The seduction and significance of participation for development interventions

Through the past three decades development agencies have increasingly adopt ed the rhetoric of participatory development This shift has been informed b y a desire to achieve greater sustainability of initiated projects. This pa per examines the relationship between participatory development and interna tional development interventions, and focuses on the difficulty of adopting participatory strategies while maintaining existing, powerful development agencies. The significance of participatory development has, however, remai ned minimal as changes in the praxis of development have seldom resulted fr om the rhetoric.