The Building Blocks of Participation: Testing Bottom-Up Planning

A pragmatic question that arises during the design and execution of many government programs is this: how can a capacity for mobilizing community participation be built into the project's design and staffing? This paper answers that question by analyzing, step by step, one case rich in experience: the decentralization project in Mexico and its predecessor, the PIDER (Programa Integral para el Desarollo Rural) program. The time span of this series of projects stretches from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. The methods and patterns of community involvement in initiating projects and in the bottom-up planning of local investments, developed during PIDER, have undergone various adaptations and set-backs, but many survived the vicissitudes of Mexico's economic crisis and structural adjustments during the mid- and late 1980s and are re-emerging as sound and replicable approaches.