CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
2.2 CONCEPTUALISING RURAL DEVELOPMENT
2.4.1 Explaining Public Participation
In public participation literature, the term ‘public’ includes individual citizens, community organisations, interest groups, the business community and government institutions (Masango,
57 2001:107; Thomas 1995:1). Thomas (1995:55) also defines the ‘public’ as “all organised and unorganised groups of citizens or citizen representatives who could: (a) provide information about consumer preferences that might, for example, be useful in resolving an issue, or (b) affect the ability to implement a decision by accepting or facilitating implementation”. From this preceding explanation of the public, it can be deduced that public participation is a process in which the public as individual citizens, community organisations, interest groups or community representatives deliberately get involved in public issues that affect them. For the purpose of this study, the public includes rural people themselves as individual citizens, non- governmental organisations who occupy the rural space, traditional institutions, interest groups and the business community. All these occupy the rural space and are affected by rural development policies and their implementation. Public participation occurs when these various
‘publics’ deliberately take part in the rural development policy making and implementation processes.
The World Bank (1996:3) defined public participation as “a process through which stakeholders’ influence and share control over development initiatives and the decisions and resources which affect them”. This definition considers participation based on who should be involved and the extent of their involvement. In addition, it points out key areas, such as local control over development initiatives, decisions and management of resources, which should require the involvement of local people. Lewis and Kanji (2009:72) note that, public participation is about empowering ordinary people to play a meaningful role in the decision- making and implementation processes so that they are not merely “acted upon” by outsiders in the name of development and progress. In essence this means that people themselves and their local representatives become experts in understanding their problems and play an active role in working out strategies and solutions to transform their situation. Thus, public participation has also been viewed as “an interaction between government and the public, ranging from informing and listening at one end, to implementing jointly agreed solutions at the other; and in between there is dialogue, debate and analysis” (European Urban Knowledge Network, 2013:2). In addition, public participation is important for both the development of policies and the sustainability of their implementation. It also allows citizens, once they have been adequately empowered, to take over service delivery in the local context. Siphuma (2009) and Theron (2005) maintain that public participation is the first building block of development and an important component of human growth. Therefore, a genuine participation practise should
58 allow the beneficiaries of development to share in, influence and direct the process of development.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), which runs Participatory Organisations in poor rural communities, notes that the grass roots strategies to public participation have helped develop the following definition of public participation (cited in Rahman 1993:150, and Theron 2012:115):
“What gives real meaning to participation is the collective effort by the people concerned in an organised framework to pool their efforts and whatever other resources they decide to pool together, to attain objectives they set for themselves. In this regard participation is viewed as an active process in which the participants take initiatives and take action that is stimulated by their own thinking and deliberation and over which they can exert effective control”.
This definition indicates that the primary concern of public participation is to get people at the grass-roots level involved in the policy making and implementation initiatives that seek to improve their conditions of living. This indicates that participation enables citizens at the grass- roots level to define their destiny. Public participation can therefore work well if, there exist legislative structures, mechanisms and institutions established to facilitate and promote the inclusion of all people and various organisations in policy implementation at grass-roots level.
Swanepoel and De Beer (2010) add that public participation is about involvement of people under certain conditions and making people become part of the decision-making and planning of and prioritisation of development interventions aimed at ameliorating their conditions. This means that participation ensures that the public plays an active role in the policy making and implementation processes. In addition, the public can also monitor and evaluate development interventions in their locality. Nonetheless, people need to be empowered with various skills in order for meaningful participation to take place. Public participation is therefore, also viewed as a process that empowers and builds capacities of citizens so that they can engage in social justice issues and contribute to their own development. In this way, it promotes human growth and builds the self-esteem of citizens, especially the poor at the grass-roots level.
Public participation is also a key component of democracy. Actually there exist a symbiotic relationship between public participation and democracy.7 A review of the literature on public
7 The word democracy originates from the two Greek words: demos, meaning the people, and kratein, meaning ruling power. It refers to the type of government in which the power to rule resides with the people. Specifically, the word democracy originally referred to the governmental system of Athens at the time of Pericles (Rejai
59 participation indicates that the practice of public participation is the sine qua non of a democratic society (Masango, 2001). Clapper (1996) argues that public participation is an end in itself in the sense that it is viewed as a prerequisite to entrench and preserve democracy.
Democracy is defined by Ranney (1971:73), as a system of government in which citizens participate in an array of government activities.8 This definition shows that there is an intrinsic connection between democracy and public participation. Democracy creats space for individual citizens, interest groups, community organisations, civil society organisations, government institutions, traditional institutions and other stakeholders to participate in policy making and implementation processes. There are different forms of democracy, which include participatory democracy, democracy by proxy, direct democracy and representative democracy.
Participatory democracy promotes and emphasises the importance of individual citizens to participate in all aspects of public life in order to develop their capacities and also benefit from associating with others in the pursuit of common goals. In other words, participatory democracy allows both the individual and the community to benefit “through a shared purpose”
(Masango, 2001:40). In addition, it espouses populist ideals of organising citizens and conscietising them about their situation.
Democracy by proxy is premised on the belief that the size of modern society makes it almost impossible to practice participatory democracy. To this end, Kay (1985:88) asserts that, “it is possible that a man (sic) may have a vision of the common good and yet not take part in government”. As a result, citizens allow their leaders to make policies and implement them on their behalf. This form of democracy is anchored on the trust that citizens place in their leaders and government to serve the common good. This indicates that citizens do not see their direct participation as necessary since they believe that the commom good can be better served by their leaders and government.
1991:150). In this system, all important decisions affecting the citizens of Athens were made by the people at a face-to-face assembly of all citizens. Ranney (1971:73) defines democracy as ‘a form of government organised in accordance with the principles of popular sovereignty, political equality, popular consultation, and majority rule.
8 Johnson (1984:164) defines citizen participation as “a process wherein the common amateurs of a community exercise power over decisions related to the general affairs of a community”. The common amateurs are ordinary men and women “without any paid office, wealth, special information, or other formal power source beyond their own numbers”. Included in this definition of citizen are grass-roots organisations that represent the interests and are concerned about the well-being of the general public.
60 Direct democracy is a political system in which citizens participate directly in the policy- making processes. Citizens actually make policies themselves and do not rely on other people to make policies on their behalf. Direct democracy is practiced in smaller populations of groups which can be managed easily (Masango, 2001:53). For example, Switzerland is one of the few countries in which direct democracy is practiced. In a direct democracy, laws are proposed by citizens and approved by the majority of voters. On the contrary, representative democracy which is a form of democracy being practiced in South Africa is a political system in which citizens elect or choose a government official to represent them in the policy-making process.
The elected officials or representatives make policies based on the interests of the public that they are representing. “Representative democracy is exercised through those who are democratically elected by the people and is exercised through regular elections” (Phooko, 2017:519). Botha (2017:227) adds that the exercise of holding regular elections is the foreground of representative democracy and it legitimises public power. Furthermore, representative democracy allows citizens, civil society groups and opposition political parties to participate in processes that are “designed ro promote democratic values of openness, accountability and representativeness” (Botha, 2017:227).
Public participation is paramount in the practice of democracy and good governance. For Kamlage and Nanz (2018:4) and Fung (2015:2), public participation is important for strengthening the “three major democratic values: legitimacy, justice and effectiveness of government decision-making”. These democratic values get enhanced when the ‘public’
becomes part of the governance system by participating in the decision-making and implementation processes. This indicates that public participation is essentially about citizens as individuals, interest groups, elected representatives and an array of other stakeholders getting involved in matters of governance with the aim of improving service delivery, development and fostering accountability.
However, Brinkerhoff and Crosby (2002), warn about the simplistic thinking and excessive expectations surrounding public participation. The positive vibes that the notion of public participation stimulates can easily evoke unrealistic expectations from the public, especially the rural poor.
Furthermore, scholars such as Theron (2012), Meyer and Theron (2008), and Theron and Ceasar (2008) point out some of the problems inherent in the public participation approaches.
61 These scholars argue that some public participation approaches tend to be ad hoc, incremental, unstructured, unbalanced and uncoordinated to the extent that some even appear as mere window dressing. For example, Theron (2008), argues that, in some contexts, the concept of public participation is used as a buzz word to describe strategies that in reality have little to do with the authentic participation of the poor. This is why some researchers think that the rhetoric of public participation creates a misunderstanding and exaggerates the expectations of the poor and other stakeholders. Theron (2012) notes that, both as concept and strategy, public participation has many faces which are good when well- intended, and bad when poorly executed. Despite its limitations, public participation provides a terrain for the top-down and bottom-up approaches to collaborate in the policy making and implementation processes. It creates space and opportunities for public officials and the rural poor, and other stakeholders from the local context to work together.
According to Midgley (1995), public participation emerged as a result of the growing frustration with government led projects and inability to spearhead social development from the top.9 To this end, Gaventa (2007) provides insights on the declining patterns of public participation in processes of representative democracy. The decline was caused by the realisation that participation through elections alone has little impact on shaping government policies and their implementation, and this led to diminishing trust in governments (King, Feltey and Susel, 1998). Gaventa (2007) delineates three approaches which explain the role of citizens in the governance of their affairs. The first approach is called “deliberative democracy”
and is based on the traditions of participatory democracy. Its basic argument is that, democracy cannot be confined to the electoral processes alone but should encompass processes in which citizens can exercise control over decisions which affect their lives. Fishkin (2011) elaborates that the evolution of democratic processes has brought power to the people but under conditions that do not afford an opportunity to the people to think about the power that they exercise. The second approach is based on neoliberal principles which support a combination of decentralisation and privatisation, with limited state involvement. In this second approach, Gaventa (2007:xii) explains that, “citizens are often reduced to consumers, who express preferences through market choices and perhaps through co-provising of services at the local
9Lewis and Kanji (2009:73) explain that the notion of participation emerged during the 1960s and 70s due to growing frustration with governments’ failure to promote social development. The failure was partly due to the creation of large bureaucracies, the selection by donors of wasteful projects and corruption created by development aid.
62 level”. In essence, citizens have insufficient power to influence government policies. To this end, Dryzek (2002) argues that the ligitmacy of democracy lies in the fact that, those affected by a decision should participate in its deliberation and should be critical of established power.
The third approach which Gaventa (2007) explains developed out of the liberal representative model which emphasises the importance of strengthening the institutions of representative democracy and outlining the prosedures accurately. Apart from improving the mechanisms of representation, the third approach does not dwell on public participation beyond the electoral process. In other words, it does not endeavour to address the question of what happens after the elections. That notwithstanding, this researcher contends that, public participation offers a vision of development practice in which citizens at the grass-root level and various local organisations could play a meaningful role in their own development. For Bhargara (2015:5):
“…political leaders are coming to realise that those in power ignore citizens’ pressure at their own peril. Donors are realising that the projects best pursued are those that genuinely respond to public demands and concerns. Increasingly, development policy and practice are emphasising listening to citizens and building projects that meet their demands”.
As a concept and strategy, public participation has the capacity to yield good outcomes when executed according to plan (Theron, 2012). But if it is only used as a catch phrase by those in power, the results can be disappointing and frustrating for other stakeholders who genuinely want to play a meaningful role in policy making and implementation. The daunting challenge is how to make public participation work in practice, and in a way that empowers and builds the capacities of the rural poor.
According to Sithole (2004:4) cited in Siphuma (2009:51), public participation has numerous benefits for the poor and these include the following:
- Provides the opportunity to address the concerns of all interested and affected parties.
- Encourages citizen focused service delivery.
- Allows citizens to contribute to the designing and shaping of local public service.
- Develops a clear sense of direction for local communities.
- Facilitates the utilisation of a whole range of resources in the local communities.
- Allows citizens and public officials to identify alternatives when addressing issues of public concern.
- Improves municipal credibility with the public.
63 - Reduces levels of misconception and misinformation about development projects.
- Creates a better understanding of a project and its objectives.
- Enhances transparency and accountability at local government level.
The benefits of public participation make it a favourable approach to the implementation of rural development policies. Apart from empowering and building capacities in rural communities, it provides a platform for the rural people and public officials to form partnerships and collaborate in policy implementation processes. In additional, public participation indicates that public policy implementation is not the preserve of public officials alone, but that citizens at the local level, especially in rural contexts have a role to play in their own development. In other words, it provides people at the grass-root level, especially the poor and the marginalised with the opportunity to be involved in the governance of their affairs. To this end, Imparato and Ruster (2003:20) define public participation as “a process in which people, and especially disadvantaged people, influence resource allocation, and policy and programme formulation and implementation”. A common feature of public participation is the involvement of people in the governance of issues which affect their lives. For example, Imperato and Ruster (2003:20) point out that, the public could be involved at “different levels and degrees of intensity in the identification, timing, planning, design, implementation, evaluation and post-implementation stages of development projects”. To this end, Naidoo and Ramphal (2018:83) define public participation “as a process by which potential interested and affected particies are given an opportunity to comment on, or raise issues relevant to, an application”. However, researchers (Theron, 2012; Meyer and Theron, 2008; Theron and Ceasar, 2008; Brinkerhoff and Crosby, 2002) warn that, the concept of public participation can be misused by politicians and public officials to manipulate citizens or exclude those considered ineligible or undesirable. Wherever it is purported to be practiced therefore, it must be critically analysed to determine whether citizens participate meaningfully or the concept is being used as a political gimmick.