Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: reviewing the past, assessing the present and predicting the future

This article assesses the various accounts put forward to explain the disappointing outcomes thus far of ‘civil society participation’ in the design and implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsps) in aid-receiving countries throughout the world. While donors' technical and depoliticised explanations prove particularly unhelpful, other more radical perspectives, though insightful, often lack sufficient subtlety in their analyses. The article goes on to consider and critique commentators' various visions and prescriptions for prsp participation. Finding within participation aid's classic paradox—where it can work it is not needed and where it might be needed it cannot work—the article predicts a bleak future for prsp participation and argues that the project's failure may exacerbate the crisis of legitimacy faced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, a crisis that led these organisations to launch the prsp initiative in the first place.