Publication: Can Participation Be Induced? Some Evidence from Developing Countries
Date
2012-07
ISSN
Published
2012-07
Author(s)
Abstract
The World Bank has allocated close to
$80 billion towards participatory development projects over
the last decade. A comprehensive review of the evidence on
the efficacy of the approach conducted by the authors for
the forthcoming Policy Research Report, Localizing
Development: Does Participation Work?, finds that while
participatory projects have been reasonably effective in
improving access to basic services, there is far less
evidence of their effectiveness in improving household
income or in building sustainable participatory institutions
at the local level. A key issue is that the institutional
culture in development agencies such as the World Bank lacks
the flexibility and long-term commitment necessary for
effective externally induced participatory development.
Induced participation -- driven by large-scale
bureaucratically managed processes, is quite different from
more organic types of participation endogenously organized
by civic groups. It requires a very different approach to
development, one that pays close attention to contextual
variation and to uncertain trajectories of change. In order
to be effective, induced participatory projects need a
strong focus on learning-by-doing; on monitoring and
evaluation and a willingness to learn from failure. A review
of the World Bank's practices in monitoring and
evaluation, and of its incentives to learn from failure,
reveals that without significant changes, including changes
in the incentive structures facing management, the Bank
cannot be effective in inducing participation.
Citation
“Mansuri, Ghazala; Rao, Vijayendra. 2012. Can Participation Be Induced? Some Evidence from Developing Countries. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 6139. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/f5580f3d-326f-584a-8487-3e0a794f5784 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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