The Politics of Community-based Participatory Development

Abstract

No concept is as central in the study of development, or as problematic in its application, as ‘participation’, viewed from the most diverse theoretical perspectives as a critically important precondition and condition of the development process. Over the years this concept has had diverse points of reference and has been subject to a numerous twists both in its conception and various efforts to institutionalize it — to put it into practice. These twists not only reflect various shifts in conception, but changes in the context of real conditions that underlie and to some extent induce these shifts. In the context of conditions given in the 1980s, the concept of participation or participatory development has been closely linked to a widespread process of government decentralization and local community-based development.