Is Empowerment Possible Under a new Public Management Environment? Some Lessons From India

Abstract

The article examines whether results-based management approaches to development program management are appropriate to the strategic shift to a governance agenda to promote broader citizen participation and its emphasis on increased empowerment. Empowerment is about people having expanded choices and a much greater level of involvement and control in all parts of their family and community lives. This is recognized as important in development policy areas such as good governance, promoting civil society, and decentralization. Using field research from fifteen NGOs working with poor women in India, the author shows that downward accountability and time are significant factors in empowerment. Results-based management approaches that have entered the field of project management over the past decade have the paradoxical effect of disempowering those it is meant to empower.