achieve an immediate quantifiable impact.
Autonomy as opposed to control	Seeking to invest, as far as possible, direct responsibility for the project with the people and not keeping absolute control in the hands of outside professionals.
Structural as opposed to physical understanding	Ensuring that the analysis of the context in which the problem is located details not merely the physical problems but also the structural issues affecting people's participation.
Spontaneity as opposed to fixed objectives	Allowing for some element of unplanned, qualitative changes to occur within the project rather than limit all actions within predetermined objectives.
Local actions as opposed to local responses	Encouraging local people to determine and to take action within the parameters of the project and not merely to respond passively to project initiatives taken by others.

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941111b

The Building Blocks of Participation

Cernea MM (1991) The building blocks of participation: testing bottom-up planning; World Bank Discussion Paper No 166

Where participation needs to be induced then the problem becomes one of organizing participation ie the problem is one of social organization. Michael Cernea suggests that such social methodologies should contain the following elements:

	identification of the social actors who will carry out the programme
	conceptualisation of the programme goals and participatory principles in line with the socio-economic interests of the social actors
	establishment of adequate linkage systems and forms of cooperation between agencies and the social actors
	establishment of information and communication patterns
	procedures for joint decision making, particularly to allocate financial resources to selected priorities
	and mobilisation through the structures endogenous to the group of social actors themselves

Because of the variable nature of the tasks and the characteristics of the actors in each context, Cernea rejects the idea of a common blueprint and suggests that, for interventions which include participation, the design of contextually appropriate methodologies must itself be an integral part of organizing the participatory process.

It goes without saying that purposive effort is a prerequisite to participation and therefore needs a budget!

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940917b (ggcdop)

Dilemmas of Participation

Kanter RM (1983) The Change Masters- Corporate Entrepreneurs at Work; Routledge

Kanter reckons that vehicles for greater participation at all levels are an important part of an innovating company.

Such vehicles are variously called:

	task forces
	quality circles
	problem solving groups
	shared responsibility teams
	focus groups

The following dilemmas are commonly encountered but should not be used as an excuse for avoiding the move towards greater participation.

Dilemmas of Beginning	Participation-by-command: the paradox of initiation "Why aren't they grateful?": the paternalism trap "Participate or else" : the question of voluntariness
Dilemmas of Structure and Management	"Escape from Freedom" : the need for structure Delegation does not equal abdication "Who cares?" : reporting and accountability The twenty-five-hour-a-day problem
Dilemmas of Issue Choice	The "big decision" trap The "agenda" trap : the need for visible results "Is participation its own reward?"
Dilemmas of Teamwork	The seductiveness of the hierarchy "Participators are made, not born" : the knowledge gap Differential personal resources The seniority/activity gap The internal politics of teams The myth of "team" "It is hard to fire your friend"
Dilemmas of linking teams to their environment	"You had to be there" : problems of turnover The fixed-decision problem "Suboptimization" - too much team spirit Stepping on toes and territories : the problem of power "NIH" (not invented here) : the problems of ownership and transfer "A time to live and a time to die"
Dilemmas of Evaluation	The "great expectations" trap : hoping for an organizational Utopia "A little taste whets the appetite"

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