Popular Participation and the Administration of Rural Development: The Case of Botswana

Abstract

Although there has been much discussion of the role of village development committees and self-help in the general sense, there has been little effort to systematically analyze the actual performance of such organizations and programs. This paper represents an effort to isolate those variables associated with successful, locally initiated, and locally undertaken development efforts. Three key criteria will be analyzed: (1) leadership -variations in success associated with different types of leadership, (2) participation—the magnitude, effectiveness and quality of participation, and (3) coordination— the degree to which local efforts are supportive of national developmental goals.