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?     

Alcohol loss arising from microbial contamination of drivers' blood specimens

This paper describes the circumstances in which some drivers' blood specimens containing added sodium fluoride (1% w/v concentration) deteriorated as a result of microbial contamination, accompanied by a decrease of alcohol concentration. Strains of the bacteria Serratia marcescens and a Pseudomonas sp. were isolated from the specimens and proven capable of growing at ambient temperature in blood containing sodium fluoride at 1% w/v concentration. They were shown to be active in alcohol degradation in preservatised blood, the activity being dependent on sodium fluoride concentration and storage temperature. Blood diluters were assumed to be a source of microbial cross contamination from one blood specimen to the next. It is recommended that postmortem blood specimens be analysed in separate batches from drivers' specimens when automated blood diluters are used, that the content of fluoride ions be increased to an equivalent of 2% w/v sodium fluoride, and that storage of specimens at temperatures above 4 degrees C be minimised.     

An experimental study of powder tattooing of the skin.

Test firings were conducted on specially prepared live rabbits to determine the approximate maximum ranges at which powder tattooing occurs for different forms of gunpowder. For .38 caliber, powder tattooing from cartridges loaded with flake powder disappears at a range of 18 to 24 in. (0.4 to 0.6 m). Powder tattooing with flattened ball powder extends to 36 in. (0.9 m), while that due to ball powder extends to 48 in. (1.2m) of range. In .22 caliber, powder tattooing was observed out to 24 in. (0.6 m) with flake powder and 18 in. (0.4 m) with flattened ball. Attempts to reproduce the animal powder tattoo patterns on paper revealed that the paper patterns are consistent with skin tattoo patterns only up to 18 in (0.4 m) of range.     

The Design and Implementation of Cross-Sector Collaborations: Propositions from the Literature

People who want to tackle tough social problems and achieve beneficial community outcomes are beginning to understand that multiple sectors of a democratic society—business, nonprofits and philanthropies, the media, the community, and government—must collaborate to deal effectively and humanely with the challenges. This article focuses on cross-sector collaboration that is required to remedy complex public problems. Based on an extensive review of the literature on collaboration, the article presents a propositional inventory organized around the initial conditions affecting collaboration formation, process, structural and governance components, constraints and contingencies, outcomes, and accountability issues.     

From Leviathan to Gulliver? The Decline of the Developmental State in Brazil

This article advances an institutionalist explanation for the decline of Brazil's developmental state, showing how an initially strong state undermined its own strength over time. The Brazilian state greatly expanded its interventionism and fragmented society—through state-corporatist mechanisms—in order to enhance its power to guide development. Yet the mushrooming state apparatus increasingly lacked internal coordination. This disunity diminished the state's capacity to attain its goals and provided added opportunities for the fragmented social groups created by the state's divide-and-rule strategies to "capture" public agencies. The resulting weakening of the state is evident in taxation, the policy focus of this article. Competing state agencies granted proliferating tax privileges, and business sectors supported by clientelist politicians blocked governmental efforts to maintain or raise the tax burden. This decline in extractive capacity contributed to the fiscal crisis that has paralyzed Brazil's developmental state since the early 1980s.     

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 resistible rise of preventive medicine

The politics of preventive health care have changed dramatically in the last fifteen years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, prevention was the motherhood issue of health care reform. With only the slightest glimmer of controversy, vaccination, promotion of lifestyle changes, mass screening, and safety regulation all became widely accepted strategies for improving health and reducing medical expenditures. By the mid-1980s, the dark side of each strategy became visible. Vaccinations can cause serious and permanent injuries; lifestyle factors are being used to raise insurance premiums, to deny eligibility for disability insurance benefits, and to deny employment. Screening is similarly used to deny employment, and new technologies for prenatal screening have raised fears of stigma and selective abortion among racial, handicapped, and antiabortion groups. Occupational safety regulation is increasingly focused on excluding the "high-risk" individual from jobs. In the absence of social protections from these economic and social harms, citizens have used tort and civil rights litigation to resist preventive health measures.