The Contradictions of Pro‐poor Participation and Empowerment: The World Bank in East Africa

O'Meally, Simon Carl

doi:10.1111/dech.12126

Cited by 15 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Even within Indonesia, many local government units have been forced to abandon Musrenbang as a futile budgetary exercise, as they were consistently denied budget allocation in the projects and activities prioritised through public engagement. In a wider context, mentions are made that the benefits of PB are largely co-opted by non-poor actors, and that it disseminates market-centred norms, as advocated by international organisations, at the expense of the poor's priorities (O'Meally, 2014; Grillos, 2017). Overall, this study serves as an example of how multiple rationalities are implicated in the process of rationalising externally propagated public sector accounting reforms in emerging economies (both in general and in indigenous communities in particular), and how the interplay between the rationalities results in unintended consequences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple rationalities of participatory budgeting in indigenous communities: evidence from Indonesia

Jayasinghe

Adhikari

Carmel

et al. 2020

AAAJ

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PurposeThis paper analyses participatory budgeting (PB) in two Indonesian indigenous communities, illustrating how the World Bank sponsored neo-liberal model of “technical rational” PB is overshadowed by local values and wisdom, consisting of sophisticated, pre-existing rationalities for public participation.Design/methodology/approachAdopting a qualitative and interpretive case study approach, the study draws on data from semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and periods of participant observation. The paper utilises Weber's characterisations of rationality to analyse the PB process in indigenous communities.FindingsThe co-existence of both formal (technical) and substantive rationalities leads two Indonesian indigenous communities to execute participatory budgeting pragmatically. The formal budgetary mechanisms (Musrenbang), cascaded down from central and local governments, are melded with, and co-exist alongside, a tradition of public participation deriving from local cultural values and wisdom (Rembug warga). Reciprocal relationships and trust based on a pre-existing substantive rationality result in community members adapting budget practices while also preserving their local culture and resisting the encroachment of neo-liberal initiatives. The paper offers deeper analysis of the unintended consequences of attempting to implement technical rational accounting reforms and practices in indigenous settings.Originality/valueThe paper provides important insights into the way the interplay between formal and substantive rationality impacts on accounting and budgeting practices in indigenous communities. Our study also presents a unique case in emerging economy contexts in which neoliberal initiatives have been outmanoeuvred in the process of preserving indigenous values and wisdom. The informal participatory mechanism (Rembug warga) retained the community trust that neoliberalism systematically erodes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple rationalities of participatory budgeting in indigenous communities: evidence from Indonesia

Jayasinghe

Adhikari

Carmel

et al. 2020

AAAJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Our respondents concur with chapters in Cornwall' s (2011) collection, which provides comprehensive analyses of the literature that depicts WB' s rhetoric of participation as "tokenism" used to "rubber stamp" and legitimise pre-defined development solutions through selectivity of participants and narrow terms of consultation. Similarly, other scholars have shown how various participatory initiatives have attempted to "empower" people through narrow technical and managerial reforms at the expense of addressing deep-seated political and power-based drivers of non-participation and marginalisation (Akbulut 2012;O'Meally 2014). Contrastingly, Hickey and Mohan (2005, 237) note that participatory approaches are more likely to succeed: (i) where they are aimed specifically at securing citizenship rights and marginalised groups' participation; (ii) where they are pursued as part of a wider radical political project; and (iii) when they seek to engage with development as an underlying process of social change rather than as discrete technocratic intervention.…”

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confidence: 99%

Behind the World Bank’s ringing declarations of “social accountability”: Ghana’s public financial management reform

Alawattage

Azure

2021

Critical Perspectives on Accounting

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Accountability has become integral to many African development reform initiatives and permeated the World Bank' s (WB) policy discourses, with "social accountability" as a major plank in its development orthodoxy. Since the 2004 Word Development Report (WDR), the WB' s leadership has been declaring its commitment to social accountability. This paper excavates what lies behind the ringing declarations of commitment to social accountability in the context of Ghana' s Public Financial Management Reform Programme. Empirically, it draws on four months' fieldwork into the accountability practices this programme brought about and an extensive analysis of WB discourses on public sector reforms and social accountability. Theoretically, the paper draws on Foucault' s governmentality and the notion of agonistic democracy central to the recent democratic accountability debate in critical accounting circles. The paper argues that the WB' s social accountability crusade hinges on the neoliberal concerns of efficiency and fiscal discipline rather than creating a democratic social order, which then questions the very notion of social accountability that the WB is propagating, especially its discursive and ideological "short-circuiting" of democratic processes. The paper finds that the dominant and dominating accountability forms that facilitate the WB' s financial hegemony are privileged over potentially emancipatory ones. The findings highlight that as local governments become responsible to international development agencies through the "social accountabilities" that the WB is promoting, they become less socially and democratically accountable to their own populace-the very place where social accountability should truly rest.

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“…Even in this example the end-users are at best co-producers of data, of knowledge about their lives in codes that can be read by machines. This is a far cry from the painstaking shift towards empowering the poor in the production of knowledge about development, debates that led a significant shift in sections of the World Bank in the 1990s-2000s (McDuie-Ra & Rees, 2010;O'Meally, 2014).…”

Section: World Bank and Ai: Precision Poverty Alleviationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The backroads of AI: The uneven geographies of artificial intelligence and development

McDuie‐Ra

Gulson

2019

Area

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Artificial intelligence is being reconfigured as a set of technologies that can address poverty with precision. The impacts of AI will both exacerbate and ameliorate the conditions of uneven development. Recent debates focus on the disruptive effects of AI, particularly to replication of development trajectories that have had success in reducing poverty. In this paper we further these debates by analysing the backroads of AI. The backroads serve as a metaphor for understanding the ways AI will travel from the sites of incubation to the frontlines of uneven development. We explore dialogues between AI and development in two arenas: the World Bank's Development Impact Evaluation initiative (DIME) and the Government of India's national AI strategy, #AIforAll. We argue that both these arenas serve as hubs from which AI will travel out along the backroads to remote, poor, and fragmented polities. While the World Bank utilises AI as technology to empower experts and mobilise a techno-political authority, what we refer to as precision AI, India seeks to function as a second-tier AI hub, making AI cheaper and more accessible domestically and for other developing countries, what we refer to as populist AI. We conclude by discussing the interrelations of precision and populist AI along the backroads, and the potential of backroads research for mapping AI, uneven geographies of development and technology and the impacts of AI's disruptions at different scales.

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The Contradictions of Pro‐poor Participation and Empowerment: The World Bank in East Africa

Cited by 15 publications

References 69 publications

Multiple rationalities of participatory budgeting in indigenous communities: evidence from Indonesia

Multiple rationalities of participatory budgeting in indigenous communities: evidence from Indonesia

Behind the World Bank’s ringing declarations of “social accountability”: Ghana’s public financial management reform

The backroads of AI: The uneven geographies of artificial intelligence and development

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