POLITICAL AWARENESS AND PARTICIPATION IN DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTIONS: A BEDROCK FOR SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY?

Abstract

To achieve the transformative commitment to “Leave no one behind” of the Agenda 2030 of UN’s Sustainable Development implies adopting actions that recognize the importance of politics in development and putting inclusive power play into the development process and interventions. It stresses the importance of politics of self-determination in development. More so, the importance of agency and politics as a method for building development capacity in communities. This is so because, excluding political aspects from development debate would lead to misinterpretation of the real causes of underdevelopment. Using secondary data analyses, the paper has its grounds in the deep connection between development and politics, and in the need for practitioners to value it and reconsider it as an essential method for a successful project aiming at improving people’s lives. This paper argues that if the locals want to advocate for their needs, people need to be aware and informed of the political environment around them. Adopting Li’s concept of rendering technical, experts focus less on the political structures, they devise technical schemes in the form of technical matrixes that identify the problems and translate them and their solutions in the form of program designs and models which remain prescriptive devoid of participation by the people. But achieving social sustainability of projects demands citizen’s greater awareness and participation of what transpires in the intervention. The paper shows the importance of agency and politics as methods for building development capacity in the communities as well as the use of politically engaging methods as relevant practices towards sustainability of development interventions.