Participatory development is a significantly popular phenomenon in development theory and practice. However, critics point to the superficial claims of participation associated with complex bureaucratic systems and a lack of sociocultural knowledge about communities where participatory programs are implemented. To comprehend why participatory development often turns out to be superficial despite its claims to be transformative, it is essential to understand the backdrop and objectives of participatory development and their complexities.

What is participatory development?

As discussed, participatory development emerged as a reaction and in response to the conventional top-down policies for social development. Robert Chambers defined participation as a process of outside organizations or development policymakers to take a step back and “hand over the stick”. It encourages listening to local communities for the identification, designing and implementation of development projects. In this process, development organizations should only facilitate the optimization of local knowledge and resources, empowering locals for social transformation. As stated by an official from Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) in India, “Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is used to observe and understand the knowledge and perception of the farmers. We do not advise but ask open-ended questions without implied advice”. Thus, as discussed, participatory development embraces a common belief that poor people have an innate potential to help themselves if provided technical and financial support. It allows people, regardless of their economic background, gender, caste, or religion, to influence development decisions that affect them.

The World Bank report revealed that participation became a popular strategy to empower marginalized individuals, foster capacity building and promote citizenship rights and accountability in local communities. Over the last three decades, participation has taken various forms and meanings. As a result, the discussion on participatory development is critical and supportive, analytical and normative. While participation received considerable praise globally, there has been a rise in criticism pointing to its failure to achieve the desired goals of empowerment and social change. The discussion below summarises the two main reasons why contemporary efforts to promote participation often fail to achieve positive social change in local communities.

Participation – a bureaucratic tool?

Firstly, it is argued that participation became a buzzword in late 1990s and early 2000s. Due to its global popularity, development organizations began institutionalizing participatory approaches to attain international legitimacy and local validation. In doing so, research suggests that development agencies used participatory development as a ‘one-size-fits-all development recipe’, overlooking the local nuances and intricacies. As a result, participatory development projects lack contextual knowledge and are mainly used to exercise power and governance in the communities in which they function. For example, criticism of World Bank’s consultations with local communities entailed interests and agendas of development stakeholders disguised under participatory approaches – claims representing the ‘voices of the poor’ were a tool to attain the pre-set development agendas, often unaligned with local needs. Participation is thus often used as a managerialist technique that reinforces power imbalance and foreign governance in local communities. These practices negate the idea of ‘bottom-up’ development and are inconsistent with the desired impact of participatory development.

Myth of community

Second problem with contemporary participatory development is that it functions through the ‘myth of community’. Rural communities are not a homogenous category. Instead, they are divided into hierarchical structures based on a multitude of factors such as religion, language, gender, ethnicity, class, etc. Furthermore, stratification of rural communities into several socio-economic, political, and cultural groups either hinder or encourage participation of specific groups. However, traditional structures and power dynamics are often obscured and neglected under the umbrella of ‘one community’. As stated, participatory development programmes are “…ambiguous about who is to be empowered – the individual, the community, or categories of people such as women, the poor, or the socially excluded” (p. 599). Such ambiguity and unified perception of rural livelihoods transcend the diverse communal characteristics that determine participation. For example, it was revealed that interactions with local communities often characterise an ‘elite bias’; influential people and mostly men in rural communities represent the entire community due to their positions as religious leaders, traders, progressive farmers, etc. In consequence, participation remains dominated by specific people.

For example, AKRSP was founded by Prince Karim Al-Husseini, Aga Khan IV. Due to the religious affiliations of AKRSP, it is argued that AKRSP’s participatory programs succeed, particularly in the Ismaili communities of northern Pakistan. Whereas AKRSP arguably received distrust and resentment in communities where Ismaili Muslims are not predominant. Hence, religious differences within the community determine challenges and risks for the success of participatory development in the rural communities of northern Pakistan. However, AKRSP’s reports and the World Bank evaluations fail to address and tackle these ground intricacies.

Unpacking participation – way forward

To conclude, participatory development promotes listening to locals in identifying, designing and implementing strategies for development. Nevertheless, the above discussion reveals that participation is often instrumentalized and used as a manipulative tool to obtain wider political and bureaucratic goals. Simultaneously, there are epistemological and methodological loopholes, such as power imbalances and cultural differences within local communities. These divisions determine the success or failure of participation in rural communities. Hence, participatory development is not a unanimous recipe for development despite its claims for transformative social change. Instead, there are peculiarities and layers of participation that must be considered.

To better grasp the subtleties and peculiarities associated with participation, participation has been defined and unpacked in four categories: nominal, instrumental, representative, and transformative. As their names indicate, nominal, instrumental and representative forms of participation are cursory levels. They appropriate and instrumentalize participation to reinforce power and politics, disguised under community involvement. Under these pretenses, participation is used to legitimize and validate the pre-existing developmental goals and therefore fails to achieve transformative social change. On the contrary, transformative participation is an ideal effective form – outsiders are catalysts that immerse themselves into local knowledge and facilitate rural communities to become in charge of their own development without any predefined agendas.

Yet, transformative participation requires immersive and ethnographic methodologies to fully cognize the local context in which participation is foreseen. These methodologies may include longer research periods, proximity with rural communities and customizable programs based on local needs. This is only achievable via extended, collaborative and interdisciplinary efforts from locals, development practitioners and researchers towards a shared goal.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the International Development LSE blog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credit: Participatory epidemiology training session for animal health workers in Botswana, ILR via Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.