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In a new approach announced by the World Bank and IMF, civil society is being offered a part in shaping and implementing national anti-poverty strategies. In order to trigger debt relief, countries are being asked to produce a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) drawing on inputs from all sections of society. This Policy Briefing details what a PRSP actually is, who should be involved, how to build participation into the process, what can be learnt from previous efforts to build participation into policy, where problems lie and how to monitor the process. It argues that learning from previous experience is vital if this new approach is to live up to its ambitious rhetoric.

How do ordinary people, especially poor people, affect the social policies that in turn affect their well-being? What is the role of citizen participation in social policy formation and implementation? How do changing contexts and conditions affect the entry points through which actors in civil society, especially the poor, can exercise their voice and influence in critical social policy arenas? State centred conceptions of social policy often view citizens as recipients of programmes, whilst market led versions focus on the clients of social welfare as consumers who participate through choice of services. This paper explores a view that argues for an approach to social policy that sees citizens not only as users or choosers, but as active participants who engage in making and shaping social policy and social provisioning. The authors suggest that changing concepts and conditions, such as demographic change, the privatisation of provisioning and globalisation, challenge traditional approaches to participation in social policy. These concepts are discussed within a broader historical review of the ways that ordinary people have participated in policy, and it is argued that participation must be repositioned in the light of current reality which offers new spaces, as well as new constraints, for citizen engagement.

This IDS working paper examines the role of knowledge in the process of making and implementing poverty reduction policy. It focuses on the production of poverty knowledge through measurement and assessment, providing an overview of contemporary poverty assessment approaches, and the issues and dilemmas involved in applying them in the context of poverty reduction policy processes. The first section examines the policy process in order to understand the relationship between poverty knowledge and policy change. It looks at how legitimate knowledge is traditionally framed in the policy process as the domain of technical experts who reduce complex phenomena to measurable variables, and how this frame changes if policy is understood as a more chaotic process with multiple actors involved. Section Two discusses the broad questions of what poverty actually is and how it can be measured, focusing on the fact that a consensus appears to have emerged which then obscures the many debates centred around poverty measurement. Three policy events are examined in order to show how different objectives shape the methodological choices policy actors make. The third section focuses on a range of methodologies available for poverty assessments, with a focus on household surveys and participatory poverty assessments (PPAs). Lastly, the World Bank and Oxfam are examined in order to understand how two international development actors with different objectives made use of acquired poverty knowledge in constructing policy messages. The argument is proposed that the agency and objectives of the policy actors themselves are most important in shaping policy narratives.

The paper is a case study of the way that World Neighbors used PRA in a process of community development in one sublocation in Kenya. The paper gives some background as to the practices of World Neighbors, the conditions in the community, and the role of government in the area. It then explains how PRA was used with a representative body at the sublocation level for analysis and planning. The PRA discussions led to development activities that had impacts on the physical well-being of community members, as well as less tangible social effects. The social effects included new modes of operating for the village leadership, changed relationships between community members, and supportive attitudes of local government officials for community led development strategies. The case study raises a number of general strategic choices facing non-governmental organisations using PRA and presents the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies chosen by World Neighbors.

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 paper considers the challenges entailed in applying the principles and methods of public participation to national and international policy processes. It draws on evidence from the field of biotechnology policy and bio-safety regulation in Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States and Zimbabwe. While there are positive examples to be found in the experiences of different countries, generally there is an unsatisfactory compromise between the obligation to promote public participation and the need to conform to international standards. Even when governments have the will to include the public in decision making, they may lack the capacity to do so effectively, or to stand by the concerns of their publics in the face of opposition from powerful foreign countries.

This briefing looks at how participatory immersion techniques can be used to promote advocacy in policy planning, focussing specifically on gaining insight into the situation of the poor. Senior staff in aid agencies are involved in daily decisions about policy and practice which have direct impact on the lives of poor people. But in a rapidly changing world, how can they be sure that they are basing those decisions on up-to-date information about what poor people want and would consider to be most helpful? REALISE is a participatory approach to learning, whereby staff from policy institutions and donor agencies spend a few days living and working with host families in a poor community. This enables them to engage in critical self-reflection both on their own and in a facilitated group and can bring long-term benefits to the practice of development. The experience increases motivation and commitment and the personal contact ensures that poor peopleÆs voices and perspectives are heard and integrated into new policy approaches and practice at senior level.