ABSTRACT
Development is intensely political. What is true of policy-making within a national context is true also in a profession or field of endeavor like development. The very nature of bureaucracy militates forcefully against participatory, bottom-up processes. Bureaucracies need to be able to report results— preferably quantifiable results—within a preordained and generally very limited time. The control of individual projects by bureaucrats and consultants, especially foreign ones, may result in completed projects, but it is not likely to result in the enhancement of local capacity. Partnership programs, a solution of the 1990s to the perennial tendency to build dependencies rather than helping people to escape them, have generated a problem of their own. In funding Third World Nongovernmental organizations directly, rather than through umbrella organizations in the First World, experts serving the major donors felt that they were nurturing responsibility and accountability.
