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
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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