ABSTRACT
A good case can be made that alternative development and policy-making do not sit comfortably together. At the risk of caricature, alternative development in this book is characterized by local and participatory decision-making in which the voices of the marginalized have a say. Policies that empower them in ways whereby they can take control of their lives will be ‘situated’, local and therefore diverse. Set against alternative development is ‘mainstream’ development, styled at different points in this book as having tendencies of top-down, economistic and ‘blueprint’ policy-making in the hands of distant, out-of-touch bureaucrats and powerful vested interests in capital cities. It follows therefore that public policy-making in the service of either of these styles of development is an important arena, but it will be a very different one in either case. The former will tend to be diverse, decentralized and less formal, and the latter state-centred, blueprinted and formal. However, these distinctions between alternative and mainstream development hide the importance of interchanges between the two. Alternative development will be reformist in nature; it must state its case and pursue its political ends through a wide variety of potential allies such as social movements, politicians, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the press, performing arts, public forums and so on. Yet inevitably alternative development may also be involved in attempts to reform public policy at the state level. Hence calls for alternative development beg some unsettling questions. Who is listening? Who are the ‘movers and shakers’ in government who need to hear? How should the case be made in terms of political language, argumentation and imagery? What strategy can outsiders devise to play a reforming role in the formal policy process?
