Actively promoted by international agencies, community participation has become a central concept underpinning the development agenda. But what's the reality behind the rhetoric? What happens when community participation is mediated by the state subject to domestic and international agendas?

Research by Oxford Brookes University examines the interplay between international policies and domestic interests in the context of project-based community participation in urban shelter provision in Egypt. It concludes that while the state may be receptive to external pressure for community participation, this is constrained by the extent to which external agendas fit domestic needs, and the social contract between the state and various class interests.

Using three contrasting case studies of the upgrading of urban squatter camps in Egypt in the 1970s and 1980s, the paper investigates how and why community participation was established as part of the development agenda, and how particular ideologies and practices of participation came to be adopted. Employing the concept of interest mediation, a framework is developed which has three parallel components: the state, its foreign and domestic policy; the state and class interest; and the evolution of foreign aid and urban development/shelter policy.

Research findings include:

• Deployment of community participation in Egypt's urban housing projects has been defined and redefined to reflect changing domestic and international political interests mediated by the state
• Large community-based urban housing projects have had no significant impact on Egypt's chronic housing problem, institutional capability, or in deepening the experience of participation.
• At the macro-level, externally introduced concepts of community participation were accepted by the state at a minimum level to satisfy donors' technical requirements, and at times to ameliorate social tensions.
• At the micro-level, the state employed a variety of 'participation' strategies to mediate the competing interests of different social groups, but was constrained by domestic political agendas supported by a resistant bureaucracy.
• In all three projects the community participation component was very mechanistic, geared towards project implementation, and involved community leaders only.
• Local outcomes were primarily influenced by decisions made in the broader context of the political economy - not by the specific objectives of housing sector policies or methods of community involvement in their implementation.

Policy implications include:

• Promotion of community participation in development projects has led the state to become a mediator between external and domestic interests.
• Community participation is a malleable concept, and limitations to effective implementation cannot be explained by conventional project evaluation methodology.
• More attention needs to be paid to investigating the nature of factors underpinning the policy-making process before designing and implementing policies for community participation, such as the social structure and prevailing social contracts.
• Analysis of foreign and domestic interests as mediated by the state provides a useful tool in assessing how grassroots outcomes will influenced by decisions made in the broader context of the political economy.

Source(s):
‘Egypt: The State, Foreign Aid and Community Participation in Urban Shelter Projects', International Planning Studies, Volume 3/2, by Roger Zetter and Mohamed E. Hamza, 1998

Funded by: HEFCE

id21 Research Highlight: 23 February 2002

Further Information:
Roger Zetter
School of Planning
Oxford Brookes University
Headington
Oxford OX 0BP
UK

Tel: 44 (0)1865 483925
Fax: 44 (0)1865 483925
Contact the contributor: rwzetter@brookes.ac.uk

Oxford Brookes University, UK

Other related links:
'Power to the people: the key to good urban governance?'

'City governance: does it make any difference to the poor?'

SD Dimensions looks at People's Participation

Visit the FAO Participation site

More from the World Bank Participation Thematic team