Does Participation Improve Development Outcomes?

Abstract

Assesses the extent to which the shift toward local participatory poverty reduction projects and decentralization efforts have enhanced the pace of development, increased equity in access to public programs, and improved the sustainability of development efforts. The evidence appears to indicate that local capture can overwhelm the benefits of local information, and demand-driven, competitive application processes can exclude the weakest communities and exacerbate horizontal inequities. Co-financing requirements can worsen the exclusion of the poorest households and communities and attenuate the impacts of poverty reduction programs. Greater community involvement tends to improve resource sustainability and the quality of infrastructure, and the most successful programs are implemented by local governments that have some discretion but are downwardly accountable. Few studies of participatory poverty reduction programs show clear poverty impacts, though some evidence indicates that projects with large livelihood components perform better than other participatory projects, and need more evaluations.