Resources

This article provides an overview of the commentaries received during the e-forum on Participatory Processes for Policy Change. Four areas are considered. Firstly, regarding issues of evidence, the debate raised important questions around the positivist versus more reflective views of knowledge in policy making. The second concerns issues of representation. Many actors emphasise the need for the poor to speak for themselves, but questions arise: who are the poor? And are their voices being heard? The third aspect looks at issues of engagement which seek to develop an alternative agenda, and represent a key challenge for deliberative processes. Lastly, issues of accountability are considered through the extent to which deliberative processes offer opportunities for holding the powerful to account. A concern here is whether adequately functioning accountability mechanisms are in place for people to hold stakeholders responsible.

A resource kit consisting of a video and manuals, providing information and experience on participatory methods in order to support the adoption of participatory approaches in World Bank projects and studies. The kit includes modules on social assessment, stakeholder analysis, PRA, SARAR and beneficiary assessment, and participatory monitoring and evaluation.

This document outlines the learning process that the Rural Integrated Project Support, RIPS Phase II has gone through in introducing a participatory approach to its work in rural development in two southern regions of Tanzania over the last five years, as seen by the stakeholders and facilitators in that process.

This article begins with a brief discussion of the links between the concepts of participation and social exclusion. Brief histories of three government programmes in the United States which have attempted to use participation to address poverty and social exclusion are then given. Themes emerging from these histories are outlined and their possible relevance for the South, as participation is increasingly used as an institutonalised strategy for addressing poverty.

This paper presents a range of initiatives the authors are involved in within the field of children's rights and participation. It begins by defining the rights based approach and needs based approach to development and goes on to give details of three projects. The first project is PLAN International Indonesia's training and capacity strengthening for its field staff aimed at promoting a shift towards addressing child rights in its programmes and projects. The paper outlines the tangible benefits for the children and the impact on their lives, for example in family relationships.|The second project is a DFID Innovations Fund research one looking at the ways in which the impacts of development projects on children are addressed in monitoring and evaluation systems, with pilot projects in Nepal and South Africa. It discusses the use of organisational mapping in both these pilot projects and the findings to come out of them|The final case study is about the monitoring and evaluation of the Saying Power Scheme in the UK. Rather than happening at the end of the projects, the monitoring and evaluation process runs parallel to it. The article describes the confidence lines and ôHö method used and concludes with challenges the projects faced

This article presents a response by DFID-India to the Prajateerpu report and the e-forum which discussed its findings, in which the organisation is implicated as having acted callously in displacing large numbers of poor farmers from their lands and imposed policies and programmes that would adversely affect their livelihoods. It begins by outlining DFID's approach to tackling rural poverty and agricultural development, highlighting that it does not wholly endorse a highly industrialised approach, and that it recognises that complexities and difficulties associated with rural poverty. It then presents DFID's programme strategy and approach, stating the value placed on participation and consultation, and gives examples of interventions in Andrah Pradesh which poor people directly benefited from.

By the end of the 1990s good governance (GG) was the new catch phrase in development and public policy circles. Good governance is increasingly viewed as a panacea to persisting problems of development and government. Donors, governments (central and local), academe, NGOs and other civil society groups are calling for GG as a requisite for making development programmes and interventions successful. This review examines indicators of local GG. It gives a historical background to GG and overviews the GG agenda. Emerging concepts of good governance are presented with specific references to different literature; and the way forwards towards a framework for defining GG is discussed, with focus on means toward good governance and decentralisation. Key measures of good governance are examined such as participation; new styles of leadership; accountability and transparency; capable public management in economic management, service delivery, sustainable natural resource management and fiscal administration; and respect for law and human rights. The author goes on to propose a manner of constructing a data base of indicators of GG: describing methodology and how to classify the indicators. This is followed by a discussion on who develops and who uses indicators of GG, and emerging issues in defining good local governance. The paper is concluded with some final remarks on the processes of measuring and defining GG.