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Scant participation
by civil society
8-9/2005
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[ Poverty reduction strategies ]
Scant participation
by civil society
In the past five years, 57 developing countries have submitted a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). At their annual meeting in September, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund intend to present a provisional review of the PRSP process so far, which was launched after the 1999 Cologne G8 summit.
It is a core principle of the PRSPs to involve as many societal stakeholders as possible. Participation is meant to legitimise the strategies and to thus contribute to their success. However, as a study by Germany’s Joint Conference Church and Development (GKKE) and the Association of German Development NGOs (VENRO) reports, the concept has “only insufficiently been translated into reality” so far. The paper, which summarises the results of several years of research, says that “effective participation” remains rare. “The opportunities of no longer treating poor people as ‘target groups’ and objects, but rather as actors who are beginning to shape their own living conditions, have not yet been made use of sufficiently, if at all.”
The report’s author is Walter Eberlei of the Institute for Development and Peace at the University of Duisburg/Essen. According to him, civil society has the greatest impact on the drafting of strategy papers. As a rule, participation decreases noticeably in the phases of implementation and monitoring. Well organised civil societal institutions such as church organisations, trade unions and subsidiaries of international NGOs, which are based in the urban centres, have the greatest influence on PRSPs. In contrast, Eberlei says, rural interest groups, which represent the poorest people, are hardly involved. Moreover, they usually do not have the personnel and material resources needed to effectively participate in political negotiations. Sadly, national parliaments as well as elected bodies at the regional or local level often remain uninvolved too.
There are a number of factors relevant for making participation succeed. One factor is the establishment of permanent dialogue structures between government and civil society. Where such structures were in place (as, for instance, in Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda), societal participation was not limited to the formulation of the PRSPs, but often included the subsequent phases of the policy process. Another factor is the legitimacy of civil society actors. The greater an NGO’s professional competence and the broader its membership basis, the more difficult it becomes for state institutions to marginalise it. Networking can help NGOs in developing countries to gain more influence. “In the PRS countries in which broad civil society alliances with an extensive combination of competencies have successfully been established (e.g. in Zambia, Mozambique, Uganda or Honduras), the question of the legitimacy of civil societal interventions is answered very differently compared with what is likely in countries in which different groups obviously tend to represent particularistic interests.”
Eberlei appeals to donors not to limit civil society participation to the drafting of PRSPs, as has often been the case, but to continue to involve them later. Furthermore, donors should not set up their own dialogue structures with the partner governments, excluding civil society. Eberlei says that this is what happened in Ghana, for example, where special working groups were set up on increasingly important issues of budget aid and then reached important decisions without involving civil society. The parliaments should also have to have greater say in many countries, even if that resulted in delaying decision making.
On the whole, “donors have to come to terms with the fact that participation of societal actors slows processes down”, according to Eberlei. After decades of development programmes being designed and carried out top down rather than bottom up, involving the public – and particularly the poor – will have to be relearned in many developing countries. (ell)
Website:
http://www.prsp-watch.de
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