Indigenous voices and the making of the post-2015 development agenda: the recurring tyranny of participation

This paper explores recent efforts to ensure the participation of indigenous peoples in the making of the post-2015 development agenda. It is based on an examination of the UN’s global consultation process, conducted between July 2012 and July 2013. Using discursive analysis of consultation findings and reports, we argue that the UN’s approach to participatory development represents a pretence rather than an actual shift in power from development experts to the intended beneficiaries of development. Therefore the post-2015 consultation process aptly illustrates the recurring tyranny of participation, this time at a global level, as the UN maintains control over global development goals. Recognising that it would be unjust to ignore the ability of marginalised groups to challenge the UN’s dominant narratives of development, we suggest that there is still time for indigenous voices to be heard in the build-up to the post-mdg era through ‘invited’ and ‘uninvited’ forms of participation.     

The ambiguity of participation: a qualified defence of participatory development

This paper examines some of the critiques addressed to participatory development by critics such as Cooke and Kothari. It argues that criticisms of participation's theoretical coherence and of its lapse into a routinised praxis largely arise from an unavoidable ambiguity that is inherent in the concept of participation, this being the means/end ambiguity. Participation must function as a means because any development project must produce some outputs (therefore participation is seen as a means to achieve such outputs), but it must also function as an end inasmuch as empowerment is viewed as a necessary outcome. This ambiguity becomes contradictory when emphasis is laid on participation as a means at the expense of participation as an end. The article proposes ways of re‐emphasising the element of empowerment so that participation may function as an emancipatory strategy.     

Zambia's 2001 elections: The tyranny of small decisions, 'non-decisions' and 'not decisions'

The course of the 1990s witnessed deterioration in the quality of elections held across sub-Saharan Africa. Zambia's elections for the presidency, parliament and local government held on 27 December 2001 are no exception. They returned the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy (MMD) to power, but with much reduced popular support and leaving doubts about the legitimacy of the result. A 'tyranny of small decisions', 'non-decisions' and 'not decisions' perpetrated over 12 months or more leading up to these elections combined to influence the outcome. The previous MMD government and the formally autonomous Electoral Commission were primarily but not wholly responsible. For independent analysts as well as for the political opposition, who secured a majority of parliamentary seats while narrowly failing to capture the presidency, identifying the relevant category of 'decisions' to which influences belong and comparing their impact is no straightforward matter. Zambia both illustrates the claim that 'administrative problems are typically the basis of the flawed elections' in new democracies and refines it by showing the difficulty of clearly separating the administrative and political factors. In contrast Zimbabwe's presidential election in March 2002, which had the Zambian experience to learn from, appears a more clear-cut case of deliberate political mischief by the ruling party.     

Horror and hope: (re)presenting militarised children in global North-South relations

This article examines the (re)presentations of militarised children in contemporary global politics. In particular, it looks at the iconic image of the 21st century's child soldier, the subject of which is constructed as a menacing yet pitiable product of the so-called new wars of the global South. Yet this familiar image is a small, one-dimensional and selective (re)presentation of the issues facing children who are associated with conflict and militarism. In this sense it is a problematic focal point for analysing the insecurity and human rights of children in and around conflict. Instead, this article argues that the image of the child soldier asserts an important influence in its effect upon global North-South relations. It demonstrates how the image of the child soldier can assist in constructing knowledge about the global South, and the global North's obligations to it, either through programmes of humanitarianism, or through war.     

Political transitions and commissions of inquiry: the politicisation of accountability in Ghana

Abstract

What role does a commission of inquiry (COI) play in delivering accountability? In theory, when the public delegates power to political leaders to formulate and implement policies, they seek political accountability in return. Using Ghana as a case study, this study examines how the operations of COIs may deliver accountability. Principal–agent theories of accountability and African conceptions of legitimacy are incomplete on their own and need to be integrated into an explanation of political accountability that takes into consideration political transitions and the role of COIs in delivering a minimalist form of accountability. This study argues that a COI is an instrument of regime legitimatisation. The demands by citizens for political accountability in Ghana correlate with political transitions. Accompanying each power alternation was a different model of political accountability. To understand the predominant applications of accountability, we emphasise the politicisation of accountability.     

Evaluating US soft power in Asia: military,economic and sociopolitical relationships between Asia and the United States

The changing dynamics of international politics such as the expansion of the European Union, the growing importance of Asia, and the post-11 September environment have raised great concern about US soft power all over the world. At the governmental level, transpacific relationships may have encouraged military, economic and sociopolitical collaboration. The Asians' perceptions about US soft power at the individual level, however, may not be consistent with the governmental level. By using the 2003 AsiaBarometer survey, this article examines the factors that contribute to individuals' perceptions about US soft power in seven Asian nations – China, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Three main factors – military, economic and sociopolitical – are considered. Higher assistance by the US government engenders positive responses from the respondents. For causal relationships, economic and sociopolitical variables, rather than the military variable, enforce individuals' positive perceptions about US soft power, according to the multilevel estimates.     

Capacity building and the (re)production of intellectual property rights

There is little settled or uncontested about the trips agreement and the global governance of intellectual property rights (iprs). This suggests that the provision of training and technical assistance to build capacity is itself part of the reproduction of the dominant (trips constituted) view of iprs and is therefore a political project rather than merely technical provision. On one side many developing countries' elites and governments are keen to join the international trading community and see the need to adopt the increasingly universalised rules of the system as part of this process. On the other hand, there are vocal constituencies less supportive of an unqualified adoption of trips‐related standards of legal protection for iprs. Given the continuing importance of legal structures to underpin and constitute markets (and this is most especially the case in markets for knowledge and information), the processes by which the trips solution to the question of knowledge ownership is being globalised through technical training needs to be understood and analysed.     

Uneven development,inequality and concentration of power: a critique of Thailand 4.0

This article provides a critique of the Thailand 4.0 strategy to push the country out of the middle-income trap through innovation-driven, inclusive and sustainable growth. First, it argues that the policies have insufficiently analysed the persistence of structural hierarchy and uneven development in the global political economy, which will constrain Thailand’s catch-up success in the future. Second, based on writings about progressive mission-led industrial strategies, it is argued that Thailand 4.0 ought to embed a progressive social and environmental agenda more clearly in its industrial strategy. Third, it is argued that Thailand 4.0 neglects to address the high concentration of political and economic power in the country, and also continues to allow unequal access to the policymaking process that has led to socio-environmental problems. Overall, this article argues that Thailand 4.0 will increasingly aggravate the two-tier fragmented nature of the political economic system of Thailand, where few can reap the biggest shares of the surplus and participate in more advanced sectors of the economy. It also calls for a more progressive industrial strategy and an alternative developmental path.     

State power, state embeddedness, and national development in less developed countries: A cross-national analysis

In this article, we test the prevailing statist argument about the state’s contribution to economic development in less developed countries (LDCs). State power in terms of centralized control of societal resources has been long considered a primary factor for economic growth. From the embeddedness perspective, the state’s effective embedding in the economy advances productive growth, while state power actually operates as a structural precondition of such policy action. Featured in our measurement are representative and financial embeddedness (operationalized as the central government’s tax income and its lending to the private sector and local states, respectively). The empirical testing is based on a pooled cross-national data of sixty-one underdeveloped countries. As indicated from modeling both manufacturing growth and increase in GNP per capita as dependent variables (during the period 1975–1990), the state power variable does not produce expected growth outcomes. However, two embedded state measures display significant but sectorbiased growth effects only for manufacturing production. Herein we further compare strong state power countries with weak ones, concluding that state power serves as a structural prerequisite so that late industrialization for LDCs can benefit from the growth coalitions in which the central state collaborates with (rather than dominates) actors at the subnational level of society and authorities. Ming-Chang Tsai teaches sociology in Taiwan. He was Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Social, behavioral, and Economic Research, University of California at Santa Barbara (1998–99). He wishes to thank professors Diane Davis and Ian Roxborough for invaluable comments. An earlier version of this article was presented in the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 1997, Toronto.     

The devil's in the theory: A critical assessment of Robert Chambers' work on participatory development

The practice orientation of Robert Chambers' work on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which aims at enabling local people and communities to take control over their own development, has received much attention in development circles. This article attempts to shift the emphasis away from PRA's practice towards its theoretical underpinnings. The article argues that PRA's practice/empiricist orientation causes it to be insufficiently theorised and politicised. As a result, questions about inclusiveness, the role of PRA facilitators, and the personal behaviour of elites overshadow, or sometimes ignore, questions of legitimacy, justice, power and the politics of gender and difference. The article draws on arguments and debates involving Habermasian 'deliberative democracy' and post-structuralist notions of power.     

Attaining participatory objectives: Citizen information and training needs

In this article the authors examine three interrelated elements of citizen participation: participatory objectives, participation techniques, and citizen information and training needs. Four objectives of citizen participation are identified, and techniques are then categorized according to their most appropriate objective. Each objective and its associate techniques are examined in terms of participant training and information needs. The intent is to illustrate the relationship between participatory objectives and techniques and that training and information relevant to the techniques selected is necessary.     

Evaluating Nashi's Sustainability: Autonomy,Agency and Activism

This article explores the development of the Russian youth movement Nashi and its relationship with the state with the purpose of assessing the movement's long-term sustainability. Establishing a link between activists' political autonomy and their potential ability to sustain the movement without state support, this article examines the validity of the assumption that Nashi is simply an extension of the state, which the state can unilaterally direct as it sees fit. It contends that despite the movement's allegiance to the incumbent regime and its utilisation of state resources, Nashi activists have become increasingly politically autonomous and therefore capable of sustaining the movement in their own right.     

Organizational development in the third world: values,closeness of fit and culture-boundedness(1)

This paper seeks to counterbalance some common arguments about the role of organization development (OD) in Third World settings. OD is a value-laden technology and this raises the issues of the closeness of fit of specific OD approaches or designs to different cultures, histories and settings. Most organizational theorists recommend a close fit, based upon an overall characterization of OD and estimates of the features of macro-cultures such as nations or regions. This paper urges a more differentiated perspective, based on evidence that OD works, on balance, in a broad range of contexts. Specifically, OD designs/approaches are not homogeneous, and neither are the nation-states or organizations in which OD is applied. The paper suggests a number of ways in which OD practitioners might become more sensitive to different contexts and thereby improve their judgments about the advisability of making OD interventions.

Since its earliest days, OD has been concerned with the issue of degree of fit. OD is a normative, re-educative strategy,⁽²⁾ and, for that reason, practitioners agree that “there” will be different from “here” in pervasive ways. Thus many ODers speak of “a new social order at work”⁽³⁾ and envision a new tomorrow, either in progressive steps, or via some frame-breaking effort. The key issue underlying how to get from “here” to “there” involves choices of designs for learning or change which are sensitive to beginning “here” and also capable of inducing systemic movement toward “there.”

Four emphases will carry this paper beyond these generalizations about why and how OD is concerned with the closeness of fit between its values and different sites of application. An initial section briefly describes OD as value laden, and hence as potentially at cross-purposes with other value laden aspects of sites of application -- national or organizational cultures, managerial climates, small work groups and so on. The second section describes three models of the relationship between OD and existing cultures, climates or styles. In addition, extended consideration is given to four generalizations about OD in Third World settings, in which closeness of fit and culture-boundedness are of special significance. The generalizations relate to success rates, the primacy of process and interaction in OD, the significance of a systems perspective, and an emphasis on specific OD sites and OD interventions. The final section presents my personal views as practitioner about closeness of fit and how to minimize cross-cultural blind spots.

Neither OD designs nor cultures are homogeneous; and change objectives can differ radically from case to case in their urgency and acceptable probabilities of success, with each case requiring judgments to be made about closeness of fit. The available literature tends to oversimplify in posing such questions as:

Is OD exclusively culturally appropriate to North America?

Does nation A have a culture that constitutes a close fit to OD values/interventions?

Are close fits preferable to distal-fits?     

Examining citizen participation: local participatory policymaking and democracy revisited

This article discusses developments in citizen participation and its contribution to democracy since the publication of the original article. It evaluates the continued relevance of the use of a normative framework to assess different forms of citizen participation, nuances some of the conclusions and shows how inclusion and a connection with formal decision-making remain central issues that need more scholarly attention. Moreover, the article shows how the framework has been used in advising councillors and organisers of local citizen initiatives.     

Problems and contradictions of participatory democracy: lessons from Latin America

The participatory innovations of the last few decades, particularly in Latin America, seem to suggest that the establishment of more participatory democracies is possible. However, limitations have characterized important participatory experiences. While the Bolivian, Ecuadorian, and Venezuelan attempts to promote popular participation have produced both positive and negative effects, some of these participatory experiences’ limitations are useful to highlight more general problems and contradictions that seem to be inherently associated with the establishment of participatory democracy in poorly functioning liberal democracies and in exclusionary and unequal societies. This analysis suggests that, paradoxically, the establishment of effective and inclusive participatory institutions may be less feasible where participatory mechanisms appear, at first glance, as most needed and promising.     

Decentralization or deconcentration: struggle for political power in poland (1)

This paper argues that the 1989 commitment to political and administrative decentralization has weakened over five years. As the point that it has become a rhetorical formula voiced by the governing political leadership when convenient, but in reality never realized. Two sets of factors contributed to such a state of affairs: (1) the inability of the center to reform itself, and (2) center's increasing commitment to regain the power lost over the last few years.

The first part of the paper lays a theoretical framework for analysis of pressures and barriers to decentralize. Second, examines the process of implementing in Poland, of local government and public administration reform over the 1989-1995 period. Finally, the third analyzes in detail the three most significant forces that central states utilized to gain control: (1) political; (2) power resources and (3) fiscal. It concludes by asserting that beyond 1990, while much of the program has been achieved in designing legislative and territorial aspects of the public administration and local governments reform, what was lacking was the political commitment to implement both.     

Evaluating Freedom of Information Laws: Objectives,Approaches, and Practical Considerations

Freedom of information (FOI) laws aim to improve the public’s opportunities to access official information from public authorities and hence to increase the level of transparency. Thus, it is important to know whether and to what degree the effects intended by establishing FOI laws are achieved and how their implementation could be improved. In order to answer these questions, FOI laws have to be evaluated. Unfortunately, attempts to evaluate FOI laws are still in their infancy. To promote sound evaluation, this article aims to provide guidance on how comprehensive FOI law evaluations might be designed and conducted.