IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/soudev/v12y2017i3p213-235.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Buying Consent

Author

Listed:
  • Masooda Bano

Abstract

Community participation remains central to development policy; but so do concerns that negotiations to achieve it have become a drill devoid of real meaning. Repeatedly, development interventions fail to unlock its presumed benefits: low-cost innovation, good governance and sustainability. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) in Pakistan, a well-known case of organic community participation, this article demonstrates that the ability to buy consent in the case of donor-funded projects erodes the capacity for real community negotiations to take place. The article argues for closer study of cases such as OPP, known for their strong element of community embeddedness, to understand where things go wrong in aid-induced community participatory projects. It shows how constant negotiations within the community that allowed for the building of trust, the merging of local and technical knowledge, the trialling and adjustments of interventions, and patient lobbying of government officials and field staff are key to unlocking the real benefits of community participation and ensuring social accountability on the part of government agencies. The quick fixes encouraged under development projects, which normally rely on material incentives to generate co-operation, undermine these very principles leading to growing evidence of failure of aid-induced community participatory projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Masooda Bano, 2017. "Buying Consent," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 12(3), pages 213-235, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:soudev:v:12:y:2017:i:3:p:213-235
    DOI: 10.1177/0973174117733428
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0973174117733428
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0973174117733428?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pranab Bardhan & Dilip Mookherjee, 1999. "Relative Capture of Local and Central Governments: An Essay in the Political Economy of Decentralization," Boston University - Institute for Economic Development 97, Boston University, Institute for Economic Development.
    2. Ghazala Mansuri & Vijayendra Rao, 2013. "Localizing Development : Does Participation Work?," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 11859.
    3. Ostrom, Elinor, 1996. "Crossing the great divide: Coproduction, synergy, and development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1073-1087, June.
    4. Anuradha Joshi & Peter P. Houtzager, 2012. "Widgets or Watchdogs?," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 145-162, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fox, Jonathan A., 2015. "Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 346-361.
    2. World Bank Group, 2014. "Strategic Framework for Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in World Bank Group Operations," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 21113.
    3. Simon O'Meally, 2014. "The Contradictions of Pro-poor Participation and Empowerment: The World Bank in East Africa," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 45(6), pages 1248-1283, November.
    4. Auerbach, Adam Michael & Thachil, Tariq, 2021. "How does Covid-19 affect urban slums? Evidence from settlement leaders in India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    5. Ricks, Jacob I., 2016. "Building Participatory Organizations for Common Pool Resource Management: Water User Group Promotion in Indonesia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 34-47.
    6. Auerbach, Adam Michael, 2017. "Neighborhood Associations and the Urban Poor: India’s Slum Development Committees," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 119-135.
    7. Afridi, Farzana & Iversen, Vegard, 2014. "Social Audits and MGNREGA Delivery: Lessons from Andhra Pradesh," India Policy Forum, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 10(1), pages 297-341.
    8. Fox, Jonathan, 2020. "Contested terrain: International development projects and countervailing power for the excluded," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    9. Veeraraghavan, Rajesh, 2017. "Strategies for Synergy in a High Modernist Project: Two Community Responses to India’s NREGA Rural Work Program," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 203-213.
    10. Baldwin, Kate & Karlan, Dean & Udry, Christopher & Appiah, Ernest, 2023. "How political insiders lose out when international aid underperforms: Evidence from a participatory development experiment in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    11. Davison Muchadenyika, 2017. "Civil society, social accountability and service delivery in Zimbabwe," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 35, pages 178-195, October.
    12. Peter P. Houtzager & Arnab K. Acharya & Julia Amancio & Aheli Chowdhury & Monika Dowbor & Suchi Pande, 2021. "Social accountability in metropolitan cities: Strategies and legacies in Delhi and São Paulo," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 39(1), pages 59-81, January.
    13. Jacob Torfing & Eva Sørensen, 2019. "Interactive Political Leadership in Theory and Practice: How Elected Politicians May Benefit from Co-Creating Public Value Outcomes," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-18, July.
    14. Misra, Jaydev, 2008. "Centralization of Decentralized Governance - Evidence from West Bengal Panchayat," MPRA Paper 15718, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jun 2009.
    15. Anthony Bennett, 1998. "Sustainable public/private partnerships for public service delivery," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 22(3), pages 193-199, August.
    16. Valentina Burksiene & Jaroslav Dvorak & Mantas Duda, 2019. "Upstream Social Marketing for Implementing Mobile Government," Societies, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-13, July.
    17. Brian Dill, 2010. "Public-public partnerships in Urban water provision: The case of Dar es Salaam," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(5), pages 611-624.
    18. Eggers, Jorg & Laschewski, Lutz & Schleyer, Christian, 2005. "Agri-Environmental Policy: Understanding the Role of Regional Administration," 2005 International Congress, August 23-27, 2005, Copenhagen, Denmark 24496, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. A. Arrighetti & G. Seravalli & G. Wolleb, 2001. "Social Capital, Institutions and Collective Action Between Firms," Economics Department Working Papers 2001-EP08, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).
    20. Pargal, Sheoli & Gilligan, Daniel & Huq, Mainul, 2000. "Private provision of a public good - social capital and solid waste management in Dhaka, Bangladesh," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2422, The World Bank.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:soudev:v:12:y:2017:i:3:p:213-235. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.