Why change?: government bureaucracies adopting participatory approaches for natural resource management

Why do government bureaucracies adopt participatory approaches to natural resource management? First, why do governments change their policy to support people's participation in natural resource management? And second, once policy has changed, why do field agents change their behaviour to reflect the shift towards participation in policy statements? More specifically, how can managers induce their field agents to perform well at participatory approaches? The paper will use a case study constructed with original field data to address these questions. The case study centres around the Guidelines for Watershed Development issued by the Government of India in 1995, which govern national SWC programmes. The paper concludes with implications for reformers wishing to catalyse similar policy changes in other settings, and for managers wishing to induce good performance from their field agents in participatory natural resource programmes.