Publication: Building Roads to Democracy? The Contribution of the Peru Rural Roads Program to Participation and Civic Engagement in Rural Peru
Abstract
Projects involving community participation often give communities responsibility to identify, prioritize, plan and implement small-scale investments. While the approach generates high ownership and relevance, it has often been considered inappropriate for large infrastructure projects with requirements of economies of scale, technical standards and efficiency. The Peru Rural Roads Program (PCR) finds the right balance between the two approaches by integrating community participation in a large-scale rural roads program with best practices, both in terms of flexibility and adaptability in project implementation, increased ownership and efficient management of road assets. Its positive impacts on rural transport, local economic development and local governance in Peru have earned it best practice awards from Peruvian civil society, from the Inter-American Development Bank and from the World Bank (President's Award for Excellence 2001). This note highlights its innovative design features and focuses on its impact on governance. Governance outcomes that are particularly highlighted include strengthening integrated participatory development planning, increasing local institutional capacity, promoting transparency in local governance and fostering civic engagement.
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“McSweeney, Catherine; Remy, Marisa. 2008. Building Roads to Democracy? The Contribution of the Peru Rural Roads Program to Participation and Civic Engagement in Rural Peru. Social Development Notes; No. 111. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/11157 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Peru : Impact of the Rural Roads Program on Democracy and Citizenship in Rural Areas(Washington, DC, 2008-06)The rural roads program, overseen by Provias Descentralizado (subdivision of Peru's Ministry of Transportation and Communications), began in 1995, and has received funds from the Peruvian Government, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is a national program for the rehabilitation and maintenance of roads that link rural communities and villages with secondary and principal roads, and through these, with towns and cities of the interior, thus expanding Peru's road network to the rural village level, especially in regions with greater levels of poverty. In its twelve years of existence, the program has been evaluated several times in terms of its impact on the economy (income levels, market dynamics), on gender equity, on the culture of the high Andes, on access to basic roads, and on rural living conditions (access to education, health, etc.). However, no effort had been made to systematically understand its impacts on democracy and the quality of citizenship exercised in rural areas. The study that is presented here, commissioned by the World Bank in February 2007, has sought to analyze PCR's impacts, using two general hypotheses that make it possible to explore the relationships between public roads and democracy. The first suggests that road integration, particularly the rehabilitation and maintenance of roads that link rural villages with district or provincial capitals, decreases the costs of democratic participation. In a context of increasing participatory supply, due to the ongoing recurrence of national and municipal electoral processes, as well as to the creation of new rights of participation, new roads allow rural residents to take part in democratic decision making processes without having to incur significantly higher costs than those of residents of urban centers. 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This paper presents a recent case study of a World Bank financed urban infrastructure improvement project in Liaoning, China, where the successful development of a meaningful public participation process influenced project design to better address the broad needs of the project beneficiaries. Particularly, the participatory process significantly influenced the project design and raised city leaders' sensitivity to public needs. Through the process the project shifted focus from major road expansion to secondary road improvements. Additionally, the participation processes picked up latent issues to better address needs of non-auto users, women and other urban vulnerable. The outcomes of the Liaoning participatory project indicate that a mainstreamed participatory process offers the potential to systematically reveal and address critical issues and public needs early in the planning process, which leads to higher value projects to accomplish investment goals.
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