ABSTRACT

The long-standing discourse on the issue of active citizenship plays a central role in the current debates on development. Of the various methods employed to encourage and promote active citizenship in communities around the world, the concept of “people’s participation”—a concept that has experienced astounding growth since the 1970s—has been reinvented as a highly democratic and effective tool in development. The term became a buzzword in the development agenda of national and international agencies in the recent past, with consensus among the international and local development experts that only those governance mechanisms that could achieve the agreement of all citizens through a deliberative democratic process would be successful. It ensures that citizens’ concerns are included into the planning, implementation, and monitoring process.