Quality participation in poverty reduction strategies: experiences from Malawi, Bolivia and Rwanda

This research, commissioned by Christian Aid in Bolivia, Rwanda and Malawi, aims to assess the quality of people’s participation in the process of producing Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), by looking at who participated in the process, how people’s expectations influenced the outcome, the impact of the political context, and the role of the structure of the participatory process

The research has found that:

• Exclusion has marked the PRS process. To rectify this governments need to pro-actively seek the direct participation of ordinary people, in particular excluded groups, and the involvement of a broad range of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
• Government will and expectations strongly determine the quality of the process. An active, capable, and experienced civil society is helpful in influencing the quality of the participatory process, but not determinative.
• Existing government experience with participatory policy-making does not appear to be heavily informing the PRS process.
• Quality participation suffers because the process is rushed and information is not disseminated in appropriate languages and formats.
• Poor people and CSOs are more likely to participate in the process during the analysis phase and more likely to be excluded in the policy formulation and implementation stages. CSOs tend to be excluded from economic discussions.
• Taking the PRS process down the community level is feasible, at least on a small scale, but requires sound planning and government commitment.
• Participatory PRS processes are only as strong as the weakest institution on which they are based. Weak local-level democracies tend to produce weak participatory PRS processes, unless specific participatory instruments are put in place to compensate.
• Creating PRS-specific processes to facilitate participation may be more effective in the short-term but runs the risk of further weakening existing democratic institutions.