In the last video, I discussed our 2009 water policy paper. And I interpreted our findings to suggest that a demand-driven approach to rural water supply planning appeared to have been a success in several respects. At least water systems were working, systems were getting repaired when they broke down, and people were generally happy with their new water systems. In this video, I want to call your attention to a 2013 World Bank report by Mansuri and Rao, that offers a different interpretation of the evidence about participation more generally, not just in the rural water sector. The report is called Localizing Development, Does Participation Work? Mansuri and Rao did not collect primary data like we did in our research project. Instead, they reviewed over 500 studies on participation, and tried to synthesize what can be learned from this literature. They noted the importance of their research question by observing that over the last decade, the World Bank has spent around US$85 billion on participation, broadly defined. Mansuri and Rao presented this typology of participation. It makes two important distinctions. First, sometimes participation occurs organically without outside intervention. But many donor funded projects try to induce participation where it is not happening, or is happening more slowly than donors would like. The second distinction is between community development and decentralization. Decentralization refers to a devolution of state powers, from higher level government, to lower level government, such as municipal or provincial institutions. Community development often refer to the process of bringing villages,urban neighborhood, or households into the process of managing development resources, without relying on formally constituted local governments. Participatory approach is usually referred to community development, not to decentralization. But the precise boundary is often unclear. For example in our research in Ghana reported in our 2009 water policy paper, the demand driven water supply programs induced the establishment of village water committees. That is a new local informal institution. This could be referred to as an induced participatory approach or community development. In contrast, decentralization might refer delegating more power, staff, and financial resources, to local or regional offices of the ministry of water resources. In their report, Mansuri and Rao summarized the benefits that will be anticipated from participatory approaches like increased accountability, higher efficiency, increased voice to marginalized communities, and the improved beneficiary targeting. They said, the purpose of participatory programs is to enhance the involvement of the poor and the marginalized in community-level decision-making bodies, in order to give citizens greater say in decisions that effect their lives. Donor support for participatory approaches typically comes from a dissatisfaction with a performance of traditional government institutions. Because of this, we would expect a shift in the locus of local decision-making toward the poor to be difficult. A variety of different participatory approaches are used in the WASH sector. For example, participatory rural appraisal techniques have been used to assess households' knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions, about WASH-related diseases and technologies. Water user associations and village water committees have been established to induce more participation from women in poor households. And participatory approaches have been used to train village water committees in planning and budgeting. So what did Mansuri and Rao conclude? I will briefly summarize five of their findings which answer five questions. First, who benefits from participatory approaches? Second, does participation improve the sustainability of the water resource? And does participation improve infrastructure quality? Third, does co-financing improve the sustainability of programs or of infrastructure? In other words, do demand filters work? Fourth, does participation alleviate poverty or increase household incomes? And fifth, does participation have other benefits? There's much more in Mansuri and Rao's report, but in this video our focus on their answers to these five question. First, who benefits from participatory approaches? Their answer, not the poor and marginalized. Mansuri and Rao say participants in civic activities tend to be wealthier, more educated, of higher social status, male, and more politically connected than non-participants. The poor often benefit less from participatory processes than do the better off. Second, does participation improve resource sustainability and infrastructure quality? Their answer, somewhat. Mansuri and Rao write, on balance, greater community involvement seems to modestly improve resource sustainability and infrastructure quality. Third, does co-financing improve the sustainability of programs or of infrastructure? Their answer, demand filters don't work. They say, for many years, willingness to contribute to programs and projects has been seen as evidence of commitment and of the sustainability of programs or of infrastructure. But this belief has little basis in evidence. What little is known suggests that co-financing, the sine qua non of participatory projects, tends to exclude the poorest. Fourth, does participation alleviate poverty or increase household incomes? Their answer, no, not much. They write, the evidence suggests that community-based development efforts have had a limited impact on income poverty. Fifth, does participation have other benefits? Mansuri and Rao's answer is yes, people like to be involved. There is some heartening evidence, though, that participation may have intrinsic value. Communities tend to express greater satisfaction with decisions in which they participate, even when participation does not change the outcome, or when outcomes are not consistent with their expressed preferences. One of Mansuri and Rao's key message is that context matters. They say building dams, bridges, and roads, or even schools and clinics, is a much more predictable than changing social and political systems. These much more difficult tasks require a fundamentally different approach to development. One that is flexible, long-term, self-critical, and strongly infused with the spirit of learning by doing. Mansuri and Rao also conclude that induced participation requires a long-term commitment to capacity building. And that participation works best when it is supported by a strong state. These key messages ring true to me. The fact that participation works best when supported by a strong state, presents advocates of participation with a dilemma. It is often the absence of a reliable, well-intentioned state that leads them to push for participatory approaches in the first place. It is also important to note that even if participatory approaches do not have a large impact everywhere, this doesn't mean that they won't work in a particular location. The search to estimate the average global treatment effect of participatory or demand-driven approaches, can easily distract us from the hard task of analyzing local situations, to determine whether a participatory approach will work in a specific context. In my mind, it's all about timing and sequencing of initiatives to increase participation, and not whether participation works everywhere or nowhere on average.
