recognition and use of local capacities and avoids the imposition of priorities from the outside. It increases the odds that a program will be on target and its results will more likely be sustainable. Ultimately, participatory development is driven by a belief in the importance of entrusting citizens with the responsibility to shape their own future.
There is less than general agreement over whether participation is appropriate in all relief and development interventions and disagreement exists over whether such methods are relevant in all phases of programs, from conception to exit evaluation. Similarly, some organizations hedge over whether participation is a value that requires strong institutional commitment, if not outright reorganization. These are disagreements over whether surgical participation or more fundamental retooling of assistance organizations is needed to faithfully engage in participatory development. But there is consensus that it is not “participation” if contact with the local population is used to confirm the integrity of a preconceived idea. Likewise, it is not participation if the purpose is to engage an indigenous population to convince them of the wisdom of a program they took no part in informing.
Relief and Development Assistance as Political Enterprise
Participation programming is not politically neutral. Participatory development promotes equity and accepts that the exercise of decision making power at the local level is as legitimate as it is at the national level. Like an important political technology of our time called democracy, it champions the sovereignty of people overthe sovereignty of a state. It is not just about meeting a people’s needs. It is about helping to create an environment where people can more effectively identify and address their own needs. It explicitly recognizes the significance of political and social context in an effort to determine the roots of an enduring problem and to avoid harming those who should benefit. To believe in and promote participatory development is to believe in the intrinsic importance of self-determination.[3]
Participatory development programming is not politically neutral. To believe in and promote it is to believe in the intrinsic importance of self determination.
Some organizations tasked with political development, such as the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives (USAID/OTI), openly advocate participatory methods precisely because they promote self-determination and predispose a people toward more democratic behavior. As Rick Barton, OTI’s first director puts it, “if you are ever going to get to a system of the people, by the people, and for the people then you’d better engage the people as early as you can.” In Haiti and Kosovo, OTI implemented programs with that in mind, making the means and ends of the program to develop a participatory ethic within populations unused to being asked what they thought. And while concrete assistance was delivered to meet the real priorities these local citizens identified and implemented, OTI emphasized the “how” of the process as the schools, water systems and electrical upgrades it funded were completed. Admittedly, this is unusual. Most organizations remain extremely wary of what they fear is “political” aid. To an astonishing degree, most traditional professionals believe their programs are “politically-neutral”.
The truth is that humanitarian and development interventions, regardless of whether participatory methods are employed or not, are highly political. Local power relationships and the psychology of expectations are revised each time organizations determine their interlocutors and distribution
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