From participatory development to community management.

In my last post I introduced the concept of participatory development as a way of ensuring the actions of NGOs and international organisations are in keeping with the needs of the communities they are trying to serve. Participatory development is a practice that is often presented as an alternative to state-led or private sector development approaches so in this post I want to unpick the underlying principles behind this concept and find out whether it really is a new and alternative solution.

The practice of participatory development is considered to have begun in the early 1990s after top-down, Euro-centric development approaches were recognised to be ineffective.  However, this type of grassroots development can be traced back to the 1940s. During the Second World War, the foreign aid budget of Britain was re-alocated to help with the war effort, leaving the then 'Colonial Development Advisement Committee' no option but to pursue development policies that did not require significant government funding. E.R. Chadwick, a British development official, decided the solution was to encourage colonial communities to step up and take the initiative themselves.

 “The Government does not have enough money to give every village what it needs...we often think that Government has all the money in the world. But this is not so... It is true that the Government is there to help all the people in the country. But surely the people should help themselves. The best things in life are the things we have made for ourselves.”

“Community Betterment in Africa” pamphlet published in the early 1950’s under the authority of HMSO. 

Community Labour in Cameroon 1964. Source: Professor Ben Page

The concept of grassroots development is therefore not a new idea. Today, although much has changed from the 1940s and 50s following the end of colonial rule, a similar problem remains -  many African governments simply do not have the capital to provide public services such as water and sanitation to their entire populations. So is participatory development still the answer?

Encouraging communities to take it upon themselves to provide water and sanitation services appears to be both a rational action; because it acknowledges the long history of government failure to do so, and an ethically attractive action; because it is based upon principles of fairness and community empowerment and appears to avoid turning to the private sector to provide basic human rights. However, many case studies have shown that participatory development is most likely to be successful when communities contribute resources such as capital and labour to the development projects themselves (see Fielmua 2011, Harvey and Reed 2006). This investment gives the community a sense of ownership to the project, reminiscent of the principles of labour and property rights described by John Locke;  

"That labour put a distinction between them and the common. That added something to them more than nature...and so [making them] his private right."

( Two Treatises of Government p288. 1689)

Creating a sense of ownership is important if development projects are to be successful. Case studies have shown that where communities do not feel this sense of ownership the installed service equipment often falls into disrepair after a few years because the local community does not take responsibility for its upkeep (Kleimeeier 2000). A paper by Wesley and Ghatak (2001) analysed how ownership matters in public good provision. They argue that success is most likely to occur where the ownership of a public good "lie[s] with a party that values the benefits of it relatively more" (p1). This sense of ownership is most obviously achieved through community investment of labour and capital. Yet this clearly is based strongly on market principles and therefore does not appear to be any different from private sector led development.  

Furthermore, central to private sector led development is the idea that service provision must have some aspect of cost-recovery if it is to be economically sustainable (WSP 2010). This aspect has attracted criticism because it means clean water and sanitation should be treated as an economic good (Bakker 2007). However, this is no different from participatory development. Case studies have shown that cost recovery is needed from services provided through participatory development projects if the services are to be maintained (Whittington et al. 2008).

Participatory development does at first appear to offer an alternative approach to government-led development. However, further case studies have shown that participatory development is more likely to work when complimented with government support (Carter et al. 1999, Harvey and Reed 2006). If significant and urgent investments are needed to pay for infrastructure repair or expansion, and local communities are not able to mobilise the capital themselves, government institutions may be the only potential source of funding. Continued government support therefore remains necessary to the participatory development process. 

Where the balance of responsibility should lie between communities and government is a complex question and one that needs far more than this blog post to do it justice. Participatory development does appear to offer an attractive alternative solution and it is frequently advocated based on ethical principles of fairness and community empowerment. There is no doubt that Guijt and Shah's description of participatory development as the "inclusion of marginalised peoples in the decision making over their own lives" is ethically attractive, but is this inclusion of marginalised people supposedly more successful because it is based on principles of fairness and empowerment or is it because it draws on liberal market principles of ownership? 

Participatory development appears in theory to present a new and alternative development solution to state or private-sector led development. However, in practice, case study evidence suggests that if it is  to work it must be supported by government and be strongly rooted in market economics. This evolution of participatory development has given rise to the practice of community management - a new hybridisation of development approaches based on principles of community participation, state intervention and private sector economics.