Can projects that attempt to induce participation and build “social capital” help repair civil society failures? The evidence on this important question is weak for several reasons, including attribution. Projects tend to have very limited impact on building social cohesion or rebuilding the state, as they tend to exclude the poor and be elite-dominated. However, there is some evidence, mainly from self-reports of participants, indicating a higher incidence of trust and cooperative activity in treatment than in control areas. Repairing civic failures requires reducing social inequalities. One way of doing so is to mandate the inclusion of disadvantaged groups in the participatory process. In particular, when the central and local governments recognise the legitimacy of deliberative forums and are responsive to them, they can transform the nature of civil society and state interactions.
Key findings
- Current evidence, mainly self-reporting, indicates a higher incidence of trust and cooperative activity in treatment than in control areas. However, this evidence is weak for a number of reasons, including the problem of attribution. Is it the facilitator or the community who are causing the impact? It is difficult to know whether effects will last beyond the project, although the limited evidence on this issue indicates that it may not. Further, responses from those in the community tend to be more reflective of rhetoric than reality.
- The chapter identifies only three recent studies which have been able to effectively deal with the problem of identifying comparison communities for assessing project impact: a IRC community reconstruction project in Liberia; a community-driven reconstruction programme in Afghanistan; and World Bank-funded GoBifo project in Sierra Leone. Others make matches based on the usual set of socio-demographic variables available. However, this makes causal inference challenging, because outcomes of interest (such as greater political awareness) may be the reason a community was selected in the first place, rather than an outcome of the programme.
- Projects tend to have very limited impact on building social cohesion or rebuilding the state, as they tend to exclude the poor and be elite-dominated. Reducing social inequalities is central to repairing civic failures. However, group formation tends to be both parochial and unequal, with similar people forming groups with one another. As a result, projects rarely promote cross-group cohesion and may even reinforce existing divisions.
- There is a growing body of evidence from village democracies in India that indicate broadly positive impacts of mandating the inclusion of disadvantaged groups in participatory processes through the use of quotas. Mandated inclusion also appears to provide an incubator for new political leadership while changing the incentives for clientelism. Evidence indicates that women and other excluded groups are more likely to stand for office for non-mandated seats once they have had some experience in a mandated seat.
Recommendations
- When central and local governments recognise the legitimacy of deliberative forums and are responsive to them, they can transform the nature of civil society and state interactions. Forums in which citizens gather to make direct representations to civic authorities, or are empowered to make decisions that have a direct bearing on their lives, seem to work when they are deemed legitimate.
- Deliberation is far more effective in literate settings. However, even in poor, unequal settings, there is evidence that deliberation may have intrinsic value – promoting dignity and giving voice to the disadvantaged.