The contribution of beneficiary participation to development project effectiveness

Criticism of development projects is widespread, and blame for disappointing results is cast in many directions. One line of criticism which has become quite strong in the recent development literature is that development projects are too top-down and need to be more bottom-up (e.g. Maguire, 1981). Projects should involve more participation by beneficiaries. In fact, some would argue that real development, by definition, must involve beneficiaries in their own improvement (e.g. Gran, 1983a,b). Without participation the people may benefit but not develop from a project. Thus participation has intrinsic value. As the recognition of the value of public, popular, beneficiary, or community participation has increased, so has the range of what is meant by participation. Some authors have expanded the concept to mean empowerment and capacity-building, sometimes including institution-building. In this paper we do not attempt to redefine participation per se. but aim instead to make an inventory of the principal concepts that have evolved in the literature so far, elicit a general model of participatory development projects, deduce the central implicit hypotheses from this literature on the relationship between participation and project effectiveness, and statistically test these hypotheses from the empirical evidence provided by AID'S series of 52 Impact Evaluation Reports. Our major question is how much does beneficiary participation contribute to project effectiveness?     

Regional integration and the individualism/collectivism dichotomy

This paper explores how regional integration can be seen through the lens of the individualism/collectivism dichotomy. Two main worldviews dominate the world since the 18-century: individualism and collectivism. These worldviews not only shape the behaviour of individuals but also that of institutional actors such as states. At the level of states, these two worldviews have been reflected in states pursuing their national interests and in states seeking to cooperate with other states. Also, within single states, these two worldviews find their expression in conceptions about how social order and public life are organised: the welfare state versus a market oriented society. As such, regional integration is a process that has a double relation to the individualism/collectivism dichotomy. First, the level of regional integration that states will pursue is linked to (individual) national interests. Secondly, regional integration as a move towards unity is function of the existing degree of homogeneity in social welfare systems. Today, a major challenge for the world is the dual evolution of growing individualism on the one hand (with limits to solidarity) and of a growing area of problems that have to be tackled at a collective level (cf. globalisation). This paper will argue that regional integration can be a valuable answer to overcome the individualism/collectivism dichotomy at the level of states. But for this to happen, civil society needs to become much more involved in regional integration processes.     

Dutch youth in transition to adulthood: Differential changes in their political and sociocultural values since the 1970s

In past decades, the postadolescents (i.e., the young who have not yet entered the labor market or established stable partnership bonds, but have already left the parental home, and as a consequence, are not acknowledged as genuine adults in a social sense) were well known for their relatively libertarian sociopolitical value orientations. The main question in this research is, do contemporary postadolescents still foster these relatively libertarian orientations, despite their experiences with the socioeconomic decline and worsening labor-market prospects in the first half of the 1980s? Analyses of Dutch data revealed, that until the 1980s, postadolescents were more libertarian and more postmaterialistic than their young adult peers who had already entered the labor market and engaged in stable partnership bonds. The difference in postmaterialism, however, appeared not to be resistant to the recent socioeconomic stagnation.     

Fatality management in mass casualty incidents

Medical involvement in mass casualty incidents requires proper planning and preparedness. In disaster situations, legal aspects concerning the dead add to the general problem of a lack of time, place and resources to maintain routine working conditions, and demand authority and competence. The aspects of planning the recovery of the dead, transportation and morgue facilities, establishment of cause of death, identification, and the final disposition of the dead are discussed. The implementation of forensic mass fatality teams is felt to be the right answer for a better planning and coordination.     

Expectations,performance, and citizen satisfaction with urban services

The expectancy disconfirmation model has dominated private‐sector research on customer satisfaction for several decades, yet it has not been applied to citizen satisfaction with urban services. The model views satisfaction judgments as determined—not just by product or service performance—but by a process in which consumers compare performance with their prior expectations. Using data from a New York City citizen survey, this study finds that citizen expectations, and especially the disconfirmation of expectations—factors that previously have not been considered in empirical studies of the determinants of citizen satisfaction—play a fundamental role in the formation of satisfaction judgments regarding the quality of urban services. Interestingly, the modeling results suggest that urban managers should seek to promote not only high‐quality services, but also high expectations among citizens. Additional implications for research and public management practice are discussed. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

An Approach to Measuring the Affordability of State Debt

Affordability is one important and widely accepted element of state and local debt policy. However, there is no well-established measure of affordability and no clear standard for making normative judgments about what amount of debt is affordable for a specific jurisdiction. This article suggests a six-step method for measuring affordability of state debt that provides a useful guideline for determining when a state may be entering a "danger zone" by having debt that exceeds norms of affordability.     

The dilemma of government responsiveness

The expectation that the government will respond to future circumstances, say bailing out a dictator to avoid a bloodbath, or raising taxes on immovable capital investments, often hinders the establishment of appropriate incentives for efficient behavior. The government's dilemma, simply, is that it may be unable to commit future governments not to be responsive. Contracts and constitutional provisions are mechanisms to limit responsiveness. So too are arrangements that increase the cost of being responsive, or build reputations for adhering to certain patterns of behavior. A promising strategy for being responsive is to base government actions on variables not under the control of individuals, such as unalterable characteristics or aggregate outcomes. These are at best palliative measures: Informed policy making must recognize the tension between providing appropriate incentives and permitting government to be responsive.