The Continued Reign of Participation and Participatory Development: A

rule of benevolence or tyranny?

Emmanuel Akwasi Adu-Ampong

International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam

12 Kortenaerkade Den Haag, 2518 AX

The Netherlands

emmanuel@student.eur.nl

2012

Abstract

Participation and participatory development has re-emerged into the

limelight of development practice. These concepts started out as radical ideas

that sought to redefine and reverse what was a top-down bureaucratic

development practice. This article reviews the genesis of these concepts and

the critiques that later came to be levied against them – especially the charge

of ‘tyranny’ by Cooke and Kothari. It is argued that while some of these

critiques may be valid these concepts still offer an opportunity for a

radicalised development practice. This article therefore proposes ways in

which to redeem the potentials in these concepts.

Keywords: participation, participatory development, development practice,

tyranny, bureaucracy, politicised

Introduction

‘Participation’ and participatory development (PD) started as radical ideas

that sought to challenge and reverse top-down development practice. The

noble aim of these ideas was to discard “mainstream development’s

neocolonial tendencies, Western-centric values and centralised decision-

making processes” (Kapoor, 2005: 1203). This rejection of centralised top-

down processes was to be replaced with spaces for local people to share and

analyse their knowledge of their own life conditions in order for them to

plan, act and evaluate needed interventions (Chambers, 1997; 1994a, b, c).

The basis of these ideas was the plethora of failed development projects and

programmes that were initiated in a top-down bureaucratic fashion. From its

initial margins in development studies, practice and thought, participation

and PD have now been assimilated into the routines of public sector

implementation agencies. Thus from local NGOs to global aid agencies like

the World Bank and IMF, participation and PD have become a ‘must do’ in

their programmes. The extent of assimilation and routinisation of what was

once a radical idea, has resulted in charges against participation and PD as

being a new fancy buzzword (Cornwall and Brock, 2005) and the ‘new

tyranny’ of development studies and practice (Cooke and Kothari, 2001).

Notwithstanding the charges and critiques against it, participation and PD

have continued to spread across the globe in the process becoming deeply

and diversely expressed in development practice. The objective of this

review article is to offer a reflection on the concepts of participation and PD

in order to ascertain whether it is indeed the ‘new tyranny’ of development

studies or that these concepts still hold the initial promise of offering

possibilities for a politicised and radicalised development practice.

This review article is organised into five sections. Section one looks into the

genesis of participation and PD, the purposes espoused by early proponents

and how they evolved over time. The next section deals with the critiques

levied against participation and PD. Section three will then attempt a

qualified defence of the concepts by addressing some of the critiques.

Through the use of examples, the analysis shows how the potentials of PD

are being retrieved from routinisation and standardisation. The possibilities

for (re)positioning participation and PD for a radicalised and politicised

development practice are then offered in section four before the conclusions

in section five. The burden of this review article is to argue that while

ambiguities exist in the definitions and practices of participation and PD,

these ambiguities create spaces in which the emancipatory power of

participation and PD can be promoted. Thus contested as participation and

PD may be, these concepts remain an important opportunity for a

development practice that fundamentally engages with the issues of power

and inequalities within communities and has the potential to bring about real

benefits to people who hitherto have been rendered mere ‘objects’ of

development interventions.

In the beginning

Participation and PD have a long and chequered history and have borrowed

ideas and methodologies from different disciplines. According to Chambers

(1994a), it was in the mid-1980s that the words ‘participation’ and

‘participatory’ first appeared in the vocabulary of rapid rural appraisal

(RRA). The methods and approaches of RRA developed and circulated in the

1980s, further evolving into participatory rural appraisal (PRA). Although

evolving from RRA, PRA had other sources including, agro-ecosystem

analysis, applied anthropology and field research on farming systems. The

major basic difference between RRA and PRA is that under RRA,

information about local conditions is elicited by outside ‘experts’; while in

PRA information about local conditions is recognised as being owned by

local people generating and sharing such information through a process of

empowerment. At its core, PRA denoted local people sharing their own

representation, understanding and analysis of their needs with development

‘experts’, largely in the form of visual representations – mapping in the

sound, using seeds to rank wealth, etc. From the 1990’s onwards PRA gained

prominence and usage throughout the development sector worldwide with

much of the initial spread occurring through South-South co-operation and

sharing of innovations and training. The use of PRA in development practice

led to ‘discoveries’ on the capabilities of local people to fully appraise,

analyse, express and plan their own realities. Thus for Chambers, PRA was

in the beginning a group of approaches and methods that enabled local

people to share and analyse their knowledge of life conditions and to plan

and act accordingly (Chambers 1997; 1994a, b, c).

Conventionally, PD is recognised as emerging from the recognition and

acceptance of the errors and shortcomings of centralised top-down

development approaches. The numerous examples of ‘white elephants’ of

failed development programmes and projects around the world are often

cited as an underlying reason. The main cause of such failed programmes

was the inability of development ‘experts’ to involve the local people in the

planning and execution of programmes. Chambers (1997:102) notes that PD

came about as professionals sought to develop new approaches and methods

to work with, after they became aware of the mismatch between the realities

they constructed and the actual realities experienced by people in the

implementation environments. The radical and political elements in

participation and PD was seen in its insistence on a bottom-up approach that

sought to make visible power relations and inequalities that exist between

communities and development agencies as well as within communities and

even the development agencies. The essence of participation was therefore to

reverse top-down bureaucratic development approaches in order to allow for

local people to determine their development priorities and for development

professionals to encourage that process rather than impose their own reality.

At that point in time, the idea of PD was a radical and revolutionary one,

since the belief among development organisation was that ‘experts’ knew

better and thus had the right to intervene in the life conditions of local

people. PD therefore called for a reversal of hierarchies in which powerful

‘uppers’ (development practitioners, academics and other important

outsiders) give way to local ‘lowers’ (subjects and beneficiaries of

development assistance) so that ‘lowers’ get empowered to determine their

own priorities (Chambers, 1997; Williams, 2004).

Envisaged as a radical alternative and reversal of the trend towards

centralisation, authoritarianism and homogenisation, PD as an emergent

paradigm was to allow for inclusive holism, open-systems thinking and

diverse options and actions to replace reductionism, linear thinking and

standard solutions. These reversals were to ‘enable local people to identify,

express and achieve more of their own priorities’ (Chambers 1997:189). An

important and core principle of PD therefore was for local knowledge and

understanding to be made part of the planning of development programmes

(Mosse, 2001). The acknowledgment and inclusion of local knowledge in

development planning was seen as holding the emancipatory and

empowering promise of PD. Cornwall (2003: 1325) explains that PD held the

“promise of inclusion, of creating spaces for the less vocal and powerful to

exercise their voices and begin to gain more choices”. This radical approach

of PD provided an opportunity for a politicised development practice that

was believed to lead to empowerment of local people. This empowerment

process allows local people to take control over development projects

through sharing their knowledge, determining priorities and having a sense

of ownership over information generated.

PD, once marginalised in development practice due to its radical

connotations, is now seen as the new orthodoxy of development studies and

practice (Mayoux, 1995; Henkel and Stirrat, 2001). Parfitt (2004) argues that

even if PD cannot be seen as the new orthodoxy, it is undeniably true that PD

is the single most important influence in mainstream development thinking

and practice. From local organisations to multinational and global

institutions, PD is being adopted and embraced as something that is

inherently good. The defining moment for the widespread adoption of

participation and PD can be traced to when these concepts got embraced by

the World Bank. After years of criticisms regarding the top-down and

exclusionary features of its Structural Adjustment Programmes and the

resulting negative socioeconomic effects, the World Bank now endorses

participation and PD. From its World Development Report (WDR) of 2000/1

– Attacking Poverty – to the current Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers

(PRSPs), the World Bank stresses the need for participation and PD. Kapoor

(2005) cites the example of Tanzania where the World Bank has imposed PD

as conditionality for assessing funds through the Heavily Indebted Poor

Countries (HIPC) initiative. Notwithstanding the widespread acceptance of

PD in development practice, critical questions remain on its theorization and

practice.

Participatory Development: A wolf in sheep’s clothing?

According to critics, participation and PD no longer have the radical

connotations they once held. For many critics, the incorporation of these

concepts into the routines of implementation agencies under the influence of

international donors has somewhat watered down the radical nature of the

ideas. Donor agencies, development institutions and organisations now see

PD as a religious duty to local people which they more often than not simply

pay lip-service to. Much can be said about the plethora of handbooks on how

to ‘do’ participatory development as if every project area has the same

dynamics. While the critiques against PD are numerous and varied this

section will focus on the broad ‘tyrannies’ identified by Cooke and Kothari

(2001) ; i) ‘the tyranny of decision-making and control’, ii) ‘the tyranny of the

group’ and iii) ‘the tyranny of method’. Majority of the critiques against

participation and PD can be put under one or more of these categories.

...on the tyranny of decision making and control

A key underlying principle of PD is that the knowledge of local people

should be incorporated in the planning process of interventions. The belief is

that by allowing local people to define and analyse their own problems, they

will come up with what they see as the best solution. The opening up for

spaces for local people to share their knowledge is considered as having the

possibility to reverse top-down bureaucratic relations – what Chambers

(1997) calls “Putting the Last First”. From this perspective, PD is seen as

empowering the ‘lowers’ in societies because development ‘experts’ who

normally will be the ones to decide, now take the role of facilitators. The

uncritical embrace of ‘local knowledge’ in the processes of PD has raised

several critiques. Mosse (2001:23) aptly notes that “local knowledge is

undoubtedly a powerful normative construct that serves to conceal the

complex nature of information production in ‘participatory’ planning,

especially the role of outsiders”.

Mosse (2001) exemplifies the problematic nature of ‘local knowledge’ using

the Kribhco Indo-British Farming Project (KRIBP) – a donor-funded

programme of a large public sector organisation in India. Mosse shows how

what in PD is termed as local knowledge (needs and priorities of

communities) may as well be just constructs of the planning context behind

which is concealed the politics of knowledge production and use. The

assumption in PD literature that the incorporation of local people’s

knowledge can transform top-down bureaucratic planning systems is

challenged. Mosse illustrates how local knowledge reflects and is shaped by

local power relations and how locally dominant groups plus project interests

strongly shape the process of PRA and the resulting ‘knowledge’ that guides

the implementation of the KRIBP. This criticism is especially true in an era

where ‘PRA-type’ information (reports, proposals) are being set out by

international donors and agencies as the new scientific standard by which to

measure the success or suitability of a project. This situation has led to

implementation agencies using the labels of ‘participation’ and PD as a way

of legitimising the old methods and approaches PRA sought to replace. The

current situation flies directly in the face of Chambers’ (1994a, b, and c) idea

of PD being an open and innovative methodological process that

continuously evolves to meet new challenges rather than as something set in

stone.

…on the tyranny of the group

Group consensus and the ways of arriving at the shared ‘local knowledge’ is

another underlying principle of PD (Chambers, 1997). It is assumed that

when the once excluded ‘lowers’ (the poor, women and old people) are

included in ‘community’ consultations and everyone is allowed space to air

their opinions, a collective decision based on ‘local knowledge’ can be

generated. It has been observed that “community is a concept often used by

state and other organizations, rather than the people themselves, and it

carries connotations of consensus and "needs" determined within parameters

set by outsiders” (Nelson and Wright, 1995:15). In the view of Kapoor (2005)

PD ends up in self-delusion when the risks and messiness inherent in

participation are short-circuited in the name of seeking for definitive and

consensual decisions. In seeking consensus, underlying micro-power

differences within the ‘community’ are ignored and there is even the real

danger that local people get to ‘participate’ only after programme objectives

and goals have been set by outsiders.

In a World Vision PD programme in Northern Tanzania, Kelsall and Mercer

(2003) explain how, in seeking for consensus, power ends up in the hands of

local elites (‘uppers’) at the expense of the poor and women (‘lowers’). In the

example of a village school project where extra classrooms and teachers’

houses were built, Kelsall and Mercer observed that not all villagers were

able to benefit. This was because some parents could not afford to pay the

school fees even though they were compelled by the ‘community decision’ to

make contributions to the project. These poorer families felt that the village

Chairman did not consider those who were poor and was not sympathetic to

their condition. For these ‘lowers’ therefore, their participation in the

community project lead neither to empowerment nor the benefiting of

sending their children to the school they contributed to. Thus, PD becomes a

tyranny when it treats communities as a homogenous group and focuses on

achieving group consensus which is usually monopolised by local elites. This

situation runs the risk of “reproducing existing inequalities and perpetuating

patterns of development which date from the colonial period if not earlier”

(Ibid: 302).

...on the tyranny of methods

In the beginning, PD was an open approach that sought to undo the

institutionalised procedures in development practice. With its proliferation

and uncritical adoption by international organisations, PD is now treated as a

‘rubber stamp’ (Mohan, 2001) that serves only as a way to legitimate

programmes. Cleaver (1999, 2001) explains how PD has been transformed

into a set of managerial exercises based on handbooks of techniques and

procedures, turning away from its radical roots. He argues that there is a

huge amount of work on techniques and procedures in the participation

literature which seems to imply that there is an appropriate technique for

‘discovering’ the realities of local people and to enable them to fully

participate in decision-making.

In the case of KRIBP, Mosse (2001) notes that over time and through a

process of Weberian routinisation, the participatory goals of the project

became displaced by the operational demands like timely-implementation

and standardised evaluations of the project. This was because the model of

participation, the method and techniques to be used in the KRIBP were

formulated by consultants and set in place by the donor organisation. This

meant that the participation model provided a rigid framework in which the

complexity of local relations had to conform. This situation lead to

standardisation and inflexibility, the very things that participation (PRA)

sought to replace. Now, instead of continuous innovation in the field as to

which approaches work better, there is a set of techniques and procedures to

follow when doing PD work. According to Kapoor (2005) the incorporation

of PD into development programming leads to the packing and branding of

participation in order to market development organisations. This tyranny of

methods has resulted in a situation where some of the old approaches that

had advantages over participatory approaches are all bundled together and

thrown out in the name of participation. In the end, the standardisation of

PD into managerial tool kits and modules means participation is used to

cover up the fact that decision making still remains largely top-down.

Defending the reign: towards transformation

These foregoing critiques of participation and PD show that there is ongoing

misuse and abuse and that there is the potential for these concepts to develop

into a ‘new tyranny’ of development practice. The critiques outlined above

make the point that as the new buzzword (Cornwall and Brock, 2005) and

rebranding (Kapoor, 2005) of the development ‘anti-politics machine’

(Ferguson, 1994), participation and PD is the oil that greases the wheels of

this machine. While acknowledging such potential ‘tyrannies’ in PD, it is

argued here that PD offers an important opportunity for a politicised and

radical development practice. In spite of the criticisms, the influence of PD

continues to increase. This shows that if properly radicalised and politicised,

PD can help achieve effectiveness and efficiency in international

development practice. Even hardcore critics like Kapoor (2002, 2005), Cooke

and Kothari (2001) and Mohan (2001) acknowledge that PD has resulted in

very real benefits to some local communities. It will therefore be fool-hardy

to throw out the baby with the bath water. In order to transform PD for a

radicalised and politicised development practice and to overcome some of

the critiques, this paper outlines three main points: i) a redefinition and

theorisation of PD, ii) the problematising of PD practice and iii) a relocation

of PD within the notion of citizenship.

Definitions matter

For PD to reassert its radical position in development practice there is a need

for a redefinition and theorising of participation. There exists an ambiguity in

the way that participation is defined. This ambiguity sometimes weakens the

consistency of how concepts as power, empowerment and community are

explained in PD. Cleaver (1999) and Parfitt (2004) highlight that the

theorisation of participation is dichotomised into a means/end classification.

How radical PD can be depends on whether it is seen as a means or as an

end; each view has different implications.

Participation as a means implies that it is used mainly as a tool for achieving

better project outcomes by mobilising local people behind predetermined

project goals. The implication is that grassroots power relations will be left

unscathed and so are the power relations between donor agencies and

recipients. Participation as a means therefore simply mobilises local people

for a project in essentially the same way as traditional top-down

development models. Participation as an end on the other hand, is seen as a

process in which power relations at grassroots level and at aid donor-

recipient level are transformed in a way that empowers marginalised groups.

Participation is thus viewed as enhancing the capacities of individuals to

improve their lives and also as facilitating social change. While it is

impossible to have a universally accepted definition, it should be noted that

definitions based on the idea of participation being an end have more

capacity to bring about changes than definitions that see participation as

simply a means. Participation as a means is politically neutral to the extent

that it does not address unequal power differentials whereas participation as

an end seeks to redress unequal power relations at various levels (Parfitt,

2004; Mohan, 2001). In the case of the World Vision programme reported by

Kelsall and Mercer (2003), the failure to see participation as an end – of

dealing with existing unequal power relations – resulted in the programme

reproducing and deepening existing inequalities in the communities. Thus a

definition of participation as an end has an empowering, politically radical

element to it and it is in this definition that participation offers an important

opportunity in development practice.

Questioning the process

Whereas Cooke and Kothari (2001) and other critics state that the

mainstreaming and routinisation of PD has led to a ‘de-politicisation’ of

development practice, this paper argues that PD still remains an excellent

opportunity for the (re)politicisation of development practice. As Williams

points out, “participation may indeed be a form of ‘subjection’, its

consequences are not predetermined and its subjects are never completely

controlled ... (it) opens up new spaces for political action” (2004:557). Thus

what must be discontinued is the uncritical promotion of PD. The practice

and process should be questioned every step of the way. As Williams (2004)

explains, the actual circumstances in which the particular discourse and

practice of PD are carried out must be critically examined to identify the

opportunities for their (re)politicisation. In the face of the all-pervasive and

ambiguous nature of PD, Williams calls for a re-evaluation in the context of

institutional analysis and political capabilities. In this re-evaluation, deeper

analysis of the wider institutional impacts of participation instead of the

overemphasis on individual instances of participation is advocated. It is in

such analysis that PD can be located in wider institutional contexts and be

used to fully understand and appreciate how these contexts allow or restrict

participation. Re-evaluation of how participation enhances political

capabilities of local people is also essential.

The questioning of PD according to Cooke (2005) must also include the self-

examination and reflexivity of practitioners. He argues that definition aside,

PD is about techniques and the end to which it is used. Thus a critical self-

reflection by practitioners, to reveal entrenched interests and attitudes is

important to make PD emancipatory for the targeted group. Furthermore,

Williams (2004) notes that, the analysis of participatory projects should be in

a way that explicitly recognises the political aspects of development. This can

be done by critically interrogating how the political spaces created by PD are

used to the advantage of the poor and marginalised. The opportunities in PD

in ensuring a politicised development practice can be utilised when there is

on-going explicit analysis and questioning of the political spaces it creates.

Questions such as the extent to which PD programmes contribute to political

learning of the poor, the degree to which PD programmes reshape political

networks and how such programmes affect or change existing patterns of

political (under)representation are vital in transforming PD from being a

‘tyranny of methods’ into an on-going innovative process. For Kapoor

(2005:1216) re-politicising PD into its radical origin means “politicising and

publicising the prejudices and prerogatives of the facilitator [which] should

help de-centre and democratise power relationships”. One way to do this

transformation is to move beyond participation as currently practised to a

more entrenched level of empowerment.

Through theoretical considerations and the case study of an NGO, Mohan

(2001) shows that there are numerous ways of moving beyond participation

as it is being practised presently and bringing about a deeper empowerment.

Moving beyond participation relates to moving beyond criticisms of PD and

ensuring that PD is not used just as a label on projects and programmes that

do nothing ‘participatory’. Using the notion of hybridity, Mohan explains

that it is imperative for PD to acknowledge that there exist power

inequalities, but to productively look at these rather than try to minimise

differentials that are not readily removed. This enables PD to move beyond

the critique of being a ‘tyranny of group’. He states that PD should use more

transformative approaches that would study the global economy and

transnational organisations and should be prepared to criticise bad practice

rather than just focusing on participatory approaches that tend to only study

downward hierarchies to local levels. There is also the need to acknowledge

that local people are not powerless, as such recognition helps to move

beyond the patronising attitudes that ‘they’ need to be empowered according

to ‘our’ agenda. This ontological position, reasons Mohan, enables a more

transformative agenda of PD to be established and it is in this that a more

radical development practice can ensue.

It is argued here that PD should move away from its romanticising of local

knowledge and to acknowledge that knowledge is socially constructed and

that it is inter-subjectively generated. PD should create space for local people

and development agencies to exchange views and their interpretations

through fair stakeholder analysis. Opportunities for constructive dialogue

are essential and PD must involve locally essential criteria in the evaluation

and assessment of projects. Mohan and Stokke (2000:252) write that PD is an

‘ongoing process of empowerment where local communities take over their

own development’. However, they caution against the dangers of too much

focus on ‘the local’. The argument is that ‘the local’ is susceptible to co-

optation and may be used by diverse stakeholders for different purposes. An

overemphasis on ‘the local’ also obscures and downplays the important role

played by the state and transnational power holders. The solution to this

problem is therefore to undertake a critical analysis of the ways in which ‘the

local’ is politically utilised.

On Citizenship and Politics of Development

Mohan has noted that the transformation of PD is best accomplished when

participation is seen “as a form of citizenship in which political processes are

institutionalised and people can hold others to account” (2007:779). A

revitalized citizen agenda within PD is currently seen as a good opportunity

for the re-politicisation of PD (ibid; Hickey and Mohan, 2005; Gaventa, 2005).

The idea here is to broaden the scope of participation to include political

agency of individuals and communities. According to Gaventa (2005:29) such

extension of “the concept of participation to one of citizenship also recasts

participation as a right, not simply an invitation offered to beneficiaries of

development”. When individuals are seen as part of a political community,

then PD becomes a process through which individuals as participants are

enabled to develop their ‘competencies’. This may then allow them to project

their agency beyond the specific development programme into wider arenas

in the society, in order to challenge existing power relations and inequalities.

This may not only increase their control over socioeconomic resources but

will also put them in a position to hold elected officials to account on their

own agency, rather than waiting for the development ‘expert’ to mobilise

and invite them to participate. The notion of citizenship is able to link the

convergence between PD and ‘good governance’ and participatory

governance (Gaventa, 2002) and this linkage means that “citizenship offers

certain advantages both as a form of analysis and as a guide towards policy

and strategic action” (Mohan and Hickey, 2005: 65).

Hickey and Mohan (2005:237) highlight that in the area of participatory

governance and democratic decentralisation, participation has been relocated

within a radical politics of development. Based on empirical evidence drawn

from a range of contemporary participatory approaches, they show that there

is great opportunity for PD to succeed. To them participatory approaches are

most likely to accomplish much; “(i) where they are pursued as part of a

wider radical political project; (ii) where they are aimed specifically at

securing citizenship rights and participation for marginal and subordinate

groups; and (iii) when they seek to engage with development as an

underlying process of social change rather than in the form of discrete

technocratic interventions”. However, they acknowledge that it is possible

for PD to succeed and be transformative even when these criteria are not

present, showing that PD is not a ‘tyranny of method’. The implications of

the above are clear; PD has transformative potentials and offers a politicised

and radical development practice when used in a critical and engaging

manner.

Conclusion

Once regarded as too radical and ostracised into the margins of development

thinking and practice, participation and PD have over the past two and a half

decades moved to the mainstream of development practice. The adoption

and propagation of PD by international development organisations and

agencies has resulted in a considerable backlash to the extent of the concepts

being labelled as a ‘tyranny’. This backlash has raised a number of important

issues concerning the dangers of uncritical promotion of PD. These concerns

however, in no way mean that PD should be discarded. Even fierce critics

acknowledge the real benefits brought by PD to some communities. Thus

rather than throwing the baby away with the bath water, this review article

has sought to show the possibilities of transforming PD for a radical and

politicised development practice. It has been argued that critically

addressing these concerns will lead to a strengthening, broadening and

deepening of participation.

The ambiguities in the conceptualisation of participation that give rise to

seeming internal contradictions need to be reconciled. Participation is and

should be seen as an end – a process of enabling individuals to develop their

capacities for self-help and that facilitates radical social change to the

advantage of the marginalised. A focus on participation as being solely a

means to achieving development goals efficiently, effectively and possibly

cheaply, simply rubber stamps projects and programmes as being

participatory without really tackling the core issues of power and

inequalities in the community. There is also the need to re-evaluate

participation and to properly relocate it within a radical and political

development practice. A re-conceptualisation of participation as citizenship

“establish [es] participation as a political right that can be claimed by

excluded or marginal peoples, and thus provides a stronger political, legal

and moral imperative for focusing on people’s agency within development

than is currently the case” (Hickey and Mohan, 2005: 70). Focus should not

be on only individual instances of participation but on the wider institutional

context and the political capabilities PD offers. This may ensure that

participation moves beyond the present practises to a more deepened

empowerment and to open up more space for a development practice that is

radical and political.

The argument being made here is that PD is indeed an important

opportunity for a radical and political development practice. However,

uncritical promotion of participation as the panacea of all the ills of

development practice should be avoided. Critical issues and questions

relating to the approaches and practices of PD should be raised to ensure that

participation delivers on its promise of emancipation, empowerment and the

reversal of top-down bureaucratic development practice. Critical

engagement will ensure that PD really addresses grassroots level power

relations, empowers the local people and gives them the opportunity and

ability to decide on their own development. It is in these critical engagements

that PD can prove its utility in providing a radical and political development

practice and dispel the charges of ‘tyranny’ brought against it.

Word Count – 5007

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