What happens to local participation when national ownership gets stronger? Initiating an exploration in Rwanda and Cambodia

Motivation “Local participation” and “national ownership” are widely endorsed ideals in development discourse and practice. With the former referring to people’s active involvement in development‐related activities with some form of external input, and the latter to aid‐recipient countries’ policy independence in relation to foreign funders, both are concerned with the inherent inequality of aid relationships. In development policy, the two also tend to be used interchangeably and in combination, apparently assumed to go hand in hand, with increased national ownership expected to be conducive to local participation. Purpose This article problematizes such usage and assumptions, and initiates a more elaborate discussion of possible interlinkages between local participation and national ownership, with the aim of contributing to a more nuanced understanding of what may happen to local participation in situations of increased national ownership. Approach and Methods It does so by depicting the trajectories and development of local participation and national ownership, by problematizing some expressions of intermingling and assumed links, and by discussing patterns of national ownership and local participation in Rwanda and Cambodia, all based on official documents, available data and others’ as well as own research. Findings Connecting two key concepts and major approaches in development policy, the article points to multiple possible interlinkages, including the possibility that national ownership in certain forms may undermine local participation, and to the need to further investigate the more complex interrelations that are likely to prevail between the two. Policy implications Such investigations will contribute to a better understanding of the prospects for different sorts of local participation in different situations of national ownership, and shed light on the difference it may make locally that a country’s development agenda is primarily domestically owned rather than donor driven. By problematizing widely held assumptions, unanimously endorsed aspects of current aid architecture can be reconsidered.