XVII Congreso Internacional del CLAD sobre la Reforma del Estado y de la Administración Pública, Cartagena, Colombia, 30 oct. - 2 Nov. 2012
Myths and realities about effective civil society participation, transparency and
accountability
María González de Asis
Barak D. Hoffman
Introduction
Participatory development is a growing focus of donor development policies. Over the past
decade, the World Bank alone has allocated approximately $75 billion for these types of
initiatives (Mansuri and Rao 2011) and other development partners are also allocating large
sums of money in this area. Interest in participatory development derives in part from
understanding that poor development outcomes often result from bad governance and lack of
citizen empowerment. Participatory development seeks to remedy these weaknesses by
having people take an active role in community development and by creating demand for
good governance (DFGG). The World Bank defines DFGG as the capacity of “citizens to hold
the state accountable and make it responsive to their needs” (World Bank 2011: 3).
Participatory development seeks to reduce poverty directly through engaging citizens in the
design and implementation of development projects, and indirectly through encouraging
improved governance at the national and local level.
A large body of research exists on the outcomes of participatory development projects. Their
impact is mixed. In general, programs appear more successful at developing citizen
awareness and empowerment than at influencing development outcomes, either directly or
indirectly. At the same time, we are gaining a better idea of what works and what does not,
and how to design more effective strategies. This paper provides an overview of the theory,
practice, and outcome of donor efforts to support participatory development. The next section
presents the development hypotheses behind participatory development. The subsequent
one provides an overview of programs and basic outcomes. The following section discusses
the top myths and realities about civil society. The final section outlines the current consensus
on designing effective participatory development programs.
Theories for DFGG programs
Numerous theories for participatory development exist. Putnam‟s (1993) argument that social
capital - bonds of trust between citizens - is a central feature explaining why some societies
are more prosperous than others serves as one of the major intellectual underpinnings for
participatory development programs. Mansuri and Rao (2011), for example, extend Putnam‟s
analysis to assert that participatory development programs correct for civil society failure
(CSF). CSF results from the inability for communities to organize around collective interests.
Participatory development projects seek to help communities overcome this obstacle. Mansuri
and Rao contrast civil society failure to market failure (i.e., the inability of markets to provide
collective goods) and government failure (i.e., the inability or lack of interest in the
government providing collective goods). They claim that donors implicitly believe civil society
can compensate for these weaknesses, yet the evidence is becoming increasingly clear that
civil society can fail as well. Crucially, Putnam did not argue that social capital is a substitute
for more effective government. Rather, his claim was that it complemented it.
A subset of this approach argues that creating engaged or empowered citizens will cause
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XVII Congreso Internacional del CLAD sobre la Reforma del Estado y de la Administración Pública, Cartagena, Colombia, 30 oct. - 2 Nov. 2012
them to take responsibility for their own development outcomes and/or put effective pressure
on their government to do so (Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008,
Gaventa and Barrett 2010, Benequista and Gaventa 2011, World Bank 2001). An engaged
citizen has agency, participates in government decision-making, knows his or her rights,
demands rights enforcement of them, and perhaps seeks to expand them into new areas
(Benequista and Gaventa 2011). This contrasts with numerous types of secondary/passive
views of citizenship such as citizens, such as:
Neoliberal: citizen as consumer of government services
Electoral: participates only through voting
Legalistic: holder of rights that government is supposed to provide, but does not advocate
for them
Delegative: allows NGOs to mediate between the government and the people
Many participatory development programs seek to turn secondary/passive citizens into
empowered ones. The theory of change inherent to these programs is that empowering
people to take ownership over the problems they face in overcoming poverty will cause them
to work collectively to remedy them (Benequista and Gaventa 2011).
A second justification for participatory development derives from evolving views on the
importance of governance as a cause of poverty among scholars and donors. For many
years, development scholars and practitioners viewed poverty as primarily a technical
problem that governments could solve through implementing better economic policies.
However, overtime policymakers and researches have developed a more sophisticated and
multi-dimensional view of the issue. Today, many see it as resulting in part from bad
governance (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012, Bates 2002, North 1991). Numerous
participatory development programs seek to improve development outcomes through
fostering better governance, such as fighting corruption, enhancing government
responsiveness, and adhering to the rule of law.
As the above discussion implied, a central tension in theories of participatory development is
whether these efforts complement or substitute for government actions in the same sectors.
The World Bank, for example, clearly states that DFGG “mechanisms are meant to
complement and not substitute traditional supply side measures at promoting good
governance (such as public financial management and public administrative reform)…(World
Bank 2011: 3).” At the same time, many participatory development programs, such as those
focusing on community-driven development, view civil society as a substitute for the
government (Hoffman and Bain 2012, Mansuri and Rao 2011). As this paper will
demonstrate, the emerging consensus is that participatory development efforts tend to be
more effective when they work alongside those that aim to improve government
responsiveness in the same areas rather than replace it.
The numerous theories behind participatory development programs have led to a wide range
of interventions and expected results. Because of the diverse scope of positive results
participatory development projects can produce, it is difficult to gauge their aggregate
effectiveness, even when we possess accurate information about their outcomes. For
example, Gaventa and Barrett‟s (2010) review of citizen‟s engagement programs find that
75% had a positive impact. Their criteria for success were that programs led to enhanced
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citizen participation and/or feelings of efficacy. By contrast, Mansuri and Rao (2011) find that
participatory development programs rarely succeed in materially reducing poverty, social
polarization and/or inequality, a far more ambitious measure of success than Gaventa and
Barrett (2010) employ. That the appropriate criteria for a positive outcome is not always clear,
especially to outside evaluators, further complicates efforts to determine program
effectiveness. The paper discusses the difficulty of measuring program success in great detail
in subsequent sections.
Program Types and Outcomes
As a result of the various theories advocating for the benefits of participatory development,
donors employ numerous frameworks to implement DFGG programs. For example, DfID uses
a voice and accountability structure (Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008). It presumes that
voice can lead to better development outcomes by improving accountability:
Directly: Accountability leads to better service delivery
Indirectly: Accountability leads to improved governance, and the latter causes better
service delivery
DfID‟s framework is one of many. The World Bank‟s draft DFGG strategy paper (World Bank
2011), Shifting the Balance: Rethinking the World Bank’s Engagement on Demand for Good
Governance, centers on Transparency, Accountability, and Participation. Transparency seeks
to improve the quality of information. Accountability measures aim to improve government
oversight and responsiveness. Participation attempts to create opportunities to have citizens
engage policymakers and/or participate directly in policy design and implementation (e.g.,
community-driven development). The premise of the paper is that effective participatory
development will make governments accountable to citizens and responsive to their needs
through the following processes:
1. Promote demand: The ability of citizens to demand better governance depends on their
access to information and their ability to act effectively on it.
2. Better flow of information: Effective mobilization provides institutionalized feedback from
citizens, the media, and civil society to the state.
3. Improved government oversight: Regular monitoring and oversight of the public sector
generates key information for the government, civil society, and ordinary citizens on
government performance.
4. Greater government response to citizen demand: Effective state response to citizen
demands for improved development outcomes.
Table 1 at the end of this document employs the TAP framework to categorize common types
of donor programs to support participatory development. The table makes two clear points.
First, many programs fit into more than one category. For example, citizen oversight panels,
such as Parent-Teacher associations, contain elements of all three. They promote
transparency by improving the quality of information parents have about their children‟s
schools, participation by involving parents in education policy, and, hopefully, greater
accountability as a result of transparency and participation. The second and more substantive
point is that the number or programs that contain elements of transparency and participation
is far greater than those that employ accountability. This is perhaps not surprising as the
range of direct interventions to improve government responsiveness is far narrower than the
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other two. In part this is because actions to enhance accountability require more government
effort than the other two, where the range of actions civil society can take on its own is far
broader.
The table also outlines the basic results of the three types of programs:
1. Transparency: Often successful in educating and informing people about their rights and
quality of government performance, yet information on its own tends to have no direct impact
on government performance (Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008,
Gaventa and Barrett 2010, Benequista and Gaventa 2011).
2. Accountability: Elections tend to be the most powerful form of accountability, but are
ineffective in the absence of complementary institutions of good governance, such as
adherence to the rule of law and effective anti-corruption policies (Bardhan 2002, Mansuri and
Rao 2011).
3. Participation: There are two major themes that emerge from these programs. First,
participation tends to have greater intrinsic outcomes (e.g., people appreciate public
consultation) than developmental ones. Second, wealthy and more educated people tend to
participate more and benefit more from it (Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Mansuri and Rao 2011,
Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008, Gaventa and Barrett 2010, Benequista and Gaventa
2011).
Summary of TAP Programs and Results
Transparency
Accountability
Participation
Access to information laws
Participatory budgeting
Advocacy campaigns
Media training
Public audits
Citizen oversight panels
Public expenditure tracking
Citizen oversight panels
Public expenditure tracking
Participatory poverty analysis
Elections
Community scorecards
Program Examples
Public audits
Citizen oversight panels
Community-driven development (e.g., user
associations to manage local natural resources)
Public audits
Information campaigns
Participatory poverty and social analyses
Using social media to report directly
on service delivery outcomes
Call-in radio talk shows
Stakeholder forums
Targeting marginalized groups
User associations
Using social media to report directly on service
delivery outcomes
Call-in radio talk shows
General Impacts
Often successful in educating and
informing people about their rights and
quality of government performance
Elections tend to be the
most effective mechanism
for
disciplining
governments
Information on its own tends to have no
direct impact on government performance
Participation tends to have greater intrinsic
outcomes (e.g., people appreciate public
consultation) than developmental ones
Wealthy and better educated people tend to
participate more and benefit more from it
Six major results emerge from synthesizing participatory development programs across
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categories:
1. Funding NGOs alone does not create civil society. This is perhaps the most important
lesson to take away from participatory development programs. Donors can create NGOs by
providing money for them, but this is far from sufficient to ensure effective civil society
development (Fox, et al. 2011, Mansuri and Rao 2011, Stevens, et al 2010). Program
evaluations are replete with descriptions of “briefcase” NGOs, organizations that take money
from donors, but fail to fulfill any socially useful function. In addition, many - if not most NGOs are services providers, and act effectively as a substitute for the government, not as
advocacy organizations. For these reasons, many NGOs lack legitimacy among the citizens
they ostensibly represent. Instead, the popular perception often is that these groups exist only
to extract funds from donors.
2. For whom NGOs speak is not always clear. In part due to the aforementioned problem,
NGOs often lack local legitimacy and their connection to the people the claim to represent can
be tenuous (Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008, Stevens, et al 2010). This outcome can be
especially troubling when people view NGOs as representing the interests of donors or even
the government. According to this line of reasoning, donors have their own biases and
interests, and their programs do not derive from the exigent problems in the eyes of the
communities they are attempting to serve. The result is the existence of two “civil” societies.
The first is a donor creation of staged dialogue and donor-determined issues where local
NGOs use the language and frameworks that donors supply, whether or not they are
contextually meaningful. The second is actual society where people seek solutions to exigent
problems through whatever resources they possess, using existing indigenous frameworks.
3. It depends how you define success. The outcome one expects to see often affects
whether evaluators view programs as successes or failures. A useful distinction is between
intrinsic versus substantive results (Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Gaventa and Barrett
2010, Mansuri and Rao 2011). Donors often seek to observe substantive outcomes, such as
quantifiable and causal impacts of participatory development programs on a material aspect
of poverty reduction, such as increases in school enrollment rates. Even successful ones
rarely produce these types of narrow and observable results. In addition, if they do achieve
such an impact, it is typically an indirect result and difficult to trace causally. Equally as
important, programs often provide intrinsic benefits, such as a sense of empowerment.
Whether a donor would view this type of an outcome as a success depends on one‟s
expectations. More broadly, as the paper discusses below, standard donor measures of
program success don‟t easily fit into participatory development projects and hence the
usefulness of such benchmarks is not evident in many of them.
4. Single approaches tend to be ineffective. Single approaches, such as employing
transparency only (e.g., public expenditure tracking surveys) rarely improve government
performance or deepen democracy in substantive ways. Rather, to be effective, programs
typically must directly incorporate mobilization for better governance, such as using
transparency and media to generate interest around an issue (Benequista and Gaventa 2011,
Gaventa and Barrett 2010, Hoffman and Bain 2012). The reason for this, as the paper
discusses below, is that (1) information alone typically is insufficient for people to take action
to improve government outcomes and (2) accurate data that targets an exigent concern
facilitates mobilization.
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5. Context matters. Local economic, political, and social contexts matter enormously
(Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Gaventa and Barrett 2010, Mansuri and Rao 2011, Rocha
Menocal and Sharma 2008). As a result, what works in one community may not work in
another, even in the same country. It is thus difficult to identify an abstract set of best
practices or employ templates from programs than donors can implement in a range of
communities simultaneously. Rather, effective programs must take into account local power
structures and conditions in order to identify where useful interventions might occur.
6. Elite capture is a significant risk. Elite capture is present, even at the very local level
(Mansuri and Rao 2011, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008). Communities are
heterogeneous and those with the most money and/or power tend to secure disproportionate
benefits from participatory development absent direct efforts to prevent this outcome. Poorer
citizens tend to face higher opportunity costs for participation than their wealthier counterparts
as well. Efforts to target marginalized communities can be effective, but tend to have a
greater impact on education and, to a lesser extent, empowerment, than on development
outcomes.
Myths and Reality about Civil Society
Based on the above basic review of the results of participatory development programs, we
can identify the most common myths and realities of civil society. Table 2 at the end of this
document summarizes them.
1.
Voice and accountability
Myth: Stronger voice leads to a more accountable government
Reality: Stronger voices only lead to more accountable government if (1) people have the
knowledge and power to make effective demands and (2) governments have the incentive
and capacity to address those demands
The view that stronger voice leads directly to greater accountability makes a number of
questionable assumptions (Mansuri and Rao 2011, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008). First,
it presumes that people are able to make collective demands effectively. Second, it assumes
that governments have the capacity and interest to respond to those demands. However,
these conditions often do not hold. In particular, this myth assumes that civil society failure is
not an exigent problem, even though, somewhat paradoxically, many participatory
development programs seek to remedy this societal shortcoming. Third, as myths two (the
people) and eight (decentralization) below demonstrate, there is no homogeneous voice of
the people. As a result, even when groups are able to articulate a demand for better
governance, for whom these people are speaking and whose interests they are seeking to
serve is often not clear, especially to outside donors looking to fund participatory development
programs. Third, it fails to acknowledge that civil society is a complement to an effective
government, not a substitute for it, as myth five below (NGOs as a substitute) explicates in
greater detail.
The problems Economic and Social Councils (ESC) have encountered demonstrate the limits
of programs that seek to rebalance political power primarily through greater participation.
ESC‟s are “consultative institutions, including organizations representing the social partners
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and other stakeholders of civil society1.” ESC‟s typically comprise representatives from the
government and civil society, convening to discuss exigent public policy issues. They provide
a useful forum for diverse interest groups to directly participate in policymaking, monitor
government performance, and hold the government accountable for its actions. ESC‟ exist in
at least 27 countries and their popularity is growing. Nevertheless, while ESC‟s can provide
wide-ranging opportunities for participation, they often encounter problems in leading to
greater political accountability. Brazil and South Africa provide useful examples of this
outcome.
In 2003, President Lula da Silva and his Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) created Brazil‟s
Council for Economic and Social Development (CDES). CDES‟s objective was to “provide a
mechanism for greater dialogue and improved governance the better to implement the
government‟s reform agenda” (Doctor 2007: 133). Reflecting the PT‟s commitment to
participatory democracy, the CDES is an ambitious approach to rebalance political power in
Brazil away from traditional business and political elites, through providing a participatory
forum where diverse interests in society, including marginalized groups, can shape policy and
monitor government performance. Yet, CDES‟s structure currently tilts heavily towards the
private sector. As a result, elite capture, to a certain extent, has undermined CDES‟s more
ambitious political goals.
South Africa‟s National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) is another
example of an ESC undermined by elite capture. Founded in 1994 during South Africa‟s
transition to democracy, NEDLAC brings together representatives from the government, the
private sector, trade unions, and NGOs to reach consensus on issues of social and economic
policy. NEDLAC‟s overall board of directors comprises four general directors, four from the
government, two from the private sector, three from trade unions, and six from NGOs.
NEDLAC also contains a number of specialized committees, such as for employment and
climate change that have a similar composition.
Like CDES, NEDLAC‟s effectiveness mirrors the distribution of political power in South Africa,
rather than challenge it (Friedman 2006). Specifically, the most powerful groups in the
organization have secured control of NEDLAC‟s agenda. For example, while unemployment
is one of South Africa‟s most pressing economic and social problems, the trade union
representatives have used NEDLAC to promote the interests of their employed members. The
unemployed who lack the political influence of trade unions do not possess material influence
in NEDLAC, by contrast. Similarly, representatives of community organizations have been
able to exert far less influence in NEDLAC than those from the government, the private
sector, and unions.
CDES and NEDLAC are far from isolated cases. Rather, ESC‟s often are at risk of domination
by the most powerful groups participating in them because many reflect a country‟s balance
of political power rather than challenge it. As a consequence, the most successful examples
of ESC‟s come from more economically developed democracies, such as Ireland, the
Netherlands, and Spain (Doctor 2007).
1
http://www.aicesis.org/spip.php?page=index&lang=en
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2.
The people
Myth: Voice represents the demands and interest of the people
Reality: The people are heterogeneous
Following from assumptions about voice and accountability, we can derive a second myth
about civil society, that there exist a homogenous people who can express a common set of
community concerns (Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008,
Mansuri and Rao 2011). Numerous analyses of DFGG programs demonstrate this is rarely - if
ever - true. Rather, communities comprise diverse sets of people with divergent interests,
including among the poor and other marginalized groups. Even when participatory
development programs recognize the depth of heterogeneity within a community, they rarely
are able to aggregate equitably their dissimilar, if not conflicting, concerns. Rather, not all
voices receive an equal hearing and, as point eight on decentralization below shows, the
most powerful groups tend to be able to express their interests better than those with less
influence. As a result, participatory development programs often fail to promote the interests
of the disempowered, even when they specifically reach out to these groups. A recent DfIDNORAD analysis of DFGG programs in Indonesia provides a clear example (Meindertsma, et
al 2008:48):
In general, participation in channels for citizens‟ voice is based on representation. However,
the validity of representation is seldom questioned and donors predominantly do not
differentiate enough between civil society organizations and their respective constituencies. In
general, participation in channels for citizens‟ voice is based on representation. As
marginalized people are rarely in the position to organize themselves to express their voice, it
is generally difficult to find representatives who can rightfully speak on their behalf.
More broadly, the belief that there exists a homogeneous voice of the people that donors can
seek to empower is inconsistent with the basic understanding that politics, including in a
democracy, is a competition for power among groups of people with divergent policy
preferences (Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Mansuri and Rao 2011, Rocha Menocal and
Sharma 2008). Participatory development programs might be able to indentify these dissimilar
(and in many cases opposing) interests, but participatory exercises that aim to develop policy
priorities within a community often fail to achieve this goal. Moreover, even if a participatory
development program could identify the distinct sets of interests in a community, it is unlikely
that they could address all of them, especially since they may often conflict.
The Movimento Indigena, the Indigenous Peoples‟ Movement, in Acre, Brazil provides an
excellent illustration of how unequal distributions of political power within a superficially
homogenous community can skew development outcomes (Shankland 2011). While health
services for Brazil‟s indigenous peoples have largely improved as a result of the Movimento
Indigena‟s increased political engagement, inter-ethnic inequalities also have risen. This
outcome has largely resulted from internal exclusion of weaker groups by more dominant
ones. These stronger groups claim to adequately represent Brazil‟s indigenous population,
disguising that they are disempowering a large number of them.
Similarly, NEDLAC‟s commitment to a diverse set of participants highlights the problem that
groups in society possess divergent interests and power (Friedman 2006). Rather, forums like
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NEDLAC provide groups opportunities to address individual concerns, not eliminate them or
offer clear mechanisms of redistributing political power.
Friedman (2006: 13) provides a cogent critique of NEDLAC‟s inability to reach consensus on
development priorities among its diverse set of participants:
The structural problems inherent in identifying a single organization which could claim to
represent large and diverse social constituencies (let alone entire ‟communities‟) was
evident…The constituencies which were to be represented are vast, diverse and
unorganized; it would have required hundreds of organizations to represent them. The
producer interest groups which participate in corporatism are capable of achieving high if not
universal coverage of their interest groups.
While it has been argued that the inclusion of „community groups‟ has forced the policy
process to take into account the concerns of their constituencies, no concrete evidence is
offered to support this claim. Indeed, the evidence suggests the opposite - the „community‟
groups complain of their exclusion from hard bargaining at NEDLAC. And even if they were to
wield influence, it would be far from clear on whose behalf they were speaking. Choosing one
organization to represent categories as diverse as women or young people is certain to
exclude many voices.
3.
Capacity building
Myth: Capacity building of civil society leads to more responsive government
Reality: Capacity building for civil society is effective only if there exists incentive structures
(1) for a government to be more responsive; and (2) for civil society groups to effectively
represent the interests of a community.
Perhaps one of the biggest myths of donor assistance, not limited to DFGG programs, is that
capacity building can be an effective tool for improving development outcomes (Fox, et al
2011, Mansuri and Rao 2011, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008, Stevens, et al 2010). While
this may be true in some circumstances (specifically when skills are a binding constraint to
achieving a particular result), what donors often fail to see or take into account is that capacity
building will be ineffective - or even counterproductive - if accommodative incentive structures
to reach better development outcomes do not exist.
Numerous examples of capacity building that has no impact on government performance
and/or development outcomes exist. Training journalists for investigative reporting, for
example, will fail to ensure more effective media coverage if reporters work for newspapers
opposed to such type of journalism. Since media house owners in many developing countries
are often business people and/or have close ties to the government or certain political parties,
this is a serious concern and a common outcome of programs that seek to improve the quality
of the media by training reporters (Stevens, et al 2010).
The Westcliff Flats Residents‟ Association, a CBO in Durban, South Africa, presents an
excellent example of the failure of an organization with very strong capacity to achieve greater
political accountability (see Hinely, et al. 2011). Although the organization was very well
organized and had a dynamic and capable leadership, it was unable to force its local
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government, especially the police, to address the drug epidemic in its community. The main
reasons were because drug dealers in the area had bribed the police not to enforce drug laws
in Westcliff and because there was no pressure from above to address the issue.
Consequently, the skills the organization had acquired through other successful advocacy
campaigns were ineffective in the fight against drug dealers. Capacity building in this instance
did very little to change incentives of government officials not to enforce the law.
4.
Program design
Myth: Participatory development programs can fit within traditional donor program structures
Reality: Participatory development programs do not fit in traditional designs
Participatory development programs do not fit within standard donor program designs for
numerous reasons (Hoffman and Bain 2012, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008). First, DFGG
is inherently political. At their core, they seek to redistribute political power more equitably
within a society. This approach to development stands in sharp contrast to more common
types of donor programs, especially those of the World Bank that seek to work with
governments and through official channels. DFGG programs, by contrast, often directly seek
to challenge existing social structures. Donor support for the Paris Declaration and Accra
Accords that promote host country ownership of development programs further complicates
fitting DFGG programs into existing donor structures.
Second, political and social change is non-linear and cannot occur according to donordesigned timelines. DFGG programs seek to rebalance political relationships. The timing,
trajectory, and outcomes of these changes are difficult to predict and donors are unable to ex
ante determine when and how they will occur or if they will happen at all. For example, as
Tunisia‟s revolution shows, the status quo may prevail for some time only to change rather
abruptly as a result of a seemingly minor action. The timing of such catalytic events, if they
occur at all, is impossible (or at the very least extremely difficult) to predict.
Third, the impact of changing societal attitudes and relationships defies standardized
quantification. Donors tend to set quantifiable expectations for program outcomes, such as
changes in school enrollment rates. DFGG programs, by contrast, seek to alter social
relationships. Measuring these outcomes and perhaps even knowing if they are changing, is
difficult for at least two main reasons. One, governments may react harshly to those who
demand more accountability. Whether such a response is a sign or progress or not requires a
sociological understanding derived from a local point of view. Two, DFGG programs seek to
encourage communities to define their own interests and desired outcomes. Donor-defined
expected outcomes undermine the basic logic of DFGG programs.
Fourth, programs need to exist for much longer than the standard 2-5 year donor framework.
Changing relationships is a time consuming effort and requires at least five years - and most
likely many more - to achieve durable success.
Fifth, failure needs to be a learning opportunity to adjust programs, not abandon them. We
should expect many parts of participatory development programs to be ineffective because
changing economic, political, and social relationships is fraught with complexity that is difficult
for outsiders to grasp. As a result, programs need to be much more adaptable and tolerant of
setbacks than standard donor initiatives. In particular, impact evaluations need to be learning
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opportunities, not reasons to determine whether donors ought to continue or discontinue their
work in those communities. Most participatory development programs will not succeed if
donors condition their support on achieving only positive outcomes within short time frames.
5.
NGOs as a substitute
Myth: Civil society can substitute for an ineffective government
Reality: The more effective the government, the more effective civil society will be; civil
society is a complement to a more effective government, not a substitute for it
Civil society on its own is not a substitute for an ineffective government, even if NGOs exist to
provide services (Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Gaventa and Barrett 2010, Mansuri and Rao
2011). Rather, the impact of DFGG programs tends to be stronger the more capable their
government counterparts. Civil society and the government work best as complements, not
substitutes. The practical consequence of this reality is that DFGG programs need to work
alongside donor-supported programs aiming to achieving similar outcomes using government
structures. Supporting access to information laws is a good example. participatory
development programs that encourage citizens to use government information to improve
development outcomes rely heavily on the quality of the data they can collect. As a result,
supply-side programs that seek to improve data quality complement the efforts of civil society
organizations and the media to use information to generate interest around exigent
development issues.
South Africa‟s Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) presents a clear example of how effective
advocacy groups cannot substitute for an effective government (Gaventa and Barrett 2010).
The TAC was very successful in forcing the Government of South Africa to design an
ambitious plan to address the country‟s massive HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, due to
broader weaknesses in the health care system, the plan does not cover nearly the number of
beneficiaries as the policy intended. The binding constraint is not lack of bottom-up demand,
but inadequate government supply of health care.
6.
Transparency
Myth: Transparency leads to more accountability
Reality: Information in the absence of social mobilization structures is ineffective in improving
government accountability
Transparency alone rarely improves government effectiveness (Benequista and Gaventa
2011, Gaventa and Barrett 2010, Hoffman 2011, Hoffman forthcoming). The argument is
similar to myth three on capacity building. The theory that improving data quality has a direct
impact on government effectiveness implies that information is a binding constraint. This may
be true in certain circumstances, but is the exception, rather than the rule. In particular, most
people living under poor governments understand their shortcomings. A more precise
quantification of exactly how bad a government is performing is unlikely to have a material
impact on development outcomes. For example, efforts to promote greater transparency
alone will fail to curb corruption or other types of misuse of public office if people fear
retribution for speaking out against it. This is a major concern in many developing countries
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where clientelism is pervasive. A client is unlikely to speak out against his or her patron as a
result of acquiring information. Rather, lack of empowerment is often due economic, political,
and/or social inequality. Promoting transparency alone typically fails to address these deeper,
more political, forms of poverty and inequality.
Instead, transparency complements efforts at social mobilization to confront political
inequities. Data allows strident civil society organizations to make more effective demands.
Transparency is not a substitute for the difficult work of mobilizing a population to demand
better governance and development outcomes. The failure of PETS to lead to more
accountable government is perhaps one of the best-known examples (Stevens, et al 2010).
In East Africa, for example, Uwezo has conducted an extensive campaign to educate parents
about the quality of their children‟s school through simple household tests. Their results show
that many schools provide alarmingly inadequate education. As of yet, however, the
information has failed to catalyze a broad-based movement for better education outcomes
because Uwezo is not mobilizing communities to make strident demands on their local
government to ameliorate the situation.
7.
Technology
Myth: There exist technological solutions to political problems
Reality: New technologies, like cell phones and social media, will not solve political problems
that lead to poor developmental outcomes; technologies are tools that can assist and
strengthen efforts at mobilization, they are not substitutes for it
That better technology alone can cause changes in governance outcomes is a common
belief. For example, many argue that Facebook and Twitter served as an essential catalyst to
overthrow dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring because these social
media outlets vastly reduced collective action problems inherent in political mobilization
(Gladwell 2010). However, technology and, in particular, social media on its own does not
allow communities or groups of people to overcome the political imbalances of power that
DFGG programs seek to challenge or eliminate collective action problems to the degree that
their proponents suggest. In particular, there is a difference between technology allowing
people to do what they are already doing more efficiently (i.e., technology as a reduction in
transaction costs) and technology encouraging people to so something different (i.e.,
technology causing behavior change). Proponents of the benefits of technology to improved
governance often fail to recognize this crucial distinction.
Contrasting mobile banking to technologically-induced improved governance provides a clear
example. There is no doubt that mobile banking opportunities, such as M-PESA in East
Africa, facilitate the capacity of individuals to transfer money, especially to rural areas where
few banks exist. Yet people in East Africa have been sending money from urban to rural
areas long before the invention of the cell phone. M-PESA thus reduces the transactions
costs of an activity in which people in developing countries had already been engaged. This
use of technology is qualitatively different than the existence of social media causing
communities to employ it as a means to address political problems. Rather, as with myths
three (capacity building) and six (transparency), employing technology is a complement for
mobilizing communities to seek better governance, not a substitute for it.
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8.
Decentralization
Myth: Decentralization leads to more responsive government
Reality: Decentralization may or may not lead to more responsive government
Donors often see decentralization as part of participatory development programs due to their
perception that local governments will be more responsive to citizens‟ needs than a distant
central government and that participatory development is more effective at the local rather
than the national level (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2006, Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Crook
2003, Hoffman and Metzroth 2010, Mansuri and Rao 2011). However, there is a significant
amount of empirical evidence that disconfirms this hypothesis. Rather, decentralization may
or may not lead to a more responsive local government and/or better development outcomes
depending on at least three crucial factors.
First, elite capture is just as likely at the local level as at the national level (Olson 1965,
Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Labonne and Chase 2009,
Mansuri and Rao 2011). Following from myth two above (the people), power inequities at the
local level can be just as strong as - if not stronger than - those at the national level. In
particular, poorer citizens often benefit less from participatory development than their
wealthier counterparts and face higher opportunity costs. As a result, decentralization does
not have any direct implications about changing the balance of political power within a
society. Community-driven development can be especially damaging in the contexts of elite
capture. Demands that members of a community participate in development projects through
co-financing, for example, can reinforce or even exacerbate existing inequalities. While
wealthy members of a community can easily afford to pay their share of these projects, in
many instances, communities coerce the poor into forced labor if they are unable to meet
their financial obligations.
Second, decentralization is more effective in improving development outcomes when
combined with strong pressure from below (Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Conning and Kevane
2002, Mansuri and Rao 2011, Pozzoni and Kumar 2005). This parallels the discussion of
myth five (NGOs as a substitute for government). As a result decentralization is likely to lead
to improved development outcomes when there exists a local civil society capable of holding
local governments accountable. Decentralization on its own does nothing to inexorably lead to
these pressures. Rather, participatory development programs are complements to supplyside efforts to create more effective local governments, not substitutes for them.
Third, decentralization is not a substitute for an ineffective central government, but a
complement to it (Besley 2006, Bardhan and Mookherjee 2006, Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006,
Crook 2003, Mansuri and Rao 2011). An ineffective central government is likely to lack they
capacity and/or incentive to hold local governments accountable for their actions. As a result,
local civil servants are unlikely to feel pressure from above to perform their jobs effectively.
Whether decentralization will improve, worsen, or have no impact on local development
outcomes in the presence of an ineffective central government is not clear. As a result,
decentralization is not a substitute for supply-side efforts to improve the effectiveness of the
central government, but as with capacity building more generally, a compliment to it.
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Decentralization in Ghana presents an excellent example of the failure of government at the
local level to be more responsive to citizen needs (Fox, et al. 2010). While decentralization is
limited in Ghana, the number of local governments has been expanding rapidly over the past
decade to bring government closer to the people, especially in rural areas. At the same time,
qualified civil servants attempt to avoid postings to these areas and systems of accountability
to ensure they live in the communities where they have been assigned are weak. As a result,
many of these new local governments exist on paper only: there are no physical structures
and few if any civil servants are present in the new district headquarters.
9.
Best practices
Myth: Templates for participatory development exist
Reality: Programs do not easily translate across communities, but need to take into account
local economic, political, and social conditions
That templates for participatory development do not exist is a natural extension of myth four,
program design (Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Rocha Menocal
and Sharma 2008). The explicit goal of participatory development indicates why this is the
case almost by definition. If the goals of participatory development programs are, ultimately,
to change the balance of political power between citizens and the government, or between
various groups within a community, effective ones must take into account the nature of
existing relationships. While it is certainly true that elements of power imbalances will be
similar across many communities in different countries, those who have the capacity and
incentive to effectively mobilize to confront them will vary. For example, in some communities
religious authorities may be a natural conduit for such efforts due to the social obligations to
the poor they often incur. At the same time, in other communities, religious authorities may be
part of the political elite. As a result, effective participatory development programs need to
take into account what is achievable given existing economic, political, and social conditions
within a community.
Participatory budgeting is a good example of failure of a best practices template to improve
government performance (Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006). Participatory budgeting became quite
common following its success in improving government performance in Porto Allegre, Brazil.
However, what many of its promoters failed to appreciate was the support it had from the new
ruling party in the state, the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT or Workers‟ Party). Participatory
budgeting in contexts without similar political support, either from above or below, have failed
to achieve the same positive results. What was essential for the program‟s success was not
the intervention, but the PT‟s support for improved governance. The correct lesson to take
from the beneficial impact of participatory budgeting in Porto Allegre is not about its effect on
development outcomes, but the ability of powerful political figures to deliver improved
governance when they supported it.
One practical consequence of the necessity of designing DFGG programs that take into
account locally existing conditions, which the paper discusses in greater detail in the next
section, is that such realities confound basic donor programs to scale-up quickly by replicating
similar efforts in many parts of a country simultaneously. Such an approach almost always
fails and there are numerous examples of this (Hoffman and Bain 2012, Stevens, et a 2010).
Rather, the reality that effective participatory development must take into account existing
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conditions within a community requires donors to expend effort to collect such information in
the program design stage as well as determining who are the interlocutors at the local level
who are capable at leading such endeavors.
10. Donors
Myth: Donor funds alone can build civil society
Reality: Funding NGOs does not automatically build civil society
The final myth, that funding NGOs can create civil society, is one that donors have long
recognized, but have failed to adequately address (Brinkerhoff and Azfar 2006, Mansuri and
Rao 2011, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008). The theory that donor finance can fund
effective advocacy for pro-poor development outcomes contains numerous flaws. First, it
presumes that NGOs who are best able to access donor funds are speaking on behalf of the
poor. Yet, the aforementioned myths that demonstrate elite capture is a serious threat, and
that communities comprise individuals with varied access to power and dissimilar policy
priorities demonstrates that such an assumption is at best naïve. Numerous examples from
many countries make clear that NGOs most able to secure donor funds are those who are
most capable of complying with donor demands and in many cases reflect donor priorities,
regardless of whether these are local exigencies or are appropriate given the local realities in
the communities where those NGOs operate. For these reasons, it ought not come as much
of a surprise that NGOs often do not reflect the needs of the people or even the poor and/or
marginalized they supposedly represent.
Focusing on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Indonesia, Mozambique, and
Nepal, Rocha Menocal and Sharma (2010), for example, find that NGOs are often poor
intermediaries between remote, marginalized communities and their respective governments.
The difficulty donors confront in identifying and choosing effective NGO partners to receive
funding exacerbates these problems. The NGOs they analyzed failed to operate
transparently, were present primarily in urban areas, and were not accountable to the
communities they supposedly represented. Poor information about the operations of the local
NGOs donors choose to implement their projects has resulted in programs that largely fail to
effectively include and advance the interests of targeted beneficiaries. Rather, they tend to
exist to promote the interests of a narrow set of people who run the organizations.
Mozambique is a clear example (DFID 2008:11):
While there are some civil society organizations (CSO) working on V&A [Voice and
Accountability] issues..few..deal with the watchdog role of civil and political rights. A wide
range of national NGOs are engaged in service delivery projects and programs…their raison
d‟être is often rather to secure employment than to play a political role in terms of e.g. propoor advocacy or defending the rights of certain vulnerable groups…
At local level, CBOs are mushrooming, but they are very often opportunity driven, i.e.
initiatives to organize are taken based on the availability of funds, and are far too often driven
by a few individuals seeking employment rather than a group of members with a common
cause.
Finally, even when DFGG projects are successful, donor funds, in general, fail to create
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sustainable civil society (Mansuri and Rao 2011). Participatory development projects tend to
wither without external funds to support them. In part, this is because many NGOs exist solely
to gain access to donor funds, as the above quote makes clear. However, opportunism is not
the only reason DFGG projects lack sustainability without donor funds. Community
mobilization is a costly and time-consuming process that requires a dedicated and
professional staff. To presume that people will volunteer for such efforts is unrealistic. Rather,
effective organizations need a full-time staff and most poor communities lack the resources to
support it. Effective NGOs in developed countries, such as Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch, depend on continual external support for their existence. There is no reason to
believe a different situation exists in developing countries.
However, it is extreme to deduce that donor funding of civil society is never effective. This is
certainly not the case. Rather, the appropriate conclusion to draw is that donor funds can help
organizations and/or groups within a community achieve goals they support. Thus they can
supply part of the capacity for a motivated group of people to advance an effective DFGG
program. What donor funds cannot do is create the incentive for DFGG. Donors need to
devote significant resources to determine which groups have a genuine interest in
implementing DFGG programs from those who only say they do in order to secure donor
funds.
Strategies for Effective Demand-Side Governance
Effective participatory development requires active citizen engagement and strong democratic
decision-making processes, the basic components of a strong civil society. However, civil
society failure is far more common in most countries where the World Bank and other
development partners work. Cleaver and Toner (2006) examine the failures of participatory
development in water projects in Tanzania and observe that:
„Bottom-up‟ approaches…severely underemphasize the problems of structural inequalities,
service fragmentation, and elite capture in local development…In seeking to promote the
participation of the excluded, such approaches may be in danger of placing the burden of
securing effective service delivery and progressive change on the poor and marginalized...
Masuri and Rao (2011) conclude that participatory development is ineffective in encouraging
better governance and/or delivering pro-poor development outcomes in the presence of civil
society failure. As a result, participatory development approaches to development face two
significant challenges. First, they need to create effective civil society. Second, civil society
needs to effectively promote policies that deliver pro-poor development outcomes and better
governance. Promoting effective community participation requires understanding and
addressing the explicit political barriers to better governance. Given the manifold
aforementioned failures of donor programs to achieve these two objectives, do we have
reasons to believe that participatory development can be effective development policies? The
answer is a cautious yes. However, donors need a degree of patience, flexibility, and
tolerance for failure than they typically demonstrate. Based on the findings in this paper, this
section provides a brief analysis of the emerging consensus on how to design effective DFGG
programs within the World Bank‟s TAP framework. It then discusses operating principals for
DFGG programs.
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Transparency, Accountability, and Participation
The World Bank‟s TAP framework has a number of strengths. First, it explicitly realizes the
inherent political nature of DFGG programs. This understanding represents a considerable
evolution in the organization‟s thinking about development from a technical or economic
perspective to a political one. Second, it recognizes that effective participatory development
relies on multiple strategies. While this change in perspective reflects an emerging consensus
on the causes of persistent poverty, translating these concepts into an effective TAP projects
is not simple. Below, the paper provides an overview of how to design such a program.
Transparency
Placing transparency at the center of participatory development programs makes a
considerable amount of sense. It is difficult to evaluate relative performance on development
outcomes and a government‟s effort to fight poverty in the absence of timely and accurate
data. Khemani (2006) outlines approaches to participatory development programs that place
transparency or access to information at the center of the intervention:
1. Collect data on the development outcome that is representative at the level of the
smallest political unit.
2. Employ organizations with credibility to collect the information at regular intervals, such as
domestic citizen associations or international aid agencies.
3. Choose a dissemination strategy. Khemani discusses a range of strategies from minimal,
such as observing whether the information becomes part of public debate, to maximal, such
as partnering with credible organizations working to improve development outcomes and
sharing the information with citizens using participatory methods, such as report cards and
PETS, and in the media. The latter strategy combines education on public policies with
measurable outcomes of them at regular intervals. A medium range strategy is to publicize
the findings in the media only.
4. Compare performance across jurisdictions. As part of a mobilization and information
campaign, it is important to inform the target population of how their community is performing
relative to other with which they can relate.
World Bank programs have found that a collective data collection approach can facilitate a
dialogue around shared experiences and best practices, and encourage innovation by
expanding the number of choices available to stakeholders interested in reform. It has proven
to be a useful mechanism to determine exigent issues as well as identify potential gaps and
challenges to reform. Establishing the range of viable programs and giving stakeholders the
responsibility to choose among them also strengthens reform ownership.
Kenya provides one of the clearest examples of using transparency as a central effort at
political and economic reform (Hoffman 2011). Beginning in the final years of ex-President
Moi‟s term in office and continuing under President Kibaki, civil society organizations and
reform-minded politicians (both sincere and opportunistic), have been employing budget
transparency, especially use of Constituency Development Funds (discretionary funds for
local projects), as focal points for mobilizing Kenyans to demand greater political
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accountability. Their strategies include publicizing the results of expenditure reviews as well
as direct efforts to teach communities how to conduct their own expenditure tracking analysis.
Participation
Any effective participatory development strategy must address the challenge of community
mobilization (Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008). Experience
demonstrates that a problem solving approach, which people can relate to improvements in
their own lives, can be helpful. Local organizations that enjoy credibility in the community,
including user associations, civil society organizations, and/or religious groups are the most
likely candidates to be able to effectively mobilize their community. Working through these
organizations is key. To be effective, efforts at participation must address two central
challenges.
First, since local organizations representing disadvantaged populations often have weak
capacity and political influence it may be necessary to link them with more powerful national
ones. Such links have the benefits of not only supporting training and capacity building, but
also have the potential to serve as a political counter-weight to balance power inequities at
the local level. Credible national NGOs are thus necessary to give community organizations
the ability to effectively challenge local power structures from a position of greater strength. In
addition, establishing links between local and national NGOs can give the former access to
national media to highlight problems in their community. However, the interest for these links
must come from the bottom-up. Attempts to force top-down partnerships have the potential to
undermine local ownership (Cleaver and Toner 2006). If local NGOs do not wish to establish
them, there is no reason to do so.
Second, elite capture can exist even at the local level. Existing studies reviewed in this paper
demonstrate clearly that wealthier citizens are more likely to participate in local development
projects more than the poor, and that the former tend to benefit more from it than the latter.
Perhaps even more troubling is that wealthier and/or more influential members of a
community can capture a local project and effectively privatize the benefits. Such outcomes
are common in projects that devolve aspects of service delivery to communities.
Consequently, effective DFGG programs require a concerted effort to reach out to
marginalized groups.
World Bank programs have found that coalitions, networks, or even teams, can emerge
around shared problems, crucial entry points for effective participatory development. By
making problems the focus of engagement, the framework pushes agents to identify their key
concerns, discover solutions, and determine challenges to achieving them. As a result, agents
can learn to look for contextually relevant opportunities for change, and to build the necessary
space for it to happen. This process employs collective identification of problems and
solutions from different mixes of public sector, private sector, and civil society representatives.
Regional workshops are one approach the World Bank has successfully implemented to build
such coalitions. For example, in May 2009, representatives from ten Latin American countries
met in Chile to identify problems with transparency and accountability in the judicial sector
throughout the region. The diverse set of representatives included the Latin American Judicial
Summit (LAJS), the Due Process of Law Foundation, Transparency International, and the
Justice Studies Center of the Americas (CEJA) and. Through this collaborative effort,
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participants identified a preliminary set of leaders and countries interested in working on
fundamental set of institutional reforms. These kinds of events often have served as a
platform for face-to-face discussions among peers who, by shedding light on experiences and
lessons learned in their respective countries, help each other better understand problems and
identify avenues for experimenting with solutions. Participants have become catalysts and
formal sponsors of new reform programs in their countries. Such forums also provide an
opportunity for participants to convey their demand for particular program components to the
donor community. They have presented demands to improve project design, delivery, and
monitoring.
An Applied Learning Program (ALP) is another practical approach for achieving this outcome
the World Bank has employed. The premise of ALPs is that sustainable reforms must be
participatory. They use a structured and flexible conceptual framework for implementing
sustainable reforms and identify the tools, mechanisms, and specific actions for achieving this
outcome. The main product of an ALP is the provision of a logical framework for the program
or project. The main components of an ALP are:
The prioritization of reform areas through joint design and implementation of specific
diagnostic tools that build local capacity and promote partnerships to monitor governance
outcomes and increase transparency.
Creating a space for exchanging knowledge and experiences.
Promoting and facilitating coalition building through participatory activities. Information
and communication technologies (ICTs), in particular, are crucial in forging these coalitions as
they enhance access to information, and reduce time and cost constraints of links among
practitioners.
Fostering consensus and strengthening the capacity of key actors to support sustainable
development.
The Judicial Learning Program (JLP) in Latin America and the Caribbean is one such
example. In the first phase of the program, five countries (the Dominican Republic, Chile,
Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Brazil) participated to work on specific problems in each country. In
the second phase, judicial experts prepared a needs assessment on the gaps, challenges,
and best practices of strategies applied to improve ethics standards, transparency and
accountability, including the enhancement of the delivery of judicial services, in the legal
sector. The program also supported coalition building to ensure a shared vision of the reform.
The result of the program was that presidents of supreme courts and heads of judicial
councils agreed to undertake radical institutional reforms, with support from their governments
and judiciary. All participating countries developed action plans and indicators focused on
transparency and accountability based on the recommendations arising from the JLP.
Accountability
Greater accountability is the outcome efforts to promote transparency and participation seeks
to achieve. The review of experience in DFGG to-date suggests most approaches have
focused on instruments transparency and participation (Benequista and Gaventa 2011).
However, without efforts to seek this outcome, citizens are likely to tire of engagements and
rightly question whether it‟s worth their effort. Actions to improve transparency and
participation are unlikely to achieve material results absent direct DFGG attempts to increase
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accountability.
Elections can be a form of accountability, but alone tend to be insufficient for improving
government responsiveness absent other structures of good governance (Bardhan 2002,
Mansuri and Rao 2011). At the most basic level, the objective of actions to increase
government accountability is to give communities (or a subset of them) an opportunity to
pressure local government officials to address their needs. Interventions to improve
accountability employ participatory approaches using the information communities gather to
collectively demand better governance and/or development outcomes. Institutionalized
forums where communities can present these demands, such as citizen oversight panels, are
one such approach. Having local NGOs who can serve as intermediaries between
communities and local political power structures is another method. They can convene
community meetings where elected local officials and civil servants can meet to discuss local
development concerns and pressure government officials to take action on them. The media,
especially local radio, can serve a similar function. In particular, radio talk shows, where local
government officials answer questions from members of the community, represents another
mechanism to promote accountability.
A World Bank Institute HIV/AIDS program in Tanzania, Good Governance in the Fight Against
HIV AIDS in Tanzania, provides a useful example of a well-integrated program employing
transparency and participation to increase accountability. The first phase aimed at identifying
potential external and internal partners, and bringing stakeholders together to respond to
HIV/AIDS in Africa. During this phase, WBI involved the Human Development Anchor sector
and the Africa Region of the World Bank, the Department of Institutional Integrity, the Global
Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the World Health Organization, the United
Nations Development Program, and local partners to identify key stakeholders in each of the
ten Tanzanian municipalities participating in the program. The partners engaged in a needs
assessment to evaluate local governance challenges, which led to the design of the five
learning modules on improving information flow, transparency, and accountability.
Participants also developed ten district specific governance action plans, designed actionable
indicators to measure impact, and created coalitions to ensure their successful
implementation. An independent Tanzanian consultancy firm conducted a baseline survey
using actionable indicators chosen by local government officials and communities. The
monitoring unit from the Tanzania Commission for AIDS was in charge of evaluating progress
towards the objectives of the project. The program ended with an independent evaluation that
provided measurable data on the impact of the district-specific action plans.
The pilot program led the Government of Tanzanian to scale-up the program to cover different
regions throughout the country. ACTafrica and the Global Fund, as well as several other
African countries have adopted this systemic approach on how to improve participation and
transparency at the local level in fighting HIV/AIDS.
Participatory Development Operating Principals
Beyond the basic TAP framework, there exist a set of more general operating principals for
effective participatory development programs. Below, the paper discusses these basic
program design features.
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1. Take citizen capability seriously: Citizens need knowledge and confidence to engage
effectively (Mansuri and Rao 2011, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008). As this paper has
demonstrated, participation is effective for learning rights and developing advocacy skills. Yet
finding well-trusted local groups solves only one part of the problem. These organizations
must also have the capacity to engage effectively with power structures, often require new
skills for learning how to do this, and must reach out to their community to gain local
legitimacy and support for their activities.
2. Economic, social, and political context matters: Participatory development programs do
not operate in a context-free environment. Rather effective, programs take into account
existing conditions in a community and have realistic expectations of what is possible under
those circumstances (Mansuri and Rao 2011, Rocha Menocal and Sharma 2008). They
understand the structure of power within a country and community, and work on multiple
levels, adopting different strategies based on the influence of the actors/institutions they are
engaging. Knowing the right people to contact in the government and their powers can greatly
help to expand the range of opportunities for citizen engagement and strongly affect the
outcomes of their actions. Previous attempts at engagement and their responses from the
state also shape peoples‟ beliefs about what they can achieve and the way they will approach
future advocacy attempts. Effective programs learn from the past and use what has worked
and/or attempt to rectify past mistakes.
3. Employ innovative impact evaluations. Designing appropriate monitoring and evaluation
mechanisms for participatory development programs requires employing a substantially
different framework than donors tend to utilize (Hoffman and Bain 2012, Mansuri and Rao
2011). First, because effective demand-driven programs must work simultaneously on
multiple activities and because changing social attitudes is a long-term, non-linear process, it
may often be difficult to assess what is working and what is not at any point in time during a
program, and we should expect backsliding and uneven progress.
Second, the utility of employing experimental or quasi-experimental program design is open
to debate in the area of participatory development. While these methods may be possible for
some elements of a program, it may not always be possible to isolate specific aspects of them
or measure success against a homogeneous control group that did not receive the
governance intervention. In addition, measuring changes in social relations, attitudes and
behavior is not easily captured by linear, quantitative methods. Rather, to evaluate the
programs requires not only seeing what is working and what is not in terms of quantifiable
outcomes, but also capturing changes in attitudes and relationships. Although surveys and
focus may be able to gather such information (and ought to be part of the impact evaluation),
assessments are likely to need qualitative on-the-ground components to do so as well. They
also require the participation of people familiar with the communities to gauge these shifting
dispositions and relationships.
The above notwithstanding, it is possible to design a monitoring and evaluation approach that
combines experimental methods with a systematic documentation of program impacts. In
particular, the program could fund a range of NGOs choosing to employ a variety of
approaches in different communities. A matrix found at the end of this document provides an
illustrative example. Having a variety of NGOs undertake the same actions in different
communities and the same NGOs doing different work in dissimilar communities combines an
experimental approach towards program activities while preserving the capacity of the bank to
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learn what works in a systematic way.
Third, impact evaluations of participatory development programs ideally are learning
opportunities to modify programs based on what is effective and what is not. Efforts to support
participatory development entail an enormous amount of social complexity and it is logical to
expect that many interventions might not be effective. Impact evaluations need to reflect
these realities and failure, in particular, can better serve as a mechanism to adjust a program
rather than terminate it. Participatory development programs are very unlikely to be achieve
success if they exist in an environment where a negative program finding leads to donors
abandoning as opposed to adapting their programs.
4. Salience of the issue matters: Effective strategies take into account the nature of the
problem citizen engagement is tying to solve (Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Rocha Menocal
and Sharma 2008). How advocates frame the issue (e.g., human rights, reflecting local values
etc.) strongly affects how it will resonate with the public and the government‟s reaction
5. Invest long term: To change social attitudes takes a considerable amount of time and
concerted effort (Benequista and Gaventa 2011, Hoffman and Bain 2012, Menocal Rocha
and Sharma 2008). A program must account for this challenge. Any investment of less than 5
to 10 years is unlikely to have a durable impact because of the need for a demand-driven
approach to change social beliefs and perspectives.
6. Start small and learn before scaling up. Because of the investment needed to ensure
active community participation, any DFGG intervention project will probably want to limit its
scope to a small number of communities where good relations can be established
(Benequista and Gaventa 2011). Piloting on a small scale, with a select group of NGOs with
good local connections and learning from doing is essential, before scale up to a more
ambitious program. Due to the importance of local contexts for designing effective programs,
scaling up rapidly often results in programs that do not reflect the realities of conditions within
a certain community.
References
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Economic Perspectives, 16: 185-205.
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Infrastructure Delivery in Developing Countries," Economic Journal: 116, 101-127.
Bates, Robert. 2002. Prosperity and Violence. New York: Norton.
Benequista, Nicholas and John Gaventa. 2011. Blurring the Boundaries: Citizen Action
Across States and Societies. London: Department for International Development.
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Oxford:
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Social Safety Nets: A Critical Review," World Development 30: 375-394.
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Westcliff Flats Residents Association. Stockholm: International IDEA.
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Demand for Good Governance. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Biographies of Authors
María González de Asis is a Senior Public Management Specialist in the Public Sector Unit
of the Latin American and Caribbean Vice presidency of the World Bank. Employed by the
World Bank since 1997, she has concentrated on public sector reform. She has managed
anticorruption programs in the field, disseminating emerging best practices in governance and
anti-corruption worldwide, leading the area of Legal and Judicial Reform Learning Programs
and the sectoral work and researching and advising countries on governance and
development around the world. In the last years she has pioneered capacity building
approaches for good governance and anti-corruption. Ms. González de Asis worked at
Transparency International in Washington, Berlin and Peru, and for the Spanish Lawyer Firm
“Abogados Asociados”. She can be reached at mgonzalezasis@worldbank.org
Barak D. Hoffman is the Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society.
Prior to coming to Georgetown, Dr. Hoffman was a research fellow at the Center on
Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He has worked for the
Federal Reserve, the United States Agency for International Development, and the United
States Department of the Treasury. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the
University of California, San Diego, and his BA and MA in Economics from Brandeis
University and Michigan State University, respectively. He can be reached at
bdh29@georgetown.edu
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XVII Congreso Internacional del CLAD sobre la Reforma del Estado y de la Administración Pública, Cartagena, Colombia, 30 oct. - 2 Nov. 2012
Table 1
Summary of TAP Programs and Results
Transparency
Program Examples
Access to information laws
Media training
Public expenditure tracking
Participatory poverty analysis
Public audits
Accountability
Participation
Participatory budgeting
Public audits
Citizen oversight panels
Elections
Advocacy campaigns
Citizen oversight panels
Public expenditure tracking
Community scorecards
Community-driven development (e.g., user
associations to manage local natural
resources)
Public audits
Participatory poverty and social analyses
Stakeholder forums
Citizen oversight panels
Information campaigns
Using social media to report directly
on service delivery outcomes
Call-in radio talk shows
General Impacts
Often successful in educating and
informing people about their rights
and
quality
of
government
performance
Information on its own tends to have
no direct impact on government
performance
Targeting marginalized groups
User associations
Using social media to report directly on
service delivery outcomes
Call-in radio talk shows
Elections tend to be the
most effective mechanism
for
disciplining
governments
Participation tends to have greater intrinsic
outcomes (e.g., people appreciate public
consultation) than developmental ones
Wealthy and better educated people tend
to participate more and benefit more from
it
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XVII Congreso Internacional del CLAD sobre la Reforma del Estado y de la Administración Pública, Cartagena, Colombia, 30 oct. - 2 Nov. 2012
Table 2
Ten Myths and Realities about Civil Society
Issue
Myth
Voice
Stronger voice leads to a more
accountable government
The People
Capacity
Building
Program Design
NGOs
Transparency
Technology
Decentralization
Best Practices
Donors
Reality
Voice only leads to more accountable government
if people can make effective demands and if
governments have the incentive and capacity to
address them
Voice represents the demands and
interest of the people
Civil society capacity building leads to
more responsive government
Participatory development fits within
traditional donor program structures
Civil society can substitute for an
ineffective government
Transparency leads to more
accountability
There exists technological solutions to
political problems
Decentralization leads to more
responsive government
Templates for participatory development
programs exist
Donor funds alone can build civil society
The people are heterogeneous
Capacity building doesn't work if incentives are
perverse
Participatory development programs do not fit in
traditional designs
Civil society complements effective government
Information alone is ineffective in improving
government accountability
There do not seem to exist technological solutions
to political problems
Decentralization may or may not lead to more
responsive government
Programs need to be designed taking into account
local economic, political, and social conditions
Funding NGOs alone does not build civil society
Table 3
Illustrative Program Design
1
2
NGO 3
4
5
Activity
1
2
x
x
x
3
x
x
4
x
x
x
26
5
x
x