Participatory Governance and Development

Geography Compass 5/9 (2011): 641–654, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2011.00446.
Participatory Governance and Development: In Search of

a Causal Nexus
Vera Schattan P. Coelho1* and Arilson Favareto2
1
Brazilian Centre of Analysis and Planning
2
Federal University of ABC – UFABC
Abstract
This paper discusses the causal nexuses between participatory governance and development
through theoretical debate and research that empirically investigates this relationship. It starts by
discussing literature on participation and then goes on to deal with the most relevant contributions
to international debates about development. Next, departing from two of the principal explana-
tions presented in studies about participatory democracy – institutional design and social mobiliza-
tion – it analyzes empirical evidence that supports the relationship between participation and
development. Finally, in light of this discussion, some conclusions are presented concerning the
causal nexus capable of supporting the belief in the potentially virtuous relationship between par-
ticipation and development.
Early literature on participation was broadly optimistic about what participatory governance
could achieve in terms of public policies and democracy, often assuming that participation
could contribute to more viable and just policies, and have a positive impact on poverty,
inequality and development processes. More recently, studies have become more focused
on the real conditions under which forms of participatory governance have evolved.
These studies have focused on: the dilemmas of emphasizing either efficiency or the
inclusion of the poorest in institutional design (Abramovay et al. 2010; Bebbington et al.
2008); the difficulties of checking the distributive impacts of participatory experiences
(Avritzer 2007); the disjunction between the motives and resources mobilized by the
agents responsible for organizing participatory spaces; the technical and economic dimen-
sions involved in processing the problems dealt with in these spaces (Coelho 2006;
Coelho and Favareto 2007; Dagnino and Tatagiba 2007); and the fragility of the connec-
tions between deliberative experiences and governance (Favareto and Demarco 2004;
Melo and Baiochi 2007). There is a lack of evidence about the causal nexuses capable of
supporting the link between participation and development.
The belief in participatory governance associates the inclusion of a broad spectrum of
citizens in public life with an increased circulation of information, greater transparency in
political processes, and participation in public debate. The democratization of debate and
decision-making, together with decentralization, are key elements in an intricate process
of improving systems of governance which should contribute toward giving impetus to
development.
This belief is based upon the combination of two analytical perspectives. The first sug-
gests that changes in the design of the institutions can contribute to promoting changes
in policy. The second draws attention to the role of social actors and their capacity to
push for change in processes of development. In both approaches, participation can pro-
mote access to public policies, and their quality and responsiveness.
ª 2011 The Authors

Geography Compass ª 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
642 Participatory governance and development
The institutional design narrative argues that the poorest and most marginalized people
can be encouraged to participate by reducing the costs involved in the process of political
mobilization. This reduction would be guaranteed by decentralization and the associated
opening of authorized local participatory bodies (Fung and Wright 2003). It would be
easier for an ordinary citizen to influence a decision made in their own neighborhood
than one made by the federal government, and this citizen could base their participation
on their own experience, rather than external expertise.
The social actors narrative argues that if mobilized citizens gain access to spaces where
they can exercise their demands and apply direct pressure for effective responses, the
chances of their points of view being taken into account would increase. This would
contribute toward the implementation of programs and policies more accountable to their
needs (Coelho and von Lieres 2010; Cornwall 2004; Gaventa 2004).
In both narratives, participation would improve the chances of defining and imple-
menting successful policies and programs. This would result in increasing poor people’s
access to services, thus increasing their chances of inclusion in both politics and the mar-
ket economy, starting a virtuous circle that would gradually increase their power, result-
ing in the promotion of social equality (World Bank 2004, 2006).
While attractive, the models supporting these positions remain problematic in some
areas. Firstly, it is not possible to foresee whether the process of building agendas express-
ing the interests of the poorest and most marginalized actually lead to cooperation, or
rather to a deepening of certain distributive conflicts (Coelho et al. 2010). Secondly, the
assumption that growth in human capital will correspond to an increase in the opportuni-
ties presented to individuals may be flawed. Human capital can grow without a diversifi-
cation of opportunities (Bourdieu 2000) and this can, in particular situations, be
associated with choices about how to deal with trade-offs between equality and effi-
ciency. Thirdly, it is assumed that problems requiring technical knowledge can be ade-
quately dealt with by ordinary citizens, but processes of development may require certain
forms of coordination and specific social abilities (Fligstein 2001) that are not necessarily
put into motion by the democratization of political processes (Pritchett and Woolcock
2004; Schumpeter 1961).
These problems highlight the need to investigate more systematically the causal nexuses
that support beliefs regarding the virtuous relationship between participation and develop-
ment. While participatory processes have led to considerable advances in terms of the
empowerment of social agents that traditionally possessed fewer resources, much still
needs to be done before it is possible to say that participatory governance has been able
to promote dynamism in social and economic life, bringing together collective and indi-
vidual gains.
Participation and Development

In order to analyze the relationship between participation and development it is necessary
to begin by examining what can be understood by development. The majority of the
many different and disparate current definitions of development are normative. Desires
and intentions expressed in the ideal improvement of the economic, social, and environ-
mental indicators of a particular country, region, or group count more than the theoreti-
cal and conceptual instruments capable of generating a realistic understanding of the
factors which generate these dynamics. Yet studies do play an important role in this nor-
mative project, and there has been a revival of the social and scientific validity of the idea
of development.
ª 2011 The Authors Geography Compass 5/9 (2011): 641–654, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2011.00446.x

Participatory governance and development 643
There is a growing perception of the limitations of the best-known economic theories

of development, such as the stages of growth model, or those based on commercial flows
(Rostow 1968); although these theories are more than four decades old, they are undeni-
ably influential in shaping policies and discourse on development. On the one hand, they
omit the importance of the stock of goods and resources on which a given society bases
the establishment of dynamic flows. These are resources variously labeled social, human,
cultural, and even natural capital. On the other, they do not explain the role of institu-
tions capable of integrating this stock of goods and resources for the promotion of well-
being and social cohesion (Favareto 2007).
Some new and innovative approaches in relation to mainstream economic theory aim
to understand development in terms of specific historical configurations. Amartya Sen
(1992) defines both the causes and effects of development as a process of expanding indi-
vidual liberties. The fundamental issue of development thus becomes the reduction of the
inequalities that prevent this expansion.
Other approaches put greater emphasis on the institutions capable of expanding these
liberties. Douglas North (2005) demonstrates that throughout human history there have
been periods of intense growth during which individual and collective gains have been
brought together by certain forms of coordination expressed in formal and informal insti-
tutions. However, his work says little about what it is that leads to the emergence of
these institutions.
A third alternative emphasizes the influence of the environment on the trajectories
established by different human societies. Jared Diamond (1997, 2006) demonstrates that
environment is not a disposable or subsidiary variable, and that various peoples through-
out history have had their field of possibilities largely determined by the existence or lack
of natural resources. Yet, this same author admits that it is the institutional variable which
is capable of explaining why certain societies faced the environmental collapse while
others were able to revert this risk.
It is therefore evident that points of dialog and complimentarity can be seen between
these three perspectives. To diminish inequalities, which Sen discusses, institutions with
this capability must be created, as North shows. Inversely, the possibility of such institu-
tions being created is greater in contexts with more diversified and less concentrated
social structures, as can be inferred from Sen. Finally, as illustrated by Diamond’s work,
environmental restrictions condition social processes. Thus, if development is understood
as the expansion of human liberties, an articulation may be necessary between social
structures, institutions, and the environment.
How such articulations emerge is relevant to the debate on participation and develop-
ment, and is something that the social sciences are just now beginning to address. Mecha-
nisms of coordination, translated into incentives and sanctions on institutional behavior,
are fundamental to the style of development in different countries or regions. There is
also a direct relationship between what Neil Fligstein (2001) calls social skills and the
styles of development, which highlights the themes of power and politics, involving both
material and symbolic dimensions.
Therefore, the problem is not just criticism of traditional approaches to development
because of the absence of a coherent explanation on the topic of economic change
(North, 2005). The greater challenge consists of starting a dialog using explanatory frag-
ments that are spread throughout different theoretical bodies and need to be integrated.
This is a task that requires a true research program. Within the limits of this paper, the
intention is to discuss this challenge using a specific bias: the interdependencies between
participatory governance and development.

If development can be defined as the process of increasing the liberties that individuals
have to make choices as a result of specific forms of coordination, the nexus between
participatory governance and development must be questioned to seek forms of participa-
tion connected to the establishment of incentives and regulatory mechanisms in every
sphere of political and economic life. These forms of participation should guarantee the
involvement of an important range of political and economic actors in dealing with cru-
cial conflicts and structures that bring about low levels of economic activity, inhibit dem-
ocratic life, or prevent the expansion of human liberties.
This questioning highlights important gaps. There is no explanation as to how the par-
ticular forms of coordination needed can be achieved. Furthermore, in the literature on
participation, there is little emphasis on its contribution to bringing together individual
and social gains.
Institutions, Participation and Power

The idea of social participation prompting development by rendering human rights more
effectively reaches the current decade ensconced in the discourse of academics, activists,
and policymakers alike. For some, the advance of the participatory project is sustained by
its ability to promote instrumental results, guaranteeing that policies reach the population
that most needs them with the greatest efficiency. For others, this advance is possible
thanks to the civic changes that participation engenders. At the root of both positions is
the idea that participatory governance can promote changes in the power relationships
between social agents, and as a result clear the way for pragmatic results or changes in
civic behavior. Each of these perspectives offers different mechanisms for explaining how
changes in power relations take place and presents different empirical elements for dem-
onstrating the validity of their propositions (Gaventa and Barret 2010). Despite vivid
debates and the important efforts made to produce rigorous research, we know much less
about the impact of participatory initiatives on development than might be expected.
Various studies analyzing participatory experiences draw attention to the limits of their
performance. Some highlight that relationships between actors are marked by huge asym-
metries, which raises the costs of participation for marginalized actors and makes their
inclusion more complex than initially supposed. Participation can also be inefficient, end-
ing up reinforcing the subaltern position of weaker actors and leading them to lose faith
in the process (Mahmud 2007; Mansbridge 1999, 2000; Mohanty 2007). The power of
state agents in participatory spaces may be excessive, and a number of studies have shown
how such spaces are captured by party political groups (Avritzer and Navarro 2003;
Coelho and Nobre 2004; Ziccardi 2004).
For those who view participation from an institutionalist perspective, many of these
limitations can be overcome by changing institutional design (Fung 2006). Their presup-
position is that the rules of the game can orient the behavior of agents in a direction that
will lead them to increase their coordination, and that the rules and procedures of institu-
tional design will have a decisive impact on altering the balance of power between the
participants, favoring the expression of demands by those who have fewer resources.
The institutional features discussed by this literature can be categorized into methods
(such as citizens’ juries, consultative development plans, participatory budgets, or tripartite
sectoral committees); mandate (visioning, goal setting, targeting, monitoring, evaluation);
recruitment (random selection, purposive selection, self-selection, combination of selection
methods); different levels of governance and types of coordination between them (neighborhood,
local, state, national, international); forms of engagement (one-off or on-going; face to face,

electronic); decision making (majority rule or consensus); and formal powers (direct control
over decisions or indirect control, such as monitoring and recommending) (Banerjee et al.
2010; Gastil and Levine 2005; Mitton et al. 2009).
A theoretical and practical question that needs to be better addressed by the institution-
alist approach is how it is possible to implement institutional features that will guarantee
that the less powerful have a voice within a context of asymmetric power relations. Why
would politically established actors organize spaces capable of promoting significant
changes in the status quo?
To answer these questions, institutionalists need to tackle two distinct challenges. One is
to identify elements of design, whether of the fora or the political system, which are capable
of favoring inclusion, dialog, and cooperation. The other is to identify the logic and values
that motivate actors in the construction of these fora. After all, if it is necessary to recognize
the procedures that are inclusive and democratic, it is equally important to identify the poli-
tics that cause them to be adopted (Coelho and Favareto 2010; Mohan and Stokke 2000).
Yet for all the institutional innovation of recent years, there remains a gap between the
legal and technical apparatus that has been created to institutionalize participation and the
reality of the effective exclusion of poorer and more marginalized citizens. For those who
view participation from a social mobilization perspective, it is identity formation and col-
lective action that are crucial to the inclusion of actors with fewer resources in participa-
tory fora (Cornwall and Coelho 2007; Gaventa 2004, 2006; von Lieres 2007; Roque and
Shankland 2007).
Processes of social mobilization occur before participation, helping to form the collec-
tive identities and confidence that will allow a marginalized group to develop the capacity
to act in situations where it will have to deal with others who have more resources (Kah-
ane and Fairbrother 2007; Levine and Nierras 2007). Such organization of marginalized
social actors, whether into associations or movements or through the complexification
and densification of the social fabric (Gaventa 2004; Mansbridge 1999; Tarrow 1994;
Young 2000) should, in the words of Neera Chandoke, contribute to mitigating the
inequalities that persistently undermine the ‘‘linguistic and epistemological authority of
subaltern actors and make deliberation a distant ideal’’ (2003, 186). Despite the centrality
of addressing these persistent inequalities, a critical and recurrent shortcoming of the
debate on participation has been its assumption that individuals are equally able to form
associations and engage in political activity (Chaudhuri and Heller 2002).
Once these inequalities are confronted through processes of mobilization and identity
formation other challenges appear. With pressure from one side to represent social
demands and thus play an oppositional role in the political sphere, and pressure from the
other to negotiate and cooperate, these agents not only face the need to criticize and
demand, but also to make the technically competent, realistic, and plausible proposals
(Favareto 2006) necessary to become co-producers of public policy. This change in role
presents another important pair of analytical challenges. Firstly, under what conditions do
agents who have historically mobilized to criticize and make demands, adopt strategies of
cooperation and negotiation, rather than conflict and contestation? Secondly, under what
conditions do groups mobilized around collective social identities prioritize the defense of
development processes?
A considerable part of the answer to these questions seems to be determined by the
style of activism practiced by social actors themselves, a style that will result from their
own history of mobilization and struggle. Through this history they acquire a repertoire
of more confrontational or cooperative strategies, developing more or less willingness to
cooperate in local participatory spaces (Coelho and Favareto 2010; Favareto et al. 2010;

Locke and Jacoby 1997). The different collective identities and distinct styles of activism
practiced by collective actors influence the performance of the participatory forum and its
ability to contribute toward making particular interests universal (Bebbington et al. 2007;
Ospina et al. 2008; Reygadas et al. 2007; Toni 2007). In other words, it is not about
opposing the existence of conflicts, which are effectively inherent to social life, to coop-
eration, but rather it is about how their expression through participatory processes can
create institutions or processes capable of combining private and social gains.
This brief overview reflects the recognition of a wide range of variables that influence
the quality of participation and the likelihood of it achieving expected outcomes in terms
of social inclusion and policy effectiveness. Next, we will take a brief look at some sys-
tematic empirical studies that are reporting on social participation experiences that have
promoted developmental gains.
Empirical Findings at the Development–Participation Nexus

The discussion below outlines the features and qualities of social actors and institutional
design that prove to be important to ensuring developmental gains. At the same time, it
argues that the developmental gains associated with participation depend both on certain
institutional features of the participative project and on the presence of a minimum of
social mobilization to make them effective. Below, we present some cases that look at
the impact of social participation on processes of territorial development and social policy,
areas in which participation gained momentum in recent years and where the authors of
this article have worked extensively.1
TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT
The concept of territory is, of course, very old, and there have been a myriad of mean-
ings given to it by different disciplines and traditions such as geography or anthropology.
What is relatively recent is the association of the idea of ‘territory’ to the debates con-
cerning ‘development’. One of the first studies to make this association was done by
Arnaldo Bagnasco (1977) – Tre Italie: La problematica territorile dello sviluppo italiano. In that
book the author first questions himself on where an economic dynamic capable of per-
mitting (a society) to escape stagnation and unemployment would occur. The answer was
that it was possible to find a pattern of social organization based on a more diverse social
structure (which therefore lacks the predominance of a primary activity, as in the south,
or a secondary activity, as in the north) as well as on decentralization (with a greater pres-
ence of small and medium sized companies). The mechanism described by Bagnasco
could not be summed up so briefly. What matters here, is that this combination had gen-
erated a more resilient environment in the face of the unfavorable changes in context
which were more open to the introduction of innovations and new activities.
In the following years crisis and realignment of traditional instruments for fostering
development together with the decentralization of policies and of industrial activity that
was related to reduced and redirected government intervention contributed to a standard
being instituted, particularly in the mid-1980s and 1990s. Since then, normative
approaches, such as in the well-known OCDE studies (1993, 1996) and others that
followed it, such as the World Bank (1997, 2001), FAO (2004), and Cepal (2003) studies
gain momentum. Approaches that translated into experiments in the field of politics,
whose most recognized initiative was: the Leader program (Saraceno 1996). A remarkable

trait of these experiments is the expectation that participation by local social actors would
be converted into a factor of efficiency in allocating public resources.
Bottom-up, participation and development type strategies: The Leader (Connections Between
Rural Economy Development Actions or Ligações Entre Ações de Desenvolvimento das
Economias Rurais, in Portuguese) program was created in 1991, as an European Union
Community Initiative, marking a wide-ranging process of discussing forms of policy plan-
ning on the continent and the growing concern with inter-regional discrepancies. It was
innovative firstly for its territorial bias as opposed to the notably sectorial character of
investments traditionally earmarked for rural areas; secondly, the type of strategy proposed
for promoting rural development, with bottom-up type actions, based on the principle of
partnership of a multi-sectorial and integrated nature. This strategy, based on the concept
of territorial competition, involves creation of development projects that include a vision
of the future, ways of coordinating actors, and the constitution of a local action group
(Abramovay and Beduschi Filho, 2004).
In its first phase, from 1991 to 1994, the program supported 217 territorial projects, a
figure that shot up to one thousand in the following phase, from 1994 to 1999. The pro-
jects are given support according to merit, without any pre-selection, as a way to foster
inter-territorial competition and mobilize energy and talent in an effort to find resources.
Two essential characteristics that have thus been valued by the Leader program are: the
concept that rural development can be achieved through planning and execution of pro-
jects and the importance that this happen with a participatory focus.
The first lessons concerning this initiative, which are very positive in tone, show that,
by introducing the concept of territorial project, the program is able to go beyond secto-
rial definition, that decline can be turned around if territorial articulation finds new paths,
and that the new territorial focus has been stimulating creativity and the use of local
knowledge. Yet the success or lack thereof of this intention was only attributed to the
way in which the expectations of social actors were combined. Therefore, there is a
strong interactionist bias in the strategy recommended, as if placing agents in contact
were sufficient, creating spaces and manners of supporting this articulation. From there
opportunities and dynamic connections would be created that are capable of improving
the territory’s performance. The territorial development project came about as a result of
an alignment of interests.
More recent studies (Coelho and Favareto 2007; Favareto, 2009; Favareto and Sch-
roder, 2008) have called attention to a sort of ‘dark side’ to these processes of inducing
territorial development. The logic used to select projects tends to reinforce differences,
insofar as the territories that already have the greatest capacity tend to gather better con-
ditions for proposals and, therefore, raise the support offered by the program. Moreover,
the way in which these development projects are created and the very articulation of
local groups has to come from the base of available resources. One of the problems in
making local economies more dynamic is oftentimes precisely the scarcity of resources
which allow for reliance on these kinds of initiatives.
Furthermore, if on the one hand there is substantial evidence that participation contrib-
utes to efficient application of resources to social policies, such as when there is a specific
focus and target public, in the case of developmental activities, this condition proves to
be much more complex, since there are many segments involved along with conflicting
interests. It is in this case that participatory processes can increase veto power, but not
necessarily increase cohesion between local agents. The issue thus moves to a second vari-
able: the characteristics of institutional design capable of aiming the accumulated power
of local social actors at projects capable of combining private and social gains.

When the institutional design channels the power of actors toward collective gains: Abramovay
et al. (2010) assess the impact of social participation on territorial development processes
in southern Brazil. Their study followed the trajectory of two organizations, a union and
a cooperative, both of which grew from the social movements connected to the fight to
strengthen family farming in Brazil.
Their conclusions point to the fact that although the
institutionalized forms of social participation in localized development processes have pushed
social movements towards demand-making practices wherein innovation, learning, and con-
struction of innovative processes are practically inexistent, it is possible to overcome this situa-
tion through appropriate manipulation of institutional design and incentive mechanisms. (2010,
275)
For the authors, the cooperative’s good performance is the result of the necessarily tense
unity between two worlds: social solidarity and economic rationality. The study shows
that this unity did not come from the intentions of the actors, but rather from the incen-
tives made available to them by government institutions. The incentives promoted greater
convergence between the demands of the cooperative and broader social gains. This was
not the case with the union, which did not have the same access to government incentives.
In the same sense, Favareto et al. (2010) showed that the way in which the govern-
ment absorbs demands and conflicts and translates them into incentives for participation is
one of the decisive elements in defining operational styles for three different social move-
ments in Brazil. Although the movements analyzed started with the same kind of conflict
(the fight for the right to access and use common natural resources) and in the same
ideological line (inspired by the organizational work of the Catholic left in the 70s), the
movements’ trajectories have proven to be significantly different. In the case of commu-
nities of slave descendents, the recognition of this condition could be seen as the only
condition for accessing public resources and land ownership deeds; as a result, the organi-
zations in this segment channeled their power into social pressure around this recognition.
In the case of family farmer unions, recognition of this condition is only part of the
requirements for accessing public resources. Part of these resources need to be negotiated
with other social actors in local forums that define where public investments will be
made. As a consequence, there is a mix of demands at these agricultural organizations and
the proposal negotiated is geared toward participatory forums.
These examples illuminate ways of connecting processes of empowerment, partici-
pation, and development. Both examples show the importance of prior mobilization,
while in certain cases, there is a risk that the greater power of mobilization and influence
of a particular group might result in their demands being exclusively pursued, calling
attention to the decisive role of institutional design and the design of incentives in
preventing organized groups from a specific social base from taking over participatory
governance.
SOCIAL POLICY: HEALTH AND EDUCATION
In the social area, in a movement parallel to the one described above, there was also a
debate which put a check on the supposed neutrality of government bureaucracy and its
‘technical’ decisions and sought to involve citizenship in building new policies for pro-
moting equality. The agenda of participatory governance began to suggest that citizens
stop being mere governmental clients and become subjects of the process that would
define the content of social policies (Ackerman 2004; Manor 2004; Offe 1984).

A number of experiences embraced this ideal in the areas of health and education, sec-
tors marked by a history of radical promises inspired respectively by the 1978 Alma Ata
Declaration and Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. The studies presented below
briefly describe how authors concerned with evaluating the impacts of participatory gov-
ernance dealt with the analytical variables discussed in the previous sections.
Institutional design
Three projects – one on participation of rural populations on Health Unit Management
Committees in Uganda, another on participatory budget in Brazil, and a third participa-
tory experiment in the area of education in rural zones of Bangladesh – point to the
effectiveness of institutional arrangements in promoting more effective public services.
In an experimental study of the effects of community-based monitoring and delibera-
tion to improve local health services in Uganda, Björkman and Svensson (2007) found
positive effects on the group that used participatory mechanisms for strengthening benefi-
ciary control over service providers and engaging communities in planning. The initiative
tackled two constraints typically faced by communities: lack of information and inade-
quate local organizational capacity. In fact, the impact on public service delivery was so
pronounced that after 1 year into the project the ‘treatment’ communities enjoyed statis-
tically significant increases in infant weight and decreased child mortality, as well as
higher utilization of local health services.
Boulding and Wampler (2010) found evidence that municipalities in Brazil that used
participatory budgeting during the period 1996–2000 spent higher proportions of their
budget on health care relative to municipalities that did not use participatory budgeting.
Their tests also show that in terms of well-being, the most positive finding is associated
with a reduction in the percentage of population that is living in extreme poverty.
Mozumder and Halim (2006) assessed two participatory components of the Ideal pro-
ject in Bangladesh and both components – school catchment area mapping and school
planning – had positive impacts on increasing student enrollment, regular attendance, and
retention at school as compared to the control group.
Design and mobilization

Another three studies, two in the area of health and one in education, show how the
type of impact from the institutional innovations described in the previous section are
changed through the presence or absence of mobilized actors.
Peters et al. (2009) conducted a systematic review to examine the health outcomes of
different approaches of community empowerment interventions. The authors used five
broad themes to categorize community empowerment: information and education, finan-
cial empowerment, inclusion and participation, accountability, and local organizational
capacity. Their results highlight the fact that communities which entered into partnerships
with policy makers and technical experts tended to achieve better results (2009, 45).2
Coelho, Fanti and Dias (2010) evaluated the performance of Health Councils, intro-
duced by the 1988 Brazilian constitution as a governance mechanism for bringing civil
society organizations, service providers, and public officials together.3 The six Health
Councils in the study are located in impoverished areas of the city with similar levels of
human development. Three of these areas had a strong history of social mobilization
regarding health demands, while the other three did not. The study showed that the
councils operating in the more mobilized areas performed better in articulating alliances
with public managers and were able to raise a larger amount of resources to build hospi-
tals and health centers; they also had better results in monitoring health services.

Banerjee et al. (2010) reported on a program that implemented two interventions based
on the rejuvenation of Village Education Committees (VECs) – consisting of three par-
ents, the head teacher of the village school, and the head of the village government –
which existed everywhere, but were almost entirely non-functional. A third intervention
recruited volunteers from villages for a week’s training on an educational technique for
teaching basic reading skills in reading camps. In contrast to the failure of the two first
interventions, the reading camps were successful.
According to Banerjee et al., ‘‘the contrast between these results may lie in the fact
that large group mechanisms make very different demands on the community than small
group mechanisms’’ (2008, 5). The authors argue that the three parent members of the
VEC could not have real control without the active backing of a large number of other
parents. At the same time, the reading program, where a single individual could directly
affect learning outcomes, did lead to a dramatic increase in reading ability for those who
attended.
Looking at these cases, it is possible to state that it is likely that the impacts found by
Björkman and Svensson, Boulding and Wampler, and Mozumder and Halim and pre-
sented earlier would be even more robust if their studies had included comparison of
areas with different legacies of mobilization. They also call attention to the need to
match, as in the case described by Banerjee et al., a community’s organizational reality to
the different models of participatory action available.
In short, the cases suggest that achieving greater coordination and policy effectiveness
through participation on the one hand involves fine tuning of characteristics of the insti-
tutional design of the participatory spaces and, on the other, the trajectory of the agents
and organizations and, in particular, what this implies for the style of activism they adopt.
They show that participatory governance can make a difference while reinforcing how
important it is that we consider the role of both some sort of collective action to sustain
it as well as of some sort of design of incentives to prevent organized groups from taking
it over. These factors create a dialog between elements that, as the literature previously
discussed and most of the case studies described show, has too often been analyzed sepa-
rately.
Final Remarks
This paper builds on substantial literature on development and social participation and
inquires as to whether and how participation affects development. The theoretical presup-
positions and empirical bases discussed provide an important contribution concerning the
design features and social mobilization conditions necessary for bringing private and
public gains closer.
For researchers with an institutionalist view of participation, inclusion as well as
coordination are to be guaranteed by an institutional design capable of reducing the costs
of participation and by linking the contributions of the participatory sphere to the deci-
sion-making and implementation processes of public policies. For researchers studying
participation in terms of social mobilization, this inclusion will only occur as a result of
processes that empower less favored actors.
The cases show that participatory experiences can positively contribute toward more
inclusive territorial planning and more effective social policies. In line with the debates
on development that highlight the importance of coordination and capabilities and the
analyses which have shown that distributive policies favoring the poor may have positive
externalities on the size of internal markets, labor productivity, and accumulation of

human capital (Justino 2006; Murphy et al. 1989; Perotti 1993), we suggest that the
results presented earlier point to a plausible and positive association between participation
and development.
Evaluating the level of community mobilization, choosing between different models of
participatory action, recognizing appropriate design features, understanding the incentives
available to public officials to implement them, and avoiding capture are necessary steps
to be taken by those interested in promoting a positive relationship between participation
and development. It is hoped that the discussion provided in this paper may motivate fur-
ther rigorous empirical research, since evidence will be fundamental to advancing our
understanding of the implication of different features of participation and development
and the resulting consequences in fostering this relationship.
Acknowledgement
This article presents results from the ‘Spaces for Change’ and the ‘Deepening Democracy
in States and Localities’ working groups carried out by the Development Research Cen-
tre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (CDRC) ⁄ Institute of Development
Studies ⁄ University of Sussex supported by DFID ⁄ UK. The comparative work also
involved CEBRAP-NCD ⁄ CEM-INCT with support from FAPESP and CNPq; RIMISP
with support from IDRC; and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC) with
support from Hewllet Foundation. The arguments presented have been developed trough
a long-term collaboration with our colleagues from these groups and we would like to
thank them for such an interesting exchange. We would like particularly to thank John
Gaventa, the CDRC Director, Andrea Cornwall and Bettina von Lieres for all our dis-
cussions and interesting exchanges during the last 10 years. We want to thank Felipe
Szabzon, Marcelo Dias and Frederico Menino for their excellent work in different
moments of the research and editing process. A preliminary version of the paper was pre-
sented at the RC19 Meeting, Stockholm 2008.
Short Biographies
Vera Schattan P. Coelho, social scientist, PhD in Social Sciences, is senior researcher at
the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning where she is the Research Director and
also serves as the coordinator of the Citizenship and Development Group (NCD). Her
research interests are public policies, political participation, accountability, democracy and
development. She has led various comparative studies in the areas of new forms of citizen
participation, social policies systems, health governance and democracy.
Arilson Favareto, sociologist, PhD in Environmental Science, is professor at the Federal
University of ABC and collaborates with the NCD ⁄ Cebrap. Favareto is professor of eco-
nomic analysis at the Centre of Engineering, Modelling and Applied Social Science of
the Federal University of the ABC Region, Brazil, and a researcher with CEBRAP. He
has published in rural development, and his current interests include new forms of the
social use of natural resources.
Notes
* Correspondence address: Vera Schattan P. Coelho, CEBRAP, R. Morgado de Mateus, 615 São Paulo, SP
04015902, Brazil. E-mail: veraspc@uol.com.br.

1
The following databases were consulted for this paper: Journal Store (Jstore), British Library for Development
Studies (BLDS), Scielo, World Bank, and 3ieimpact. We searched for participation and empowerment, health, edu-
cation, development, human rights, finance, microfinance, corruption, mobilization. The results obtained provide
for little analysis on the impacts of participation. Most of the papers and reports discuss conditions for participation
with exceptions, especially in the case of social policies. The cases reported here were chosed because they exem-
plify the type of problems highlighted in this bibliographical base.
2
Promising good practices include providing feedback by sharing results with communities, using systems for local
adaptive learning, using community resources to support programs, and promoting equality.
3
For more information on participatory spaces in São Paulo, see http://vimeo.com/17165331.
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Geography Compass 5/9 (2011): 641–654, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2011.00446.

Participatory Governance and Development: In Search of

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Participation and Development

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There is a growing perception of the limitations of the best-known economic theories

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Institutions, Participation and Power

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Empirical Findings at the Development–Participation Nexus

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SOCIAL POLICY: HEALTH AND EDUCATION

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Design and mobilization

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ª 2011 The Authors Geography Compass 5/9 (2011): 641–654, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2011.00446.x

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