Abstract
ABSTRACTCommunity and democratic participation are still an essential component of current mainstream development interventions. However, elite capture seriously undermines the outcomes of development projects. This article analyses the effects on (in)equality of the implementation of policies that are technically participatory, in the context of an internationally‐funded urban development programme in Nairobi, which was implemented in the aftermath of the post‐election violence of 2007–2008. Ethnographic data reveal how the institutionalization of pre‐existing power imbalances between landlords and tenants is accomplished through the creation of structures of community governance and ‘participatory enumeration’. The article concludes that without the resources to challenge powerful interests within the settlement, the programme is likely to worsen the condition of a large section of the residents. In the context of strong pre‐existing inequalities and conflict, participation needs careful management and firm external agency to achieve genuine social transformation.
Highlights
Community and democratic participation remain essential components of mainstream development interventions
This article draws on the latter literature to examine how pre-existing inequalities affect the implementation of an urban development programme embedded in a ‘participatory’ framework
Whatever the political choice in relation to land allocation, a properly conducted enumeration is necessary in any slum-upgrading programme
Summary
Community and democratic participation remain essential components of mainstream development interventions. This article draws on the latter literature to examine how pre-existing inequalities affect the implementation (and, by implication, outcome) of an urban development programme embedded in a ‘participatory’ framework It looks inside the ‘black box’ of ‘community’, in order to analyse, firstly, the process whereby structures of community governance are created and, secondly, the manner in which ‘participatory enumeration’ is carried out in one slum-upgrading programme. A brief presentation of the programme and the actors involved is followed by an ethnographic account of the process through which structures of community governance were created and ‘participatory enumeration’ was carried out These accounts provide the basis for analysing the progressive process of exclusion of certain sections of residents, and for a critical examination of the impact of pre-existing social inequality on the participatory project.
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