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This paper outlines how PRA can be of value to the policy making process by drawing on practical examples from around the world. The paper argues that not only is PRA important in providing poor people with a voice but that it can also challenge the perceptions, behaviours and attitudes of those in authority. The paper warns of the dangers of rapid scaling up of PRA.

Development organisations need to know how effective their efforts have been. But who should make these judgements, and on what basis? Usually it is outside experts who take charge. Participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) is a different approach which involves local people, development agencies and policy makers deciding together how progress should be measured, and results acted upon. It can reveal valuable lessons and improve accountability. However, it is a challenging process for all concerned since it encourages people to examine their assumptions about what constitutes progress, and to face up to the contradictions and conflicts that can emerge. This paper briefly outlines what Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM & E) is, provides examples of where it has been practically applied and examines some of the challenges faced.

This synthesis offers a review of experiences in applying participatory approaches to macro-level policy formulation, implementation and monitoring in poverty reduction. The participatory experiences are drawn from research initiatives, donors' country strategies, aid coordination processes, policy advocacy campaigns, institutional change processes, budgetary analysis and formulation and citizens' monitoring mechanisms. The review highlights significant challenges that must be overcome in order to establish participatory, sustainable, country-owned poverty reduction strategies.

There is a growing recognition that citizens should play a role in informing and shaping environmental policy. But how should this be done? This paper explores one route, where opportunities 'from above' are created, often, but not exclusively so, by the state, often through local government policy and planning processes. A set of approaches - known collectively as Deliberative Inclusionary Processes (DIPs) - are explored in different settings through 35 case studies from both the north and south. These experiments in more inclusive, participatory forms of policy deliberation have been prompted by a number of factors. These include wider political shifts towards new forms of citizenship and democracy; concerns about policy effectiveness and implementation success; the emerging recognition of the complexity and uncertainty inherent in environmental problems; growing levels of distrust in policy processes and expert institutions; and the increasingly recognised importance of accepting that values, ethics and issues of justice are key to environmental policy problems. Through an examination of lessons emerging from the case studies, practical issues, such as time and resource constraints, are considered alongside methodological questions emerging from asking: who convenes the process, who defines the questions, and how are multiple forms of expertise accommodated? The paper shows how power relations and institutional contexts critically affect the outcomes of DIPs processes. Without linking such processes to broader processes of policy change - including connections to conventional forms of democratic representation - DIPs may simply be one-off events, and so their considerable potentials for transforming environmental policy processes will go unrealised.

This paper aims to make facilitation and the role of the facilitator more transparent. It is based on the authors own experience in facilitation along with some theoretical concepts.  They highlight three different aspects of participatory interventions: the reasons for the intervention; the range of stakeholders involved; and the style of facilitation.

How do ordinary people, especially poor people, affect the social policies that in turn affect their well-being? What is the role of citizen participation in social policy formation and implementation? How do changing contexts and conditions affect the entry points through which actors in civil society, especially the poor, can exercise their voice and influence in critical social policy arenas? State centred conceptions of social policy often view citizens as recipients of programmes, whilst market led versions focus on the clients of social welfare as consumers who participate through choice of services. This paper explores a view that argues for an approach to social policy that sees citizens not only as users or choosers, but as active participants who engage in making and shaping social policy and social provisioning. The authors suggest that changing concepts and conditions, such as demographic change, the privatisation of provisioning and globalisation, challenge traditional approaches to participation in social policy. These concepts are discussed within a broader historical review of the ways that ordinary people have participated in policy, and it is argued that participation must be repositioned in the light of current reality which offers new spaces, as well as new constraints, for citizen engagement.

This IDS working paper is one of a series arising from the Pathways to Participation project which was initiated in Jan 1999 by the Participation Group, with the aim of taking stock of the first 10 years of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). There is a tendency to call any development practice that in some way involves local people 'participatory', and a huge diversity of meanings and practices can be hidden under this umbrella term. Additionally, the term 'participation' has become uncritically associated with 'empowerment'. Such oversimplified representations ignore the fact that participatory practice will vary greatly according to the context within which it operates. The paper analyses one particular approach to participatory development developed by SPEECH, an NGO working in Tamil Nadu, India, focusing specifically on gender relations. The paper draws on fieldwork from two communities - Kottam and Maniyampatti - in which SPEECH have been working for a lengthy period. The authors suggest that SPEECH's participatory practices are shaped by how both the staff and the local actors understand participation. As a result, the two communities have developed different participatory processes. The paper describes the notion that empowerment through participation is a relational and varied process occurring in spaces where people are able to interact according to an 'unusual' set of rules (i.e. during PRA workshops). The authors contend that such a process can have wider effects on social relations in everyday life, although, in this particular case study, certain aspects of gender relations have remained unchanged.