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| [PHOTO: Dominic Chavez / World Bank / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0] |
New York/Washington: Involving local communities in decisions that affect their
lives is central to making development more effective, and it has the potential
to transform the role that poor people play in development by giving them voice
and agency. But inducing civic engagement in development is not easy, says a
new World Bank report, which covers community development and decentralization
projects supported by the Bank and other donors.
Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?, a new
Policy Research Report analyzing participatory development efforts, shows that
such projects often fail to be sensitive to complex contexts – including
social, political, historical and geographical realities – and fall short in
terms of monitoring and evaluation systems, which hampers learning. Citing
numerous examples, the authors demonstrate that participatory projects are not
a substitute for weak states, but instead require strong central support to be
effective.
The report shares evidence-based lessons on the challenges
donor agencies face in inducing participation, including the need for a
responsive state and a strong awareness of local context, and it recommends
several steps to ensure that financiers support projects effectively, such as
flexible, long-term engagement and participatory monitoring.
“Genuine efforts at inducing civic engagement require a
sustained long-term commitment and a clear understanding of the social and
political forces at all levels of society,” said Ghazala Mansuri, a lead economist in the World Bank’s
Poverty Reduction and Equity Group who co-authored the book with colleague,
Vijayendra Rao, lead economist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group.
“Rarely is much thought given to the possibility that it is
no easy task to effectively organize groups of people to act in a way that
solves market and government failures,” said Rao, “In fact, such efforts face
multiple challenges, such as lack of coordination, inequality, lack of transparency,
corruption, free-riding, and low capacity. Participation works best as a
sandwich with bottom-up participation supported by top-down supervision. ”
Given that the World Bank itself invested $85 billion over
the past 10 years on local participatory projects, with other donors adding
billions more, Mansuri and Rao had rich material to examine when participatory
projects work and when they do not. They conclude that while community
participation has had some success in improving outcomes in health and
education, it has been less effective in reducing poverty, or in building the
capacity for collective action.
According to the World Bank researchers, there are some common features among community-based
programs that have done well in reaching the poor and improving services. One
is strong engagement by the state, as in Brazil’s Programa Saude da Famılia,
which provides free health services and is managed by municipal governments
under the supervision of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Assessments of this
program reveal substantial health effects, especially for newborn babies and
young children. In addition, the program is cost effective, at some $30 per
capita.
Another key to success is significant effort in building capacity at
the local level, as was the case with Ghana’s Community Health and Family
Planning Project. As per the report, it is also "vital" to pay a great deal of attention to context
and to commit strongly to transparent monitoring systems, as in Indonesia’s
Kecamatan Development Program.