The transition away from centralised
authoritarian regimes and national one-party rule in many countries of
the global South in the 1980s and 1990s has ushered in a new political
era internationally, one that may be very broadly characterised as
animated by a commitment to elected civilian rule and the
democratisation of local political arenas through decentralisation.
This new era has brought with it promises of more and better
opportunities for amplifying the voices of the rural poor, and so for
increasing state accountability to them, in the development process. At
times, the promises have been backed up by the creation of new,
officially sanctioned and ostensibly more democratic spaces for popular
participation in both electoral and non-electoral processes, especially
at the local level.
Looking back, however, actual political dynamics and their outcomes in
terms of development policy too often have fallen far short of what has
been promised. Underlying inequitable structures, and the flawed
institutions and practices that perpetuated them in the past, have been
maintained and even reinforced in some cases. Too often, the new
rhetoric of democracy and democratic development has served as a veil
for national and local governments, oftentimes in cahoots with foreign
governments and foreign and transnational corporate interests, to
renege on promises, squander opportunities and even block initiatives
of and for reform and change that might have made a difference. For
many social change activists across the globe, this gap between
rhetoric and reality has proven to be a very hard nut to crack. This is
partly because the new policy spaces, however promising they may be,
are not neutral. As John Gaventa (2002: 10) reminds us: “The fact that
public spaces for participation exist, whether in rule of law or social
practice, does not mean that they will always be used equally by
various actors for realising rights of citizens. Rather, such space is
itself socially and politically located, with dynamics of participation
varying across different levels and arenas of citizen engagement, and
across different types of policy spaces”. Some social change activists
who attempt to participate in the new policy and political spaces find
themselves having to give up their political rights and freedoms in
order to access the promised social and economic benefits. Others may
decide that it may be worthwhile to forego their rights and freedoms
for a while in order to grab the social and economic benefits offered
in the short-term, but then find it more difficult than thought to
reassert themselves politically afterward. Still others dismiss the new
policy spaces outright, arguing that they are inherently biased and
immutable to purposive social change interventions from below. But how
to deal with such a situation is not obvious. Especially in the absence
of credible and sustainable alternatives, many poor and marginalised
people simply do not have the luxury to indulge in outright rejection
of new official policy and political spaces that may be opening up.
The underlying issue is how can the new policy and political spaces be
pushed beyond “mere window-dressing”, and instead used and transformed
to effectively serve the needs, demands and aspirations of the poor?
This project is an attempt to look into actually ongoing and
potentially innovative attempts by rural poor groups in six countries
to deal with this crucial issue. In between the orthodox left’s usual
insistence on an “expose and oppose” strategy and outright rejection of
new policy and political spaces on the one hand, and the conservative
mainstream push for quiescent incorporation on the other, there is
still room for innovation. Most discussions of innovative efforts to
date have started from clearly innovative outcomes in urban settings,
and then retraced the processes that led to them, in hopes of
identifying how they could be replicated elsewhere. By contrast, while
appreciative of the need for innovation on the outcome side, this
project starts from the proposition
that innovation can be seen in the process side of efforts themselves,
and not just the (potential) outcomes of such efforts. The efforts the
studied here may ultimately fail to produce the desired outcomes; it
remains to be seen since they are still underway. Yet each has the
potential to produce important innovative outcomes, and so the efforts
are still worth looking at. This project can thus provide insights that
might help to explain when innovative outcomes are achieved, and when
they are not. Moreover, our research is “integrated” into the efforts
themselves, hopefully so that it can contribute to improving them as
they unfold. From the perspective of rural democratisation, the project
will thus look into the emergence and trajectory of innovative
rural-based initiatives or collective campaigns that are currently
underway in six countries, in terms of their substance, political
significance and their impact on development processes. What exactly
constitutes an “innovative” rural-based initiative or collective
campaign will be part of the inquiry itself. The term “collective
campaign” comes from American sociologists Marwell and Oliver (1984:
12), who use it to refer to “an aggregate of collective events or
activities that appear to be oriented toward some relatively specific
goal or good, and that occur within some proximity in space and time”.
Each country team will examine the selected ongoing collective
campaigns or initiatives in their country by addressing a common set of
basic core questions and then also a series of common additional
questions that will help to situate the initiatives in their actual
historical and institutional contexts. Addressing a common set of
questions should facilitate systematic comparative analysis across the
six countries.