What is empowerment? What principles and lessons can inform an empowering approach to development? This book outlines 20 ‘tools and practices’ to support poor people’s empowerment and highlights four mutually reinforcing elements of empowerment that must underlie reform strategies. These key elements are: 1) access to timely, clear information; 2) inclusion and participation; 3) downward accountability mechanisms; and 4) local organisational capacity. Greater investment in information disclosure, social accountability and local organisational capacity is particularly important.
Empowerment is defined as ‘the expansion of assets and capabilities of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, influence, control and hold accountable institutions that affect their lives’. It requires the removal of formal and informal institutional barriers that prevent people from taking action – individually or collectively – to improve their wellbeing. Key formal institutions include the laws and rules upheld by states, markets, civil society and international agencies. Informal institutions include norms of social solidarity, exclusion and corruption.
A growing body of evidence points to the links between empowerment and development effectiveness at society-wide, grassroots and project levels. For example, projects in countries with strong civil liberties – particularly citizen voice, participation and accountability – significantly outperform projects in countries with weak civil liberties.
It is important to strengthen the demand side of governance by focusing on laws, rules and procedures that enable citizens and poor people’s organisations to interact effectively with their governments. Four key elements act in synergy to strengthen the demand side of governance:
- Access to information: Two-way information flows from citizens to government and from government to citizens are essential. It is most important to provide information on state and private sector performance, financial services and markets, and rules and rights regarding basic services.
- Inclusion and participation: Poor people need to be recognised and treated as co-producers, with authority and control over decisions and resources devolved to the lowest appropriate level.
- Accountability: Social or public accountability mechanisms hold agencies accountable to citizens.
- Local organisational capacity: ‘Voice’ is magnified when people work together, organise themselves and mobilise resources to address common concerns.
The World Bank has established partnerships with poor people in the co-production of public goods, particularly basic education, and in natural resource management. However, to be sustainable and to avoid elite capture, many such projects need to invest more systematically in information disclosure, social accountability and local organisational capacity. The following lessons should inform an empowering approach to development in any context:
- Building improved social relations and trust among stakeholders is important for sustainability but requires time, skills and investment in participatory processes.
- Participatory processes should include clear, agreed rules of engagement and conflict management strategies. Bringing stakeholders together to set priorities, change rules and allocate resources can create conflict.
- Change is brought about by champions and alliances in-country. Innovation and support for reform spreads through alliances across classes and sectors, and through peer or horizontal learning (such as between ministers, mayors or communities).
- It is vital to bring together the state, the private sector, civil society and poor people.
- Poor people’s realities are the starting point, but direct and intensive forms of participation are not always appropriate. The costs of participation for the poor can be high.
- Local capacity, particularly poor people’s capacity to manage development resources effectively, is often underestimated. Weaknesses are more likely to stem from lack of funds or incentives (or the presence of disincentives) than from lack of competence.
- Poor people’s membership-based organisations tend to be overlooked. Many federated networks exist with representation at national level, and need to be more involved in policy dialogue and implementation.
- Changes in rules and in institutional processes enable large-scale change. Implementing new rules requires: acknowledging the need for changed values and behaviours; educating stakeholders at all levels; supporting institutional capacity to manage change processes; ensuring public accountability; and monitoring, evaluating and refining the rules based on experience.
