by itself and that it puts pressure on governments to perform better, and
therefore in the long run is desirable for the HIPC countries now drawing up
PRSPs, but we do have qualms about the way proposed to get to that remote
point. Our contention is that participation as imposed by donors, is at the
same time too ambitious to be workable and too vague to be monitored. We
argue that the participation conditionality should be ‘contextualized’ in the
sense of being molded to the specific history and institutional context of
every country. We use Bolivia, generally regarded as an example of suc-
cessful civil society participation in the PRSP, to make our point. Through
describing the participation process and analyzing its weaknesses and prob-
lems we will see that the vagueness of donors gave the Bolivian government
the freedom of organizing the process in a way that neutralized the poten-
tially revolutionary sting of civil society involvement. Bolivian government
was given a free hand to manipulate the process and to render it harmless
to itself. Admittedly, some genuine participation took place, but not by the
poorest, and it was circumscribed to a small part of the PRSP that not only
did not threaten the central government but in fact turned the heat away
from its own considerable failings. A preliminary conclusion suggested by
our reading of the Bolivian case is that the participatory PRSP process does
not fundamentally alter the relations between government and civil society,
but that it reproduces the already existing strengths and weaknesses, and at
best, adds some positive gradual changes. Public sector accountability was
strengthened, but not in ways that allowed to tackle the major failings of the
present political system. As far as listening to civil society is concerned,
the donor community restricted its attention very strictly to the PRSP and
turned a blind eye to several incidents where the government dealt ruthlessly
with civil society protests that questioned and challenged its development
strategy. We refer in particular to government plans to privatize certain pub-
lic service utilities and to eradicate coca production.
accumulated experience at the
level of actors, the insights of and
analyses made by the WB-staff
might highlight in retrospect
important aspects of the partici-
pation process. Bolivia is, com-
pared to Nicaragua and Rwanda,
situated at the ‘good track record’
continuum. Studying the Boliv-
ian case is therefore instrumental
as is will help us calibrate the
scale on which PRSP ought to be
judged. Contrasting Nicaragua
and Rwanda with Bolivia should
be more realistic than placing
them in front of an ideal (the the-
oretical assumptions mentioned
before) that might be unrealistic
from the outset
We further doubt that there has been an increase in “ownership” as a result
of civil society participation in the Bolivian PRSP process. Bolivia remains
as divided as ever on the development strategy followed with considerable
donor approval since 1985. If put to the test of a referendum, the majority of
the voters might well reject those policies, including those embedded in the
PRSP.
We are also not convinced that the participation that took place increased the
effectiveness of poverty alleviation policies. We argue that local participa-
tion had an impact on the effectiveness of the PRSP, but that its influence
was circumscribed to a small part of the total budget. Moreover, even for
this small part, it is not so clear that participation will, on most counts, lead
to a more effective poverty reduction strategy. Participation is not necessar-
ily good for combating poverty. There may be cases where there is too much
participation for effectiveness sake. We argue that there have been several
such occurrences in Bolivia
As far as the lessons for other countries are concerned, if relatively
little progress has been achieved in a country with a fairly open political op-
portunity structure, and a far better organized and vocal civil society than in
IDPM-UA Discussion Paper 2002-05 • 5