新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

Transnational NGOs and participatory forms of rights-based development: converging with the local politics of citizenship in Cameroon

摘要：

The transmission of participatory development by transnational non-governmental development organizations (NGDOs) to local partners in developing countries is today widely criticized, often because of an apparent failure to attain the essentially political goal of empowerment. This article argues that this problem relates closely to a failure amongst NGDOs to engage with the political context in which citizenship participation is contested in developing countries. Case study material reveals how one participatory development intervention has converged with a particular moment in the trajectory of citizenship formation amongst the target group, and with the local politics of citizenship in Cameroon more broadly, in ways that have, at best, ambiguous implications for the empowerment of the local participants. The paper concludes by discussing how rights-based approaches might overcome these problems, and the challenge that this poses for the transnational development community.