scholarly journals The Fit between Policy, Theory and Practice of Participatory Development in Aid Assisted Education Projects in Kenya

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Josephine Syokau Mwanzia
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Participatory Development ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Improvement Project ◽  
Policy Theory ◽  
Disadvantaged People

<p>This research critically examines the efficacy of mainstream aid development projects that embrace people-centred, participatory approaches and government partnerships with multilateral and bilateral agencies (donors), civil society and local communities to enhance benefits of empowerment and social change to disadvantaged people. The thesis used an example of an aid project, the Basic Education Improvement Project (BEIP) which the GOK implemented in partnership with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and disadvantaged communities in urban slums and marginalised rural areas particularly Arid and Semi Arid Lands (ASALs). The thesis further drew upon structural and poststructural perspectives to respond to the developmental challenges posed by the theories of modernisation, dependency, ADev and postdevelopment and to assess the 'fit' between policy, theory and practice of participatory development (PDev) and its relationships to participatory democracy (PDem). Core ideas came from Robert Chambers Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Rowlands' classification of power, Arnstein's ladder for citizen participation and Ife's approach to community development (CDev). To understand the meanings and impacts of the BEIP structure, partnerships, participation, empowerment, sustainability and social change, and the relational dynamics it generated, the thesis used multiple research methods based on qualitative, case study and grounded theory methodologies. These were chosen because of their compatibility with the critical theory used to analyse government-to-donor led and people-led development as enacted in the BEIP and their sensitivity to researcher flexibility and contextual and unique features of the research. The research shows that mainstream PDev management through bureaucratically organised structures of management and governance creates new forms of centralism where representative democracy (RDem) rather than participatory democracy (PDem) are used. Despite having a strong focus on holistic and balanced development, the enactment and implementation of partnerships and participation within an aid delivery system, and through representatives and technical experts, limited benefits of empowerment and social change to the disadvantaged people. Indeed, participation and collaboration in the BEIP enhanced the teaching and learning environments of the targeted schools and increased awareness of rights to the disadvantage people. However, not only did accountability remain top-down but partnerships emerged through competitive, not cooperative relationships. Such top-down approaches and elite-to-elite social networks contributed to social exclusion, further marginalisation of the disadvantaged people, and risked accentuating dependency on external aid. For these reasons, the thesis argues that emancipation of disadvantaged people and realisation of sustainable development are more likely to emerge through interventions that increase participatory practice, where government partnerships with civil society and local communities draw upon cooperative  principles, that promote structures and discourses of citizenship and rights and that focus on the grassroots, not the nation-state as the locale for social change.</p>

scholarly journals The Fit between Policy, Theory and Practice of Participatory Development in Aid Assisted Education Projects in Kenya

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Josephine Syokau Mwanzia
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Participatory Development ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Improvement Project ◽  
Policy Theory ◽  
Disadvantaged People

<p>This research critically examines the efficacy of mainstream aid development projects that embrace people-centred, participatory approaches and government partnerships with multilateral and bilateral agencies (donors), civil society and local communities to enhance benefits of empowerment and social change to disadvantaged people. The thesis used an example of an aid project, the Basic Education Improvement Project (BEIP) which the GOK implemented in partnership with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and disadvantaged communities in urban slums and marginalised rural areas particularly Arid and Semi Arid Lands (ASALs). The thesis further drew upon structural and poststructural perspectives to respond to the developmental challenges posed by the theories of modernisation, dependency, ADev and postdevelopment and to assess the 'fit' between policy, theory and practice of participatory development (PDev) and its relationships to participatory democracy (PDem). Core ideas came from Robert Chambers Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Rowlands' classification of power, Arnstein's ladder for citizen participation and Ife's approach to community development (CDev). To understand the meanings and impacts of the BEIP structure, partnerships, participation, empowerment, sustainability and social change, and the relational dynamics it generated, the thesis used multiple research methods based on qualitative, case study and grounded theory methodologies. These were chosen because of their compatibility with the critical theory used to analyse government-to-donor led and people-led development as enacted in the BEIP and their sensitivity to researcher flexibility and contextual and unique features of the research. The research shows that mainstream PDev management through bureaucratically organised structures of management and governance creates new forms of centralism where representative democracy (RDem) rather than participatory democracy (PDem) are used. Despite having a strong focus on holistic and balanced development, the enactment and implementation of partnerships and participation within an aid delivery system, and through representatives and technical experts, limited benefits of empowerment and social change to the disadvantaged people. Indeed, participation and collaboration in the BEIP enhanced the teaching and learning environments of the targeted schools and increased awareness of rights to the disadvantage people. However, not only did accountability remain top-down but partnerships emerged through competitive, not cooperative relationships. Such top-down approaches and elite-to-elite social networks contributed to social exclusion, further marginalisation of the disadvantaged people, and risked accentuating dependency on external aid. For these reasons, the thesis argues that emancipation of disadvantaged people and realisation of sustainable development are more likely to emerge through interventions that increase participatory practice, where government partnerships with civil society and local communities draw upon cooperative  principles, that promote structures and discourses of citizenship and rights and that focus on the grassroots, not the nation-state as the locale for social change.</p>

UN-BLURRING THE MYTHS AND REALITIES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN’S RIGHTS IN SOUTH AFRICA

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
T N Sithole ◽  
Kgothatso B Shai
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Children's Rights ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Children’S Rights ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Great Awareness ◽  
Policy Theory ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
The Status ◽  
Customary Practices

Awareness of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW 1979) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC 1989) is relatively high within academic and political circles in South Africa and elsewhere around the world. In South Africa, this can be ascribed mainly to the powerful women’s lobby movements represented in government and academic sectors. Women and children’s issues have been especially highlighted in South Africa over the last few years. In this process, the aforementioned two international human rights instruments have proved very useful. There is a gender desk in each national department. The Office on the Status of Women and the Office on Child Rights have been established within the Office of the President, indicating the importance attached to these institutions. These offices are responsible for co-ordinating governmental efforts towards the promotion and protection of women and children’s rights respectively, including the two relevant treaties. Furthermore, there is also a great awareness amongst non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in respect of CEDAW and CRC. This can be ascribed mainly to the fact that there is a very strong women’s NGO lobby and NGOs are actively committed to the promotion of children’s rights. Women are increasingly vocal and active within the politics of South Africa, but the weight of customary practices remains heavy. The foregoing is evident of the widening gap between policy theory and practice in the fraternity of vulnerable groups – children and women in particular.

Domestic Colonies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Arneil
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
The State ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Peter Kropotkin

Colonization is generally defined as a process by which states settle and dominate foreign lands or peoples. Thus, modern colonies are assumed to be outside Europe and the colonized non-European. This volume contends such definitions of the colony, the colonized, and colonization need to be fundamentally rethought in light of hundreds of ‘domestic colonies’ proposed and/or created by governments and civil society organizations initially within Europe in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries and then beyond. The three categories of domestic colonies in this book are labour colonies for the idle poor, farm colonies for the mentally ill, and disabled and utopian colonies for racial, religious, and political minorities. All of these domestic colonies were justified by an ideology of domestic colonialism characterized by three principles: segregation, agrarian labour, improvement, through which, in the case of labour and farm colonies, the ‘idle’, ‘irrational’, and/or custom-bound would be transformed into ‘industrious and rational’ citizens while creating revenues for the state to maintain such populations. Utopian colonies needed segregation from society so their members could find freedom, work the land, and challenge the prevailing norms of the society around them. Defended by some of the leading progressive thinkers of the period, including Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Peter Kropotkin, Robert Owen, Tommy Douglas, and Booker T. Washington, the turn inward to colony not only provides a new lens with which to understand the scope of colonization and colonialism in modern history but a critically important way to distinguish ‘the colonial’ from ‘the imperial’ in Western political theory and practice.

scholarly journals The Impact of Neoliberalism on Civil Society and Nonprofit Advocacy

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Alexander ◽  
Kandyce Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Political Advocacy ◽  
Critical Inquiry ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Civic Space ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Nonprofit Advocacy

AbstractThe following manuscript employs critical inquiry to analyze the effects of neoliberalism on nonprofits in the U.S. and their capacity to engage in political advocacy and the production of meaning, a pivotal role for civil society institutions. Three false narratives of how nonprofits support democracy are presented followed by a discussion of how neoliberalism and the economization of the sector has delimited their capacity to fulfill their roles of engaging in emancipatory projects or social change. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of how nonprofits can reclaim civic space and empower citizens in a representative democracy.

Local Institutions at the Crossroads of Environmental Regionalism in Southeast Asia: State-Civil Society Interplays and Tensions

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Antonio P. Contreras
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The State ◽  
Local Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
International Interactions ◽  
Civil Societies

This paper inquires into the implications of the different discursive imaginations on civil societies and the state from the perspective of the social sciences, particularly political science and international relations. It focuses on some interfaces and tensions that exist between civil society on one hand, and the state and its bureaucratic instrumentalities on the other, particularly in the domain of environment and natural resources governance in the context of new regionalisms and of alternative concepts of human security. There is now a new context for regionalism in Southeast Asia, not only among state structures, such as the ASEAN and the various Mekong bodies, but also among local civil societies coming from the region. It is in this context that issues confronting local communities are given a new sphere for interaction, as well as a new platform for engaging state structures and processes. This paper illustrates how dynamic are the possibilities for non-state domains for transnational interactions, particularly in the context of the emerging environmental regionalism. This occurs despite the dominance of neo-realist political theorizing, and the state-centric nature of international interactions.

Deliberative Democracy in India

2018 ◽  
pp. 804-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramya Parthasarathy ◽  
Vijayendra Rao
Keyword(s):  
Social Inequality ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Participatory Development ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Indian Village ◽  
Panchayati Raj

This chapter traces the evolution of deliberative institutions in India, as well as the ways in which deliberative bodies influence, and are in influenced by, entrenched social inequality. The paper first unpacks the historical roots of Indian deliberation, emphasizing the ways in which religious traditions fostered a culture of debate and dialogue. The paper then explores the interplay between Western liberal philosophers, most notably Henry Maine, and Indian political thinkers, including Gandhi and Ambedkar, on participatory democracy in India. The discussion then highlights the continued dialogue between Indian and Western ideas in the push for greater participatory development. Finally, the chapter probes the current incarnation of state-sponsored deliberation in India—namely, village assemblies known as gram sabhas under the constitutionally mandated system of Indian village democracy or Panchayati Raj, and reviews the growing empirical scholarship about these village assemblies.

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