Does community participation in development projects improve the quality and targeting of public benefits? Does participation lead to the empowerment of marginalised groups and increase the capacity for collective action? What are the effects of external agents on the quality of participation and on project success and sustainability? This review examines the literature on the effectiveness of participatory development and makes recommendations for future research.
Although community-based and-driven development are among the fastest growing mechanisms for channelling development assistance, projects that rely on community participation have not been particularly effective at targeting the poor. Most are dominated by elites and both targeting and project quality tend to be worse in more unequal communities. External facilitators are often poorly trained and the naïve application of complex contextual concepts like participation, social capital and empowerment contributes to poor project design and implementation. Thus, community-based and-driven development projects are best undertaken in a context-specific manner.
Whilst the potential gains from community-driven development are large, there are a number of constraints to its effectiveness:
- Decentralised targeting is not always effective in targeting projects to the poor within communities due to political economy considerations and perverse incentives. The preferences of the poor have not been adequately considered in project selection.
- There is some evidence that participatory projects create effective community infrastructure and improve welfare outcomes, but little evidence of a causal relationship between any outcome and participatory elements.
- There is a complex relationship between economic and social heterogeneity and project outcomes. The targeting of poor communities and poor households within communities is worse in more unequal communities.
- Though community-based development may be more effective in more cohesive communities, better-networked or better-educated groups within a community may benefit more from projects.
- The sustainability of community-based initiatives depends on an enabling institutional environment which requires government commitment as well as accountability of community leaders to avoid ‘supply-driven demand-driven’ development.
- Although successful projects in any context may provide an important learning opportunity, wholesale application of best practices in unlikely to be useful. Key concepts must be adequately detailed in a context-specific manner.
There are a number of gaps in knowledge which require further attention:
- A distinction between potentially benevolent and pernicious forms of ‘capture’ by elites may be important for understanding project dynamics and outcomes. The checks and balances which are most effective in reducing capture and exclusion need to be better understood.
- There is a need for more research into the involvement of external agents, who can create competition among different interests.
- There is virtually no reliable evidence on community participation projects actually increasing a community’s capacity for collective action.
- There is a need for more investigation into the role of facilitators, who may not always align incentives with the best interest of the community and may have difficulty rapidly scaling-up projects.
- More research into the actual impact of community-based development on empowerment is needed. A more analytical approach with a long time horizon and good monitoring and evaluation would be beneficial.
