![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Participatory governance offers the potential to deliver responsive and accountable services. This article tests this expectation by looking at how members of participatory extension platforms in Malawi understand the meaning of “demand-driven” services, and allocate responsibility and influence in service provision. Results show that most respondents agree on bottom-up extension services that respond to expressed farmers’ needs (86% of respondents), and assign responsibility and influence widely across state and non-state actors. While these findings suggest that these participatory mechanisms can promote responsiveness to farmers’ needs and accountability, they also point toward different governance challenges in extension services.
La gouvernance participative a le potentiel de faciliter la dispensation de services adaptés et imputables. Cet article met cette attente à l’épreuve en examinant comment les membres de plateformes participatives élargies au Malawi comprennent le sens des services « déterminés par la demande » et attribuent la responsabilité et l’influence à la délivrance de ces services. Les résultats montrent que la plupart des répondants adhèrent à l’idée d’une approche ascendante des services de vulgarisation pour répondre aux besoins des agriculteurs, tels qu’exprimés par eux (86 % des répondants), et attribuent la responsabilité et l’influence d’une manière fortement transversale aux acteurs étatiques et non-étatiques. Alors que ces résultats suggèrent que ces mécanismes de participation peuvent encourager la réactivité aux besoins des agriculteurs et l’imputabilité, ils mettent aussi en lumière différentes difficultés de la gouvernance dans les services de vulgarisation.
La gobernanza participativa conlleva la posibilidad de proporcionar servicios eficientes que, a la vez, rindan cuentas. El presente artículo somete a prueba esta expectativa, analizando cómo comprenden el significado de servicios “basados en la demanda” y cómo asignan responsabilidades e influencia en la entrega de servicios quienes integran plataformas de extensión participativas en Malaui. Los resultados muestran que la mayoría de los encuestados (86%) aprueba la idea de que los servicios de extensión comunitarios respondan a las necesidades expresadas por los campesinos y que asignen responsabilidades e influencia ampliamente entre los actores estatales y no estatales. Aunque estos hallazgos sugieren que dichos mecanismos participativos pueden promover la capacidad de rendir cuentas y responder a las necesidades de los campesinos, también ponen en evidencia los distintos retos vinculados a la gobernanza en el contexto de los servicios de extensión.
Acknowledgements
We thank all the members of the SANE team, including Marie Cadrin, Clodina Chowa, Austen Moore, Grace Mzumara, Stacia Nordin, and Lonester Sibande; the respondents and participants in the survey; and Amanda Ang for useful GIS research assistance. This research was approved by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Institutional Review Board (Protocol Number 17064) in the United States and by the National Commission for Research on Social Sciences and Humanities (Protocol Number P08/16/133) in Malawi.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Cristina Álvarez-Mingote is a Research Specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She works on the political economy of development, with current emphasis on the public provision of agricultural extension services. Her most recent research addresses issues of governance, accountability, and farmers’ involvement in extension service delivery in Malawi. Cristina holds a PhD in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Paul E. McNamara is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics and the Division of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is Director of the USAID-funded INGENAES (Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services) project, which works with consortium members and other partners to strengthen nutrition and gender integration in agricultural and nutrition extension services around the world. He also serves as Principal Investigator for the USAID-funded Feed the Future Strengthening Agriculture and Nutrition Extension Services Activity (SANE) Project in Malawi. His research, outreach, and teaching efforts are in the areas of extension, consumer economics, health economics, and agricultural economics and rural development. McNamara holds a PhD from the Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota and an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Notes
1 Note that when talking about governance issues we are referring to the difficulty of achieving good governance, which is commonly understood as processes that are based on accountability, transparency, responsiveness, rule of law, stability, equity and inclusiveness, empowerment, and broad-based participation. See, for example: www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/quality-framework/technical-notes/concept-of-governance. Our paper in particular emphasises transparency and accountability issues, which hinder the emergence of good governance.
2 For more details on this policy and its implementation guidelines, see http://g-fras.org/en/2015-05-28-15-50-27/australia-15.html.
3 District Agriculture Committees and Village Agriculture Committees are also part of the DAESS, but not of our analysis.
4 See http://meas.illinois.edu/sane for more information about SANE.
5 Balaka, Blantyre, Chikwawa, Dedza, Lilongwe, Machinga, Mangochi, Mchinji, Nsanje, Ntcheu.
6 Four DSPs were inactive and, for nine ASPs, the enumerators only managed to interviewed four, not five, respondents.
7 For the ASPs, these options read “the Department of Agricultural Extension Services should … ” because of lower knowledge of what the DAESS is at this level.
8 We coded as “Chair”, “Secretary” and “Treasurer”, all those who reported holding these positions or similar ones such as “Vice-Chair”, “Vice-Secretary”, “Acting-Secretary”, and “Treasurer Committee”. As “members”, we coded those who reported being committee members and one who declared “extension worker”. In terms of represented organisations, we coded as “farmers” those that were farmers, lead farmers, semi-commercial farmers, etc.; as “NGOs and other organisations” those belonging to NGOs like Heifer, CADECOM, and other social organisations such as farmer organisations like NASFAM or cooperatives and other community-based organisations, lead farmers representing these organisations were also part of this category; as “public sector” those representatives of the government of agriculture including the Ministry of Agriculture, District Agriculture Development Officers and extension workers; as “private sector” those representing agro-dealers and other business people, and in the category “other platforms” fall those who represented Village Development Committees, Area Development Committees, Village Agriculture Committees, etc.
9 Answers “do not know” or “do not answer” were coded as missing values, and the four respondents that chose “disagree” were considered as not choosing the bottom-up approach. Having missing values is the reason why the percentages do not add to 100%, and this applies to all of the results.
10 The responsibility of the local government is compared with the influence of the Local Councillor, District Commissioner, District Executive Committee, District Chairperson, and District Assembly, and the responsibility of the national government with the influence of the Members of Parliament. To simplify presentation of the results the “traditional authorities” row shows the average for traditional authorities, Group Village Headmen and Village Headmen answers about influence when compared with the traditional authorities question on responsibility. The results for these three levels are practically the same.
11 Of the 33%, 16% corresponds to “neither influential nor not influential”, of the 23%, 15% is ‘neither’, of the 25%, 4% is ‘neither’, and ‘neither’ is 3% of the 19%.