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Editorial, volume 7, number 3
'Partnership' and 'participation' are two of the most sacred (though hackneyed) terms in the aid-agency vocabulary. 'Partners' are how Northern NGOs typically describe the myriad Southern organisations they opt to support, whether through funds or technical assistance, or in other ways. Thus an agency's 'partner' may be a political party, a government department, a mission hospital, a legal-aid bureau, a national NGO, the humanitarian arm of an armed revolutionary movement -- or indeed anyone engaged in social change. This 'partner' may be a formal representative body, such as a union or membership association; an ad hoc local group; or, not infrequently, an organisation designed to satisfy the needs and expectations of its chief benefactor as much as those of its intended beneficiaries.
This blanket use of the term 'partner' is certainly inaccurate, usually misleading, and often resented. The reality of the donor-recipient relationship undermines the possibility of partnership between equals. Participation is, after all, an essential feature of any voluntary partnership: the mechanisms for two-way communication are what define it, along with a commitment to inter-dependence, and a willing acceptance of mutual obligation. Trust, solidarity, and reciprocity are paramount. That Northern aid agencies should make such a noise about participation, and dedicate so much time to inventing techniques to monitor whether their Southern 'partners' are indeed 'participating' in the approved fashion, is itself significant. Yet the mechanisms of agencies -- projects and grants -- tend to distort the vision of both the funders and the funded, even as they determine the relationship between them. The demands arising from the donor's (legitimate) need to manage and account for the resources it hands over are based on (and foster) an absence of trust: recipients report to and are evaluated by their donors, not the other way around. So, if a donor decides to call its recipients 'partners', essentially in the context of a relationship characterised by charity and dependence, some abuse of its power is almost bound to follow.
Nevertheless, international partnership is the only way in which social and economic forces can be harnessed equitably to the needs and aspirations of the majority of the world's population. As Javier Schunk and Paolo Martella contend in this issue, genuine partnership cannot be built on self-delusion, any more than it can be sustained through inequality. Within any set of relationships, this means being honest about who has what kinds of power, to whom they are accountable in exercising it - and then seeking to change the status quo. David Craig and Doug Porter argue that development agencies are widely adopting project-management techniques that appear on the surface to be 'bottom-up' and participatory, but are in fact new forms of top-down direction and control. They suggest that these tools can become an instrument of disempowerment, depending on how and in what institutional context they are used. Cecile Jackson draws on the poignant evidence of diaries kept by Indian field-workers employed in a large rural development project to show how village-level participation was in fact shaped by resistance, negotiation, subversion, suspicion, and patronage -- to say nothing, at times, of sheer force of character!
Dan Connell opens with an amusing account of an experience of an aid programme in Irian Jaya, in order to argue that popular participation turns on addressing the inequalities and inequities of class and gender. Only if people are emancipated can they re-configure society to the benefit of all. Niaz Ahmed Khan and Showkat Ara Begum evaluate how far participation was actually promoted in a 'participatory' social forestry project in Bangladesh. In spite of extravagant claims, they conclude that, in any meaningful sense, local participation was minimal and defined within strict bureaucratic limits. Examining the legacy of the 'Green Revolution' in India, Shalendra Sharma gives a detailed insight into the micro-level means by which their participation in the modernisation model of development has largely benefited the rich, and further excluded those who are poor and marginalised.
Partnership and participatory development rely on communication: encouraging local people to talk, listening to them, interpreting what they do and don't say, and drawing meaning from this. In his essay on verbal communication, Frank de Caires questions how talk is selected and documented by development workers and agencies, since this will shape subsequent decisions and policies. Jimmy Roth and Jeremy Franks describe the use of jargon or 'buzzwords' effectively to preempt discussion and inhibit analysis; while Sylvia Schmelkes stresses the role of education in enabling people to overcome their exclusion from shared knowledge and from the basic techniques required for qualitative participation in the processes of change. Without this, she maintains, people cannot actively transform themselves or their social and political environment.
Their recent infatuation with participatory techniques has tended to deflect many NGOs from deeper questions about what it is that people are meant to be participating in, or about their own role within this. This issue of Development in Practice challenges anyone who is concerned with development policy and practice to examine the purpose as well as the quality of what passes as 'participation' in many development projects; and to consider how Southern organisations might seize the initiative in defining the terms of their 'partnership' with those in the North.
Deborah Eade
Oxfam (UK and Ireland)
June 1997
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