Beyond the rhetoric of rural development participation : how can it be done?

This paper explores ways to achieve such participation. The first two sections describe, respectively, three well-known movements to achieve participation: rural cooperatives; community development; and rural animation. Their respective shortcomings and constraints to participation posed by national policies, national and donor bureaucracies, and the immediate project environment are reviewed. The third section draws on these experiences and on recent development literature to suggest a set of eight operational guidelines deemed necessary for creating effective local participation. Stress is laid on building local organizational capacities and decentralizing the development process itself. Exemplification of the use of these guidelines in two projects - in Guatemala and Indonesia - concludes the study. A 59-item bibliography is appended.