Top-down Development Approach Research Articles

Information campaigns and local authorities

The new constitution links the duties of local governments to development,implying that the financial dilemma of local authorities caused by theculture of non~payment for municipal services, should be seen in the lightof the deve/opment~rientated situation in South Africa. As the failures ofthe authoritarian top-down development approach became evident, it is not'8 solution to remove the electricity cables of non-payers, neither is it asolution to modify behaviour only. The motivation behind a campaignaiming at correcting the situation should focus on the capacity building inthe community, which is in line with participatory development and DSCthinking. This can only be· done in a participatory situation, whereinformation is released about the operations of the local authority, and thecommunity is educated about the functions and processes taking place inthe local authority. In a workshop situation, the needs of the communityshould be prioritised, in order to address those needs. It is believed that byunderstanding the various functions and operations of the local authority,attitudes of the community will change towards the local authority, and thatsuch change might lead to a change in the culture of non~payment.

The Sustainable Development in Papua Based on Customary Territories and Human Development Paradigm

The National Development Planning Agency of Indonesia has adopted the concept of development based on customary territories in Papua in the 2015-2019 National Midterm Development Plan (RPJMN). This RPJMN aimed to accommodate the mandate of the Special Autonomy Law Number 21 of 2001 regarding Special Autonomy for Papua Province. However, the RPJMN used a top-down development approach that accommodates more national and international interests than local and customary territories' interests. The main objective of this paper is to propose a new concept of sustainable development that uses a bottom-up development approach to reconcile both interests above. The concept is supplemented with the road map and simulation to explore the progress of sustainable development. The modeling and simulation of sustainable development progress consist of the human development index (HDI), human development indicators, and electricity demand using the system dynamics model. In 2050, the lowest HDI is 63.87 in Mappi Regency. Life expectancy is 68.53 years; the schooling expecting years is 12.19 years; the schooling mean years is 6.60 years, and the expenditure per capita is Rp7,599,010, - In 2050, the highest HDI is 94.83 in Sorong Municipality. Life expectancy is 80.73 years; the schooling expecting years is 18.00 years; the schooling mean years is 15.00 years, and the expenditure per capita is Rp19,869,057 – In 2050, the electricity demand in Mappi Regency is 46,032 MWh. Meanwhile, the electricity demand in Sorong Municipality is 1,137,746 MWh.

The citizen-led information practices of ICT4D in rural communities of China: A mixed-method study

Abstract Information and communication technology is regarded as a critical means of addressing rural problems of information deficiency, ineffective communication and emotional disconnection. Most studies on information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) can be categorized as a top-down development approach and are often theoretical research or case studies conducted using qualitative methods. In this study, we discuss a new phenomenon of citizen-led information practices in rural areas driven by the rural community and its citizens. By employing a mixed-method approach combining case studies and social network analysis (SNA), we explore how ICT4D can be achieved through citizen-led information practices. This study makes theoretical contributions to the study of ICT4D and information practices as well as the mixed-method approach, which deepen our understanding of the citizen-led information practices of ICT4D. This study also provides practical suggestions to the governments, enterprises, social organizations and rural communities in ICT4D practices and ICT function design.

Book review: Coles, A., Gray, L. and Momsen, J., editors, 2015: The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Development

Coles, A., Gray, L. and Momsen, J., editors, 2015: The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Development. London/New York, NY: Routledge. 594 pp. £190. ISBN: 9780415829083 (Hardcover).

Village-Based Institutional Development Strategy to Prevent the Paddy-Field Conversion at Pandeglang Regency, Banten, Indonesia

Indonesia government needs innovative policies preventing the paddy-field conversion in the current era of regional decentralization. Average of paddy-field conversion in Indonesia has reached 187,200 hectares per year. Irrigated-paddy-field in Indonesia that converted to non-agricultural purpose in 2009 had already reached 3.09 million hectares (42.4 percent). The highest conversion areas were in Java and Bali islands that reached 1.67 million hectares. The study in Pandeglang Regency has shown the prior strategy to prevent paddy-field conversion. It requires the integration the protection toward the peasant based on inter- village participatory partnership to develop the rural area. The developed institution should follow the current applicable regulation, namely the Local Public Service Agency or Badan Layanan Umum Daerah (BLUD) to protect the paddy-fields. It does not only by managing logistic to support the production of the peasants, but also as a synchronizer among multi-parties for the empowerment actions of the peasants to manage the paddy-field farming. The government should use various development approach policies to prevent paddy-field conversion. Top-down development and bottom-up approach is required to be affirmed. Moreover, technocratic approach should be supported by participatory development. Otherwise, the stakeholders should be involved to implement the rural-based institutional development strategy preventing the paddy-field conversion.

Developing a Model for Participation of Public, Private, Beneficiaries, and Associations towards a Sustainable Agricultural Development (Case Study: Central District of Boyer-Ahmad County)

1- INTRODUCTION Participatory development (PD) seeks to engage local populations in development projects. It has taken a variety of forms since it emerged in the 1970s. Local ‘ownership’ is essential to sustain capacity but depends on wide-spread participation. A lot of studies related to participation topics have been conducted recently. But a few of them consider participation between all of stakeholders or beneficiaries of development. Thus, the aim of this study was to develop a participatory model for public, private, beneficiary, and association sectors for achieving a sustainable agricultural development in the Central District of Boyer-Ahmad County. 2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Most of the literature about PD emphasis giving the poor a chance to contribute activities related to their benefits. hoping that development projects will be more sustainable and successful by engaging local population in the development process. PD has become an increasingly accepted method of development practice and is employed by a variety of organizations. It is often presented as an alternative to top-down development approach. There are some questions about the proper definition of PD as it varies depending on the perspective applied. The Social Movement Perspective defines participation as the mobilization of people to eliminate unjust hierarchies of knowledge, power, and economic distribution. The Institutional Perspective defines participation as the reach and inclusion of inputs by relevant groups in the design and implementation of a development project. Based on this approach, a lot of stakeholders play their own role in the process of rural development. No doubt, to achieve real rural development, it is necessary to seek some guidelines for the cooperation of all stakeholders. 3- METHODOLOGY The Grounded Theory as a qualitative research method was used in this study. Based on the data collected from about 92 hours semi-structured interviews with 51 agricultural key informants who were purposefully selected from the study region, the text of the interviews was transcribed and coded using open coding in the 183 primary classes (themes). Then, these themes were categorized into 54 groups and consequently, these groups were also categorized into 21 central categories using theoretical coding. Finally, a model was designed for participation of the supposed stakeholders/ beneficiaries towards a sustainable agricultural development. 4- CONCLUSION As it was mentioned, this study sought to develop a model for collaboration and participation of sectors active in the field of agricultural development including public, private, beneficiaries, and associations towards a sustainable agricultural development. This model contains determinant components (such as participation-orientated strategy of sustainable development of agriculture, private sector quality services, the participation orientation of the land users, systematic leadership of associations, decentralization, and employing local authorities), and constraints (including decentralization and governance of the relations in the public sector, executive and private sector investment restrictions, the economic and cultural poverty of farmers, and institutional and legal challenges existent in the supposed organizations). The contribution and stance of public and private sectors and beneficiaries and associations were coordinated in establishing a balanced participation. This model also makes allowance for monitoring participation orientated network and agricultural database.

In This Issue: Advancing the Right to Food

In This Issue: Advancing the Right to Food

Using a community-based participatory approach to research and programming in Northern Uganda: two researchers’ confessional tales

Sport and physical activity are increasingly being used to promote personal and community development, particularly in developing nations such as Uganda. However, most sport-based research and programming efforts in developing nations have taken an outside-in globalisation approach or a top-down development approach, which may overlook the voices, knowledges and needs of the communities being served. With these concerns in mind, we took a community-based participatory (CBP) approach to our efforts in Uganda. While this approach is optimal for community-engaged research and programming, there are many challenges associated with CBP. During our time in Uganda, we reflected on these challenges in separate reflexivity journals, which are presented in this article in the form of two confessional tales. Through personal, functional and disciplinary reflexivity, we explore the challenges we faced pursuing a CBP approach to research and programming, along with the effective and ineffective strategies we used to try to overcome these challenges. Topics discussed in these confessional tales include goal setting, communication, flexibility, patience, relationship-building and empowerment.

Programmability and portability for exascale: Top down programming methodology and tools with StarSs

StarSs is a task-based programming model that allows to parallelize sequential applications by means of annotating the code with compiler directives. The model further supports transparent execution of designated tasks on heterogeneous platforms, including clusters of GPUs. This paper focuses on the methodology and tools that complements the programming model forming a consistent development environment with the objective of simplifying the live of application developers.The programming environment includes the tools TAREADOR and TEMANEJO, which have been designed specifically for StarSs. TAREADOR, a Valgrind-based tool, allows a top-down development approach by assisting the programmer in identifying tasks and their data-dependencies across all concurrency levels of an application. TEMANEJO is a graphical debugger supporting the programmer by visualizing the task dependency tree on one hand, but also allowing to manipulate task scheduling or dependencies. These tools are complemented with a set of performance analysis tools (Scalasca, Cube and Paraver) that enable to fine tune StarSs application.

Community Responses to Government Defunding of Watershed Projects: A Comparative Study in India and the USA

When central governments decentralize natural resource management (NRM), they often retain an interest in the local efforts and provide funding for them. Such outside investments can serve an important role in moving community-based efforts forward. At the same time, they can represent risks to the community if government resources are not stable over time. Our focus in this article is on the effects of withdrawal of government resources from community-based NRM. A critical question is how to build institutional capacity to carry on when the government funding runs out. This study compares institutional survival and coping strategies used by community-based project organizations in two different contexts, India and the United States. Despite higher links to livelihoods, community participation, and private benefits, efforts in the Indian cases exhibited lower survival rates than did those in the U.S. cases. Successful coping strategies in the U.S. context often involved tapping into existing institutions and resources. In the Indian context, successful coping strategies often involved building broad community support for the projects and creatively finding additional funding sources. On the other hand, the lack of local community interest, due to the top-down development approach and sometimes narrow benefit distribution, often challenged organizational survival and project maintenance.

Civil society or ‘comprador class’, participation or parroting?

This article critically looks at the interfaces between the ideal notions of civil society and participation within the remit of Bangladesh’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) formulation process. On the one hand, the idea of civil society has been likened to a renaissance and is often considered to be the most likely route out of development ‘problems’, particularly in the poor countries. Dominant development discourses have scripted the liberal interpretation of civil society as the only game in town. However, on the other hand, as a consequence of growing criticism on the failure of top-down development approach in the late-1960s, and throughout most of the 1970s, there was a sudden upsurge of interest that ordinary citizens might have a part to play in the development process. A generalized consensus took shape that people’s participation in projects is an important component of development programmes and a means to their success and hence participation has turned out to be a ‘new paradigm’ of development. The PRSP framework, that precepts a romantic marriage between civil society and participation, was foisted by two major International Financial Institutions (IFIs) as a condition of further debt and other development assistance for all poor countries. Participation from ‘all relevant stakeholders’ including civil society was trumpeted as a significant policy shift from previous development prescriptions of these IFIs. This article presents observation from 36 semi-structured interviews with civil society representatives including key people who prepared and finalized the PRSP of Bangladesh and the review of six daily national papers (September 2004 to October 2005). This piece argues that, in theory, participation can be manifested as the ‘key’ for development, but in practice, participation can be an iron hand in a velvet glove. Participation can turn into parroting and often resemble similar views that are ‘expected’ and required to validate external framework. Moreover, through such process of mainstreaming participation, an interest group within the civil society can emerge who has the technical knack of producing development policy according to donor recipe with some flavour of participation. This work therefore asks whether civil society and participation should be used as technologies of social control or as anti-hegemonic and anti-clientelistic forces in order to empowering marginalized members of the society.

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IntroductionIn response to the failure of development projects in 1950s, social activists and fieldworkers observed that the populations concerned were not included in project's design and implementation. Failure was linked to the lack of local people's involvement in developmental projects. It was assumed that if local people were involved, projects would have been more successful (AWARD, 2008). Similarly, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States (FAO) also pointed out that the traditional top-down approach of many developing and developed countries failed to reach and benefit the rural poor (FAO, 1991). The reason for this failure, identified by the international community in the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (WCARRD), held in Rome in 1979, is the lack of active of the poor in development programmes (FAO, 1990). As an alternative approach, the concept of participatory development gained significance in development debates and programmes.Adopting a people oriented approach rather than a government outlook will bring in more peace and development. The recent people protest in Arabs called Arab Spring is more an outcome of young generation demanding in the country's governance and resource allocation processes. Such human turmoil can be minimized if not totally eliminated by adopting people participatory approach to crucial projects at least. This will have a twofold effect - strengthen the community and second bring in the better citizenship. Thus, involving people in development, governance and decision making becomes need of the day as it ensures confidence of the people. It also helps in providing equality, justice and smooth delivery of services. The low level of can be one of the reasons behind the recent Arab Spring started in 2010. The people in these countries have stood up for more freedom, equality, justice, better future prospects, employment, economic and social development and in the decision making process.The phenomenon of participatory or bottom-up development has become very popular, interesting and attractive in the context of urban and regional development and has recently become virtually indispensable in the discussion on development. According to Masanyiwa and Kinyashi (2008, p 3) participation has now become an established orthodoxy in development thinking and practice. Participation is widely accepted by many governments and international agencies including the World Bank (World Bank, 1996; World Bank, 1998; World Bank, 2000), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 1997), US Agency for International Development (USAID, 1999), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA, 1995), Food Agriculture Organization (FAO, 1990, FAO; 1991, FAO; 1994 and FAO, 1997), Inter-American Development Bank (IADB, 1996) as an important element in development projects and programmes, and have involved people/GROs/ NGOs in their development programmes/activities in order to achieve sustainable development. On the other hand, in the so-called top-down approach to development, the entire process of formulating and implementing polices and projects are carried out under the direction of government and people were put in a passive position and were rarely consulted in development and usually have no active role in development activities. This government-led approach to development remained intact or even increased deep-rooted problems including economic and social disparities between social classes, genders, regions, and between urban and rural areas. Participatory development arose from consciousness of these inadequacies.According to the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA, 1995), participatory development is not an attempt to replace the top-down development approach with local community-led approach but it attempts to compensate for or overcome the limitations and shortcomings of the top-down development approach by adopting a bottom-up style of development. …

Independensi Lembaga Swadaya Masyarakat (LSM) di Tengah Kepentingan Donor

<div>The top-down development approach has failed to bring Indonesia in meeting prosperity. Alternatively, a critical approach as offered by Non Governmental Organization (NGO) becomes much more attractive to be adopted. However such approach encounters problematics since each NGO carries its own interest, ideology, and its dependency on donor agencies, normally diametrically collide with another NGO’s ideology, its interest as well as donor-supported interest. This study is to answer the question how deep have donors infleunced to the ideology, interest, and financial independency of local NGOs. The study use qualitative method as approach. The financial arrangement network, action, interest, motives and NGOs’ ideologies are the main focus of this study. Two NGOs are observed, namely Lembaga Kajian untuk Transformasi Sosial (LKTS) and Lembaga Pertanian Sehat (LPS). This study revealed that LKTS and LPS were quite dependent in the financial aspect. LKTS was also dependent in formulating action, while LPS was independent. Some factors affecting the independence of NGOs are: (1) degree of militancy of NGOs’ ideology, (2) financial strength, (3) NGOs’ level of achievements. In the development perspective, NGOs are not necessarily reflecting type of social movement organization which are always strongly based on bottom-up ideology.</div><div> </div>

The Rise and Fall of the Dominant Paradigm

“Self development implies a different role for communication than the usual top-down development approach of the past.”