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This article gives an overview of deliberative democracy and citizen empowerment. It describes the reasons for the recent interest in Deliberative and Inclusionary Processes (DIPs). These are given as; political changes; a lack of trust in professional expertise and science; high levels of uncertainty and complexity (e.g. in the realm of the environment and technology) that are an integral part of living in a modern world and the notions of human rights, social justice and empowerment. It then details the main issues emerging from DIPs that are discussed in the remaining articles within PLA notes No. 40 and ends with a brief description of some of the challenges DIPs might face.

This paper explores literature related to the dynamics and methods of strengthening community-based participation in the context of programmes for democratic decentralisation. It specifically examines the merging of two distinct traditions of participation, social/project and political, and looks at the linking of development with the state, and a concept of governance that is accountable to civil society. In so doing, the authors demonstrate the emergence of a new definition of participation as citizenship, and contend that such new forms of citizen participation can best be seen at the local level, where ægrassrootsÆ interact with those of governance and the state. Barriers to citizen participation in local governance are discussed, such as: power relations; no previous history of grassroots/citizen organisations; weak or non-existent participatory skills; lack of will at both central and local government level; the level of participation; and the paucity of financial resources at local level. Ways in which these obstacles can be overcome are subsequently suggested, including participatory planning, citizen education and awareness building, and training and sensitising of local officials. The paper concludes with an illustration of a successful experience of citizen participation (participatory budgeting in Latin America), and a brief discussion of issues for further research.

The paper starts with the observation that it is increasingly accepted that improving the quality of life in impoverished urban areas depends on the capacity of local residents to form social networks and civic organisations. While much of the literature calls for a retreat of the state to accomplish this, some recent studies have shown that state actors can actually promote empowerment of civic organisations. The article looks at an example of state-fostered civic organising: Porto Alegre's "participatory budget", which involves handing over municipal funding decisions on basic capital improvements to neighbourhood-based forums. The analysis looks closely at the Extremo Sul district in terms of mobilising neighbourhood residents, opening closed neighbourhood associations, building co-operative alliances, and transforming participants' perspectives. It is argued that in response to this policy innovation, innumerable neighbourhood organisations have formed, whilst at the same time clientelist forms of neighbourhood action have been discouraged and participation and inter-group collaboration promoted. It is concluded that the first step to state-sponsored civic organising is that the state must be genuinely open to participation and responsive, and that potential participants must become aware of that responsiveness. In Porto Alegre, this did not happen straight away, but there was a demonstration effect that helped mobilise groups, and the targeted issues were found to be meaningful to poor neighbourhood residents. Community organisers also acted as external agents helping unorganised neighbourhoods organise. Networks of reciprocity and trust were built and clientelism discouraged, as alliances built up from year to year and people changed the way they perceived their interests. Against the trend for promoting self-financing and cost recovery in infrastructure investments, top priority went to raising revenue through taxation and administrative streamlining. Further, government spending set off, rather than discouraged, a boom in civic action. It is argued that the policy prioritised a different kind of investment: building new relationships between government personnel and citizens. This new type of governing privileges accessibility, flexibility, and negotiation. It is argued that, overall, there has been a fundamental transformation of political life in Porto Alegre as neighbourhood residents have shifted from powerless cogs in clientelist machines to being active participants in public life.

Effective poverty reduction requires narrowing the gap between words and actions, making trust and accountability real within and between organisations, at all levels and between all actors. Aid agencies today are shifting emphasis from projects and service delivery to a language of rights and governance. They have introduced new approaches and requirements, stressing partnership and transparency. But embedded traditions and bureaucratic inertia mean old behaviours, procedures and organisational cultures persist. This Policy Briefing looks at how current practices maintain such cultures, and at how they can be changed by achieving consistency between personal behaviour; institutional norms and the new development agenda.

This paper explores the dynamics of the making and shaping of poverty policy. It takes as its starting point a critique of linear versions of policy-making, highlighting the complex interplay of power, knowledge and agency in poverty policy processes. We argue in Section One that the policy process involves a complex configuration of interests between a range of differently positioned actors, whose agency matters, but whose interactions are shaped by power relations. Making sense of contemporary poverty policy requires a closer exploration of the dynamics within and beyond the arenas in which policies are made and shaped. It also requires an understanding of how particular ways of thinking about poverty have gained ascendancy, coming to determine the frame through which poverty is defined, measured and tackled. To do so calls for an historical perspective, one that situates contemporary poverty policy with regard to antecedent visions and versions. Section Two of this paper thus provides an overview of differing narratives on the causes of and solutions to poverty, especially as they have emerged in dominant development discourses. Making sense of participation in the policy process requires that we identify and explore policy spaces in which alternative versions of poverty may be expressed by a variety of voices, and the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that surround them. In Section Three of this paper, we examine two broad kinds of policy spaces - those that are found in invited forums of participation created from above by powerful institutions and actors, and those more autonomous spaces created from below through more independent forms of social action on poverty related issues. By examining how different narratives of poverty and different actors interact in such spaces - as well as how they may be excluded from them - we can better understand the ways in which power and knowledge frame the policy process.

This short paper describes some lessons learnt during training workshops conducted for capacity building in participatory approaches (PA) at Ha Giang in Vietnam. Two further goals were identified in addition to capacity building. These were to learn ways of influencing the conventional 'top-down' planning, and to learn participatory methodology for community-based planning in areas of both low and high literacy. In areas of low literacy, tools were utilized such as symbols to represent issues in the community; pictorial plans with scoring/ranking according to priorities; picture cards; a literate villager acting as a scribe. Both literate and non-literate plans were presented at the commune level. The authors concluded with a number of limitations, including problems due to village size and the difficulties of accurately translating pictorial plans into official reports.