LOCALIZING DEVELOPMENT: DOES PARTICIPATION WORK?
Equalizing access to information is relatively straightforward . . .
access to information between the rich and the poor—is often not enough. Direct confrontation with structures of power may be necessary to create more accountable and responsive policies. Whether the provision of information improves the functioning of states and markets and the capacity of citizens to mobilize remains an empirical question.
Conclusions . . . but citizens may need to confront the structures of power directly to use that information to make governments more responsive to them.
Participatory development policy needs to be driven by a thoughtful diagnosis of the interaction between market, government, and civil society failures.
Fads, rather than analysis, tend to drive policy decisions on participatory development. Passionate advocates spark a wave of interest, followed in a few years by disillusionment, which gives ammunition to centralizers, who engineer a sharp reversal. In time, excessive centralization generates negative fallout, which reinvigorates the climate for local participation. There have been at least two such waves in the post–World War II period (as shown in chapter 1). If current trends are extrapolated, another centralizing shift may have begun. Advocates and the vicissitudes of fashion are perhaps unavoidable in the aid allocation process, but they need to be supplemented by a thoughtful diagnosis of market, government, and civil society failures; inequality; and a contextual understanding of the best ways to rectify them. These spheres do not operate independently; well-being is enhanced by both improving the functioning of each sphere and enhancing the links among them. The problems of information asymmetry and coordination that affect markets and governments also affect civil society. Decisions about whether, when, and how to promote local participation are therefore never easy. They need to be made with an understanding of the cooperative infrastructure; the role of elites; and the economic, political, and social costs and benefits associated with localizing decision making in a given country at a given time.
Notes 1. Effective civic action can also have harmful consequences for the average citizen, particularly when multiple groups with competing interests coexist within the same society—when, for instance, a fringe group is able to impose its beliefs on society at large by effectively mobilizing its members and cowering the majority into submission (Kuran 2004). This
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