Maximum Feasible Participation: The Origins, Implications, and Present Status

Abstract

&dquo;which provides services, assistance, and other activities of sufficient scope and size to give promise of progress toward elimination of poverty...through developing employment opportunities, improving human performance, motivation, and productivity, or bettering the conditions under which people live, learn, and work;&dquo; (3) &dquo;which is developed, conducted, and administered with the maximum feasible participation of residents of the areas and members of the groups served. &dquo; (emphasis added)Since the passage of the act, the last of these elements--the clause which calls for &dquo;maximum feasible participation&dquo; by the poor--has burst upon the public consciousness. Right wing critics, both in and out of Congress, have branded community action programs as nothing less than a blueprint for revolution. Mayors across the nation charged the federal government with financing an attack on city hall, undermining local influenced and authority. 3 Welfare agencies, responding to a threat to their jurisdiction and claim to professional expertise, asserted simply that involving the poor is not feasible. In city after city attempts to implement community action programs have met with a struggle over the meaning of the clause and the extent and character of participation by the poor.This investigation was undertaken: (1) to illuminate the origins, the legislative history, and the intent of the &dquo;maximum feasible participation&dquo; clause; and (2) to determine its present status. It was guided by the following questions: What streams of thought were then current in American life that would have suggested such an approach? Was it the result of a changed view of the poor and their capabilities? Was there an awareness of the revolutionary implications to both the welfare and the political establishments in local communities, and ultimately to the nation as a whole? &dquo;MAXIMUM FEASIBLE PARTICIPATION&dquo;The Origins. From the President's &dquo;Message on Poverty&dquo; on March 16, 1964, wherein he commended the bill to the Congress, to its passage five months later, no public discussion of the participation clause took place. W'hile a great deal of discussion centered on the general provisions of Title II, the committee hearings4 reveal that, with the exception of the statement by then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 5 there is no mention of the clause by any other government official in several thousand pages of testimony. Even after Kennedy's testimony stressing the importance of participation in treating a community's ailments, 6 not one Congressman questioned its meaning or intent. The Congressional debates are equally devoid of discussion about &dquo;maximum feasible participation. &dquo;7

Is Community-Based Participatory Research Possible?

“…10 Its domestic pedigree lies in the principle of “maximum feasible community participation” that guided the poverty programs of the late 1960s and early 1970s. 11 Initiatives such as Headstart and community health centers had, and still have, community-majority governing bodies. This represented recognition of the fact that low-income communities rarely have any control over the programs that have an impact on their lives, such as schools, medical facilities, and public housing.…”

"Maximum Feasible Participation": Working Class and Peasant Movements as a Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Current U.S. Movements of Poor and Minority Groups

“…FOOTNOTES 1 This is a much expanded version of a paper read at the Thirty-Third Annual Meeting, Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, Georgia, April 9-11, 1970. 2 For the origins of Section 202(a) 3 of Title II-A of the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, see Rubin, 1969. Oceanhill-Brownsville experimental school district in New York City. This was not formally a CAA situation, of course, but voting should have been heightened precisely because there was a more visible and specific issue--community control of education--and by the fact that a crisis had developed.…”

States Make Movements? The Material and Discursive Influence of State-Sponsored Community Organizing in Puerto Rico

“…Yet the growing radicaUsm of some community development programs (CDPs), and the increasing sponsorship of local authorities, stimulated the Home Office's withdrawal from the local projects and ultimately the program's demise, just as Thatcher was about to take office. Similar issues were confronted by community groups involved in the Model Cities and Community Action Programs of the 1960s in the United States (Frieden and Kaplan 1975;Haar 1975;Kaplan, Gans, and Kahn 1970;Rubin 1972;Sobin 1972). • Numerous authors have argued that while community-based organizations and community development corporations in the Urüted States originally professed to seek the "real" participation of residents and the transformation of the structures of power and decision making to empower communities, these have become increasingly disconnected from the communities in which they are embedded, pursuing more place-based approaches to neighborhood revitalization, and reflecting bureaucratic (through professionalization) and conservative (through dependence on funding from government and foundation sources) concerns (Everingham 2003;Mayer 2003;Newman and Lake 2006;Rosenthal 1984; but see Naparstek and Dooley 1997 for a positive view on the role of community development corporations (CDCs) as intermediaries).…”