The politics of 'participation': civil society, the state and development assistance

James Putzel

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The starting point for this paper are some of the key texts relating to the question of promoting ‘pro-poor’ political participation and organisation, which were written or circulated within the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID) in preparation for a retreat organised to discuss the issue in October 2002. I incorporate into this some of the concerns I believe we are addressing within the Crisis States Programme. In this paper I demonstrate how paying attention to politics challenges some of the assumptions within programmes pursued by donors involved in the promotion of ‘good governance’ and economic reform. The argument is structured around four issues: (1) the question of ‘participation’; (2) understanding ‘civil society’ and the state; (3) the role of what I think we can usefully call ‘political society’ and ‘political parties’; and (4) governance and economic reforms that may undermine political organisation.

JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2004-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/841/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:841

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().