Third World Quarterly, Vol 25, No 3, pp 537556, 2004

The ambiguity of participation: a qualied defence of participatory development

TREVOR PARFITT
ABSTRACT This paper examines some of the critiques addressed to participatory development by critics such as Cooke and Kothari. It argues that criticisms of participations theoretical coherence and of its lapse into a routinised praxis largely arise from an unavoidable ambiguity that is inherent in the concept of participation, this being the means/end ambiguity. Participation must function as a means because any development project must produce some outputs (therefore participation is seen as a means to achieve such outputs), but it must also function as an end inasmuch as empowerment is viewed as a necessary outcome. This ambiguity becomes contradictory when emphasis is laid on participation as a means at the expense of participation as an end. The article proposes ways of re-emphasising the element of empowerment so that participation may function as an emancipatory strategy. It has become commonplace in articles on participatory development to start by noting how inuential this approach has become. Henkel and Stirrat refer to it as the new orthodoxy, noting that by the early 1990s every major bilateral development agency emphasised participatory policies.1 Indeed, that most inuential of multilateral agencies, the World Bank, had joined them in its advocacy of participation by the middle of the decade. Even if participation cannot be seen as the new orthodoxy, it is clear that it has become one of the central inuences in mainstream development thinking. Given the increasing inuence of participatory approaches, it is unsurprising that they have attracted an increasing amount of attention from commentators, and it is perhaps inevitable that a proportion of this should be critical. A number of analysts have written substantial critiques of participation, including Kapoor, Mohan, Porter, and the various critics whose work has been gathered in Cooke and Kotharis volume Participation: The New Tyranny?. As is suggested by the title of the Cooke and Kothari reader, many of these critiques throw some level of doubt on the emancipatory claims of participation, arguing that, rather than empowering those at the grass roots, it simply provides alternative methods for incorporating the poor into the projects of large agencies which remain essentially unaccountable to those they are supposed to serve. In other words,
Trevor Partt is in the Department of Political Science, American University in Cairo, 113 Kasr El Ain Street, PO Box 2511, Cairo 11511, Egypt. Email: tpartt@aucegypt.edu. ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/04/030537-19 2004 Third World Quarterly DOI: 10.1080/0143659042000191429

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participation is simply another means of pursuing traditional top-down development agendas, while giving the impression of implementing a more inclusive project of empowering the poor and the excluded. The object of this paper is to interrogate some of the central criticisms addressed to participation with a view to assessing how far any elements of a progressive agenda of empowerment can be retrieved from the participatory project. In the next section we shall examine some of the more widely accepted denitions of participation, placing an emphasis on a certain ambiguity that they give rise to in the concept of participation. It will be argued that this ambiguity can give rise to contradictions that partially undermine the coherence of the participatory approach in its treatment of such issues as power and the nature of the community. It will also be observed that many criticisms tend to focus almost exclusively on one approach in participation, namely Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), when in fact other approaches to participation are also available, and examination of them might have led to different conclusions. The main burden of this paper is to argue that, while this ambiguity may make participation a problematic approach, it also gives rise to opportunities for promotion of an emancipatory agenda. In other words, participation is a problematic and contested ground, but one with the potential to deliver real benets to those who have hitherto been incorporated in the project of development as objects of the manipulations of development agencies. Participation as means or end? A variety of denitions of participation have been offered. Oakley et al gathered together the following: (a) Participation is considered a voluntary contribution by the people in one or another of the public programmes supposed to contribute to national development, but the people are not expected to take part in shaping the programme or criticizing its contents (Economic Commission for Latin America, 1973). (b) With regard to rural developmentparticipation includes peoples involvement in decision-making processes, in implementing programmes, their sharing in the benets of development programmes and their involvement in efforts to evaluate such programmes (Cohen and Uphoff, 1977). (c) Participation is concerned withthe organized efforts to increase control over resources and regulative institutions in given social situations on the part of groups and movements of those hitherto excluded from such control (Pearse and Stiefel, 1979). (d) Community participation [is] an active process by which beneciary or client groups inuence the direction and execution of a development project with a view to enhancing their well-being in terms of income, personal growth, self-reliance or other values they cherish (Paul, 1987).2 All these denitions share the view that development will be enhanced if people are actively involved in the projects that affect them. However, it would be fair to say that statement (a) on the one hand, and statements (b), (c) and (d) on the 538

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other hand, represent radically different perspectives on the rationale for participation. The rst statement is suggestive that development will be enhanced because people are mobilised to volunteer some work on a project without actually having any substantive voice in determining what it will do and how it will do it. However, statement (c) makes it clear that people at the grass roots are to be given a measure of control over resources and within institutions, while statements (b) and (d) indicate that project participants will have a say in the design, management and evaluation of the project. Statements (b), (c) and (d) entail empowerment, whereas (a) does not. Oakley et al observe that this difference is related to the question of whether participation is seen as a means or an end.3 Statement (a) implies that participation is to be seen as a means of bringing about development, a way of mobilising people behind the predetermined objectives of development agencies. By contrast, the other statements all suggest that, to one degree or another, participation is an end in itself inasmuch as it empowers people to pursue their own development activities and projects. All of this is suggestive of an ambiguity at the heart of the concept of participation, which has clear potential to manifest itself as contradiction. It should be clear that participation as a means has quite different implications from participation as an end. Notably, such different understandings of participation have different implications for the analysis of power relations in the participatory process and for the way in which the target/beneciary community is viewed. To the extent that participation is viewed as a means, this is indicative that power relations between those at the grass roots, or the target community, and the aid/governmental agencies, will be left largely untouched. Project design (including denition of project goals and targets) and management will be left largely in the hands of the traditional authorities, while the role of those mobilised to participate will simply be to rally around to work for the predetermined goals of the project. Power relations between aid donors and recipients remain essentially the same as in traditional top-down models of development. However, the view of participation as an end suggests a transformation in power relations between donor and recipient, with the latter empowered and liberated from a clientelist relation with the former. Whereas participation as a means is politically neutral insofar as it does not address such power differentials, participation as an end has an emancipatory, politically radical component in that it seeks to redress unequal power relations. This also has implications for the analysis of the target group or community. Oakley points out that in cases where participation is used as a means it is essentially a short-term exercise; the local population is mobilised, there is direct involvement in the task at hand but the participation evaporates once the task is completed.4 A short-termist approach that puts its emphasis on obtaining quick and (at least implicitly) cheap results is not conducive to a nuanced analytical approach to the community in which the project is to be implemented. It is far more likely that the project implementers will attempt to mobilise the community as a whole on the assumption that their project will be of general benet to the populace at large. As many critics of participation argue, this is to risk ignoring decisive power differentials within a community and, all too often, it means that any benets accruing from a project can be largely captured by the 539

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more powerful members of that community. By contrast with this, participation as an end implies a more critical approach to such questions. We may cite the following passage by Chambers as an example of such analysis. He notes that:
Policy documents and project proposals advocate community participation and go no further. Visitors to villages and slums assume that those whom they meet represent the community. Within communities, though, there are many obvious differences. Following Alice Welbourn (1991), four major axes of difference can be seen: of age, gender, ethnic or social group, and poverty; and there are always others: of capability and disability, education, livelihood strategy, types of assets, and much else. Those whom outsiders meet and interact with are most likely to be middle-aged or youths, male, from dominant groups, and economically better off. And often their criteria, preferences and priorities are taken as those of the whole community; but the community also includes those who are weaker and worse offchildren, the very old, females, social inferiors, subordinate groups, the disabled and those who are vulnerable and poor.5

In this passage Chambers unequivocal advocacy of an empowerment-based approach (participation as an end) is conducive to a greater concern accurately to identify those who need to be empowered, which itself gives rise to a more problematised approach to analysis of communities. Participation is here seen as a process of development in its own right rather than as a tool for achieving certain goals. It seems clear that the question of whether participation is seen as a means or an end has quite different implications for the way in which power and community are analysed. In fact the majority of projects fall somewhere between these two poles. As Oakley notes, often government and development agencies see participation as the means to improving the delivery systems of the projects they seek to implement.6 This means that they are more prone to regard participation as a means, although it should be noted that many of them still give at least rhetorical attention to the objective of empowerment. For example, the World Bank (often criticised as one of the more authoritarian aid institutions) notes that participation can involve mechanisms for collaboration and empowerment that give stakeholders more inuence and control.7 By contrast, other agencies, such as NGOs that have a specic brief to represent vulnerable groups, tend to be more directly concerned with empowerment of their target groups. By way of example one might cite the activities of Save the Children in Egypt, many of which have been focused on womens and childrens education with a view to empowering women and enhancing child care and protection. Nevertheless, even if we accept the proposition that the World Bank is still likely to be more concerned with attaining certain project outcomes than participation, and Save the Children may show more genuine concern for empowerment, it must still be conceded that the Bank at least shows some interest in participatory techniques, while Save the Children is by no means uninterested in efciently achieving project objectives. It can be argued that no agency can afford to completely ignore participation, just as no agency can afford a completely cavalier attitude to the need to achieve at least some measurable development objectives. Even the most top-down orientated organisation wants to engender some participation in its projects (even if this only takes the form of acquies540

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cence), while those agencies that are concerned with empowerment want at least some measurable benets to accrue to those that they empower. In short, aid agencies must necessarily try to strike a balance between concerns of empowerment (participation as an end) and efcient achievement of development objectives (participation as a means) and this balance will vary in accordance with a number of factors, including the organisations objectives, traditions and culture. This necessity to strike a balance between participation as a means and an end indicates the inescapable nature of the means/end ambiguity. The impact of this ambiguity on the concept of participation is discernible in the aforementioned vagaries in the analysis of power and the community, whereby the view of participation as a means leads to the under-analysis of power relations, both at the donorrecipient level and within the community. In the next section we shall see how this tendency gives rise to many of the criticisms made of participation. Participation under scrutiny Participation has been criticised at two levels, that of its theoretical coherence and that of its practice. In this section we shall see that many of the theoretical critiques of participation are addressed to the issues identied above pertaining to the inadequate analysis of power and community. These issues are connected to the criticisms of participatory practice, given that many critics link these analytical shortcomings with the way that participation is actualised, particularly through the strategy of PRA. Responses to these criticisms will be elaborated drawing on the empowerment-orientated aspects of the participatory school that the critics have arguably under-valued. Many critics focus on perceived inadequacies in the conceptualisation of power in Chambers work. Kothari points to Chambers tendency to present social relations as a binary relation between uppers who possess power, and lowers who are without power.8 It follows from this predicate that participation must be about reversing this situation so that lowers are empowered and uppers disempowered. Kothari argues further:
Participatory methodologiesrequire the formulation and adoption of a framework in which the micro is set against the macro, the margins against the centre, the local against the elite, and the powerless against the powerful. However, the almost exclusive focus on the micro-level, on people who are considered powerless and marginal, has reproduced the simplistic notion that the sites of social power and control are to be found solely at the macro- and central levels. These dichotomies further strengthen the assumption that people who wield power are located at institutional centres, while those who are subjugated and subjected to power are to be found at the local or regional levelhence the valorisation of local knowledge and the continued belief in the empowerment of local people through participation.9

It can be seen that such an account simplies power relations in such a way as to obfuscate power differences at the local level. Mohan also notes a tendency in Chambers work to romanticize and essentialize the poor and the social systems by which they operate, which conceals the important differences 541

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within the marginalized along lines of class, gender and ethnicity.10 In these instances Chambers stands accused of a reductionist account of power relations that leads to under-analysis of the community. However, these accounts of Chambers work do not sit comfortably with the quotation cited in the previous section where he specically draws attention to the presence of differentiation along lines of gender, age, ethnicity and social group within local communities. This suggests that Chambers has a greater appreciation of the social complexity of the local level than is initially implied by his tendency to dichotomise social difference into uppers and lowers. It may be because of her emphasis on the latter strand in Chambers thinking that Kothari makes a number of critical observations about PRA praxis that seem rather questionable. For example, she makes a blanket reference to PRA as a practice of surveillance, in which the poor are subjected to the disciplinary gaze of the aid donor without having any reciprocal right to examine or criticise the donor.11 Yet Chambers refers to instances where farmers in Gujarat have conducted their own monitoring of soil and conservation works, and village organisations in Sri Lanka and Gujarat have evaluated activities according to criteria they have designed.12 In these instances the application of PRA techniques to evaluation has enabled local people to have some feedback on aid activities carried out in their communities. Kothari also follows Mosse in suggesting that PRA tools tend not to accurately represent the complexity of peoples lives (a contention that can be seen as following from the proposition that Chambers account of power obfuscates differences at the local level). Rather, PRA tends to simplify, eliminating anything that is messy or does not t the structured representations implied by participatory tools while controlling to produce the norm, the usual and the expected.13 For example, Kothari suggests that a one-time event such as a wedding may be missed by a PRA exercise focused on the routine, although it may have great signicance for the nancial well-being of those involved in it. It is instructive to compare these observations with the following account of a PRA exercise undertaken in Zimbabwe:
Participatory methods for wealth ranking involving card sorting are pretty standard. I sat down with my research team [consisting of people drawn from the local village] and said, Tell me what rich people have, tell me what poor people have. I wanted a ve point scale. They pushed me to six. Their scale included the usual cast of variablescattle, house type, and employment. But also included among their variables was one I had never thought ofsecondary education, where (in the village or in town), and how continuous. They laid out categories of people who were dependent on other people for livelihoods. There was a huge argument over the importance of owning means of production (ploughs, cattle, elds) against owning consumer durables (fancy house, radio). Then I asked each village researcher to rank all our respondents, leaving blank anyone they could not or did not want to rank. What I found particularly interesting in these rankings was that they ranked a number of widows much lower than I would have ranked them. Why? They ranked widows on what they themselves personally controlled/owned as opposed to what their children were able to give them. Since their children might withdraw their favours, or be run over by a bus,

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their largesse did not count. There was a very strong sense of vulnerability in these rankings.14

In the rst instance the reference to the standardisation of tools might seem to bear out Kotharis reference to a normalising tendency in PRA. However, it is clear that at least in this instance the change agent was exible enough to listen to local people and take into account their concerns pertaining to appropriateness of the wealth rankings. This suggests that PRA can be implemented in such a way as to be sensitive to local specicities. Furthermore, the concern for the variable situation of widows shows that these villagers were able to express considerable awareness of the particular and changeable situation of this vulnerable group. None of this suggests that PRA must inevitably elide over the messier, more volatile aspects of life in order to produce the expected or normal account of poor peoples lives. Kapoor provides a somewhat different critique of Chambers account of power. He notes that Chambers equivocates between two positions, one being the binary division of society into uppers and lowers that Kothari focused on, the other being the more complex approach to analysis of local communities that we drew attention to above. What these two positions hold in common is that they both envisage power as a negative inuence, a force that those who are advantaged use to repress those who are less advantaged. In order to correct this, power must be eliminated from the developmental arena and PRA is conceived of as a means of achieving this. It is particularly worth noting that Chambers envisages the uppers in aid agencies being persuaded to abandon their hold on top-down mechanisms of power and to embrace the principles of participation and PRA on the basis of the personal satisfaction that this will afford them and the increment in efciency that will accrue to their development ventures. In other words, they will be induced to give up their hold on power because of the efcacy of participation as a means. Kapoors commentary starts from the basis that Chambers presents an undertheorised account of power that leaves out of account the Foucaultian insight that power is inevitably imbrocated with the formation of knowledge. In this sense power cannot be eliminated from the developmental eld since it is unavoidably involved in the formation of development knowledge, irrespective of whether or not such knowledge was gathered through participatory means. It further indicates that power is not to be seen purely in a negative light but, rather, as Janus-faced, having a repressive aspect, but also a more positive role in the formation of knowledge.15 This complicates Chambers agenda in a number of ways. First, the power of aid agencies cannot be dispensed with in the simple way that he envisages, through a voluntary decision by the uppers in that agency. Second, participatory techniques such as PRA cannot be seen as ways of purging power relations from development because they are products of and thoroughly permeated by power relations themselves. The danger in proposing that power can be eliminated from development lies in the certainty that less obvious forms of power will certainly persist and the likelihood that some of them will be repressive, perhaps just as repressive as the more overtly top-down power relations that they purportedly reform. In this context it is notable that one of the 543

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inducements Chambers cites as persuading uppers to embrace PRA is the increment that it will give to efciency. This resort to a discourse of participation as means effectively re-inscribes the primacy of a top-down logic of the need to achieve measurable objectives efciently. Thus, power re-enters the equation incognito under the guise of the demands of efciency. Clearly, Chambers falls into a trap created by the ambiguity of participation. He wants to propound a methodology for empowerment of vulnerable groups but, in order to sell the idea of participation to the uppers in the aid agencies, he resorts to a rhetoric of efciency, or participation as means. This is a similar move to that undertaken by Oakley, who even more explicitly asserts the rationale for adoption of participation by development organisations in terms of such criteria as efciency, effectiveness and sustainability.16 Associated with this is a rather one-dimensional view of power as a force of oppression which can be banished if the aid agencies vow to embrace participation and PRA. All of this is to ignore the pervasive nature of power, which will persist in participatory ventures, albeit in forms that may have a participatory veneer. Notwithstanding the extensive efforts both Chambers and Oakley make to defend the centrality of empowerment, their resort to the discourse of participation as means serves as the key that aid agencies can use to reintroduce top-down disciplines and power relations, while simultaneously claiming to be inclusive and empowerment-orientated through their endorsement of participation. Kapoor and various other critics identify a number of ways in which power relations can be (and often are) secreted in the PRA process. Kapoor, and Mohan and Stokke note that the value that is attributed to local knowledge can often lead to its automatic acceptance.17 This can mean that local structures of power such as patriarchy are overlooked. Similarly, the nature of PRA as a public exercise means that it tends to undervalue the private, which can mean that womens issues are concealed in areas where women are excluded from the public sphere. Kapoor suggests that there could even be false use of PRA by state organisations to co-opt or monitor groups and communities seen as threatening.18 Mosse, Cleaver and Hildyard et al all provide case studies that bear out the contention made above that top-down power relations tend to be preserved in certain projects beneath a participatory edice. Mosses discussion of the Kribhco Indo-British Farming Project (KRIBP) suggests that participation may take place largely on a symbolic level, while the real decisions are taken at a much higher level. He asserts:
not infrequently, programme decisions take place with little reference to locally produced knowledge at all. PRA charts and diagrams provide attractive wall decorations, making public statements about participatory intentions, legitimising decisions already madein other words symbolizing good decision-making without inuencing it.19

Mosse points out that projects like the KRIBP emerge out of an institutional setting involving national and local governments as well as wider aid bureaucracies. All these forces put pressure on project management and personnel to produce outputs that such organisations can recognise as measures of progress, such as achievement of spending targets and timely delivery of quantiable 544

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project objectives. Mosse argues that over time, and through a Weberian process of routinization, the operational demands of a project such as KRIBP (ie timely implementation of high-quality programmes) can become divorced from its participatory methods and goals.20 He recounts how the KRIBP came to be characterised by a dual logic in which there was a symbolic observance of the principles of participation, while the project actually operated along top-down lines. The adherence of the projects clients was maintained through the deployment of patronage by project staff. In short, the appearance of participation was preserved while the project actually adhered to traditional top-down power relations. Hildyard et al draw similar conclusions from their case study of the Western Ghats Forestry Project in Karnataka, India, a venture in Joint Forest Management, this being a participatory approach to forestry. This involved the Karnataka State Forestry Department (KFD) encouraging the formation of a number of Village Forest Committees (VFCs) to participate in forest conservation. Hildyard et al draw on research by Patricia Feeney of Oxfam to note that many of the projects activities were commenced before there had been any public meetings to mobilise local people, that the KFD seemed to call VFC meetings at their own convenience, and they managed the funds and kept the minutes of meetings. Some VFCs only seemed to exist on paper. Furthermore, the VFCs were dominated by the more powerful elements from within the villages and by men. Given that the VFCs were empowered to make rules on forest use this meant that the elites within the villages were able to reorder forest use to their own best advantage.21 Although Hildyard et al note that there have been instances where villagers have beneted from the VFCs, this is clearly a project where top-down power relations between the implementing agency, the KFD, and the recipients have been preserved beneath a thin veneer. As anticipated in our earlier analysis, the concern to achieve project objectives has also led to a failure to deal adequately with differences within the community, with the result that power disparities have been reproduced in the project. Cleaver makes many of the same points as Mosse and Hildyard et al about routinisation of participation and the persistence of top-down power structures, arguing as follows:
Participation in development activities has been translated into a managerial exercise based on toolboxes of procedures and techniques. It has been turned away from its radical roots: we now talk of problem-solving through participation rather than problematization, critical engagement and classThis limited approach to participation gives rise to a number of critical tensions or paradoxes. While we emphasize the desirability of empowerment, project approaches remain largely concerned with efciency. While we recognize the importance of institutions, we focus attention only on the highly visible, formal, local organizations, overlooking the numerous communal activities that occur through daily interactions and socially embedded arrangements. A strong emphasis on the participation of individuals and their potential empowerment is not supported by convincing analyses of individual positions, of the variability of the costs and benets of participation, of the opportunities and constraints experienced by potential participants.22

This sums up many of the critiques of participatory practice, notably misuse of 545

TREVOR PARFITT PRA techniques, the proclivity to focus on efciency rather than empowerment, an obsession with creation of formal committees and organisations rather than dealing with existing groups. This is crowned by demands for more research into the benets and risks of participation. In addition to all this we must keep in mind the critical insights that Bill Cooke brings to bear from a social-psychological perspective. Cooke refers to four types of group dysfunction that he suggests may adversely affect the participatory process: risky shift, the Abilene paradox, groupthink and coercive persuasion. The phenomenon of risky shift suggests that groups tend to take more risky decisions than they would as individuals, thus suggesting that organisation of people into participatory groups may make them more risk prone. However, it is notable that the contention that groups will take more risks than individuals is premised on their living in a culture that values risk taking (eg the USA). It is questionable how far this would apply to poor people in the South, who are usually identied as being conservative in their attitudes towards risk in view of their understanding of the dire consequences if such risk fails to pay off for them. The Abilene paradox suggests that group actions often contradict what the group members really want to do, thus undermining their aims. The central factor in bringing about this outcome is a propensity for members of a group not to communicate and to make ill-founded assumptions about what others want, leading to decisions that run counter to what the group members actually wanted. It can be seen how a mechanistic application of PRA could give rise to such a phenomenon but, as we shall argue, participatory methodology does not have to fall into this trap. The phenomenon of groupthink indicates that groups can reach a false consensus when they reach a form of esprit de corps that displays certain characteristics. These include over-condence about the power and capabilities of the group; a proclivity to rationalise away discouraging feedback; an unquestioning acceptance of the morality of the group; negative stereotyping of out-groups; self-censorship of any doubts and pressure against anybody who does express doubt; the tendency of some members to adopt the role of guarding the group against negative information; and, as a consequence of the foregoing, a sense of false unanimity as to goals. While it is questionable whether some factors might apply to groups of the Southern poor (notably over-condence, for the reason mentioned above), we have already seen from some of the other critiques that out-groups may be excluded from participatory organisations, or may be silenced even if they are allowed to join them. This indicates that certain aspects of groupthink are applicable in the participatory context. Again, it will be argued that such tendencies can be avoided by a less mechanistic praxis. The nal type of group dysfunction that Cooke refers to is coercive persuasion, which can be summarised as brainwashing. Cooke suggests that coercive persuasion, or conscientisation in the participatory context, consists of a threestage process. The rst stage consists in what Cooke terms unfreezing, or destabilising a subjects socio-ideological orientation through techniques based on disconrmation of that persons world-view. The second stage is that of changing the orientation of the subject to the viewpoint preferred by the conscientiser by getting him or her to identify with the role model provided by the conscientiser. The nal stage is that of refreezing the new orientation

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through positive techniques of conrmation. Cooke acknowledges the ambiguous nature of this process when he quotes Schein to the effect that, if consciousness is changed in a way that we approve of, we are more likely to label it positively (eg as conscientisation), whereas, if we disapprove, we are more likely to apply a negative label, such as brainwashing.23 After all, the process that Cooke characterises could be used to describe such variant operations as de-nazication, deprogramming of cult members, or US efforts to spread the creed of liberalism throughout the world. It can reasonably be argued that, to the extent that participation actually helps to change and mobilise people such that they are better able to accomplish their own development, there is no obvious reason why it should not be cast in a positive light even if it does work in the way Cooke suggests. In this section we have reviewed some of the central critiques made of participation both on the theoretical and the practical levels. It is clear that there are substantive issues of doubt revolving around the means/end ambiguity that we identied earlier. At the theoretical level it seems clear that there is a trade-off between participation as a tool of empowerment and as a means to attain project objectives. Theorists such as Chambers and Oakley pitch their writings on participation in such a way as to try and sell it to aid agencies on the basis of claims as to its efciency, while also attempting to retain a central position for the idea of empowerment. However, this resort to a discourse of efciency has the tendency to open participation up to colonisation by top-down concepts of managerial efcacy. The results of this are demonstrated in some of the case studies that have been cited, with a mechanistic, routinised, largely symbolic practice of participation (often in the form of a rather perfunctory PRA) co-existing with an operational policy of traditional top-down management that affords the recipients little in the way of empowerment. The question arises as to the extent to which this discredits participation as a development strategy. In the next section we shall attempt a rehabilitation of the idea of participation. Reconstructing Participation The central critiques of participation can be divided between those that focus on praxis, notably on PRA, and those that question the analytical premises of participation. Initially we shall try to provide some answers to these critiques at the level of practice, before addressing some of the theoretical issues, notably the means/end ambiguity that is integral to the concept of participation, but which also destabilises it. Many observers have noted that formalism has grown with the spread of PRA and its institutionalisation as a working methodology that has been adopted by an increasing number of development agencies. Indeed, this should not be unduly surprising, given the traditional bureaucratic characteristics of many aid agencies, with their emphases on rule following, hierarchy, procedure and playing safe. Leurs observes that perhaps the biggest challenge facing PRA at this level [the organisational level] is the hierarchical organizational culture which is still so pervasive in non-governmental (including aid-funded projects) as well as government organisations.24 A common pattern seems to be for 547

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development agencies of all kinds to adopt PRA in name so that they can claim to be participatory, only to try and institutionalise it as a part of their existing top-down procedures. Leurs comments that much PRA has been reduced to the increasingly mechanical application of standardized sequences and combinations of methods.25 A study of the way that PRA has been used in Kenya comments that for some agencies PRA has, it seems, simply become a bureaucratic requirementa box that needs to be ticked for a project to proceed. It also observes that:
Doing participation has, in some circles, become practically equivalent to doing PRA. A number of people highlighted the dangers of conating the two. Donors want PRA, not participation, one practitioner complained: they want a clearly delimited product that would serve to meet the procedural obligation for consultation, not a process that could throw up challenges and possibilities beyond the bounds of the projects they had in mind. As an international NGO worker reected, it seems like PRA is a thing you do to communities, rather than something about participation.

This approach to

PRA

has the following costs:

Oneis that PRA is simply slotted into existing practice, providing little challenge to institutionalised patterns of behaviour. Another is that without a closer understanding of what PRA involves in practicethat is, without doing PRAit is easy enough for people to latch onto elements of the approach. In so doing, they come to regard doing PRA as equivalent to, for example, applying a set package of tools or as an event, a PRA, rather than as part of a process that has other aspects and entailments.26

This is illustrative of how a tokenistic use of PRA undercuts participation. The common tendency to adopt a few tools, use them on a one-off basis in each community, and mechanistically repeat them from one community to the next, is far from conducive to a genuine process of participatory mobilisation. This is especially the case if the agency or personnel doing the PRA are simply going through the motions, with little if any intention of initiating a genuine participatory process in the rst place. In making these points it should not be forgotten that many agencies are carrying out good work of the sort illustrated by Fortmann in the Zimbabwean case (see above), but bad PRAs are common enough that many people feel they are a genuine reection of what participation can achieve. For example, many Kenyan practitioners echoed the views of several of the critics cited here, expressing the view that PRA is not automatically sensitive to differences within communities. In particular, it was felt that PRA was gender blind and that it glossed over wealth differences in communities, consequently reinforcing inequalities between men and women, and between wealthy and poor. Yet we have already seen from the Fortmann example that a sensitive use of techniques associated with PRA can be very effective in identifying just such lines of difference. Clearly, the contrast between the Kenyan case and Fortmanns Zimbabwean example revolves around bad practice as against good practice. It is clear that in Kenya many practitioners approach PRA in a tokenistic way, failing actually to engage with the people in an attempt to mobilise them. By 548

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contrast Fortmann avoided at least some of these pitfalls. Rather than using the wealth-ranking techniques in a purely routine manner, insisting that they be applied exactly as specied in the manual, she used them as a starting point with which to communicate with the local community. In this sense she came much closer to observing Chambers views of empowerment and handing over the stick than to a top-down approach. The question arises as to how to ensure some level of quality control in participatory work. This raises a complex of interrelated problems concerning how to reconcile the somewhat contradictory demands of many development agencies for rules, regularity and efcient delivery of outputs (which imply top-down hierarchy) with the demands of empowerment for a more processual approach involving handing over the stick. Analysts like Leurs see training as central in creating the conditions for good participation, advocating an approach which focuses on the role of the facilitator and his or her relationships with different community members. The facilitator is encouraged to analyse his/her experience and generate training materials on this basis. This approach also encourages the facilitator to be self-critical and aware of his/her own actions.27 The emphasis on self-criticism and analysis would help to correct for tendencies towards routinisation of participatory activities. However, training does not in itself change organisational culture and, if a top-down organisation puts pressure on the facilitator to produce specic results in a certain time, s/he may well disregard any participatory training and revert to top-down methods. It is for this reason that many commentators, including those close to Chambers (eg many of his colleagues at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex University), have advocated the need for a new type of development organisation, the learning organisation (a model that is derived from business studies). An IDS workshop gave consideration to the changes in procedures, systems and structures that would be necessary to turn top-down development bureaucracies into learning organisations. Under the rubric of procedural change, they recommended that aid donors and governments should move away from an obsession with the need for a tightly dened, quantiable product, or output, towards a greater concentration on process and capacity building. Rather than looking for physical outputs, such as a school or a health centre, they should focus on the process of assisting people to enhance their capacities to undertake and participate in development. Another of the workshops recommendations was that incentive schemes should be introduced to reward participatory behaviour by personnel, both in the ofce and in the eld. Rewards would be given to encourage behaviour patterns such as tolerance, mutual respect, openness to differing views, adaptability and the ability to learn from mistakes. Other procedural prerequisites for a learning organisation include introduction of feedback mechanisms so that information is shared and a willingness to have its development activities evaluated by stakeholders. A number of structural and systematic changes are identied as being necessary to support these procedural adaptations. First, the use of exible, ad hoc, innovative learning units is commended. These can help to break down boundaries between different sections or ofces in an organisation, thus facilitating spread of information and the ability to make ad hoc decisions when necessary. This 549

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would help the organisation become more exible and responsive to situations and opportunities as they arise in the eld. The second structural/systemic change recommended is exible budgeting. The essence of participatory work is that many development activities cannot be pre-planned and budgeted because they emerge out of the discussions between facilitators and beneciaries. Some devolution of responsibility for nance, the ability to switch money between budget headings and the ability to roll unspent balances forward are essential to provide the necessary exibility to fund activities that have not been preplanned. The IDS workshop points out that some donors are adopting some of these reforms, setting up contingency funds and permitting movement of funding between budget headings. Finally, the importance of accountability to the recipients at the grass roots is emphasised. Indeed, participation necessitates downward accountability given that it entails recipients making decisions about what will be done. While its participants pointed out that downward accountability is necessary, the IDS Workshop failed to specify any systemic or structural changes that would help to bring this about, stipulating only that a profound change in the behaviour and attitudes of those in positions of power, those who control accounts, may be necessary. The workshop suggested that taking senior personnel into the eld to show them the need for exibility might help to convince them to make such changes.28 Thompson notes that certain development projects have attempted to introduce learning mechanisms into their operation. The Badulla Integrated Rural Development Programme in Sri Lanka, the National Irrigation Administration of the Philippines, and Kenyas Soil and Water Conservation Branch have all made efforts to develop institutional learning mechanisms. Thompson describes them as follows:
All three agenciesused pilot programmes as learning laboratories for testing, modifying and rening their new participatory approaches. These lessons were analysed and discussed in great detail by key decision makers from the agency and, in some instances, other external resource persons in a variety of workshops, review meetings and working groups. The emphasis in all of these sessions was on critical reection, open sharing, constructive dialogue and learning. Various forms of process documentation were also initiated, including regular village reports, catchment reports, process reports and socio-technical proles. All of these forms of documentation were distributed and discussed by a wide array of key stakeholders on a regular basis.29

Clearly these examples incorporate elements of the learning organisation model, notably self-critique, wide ranging and free discussion both within and outside the organisation, information sharing, and moves towards downward accountability. All this is suggestive that at least some development organisations are moving away from the top-down blueprint model towards a more experimental approach that involves at least an element of empowerment at the grass roots. While good training and institutional change may help to create the environment for good participatory practice, it is questionable whether they are sufcient conditions for good participation. If we were to try to identify the 550

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elements that are core to good praxis, we would probably nd ourselves focusing on the synergies that emerge from the positive behaviours (such as handing over the stick and letting the recipients do things for themselves) emphasised by Chambers and the attitude of self-critique (which Chambers also emphasised as essential to participation) that underlies and motivates such behaviour. Something akin to this perception is evident in the views of many Kenyan practitioners, who agreed that creation of more opportunities for interchange and debate is essential to improve participatory practice. Cornwall et al elaborate on these views as follows:
For some practitioners, the starting point for these discussions should be the core concepts underlying interpretations of participation. Conceptual clarity would, they suggested, help practitioners to differentiate between different forms of practice, and also to see the potential of using different participatory methodologies to pursue the broader goals of participation. Others argued for the establishment of non-threatening spaces in which practitioners could interact around the dilemmas of practice. These ranged from problem clinics at which less experienced practitioners could gain support and advice from their more experienced peers, to open sessions to which practitioners bring recent experiences and explore together ways to resolve problems they face. Others still suggested starting from a discussion of outcomes, from which debate might be generated around indicators of impact, particularly for non-tangible outcomes like empowerment. This could also take the shape of an open discussion of standards of practicewhether framed in terms of minimum standards, a code of ethics, or what a commitment to best practice actually involves.30

It can be seen how a widespread and open debate on such issues could deliver quite specic benets in terms of mutual support, dissemination of various techniques, and greater general understanding among practitioners that participation involves more than the routinised use of a few tools such as mapping and wealth ranking. Perhaps the most crucial benet lies in the self-critical awareness that such ongoing debate is likely to foster, since this in itself constitutes the most effective safeguard against a formalistic praxis. This gives rise to the question of how such debate might be ensured as a normal part of the participatory process. One of the central problems that critics illuminate is that a moment of debate and self-critique is largely missing from PRA, the most widely used methodology. It is too easy for practitioners to see PRA as a grab bag of tools and techniques that the facilitator performs with a community. Certainly, there is the admonition to hand over the stick and to let the villagers do it themselves, but there is no specic moment in a PRA that necessitates any self-critical debate among any of the parties involved, inclusive of the donors and the aid beneciaries. A good practitioner is likely to understand the need for such debate and critique and to introduce it as Fortmann did (see above). However, it is all too easy for a facilitator to focus on the tools and to forget about the principles that are supposed to underlie their utility. This is suggestive of the need for a methodology in which the elements of debate and critique are central to the process in the sense of being built into it. In fact such a methodology exists in the shape of Participatory Action Research (PAR), which has been characterised by Burkey as an educational process 551

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through which a target group is motivated to formulate strategies and initiate activities to improve their collective situation. Burkey denes it as follows:
Participatory action research takes place in time as part of the analysisaction reection process where the people are both the subject and the object of the research; where the investigator not only shares this reality, but in fact participates in it as an agent of change. Participatory action research is thus an active research with a clearly dened purpose of creating knowledge to be shared by both the people and the investigator, knowledge that leads to action and, through reection, to new knowledge and new action.

It is clear that analysis and reection are an integral part of the process of undertaking PAR, which consists of a cycle wherein analysis leads to action, followed by reection, leading to further action. The centrality of these elements of debate and critique is demonstrated by the fact that PAR is mainly based on the dialogic approach, which Burkey describes as consisting of an interchange and discussion of ideas based on a process of open and frank questioning and analysis in both directions between the investigators and the people, both individually and in small groups. PAR is not something that is done to a target group. The people are fully involved in the processes of analysis and reection. They are not reduced to the position of objects of research because they also operate as subjects actively researching their own situations and strategies for improving their lives. The objective of PAR is that people should become capable of producing their own analyses and plans of action. As Comstock and Fox assert:
The validity of the results of participatory research can be gauged rst, by the extent to which the new knowledge can be used to inform collective action and second, by the degree to which a community moves towards the practice of a self-sustaining process of democratic learning and liberating action.31

This indicates that reection, analysis and self-critical awareness are central to the performance of a PAR intervention in a way that is not the case in PRA. It is intrinsic to PAR that the facilitator must embark on some form of analytical dialogue with the target group. The fact that such reection involves aid recipients is also signicant in that it means that any knowledge, analysis or critique produced is not simply conned to the aid practitioners. It brings into play peoples knowledge and contributes to peoples knowledge. In this sense it refrains from essentialising either top-down expertise or peoples knowledge. Thus, the dialogic approach can be conducive to synergies between the specialist knowledge brought by the facilitator and the peoples knowledge brought into play through the dialogue. Such synergies encourage the facilitator to remain critical and to develop his/her knowledge (consequently improving practice), while also encouraging the people to develop and use their knowledge for their practical benet. Such popular mobilisation is also one of the core aims of participation and represents an indicator of at least a measure of success. It seems likely that such a dialogic process would help to minimise the likelihood of such instances of group dysfunction as the Abilene paradox, risky shift and groupthink. The careful research process, the focus on dialogue and the 552

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combination of local and aid agency knowledge should act as an effective guard against the over-condence and failures of communication that lie at the root of such dysfunctions. Burkey also makes it clear that it is best to work with groups that have largely common interests in order to minimise disagreements and miscommunication. Certain of the critics whose work is gathered together in Cooke and Kotharis volume also make comments that seem to favour such a dialogic approach. Mohan refers approvingly to the work of Village AiD, which is using the REFLECT approach pioneered by Action Aid to explore the potential of self-generated literacy through a programme called Arizama, which is a Dagbani word roughly translating as dialoguethis involves the identication, adoption and adaptation (where necessary) of indigenous facilitation methods, such as dance, song and story-telling.32 Hailey also stipulates that personal dialogue, conversation and discussion are crucial to the success of shared decision-making, concluding that participative decision-making should not therefore be reduced to some formulaic process, but should be rooted in a dynamic relationship of mutual trust and respect.33 All this is suggestive that an empowering strand of participation is alive and well despite the co-optation of many ventures, especially those based on a mechanistic application of PRA. Good training and self critical use of a methodology rooted in the dialogic approach can all contribute to a grassroots development in which people at the grass roots have a genuine decision-making role. Thompson even provides some proof to the effect that at least a few aid agencies are beginning to adapt institutionally and incorporate elements of the learning organisation model. It might be suggested that this does nothing to counter problems arising from the means/end ambiguity at the heart of the participatory idea and that consequently there is always the likelihood that aid bureaucracies will invoke a discourse of participation as means that will undercut the possibilities of participation to engender empowerment. Kapoor provides one possible corrective to such tendencies in using the work of Habermas on the conditions required to achieve free and fair democratic negotiation. He summarises Habermass position as follows:
For Habermas, deliberations need to be governed by formal conditions that are anticipated in the very resort to dialogue and that he calls an ideal speech situation. This ideal speech situation is one in which there is uncoerced rational dialogue among free and equal participants: the discussion is inclusive (ie no one is excluded from participating in the discussion on topics relevant to her/him), coercion free (ie people engage in arguments and counter-arguments freely, without dominating others or feeling intimidated by others) and open (ie every participant can initiate and continue discussion on any relevant topic, including the very procedures governing the discussion).34

There is much controversy over how far this model is capable of implementation and Kapoor prefers to view it as a regulative principle with which to critique examples of debate. In another context the present author has illustrated how this model might be applied to a participatory situation. A forestry project in Nepal initially found that it was not reaching all the forest users at the project site 553

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because it had conned its dealings to those who were prominent in the community. When the project took measures to involve at least some of those who had been previously excluded, the project became more effective both in terms of preservation of the forest and meeting the needs of the generality of forest users.35 In this instance a move (and only a partial move it should be noted) towards inclusiveness in the debate delivered increments to the project in terms not only of empowerment, but also of effectiveness (ie forest preservation). This is illustrative of the utility of the Habermasian model as a principle against which one can compare participatory projects to see how far they are meeting conditions of inclusiveness, openness and avoidance of coercion. Of course none of this actually resolves the means/end ambiguity and any contradictions implicit in it. As we have seen, this ambiguity is inherent in the concept of participation, given that any project must include at least some element of participation by the local populace (however minimal or extensive) and produce at least some developmental outputs. Some might argue that this renders participation inoperable and discredits it. However, a different light may be cast on this issue if it is viewed from a perspective that owes something to deconstructionism. One aspect of Derridas work on deconstruction constitutes a proposal to the effect that any concept will be revealed to consist of contradictory elements if subjected to analysis. Derrida uses the example of the law to illustrate this point, arguing that any body of law can only be founded on the basis of a violation of law. He cites the American Constitution as an example of this, noting that this founding document of American law could only be instituted on the basis of a violation of the British colonial law that preceded it. Even when a formal written legal code is instituted where there has been none before, it must be introduced in violation of whatever system (whether customary or otherwise) went before. Hence the law is characterised by contradiction in the sense that its logic consists in a demand that people must always respect the law, but its origins lie in a breach of law. The means/end ambiguity in participation can be seen as constituting a similar structure. We have already seen that participation must be conceived as both a means and an end, but this entails an element of contradiction inasmuch as participation as means implies a central value for efcient production of outputs, whereas participation as an end implies a central value for empowerment. In this sense both the law and participation are characterised by contradiction and ambiguity. However, this does not result in Derrida rejecting the law, nor need it result in development theorists rejecting participation. Such contradiction is integral to both concepts and is essential to their meaning and utility. As already noted, participation is only meaningful and utile if conceived as both means and end. Derrida suggests that we abandon the Enlightenment propensity to try to dene every concept in a fully consistent way and accept that important concepts entail an element of contradiction. Consequently, he would argue that the law (and respect for it) is necessary despite the founding breach of law that underlies it. What this contradiction implies is that there can never be a perfect law, that is to say an absolute and completely coherent body of law that is sufcient to deal with all eventualities. British colonial law was overthrown because of its imperfections, notably the injustice and repression implicit in colonial domi554

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nation. Indeed, the American law that followed it has been subsequently revised (sometimes with great violence) to correct injustices such as slavery. This is not to say that these bodies of law had no utility (despite their imperfections). Ambiguity and contradiction do not discredit the law, but point up the need to continually critique and revise the law.36 Similarly, participation can be seen as an essential value in development despite its ambiguity. What this ambiguity means is that (as in the case of the law) participation is a contested ground between those who would prefer to use it as a means to achieve certain ends and those who wish to emphasise its possibilities for emancipation. The central point for us to note is that the emancipatory element is more pronounced in participation than other philosophies of aid, inasmuch as it specically incorporates an emphasis on popular mobilisation. Of course there are forces that prefer to downplay empowerment and that seek to co-opt participation, but even they cannot eliminate the emancipatory possibilities of participation. We have also seen that there are methodologies of participation (eg PAR) and institutional adaptations that provide the basis for an emancipatory project. Examples of badly executed PRAs and supercial performances of participation can be countered with examples of projects that have delivered some increments of empowerment to participants. This indicates that there is an opportunity to win the high ground of participation from those who would like to co-opt it and turn it into a new tyranny. It is for these reasons that participation is worthy of defence, albeit a defence qualied by critique of those tendencies that attempt to deradicalise it.

Notes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

H Henkel & R Stirrat, Participation as spiritual duty: empowerment as secular subjection, in B Cooke & U Kothari (eds), Participation: The New Tyranny, London: Zed Press, 2001, p 168. All quoted in P Oakley et al, Projects with People: The Practice of Participation in Rural Development, Geneva: International Labour Ofce, 1991, p 6. Ibid, pp 78. Ibid, p 8. R Chambers, Whose Reality Counts Putting the Last First, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1997, p 183. Oakley et al, Projects with People, p 8. J Rietbergen-McCracken & D Narayan, Participation and Social Assessment: Tools and Techniques, Washington DC: World Bank, 1998, p 4. See Chambers, Whose Reality Counts?. U Kothari, Power, knowledge and social control in participatory development, in Cooke & Kothari, Participation, p 140. G Mohan, Beyond participation: strategies for deeper empowerment, in Cooke & Kothari, Participation, p 160. Kothari, Power, knowledge and social control, p 145. Chambers, Whose Reality Counts?, p 218. Kothari, Power, knowledge and social control, p 147. L Fortmann, Womens rendering of rights and space: reections on feminist research methods, in R Slocum, Lori Wichart, Dianne Rocheleau & Barbara Thomas-Slayter (eds), Power, Process and ParticipationTools for Change, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1995, p 37. I Kapoor, The devils in the theory: a critical assessment of Robert Chambers work on participatory development, Third World Quarterly, 23 (1), 2002, pp 101117. Oakley et al, Projects with People, pp 1718.

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

G Mohan & K Stokke, Participatory development and empowerment: the dangers of localism, Third World Quarterly, 21 (2), 2000, pp 247268. Kapoor, The devils in the theory, p 114. D Mosse, Peoples knowledge, participation and patronage: operations and representations in rural development, in Cooke & Kothari, Participation, p 23. Ibid, p 25. N Hildyard et al, Pluralism, participation and power: joint forest management in India, in Cooke & Kothari, Participation, pp 6364. F Cleaver, Institutions, agency and the limitations of participatory approaches to development, in Cooke & Kothari, Participation, p 53. B Cooke, The social psychological limits of participation?, in Cooke & Kothari, Participation, p120. R Leurs, Current challenges facing participatory rural appraisal, in J Blackburn & J Holland (eds), Who Changes? Institutionalizing participation in development, London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1998, p 128. Ibid, p 125. A Cornwall et al, In Search of a New Impetus: Practitioners Reections on pra and Participation in Kenya, IDS Working Paper 131, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, p 7. Leurs, Current challenges facing participatory rural appraisal, p 125. IDS Workshop, Towards a learning organisationmaking development agencies more participatory from the inside, in Blackburn & Holland, Who Changes?, pp 145152. J Thompson, Participatory approaches in government bureaucracy: facilitating institutional change, in Blackburn & Holland, Who Changes?, pp 1516. Cornwall et al, In search of a new impetus, pp 2829. S Burkey, People First: A Guide to Self-Reliant Participatory Rural Development, London: Zed Press, 1993, pp 6164. G Mohan, Beyond participation: strategies for deeper empowerment, in Cooke & Kothari, Participation, p 165. J Hailey, Beyond the formulaic: process and practice in South Asian ngos, in Cooke & Kothari, Participation, p 101. I. Kapoor, The devils in the theory, p 105. T Partt, The End of Development: Modernity, Post-Modernity and Development, London: Pluto Press, 2002, pp 155156. For an extended discussion of Derridas ideas and their developmental implications, see Partt, The End of Development, ch 4.

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