Beneficiary Participation in Development Projects: Empirical Tests of Popular Theories

Abstract

Development projects have had disappointing results despite the acknowledgment of past mistakes and significant evolution in development strategies. A major disappointment has been the failure of most development projects to benefit significantly the poor majorities in developing countries. Criticism against trickle-down aid strategies gained official acceptance during the mid-seventies. The New Directions legislation governing the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), and the enunciation of the Basic Human Needs (BHN) doctrine by the International Labor Organization, the World Bank, and other international organizations were explicit efforts to redirect bilateral and multilateral aid toward the poor and to increase the participation of beneficiaries in projects aimed at their own development. The philosophy behind these changes is that real development must be peoplecentered instead of production-oriented.1 In fact, some critics define beneficiary participation as integral to authentic development.2 Joining in the chorus of those supporting increased participation are bilateral and multilateral aid agencies, private voluntary organizations, grassroots organizers, global-humanist scholars, and development management consultants. In sum, the call for participation comes from a broad spectrum of those concerned with development and for a wide variety of reasons. In this article we use a set of 52 AID development projects to examine several theses about whether and how participation contributes to project success and what conditions encourage participation. We begin by describing our methodology and sources of data. The second section establishes the benefits of participation by summarizing the major findings of a previous article we wrote on this issue.3 Participation is not always necessary or helpful. It has much