Municipalities and Community Participation

A Sourcebook for Capacity Building

Janelle Plummer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134202539
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Local & Regional Planning Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

'Among all the literature on participation, this is the first book I know that focuses on municipal authorities. It... also has particular importance both for higher levels of government (at national or provincial/state level) and for international agencies. Firstly, it is a reminder of the importance of well-functioning municipal governments for reducing poverty. Secondly, it is a rich source of case studies and analysis about how municipal authorities can incorporate one central component of 'good governance' - a permanent, participatory engagement with their citizens'
From the Foreword by David Satterthwaite, Director, Human Settlements Programme, International Institute for Environment and Development

Increasingly, governments and donors are advocating the participation of poor communities in the delivery of urban services and infrastructure. Yet local authorities responsible for implementing participatory policies often do not have the skills, organisations or resources needed, or an adequate idea of the capacity required. This sourcebook provides invaluable practical guidance for municipal officials, and others working in urban development and poverty reduction, on the range of issues to be addressed in planning and managing cities with community participation. It explains the key elements of participation, identifies common constraints and opportunities, describes the vehicles for moving participation forward and outlines the capacity building needed for a municipality to achieve participatory goals.

1
Introduction

Increasingly, governments of developing countries are adopting, in rhetoric and policy, the concept of community participation. In many cases, particularly where governments are pursuing decentralisation policies, the responsibility for addressing urban poverty lies with local government and accordingly it is the municipal levels of administration that are handed the responsibility for implementing policies advocating the participation of poor communities. However, most municipalities lack human and financial resources and many function through hierarchical structures and prescriptive approaches. Most are unlikely to have the capacity to change their approach with the same speed that policy makers can draft legislation, reformulate programmes and reconsider approaches.

A majority of local governments are dominated by engineering-led, capital intensive works and staffed by administrators and technical professionals who find the concept of community participation irrelevant. Other municipalities have little power, are under-staffed and under-skilled, and battle to fulfil standard municipal functions. At worst, constant transfers, the lack of resources and political pressures mean that municipalities are dysfunctional. The common experience appears to be that municipal officials have an incomplete knowledge of the potential and limitations of participatory processes. Even where there is a basic willingness to accept participation, municipal officials often lack skills and resources, and few policy makers and managers appear to appreciate the degree of difficulty, capacity building and commitment required to develop effective partnerships at the local level. Furthermore, the development community frequently lacks an appreciation or acknowledgement that the very nature of the conventional municipality is in conflict with the concept of participation and that the whole notion of community-municipal partnerships is somewhat incongruous.¹

The prevalence of weak municipalities combined with the new paradigm for participation makes it necessary to consider, in pragmatic terms, just how community participation is to be seriously and sustainably adopted in the municipal delivery of services to the poor. If policy formulation toward increased participation is to become meaningful, it is essential that it is accompanied by efforts to improve the capacity of the government agencies responsible for implementation. Municipalities must be given the support needed to change their basic nature and to become responsive, flexible and accountable organisations that are able to work in harmony with communities.

Although it may be accepted in some spheres that municipal capacity building for community participation is urgently required, there is still considerable scope for improving the understanding of what exactly this capacity building entails. There is a need for understanding the problems that municipalities experience in implementing participatory processes, the options for their resolution and the range of areas in which capacity building needs to be undertaken.

Background

Many donor projects currently promoting participatory approaches have themselves been designed through nonparticipatory methods. Donors frequently impose generic ideas of participation on project objectives and methodologies and as a result municipal officials rarely initiate change voluntarily. Mostly they are cast into the domain of participation. While many officials are willing to attempt participatory approaches, many are deeply sceptical and nearly all ask for proof, tangible illustrations and evidence.

• Where is community participation being undertaken elsewhere?
• How does it work in other cities?
• What problems have they had?
• How is the project organised in the municipality?
• Who is involved?
• How does a municipality communicate with a community?
• What are the roles of the municipalities and the communities?
• At what stage does the community get involved?
• Who leads the process within the municipality?

Over the last decade, the adoption of participatory approaches in the delivery of urban infrastructure has dramatically increased. Yet, to date, there are still few examinations of the municipal perspective of participation and only limited documentation of the constraints facing those municipalities that undertake such a shift in methodology.

The research for this sourcebook was undertaken with Knowledge and Research (KAR) programme funding from the Infrastructure and Urban Development Department of the Department for International Development (UK) over the period June 1997 to March 1999. Following the development of a conceptual framework and a database of potential case studies, a fieldwork methodology was prepared and tested in the city of Ahmedabad in India. Detailed research was then undertaken in 10 locations in 4 countries. In India, where there are a number of municipalities with experience of community participation, case studies were undertaken in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Cochin, Surat and Visakhapatnam, as well as one statewide initiative in Kerala. Studies were also carried out in Aswan and on the national level Shrouk Programme in Egypt, Colombo in Sri Lanka and Faisalabad in Pakistan. The aim of this research was to examine the processes of establishing municipal-community partnerships in service delivery,² to document the main issues identified by municipalities, the problems they encountered in promoting community participation and the solutions which were developed.

The range of case studies, including donor and local initiatives, exposed both vast differences and similarities in participatory approaches. On the one hand, a number of key themes emerged from the case studies. On the other, participatory approaches appear to be dependent on the social and cultural factors affecting the community and the administrative context of the municipality. A comprehensive analysis of the findings led to the development of a strategic framework for building municipal capacity for community participation. This framework places the vast range of issues into a coherent structure for discussion and action.

Purpose of this Sourcebook

The ultimate aim of this work is to bring about stronger and more sustainable forms of community participation which lead to a better quality of life for poor people. The underlying aim of this sourcebook is to consider the municipal perspective and support municipalities in the development of participatory approaches. With this goal in mind, this work is unapologetically concerned with municipal problems and lessons. While it assumes the need for municipal involvement in urban service delivery, it starts from the basic premise that introducing participatory processes is not easy for municipalities, and suggests that there needs to be greater recognition, from all actors, of the degree of difficulty of the task. Only once this is recognised will effective capacity building programmes be introduced.

The purpose of this sourcebook is twofold.

• First, it aims to provide a strategic framework for strengthening the capacity of municipal organisations and officials to implement participatory processes. It does so by documenting and structuring the basic elements underlying municipal-community partnerships.
• Second, it aims to provide a sourcebook of illustrative material. It documents tangible examples of the key elements of participation and municipal change, the opportunities and constraints of differing contexts and the procedures and activities that impact upon participatory processes. Through the dissemination of these experiences to municipal officials, it aims to develop greater confidence and familiarity with community participation.

This sourcebook is directed at those development professionals responsible for building municipal capacity for community participation: for trainers responsible for capacity building, and for those policy-makers and municipal managers committed to the process, and keen to broaden their understanding of the diversity and enormity of the task. The term ‘municipal’ refers to the local level of government commonly responsible for the delivery of urban services and infrastructure. This definition is not intended to limit the discussion or audience which, by its nature, is likely to be applicable to all forms of local government.³

Conceptual Framework

One of the primary problems encountered by government, agencies and organisations deliberating over participation in the last three decades has been the lack of consensus as to what is meant by ‘community participation’. Unsurprisingly, actors consider participation with different agenda, opposing ideologies and distinctive goals. By extension, there is little consensus as to what participation should be. This debate is well documented⁴ and forms an important background to the specific topic of this sourcebook for building capacity for community participation. This assumes the need for the participation of poor communities in service delivery and concentrates on unpacking the rhetoric of participation into elements which are tangible and achievable within the scope of the municipality. At the very least, however, it is essential that this introduction highlight some of the key issues and conflicts relating to participation, and that these are constantly re-emphasised in the capacity building process.

Key aspects of the participation debate

As early as 1969, Arnstein⁵ introduced a number of important issues to the conceptual debate. In an effort to describe the way communities interacted with government in development projects, she established the idea of a ladder of participation which functioned as a continuum ranging from the most exploitative and disempowered to the most controlling and empowered. These ideas enabled theorists and analysts to describe various types of participation in terms of increasing degrees of decision-making. This process established a simple framework for describing:

• non-participation (manipulation and therapy);
• tokenism (informing, consultation, placation); and
• citizens’ power (partnerships, delegated power and citizen control).

In 1983, Moser proposed that a simple distinction could be made, irrespective of context, between those development efforts which envisaged community participation as a means, and those which saw participation as an end in itself.⁶ Participation-as-a-means implies that the people are mobilised with the purpose of achieving a desired outcome (for instance, improved water supply or drainage). It could involve bottom-up or top-down processes, but is commonly evaluated in terms of the measurable outputs of the process. Participation-as-an-end is not measurable in terms of development goals but in terms of the transfer of power. It is a process where the outcome is itself increasingly meaningful participation in the development process; and where the real objective is to increase the control of marginalised groups over resources and regulative institutions.⁷ Moser suggested that the operational constraints on participation-as-a-means include inadequate delivery mechanisms, while the constraints on participation-as-an-end are structural and include institutional opposition to the redistribution of power and resources.

While Moser herself has since asserted that the important issue is not the creation of a simple distinction but the dynamic through which participation-as-a-means has the capacity to develop into participation-as-an-end,⁸ this dichotomy has become well established and has strongly influenced the categorisation of participatory projects. For the purposes of municipal capacity building for community participation it is a helpful and contentious differentiation for discussion amongst municipal, community and NGO actors. In practice, it describes the fundamental distinction commonly, if incorrectly, drawn between socially-oriented and output-oriented goals which are often the seeds of conflict between various actors in the development process.

In 1987, after Moser devised the means-end distinction, Samuel Paul conducted an evaluation of a large number of participatory projects for the World Bank. His empirical analysis resulted in a more detailed explanation and the first conceptual framework for participation. It brought with it a greater distinction between the objectives, methods and degrees of participation. First, he identified 5 types of project objectives:⁹ cost sharing, efficiency, effectiveness, beneficiary capacity, and empowerment. Second, he reinterpreted Arnstein’s ladder of participation to describe the different levels of ‘intensity’ to which communities can participate in development projects. He defined community participation in terms of information sharing, consultation, decision-making, and initiating action. Third, his analysis identified three instruments of participation: user groups, community workers/committees and field workers. This contribution to the debate, while controversial, helped to disaggregate community participation further into a refined and tangible set of factors.

The nature and scope of community participation in urban management has been discussed further over the last 5 years. Schübeler’s work for the Urban Management Programme, for instance, acknowledges that participation exists ‘in a wide variety of forms, ranging from government involvement in community-based development activities to people’s participation in government-directed management functions’.¹⁰ He proposed a typology of four complementary, potentially co-existing, evolving approaches to participation:¹¹

• t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Boxes
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 A Strategic Framework for Municipal Capacity Building
• Chapter 3 The External Operating Context
• Chapter 4 The Elements of Participation
• Chapter 5 The Vehicles of Participation
• Chapter 6 The Internal Capacity of the Municipality
• Chapter 7 The Management Capacity of the Municipality
• Chapter 8 Framework for Action
• Appendix A Background to Case Studies
• References
• Index