Impacts of Participatory Development in Afghanistan: A Call to Reframe Expectations

The rhetoric surrounding participatory development approaches is very positive, based upon the expectation that it provides better development outcomes than classical development approaches. This is both supported and contradicted by the participatory development literature, indicating the complexity of the interplay of participatory approaches and development programs in real world situations. This study adds to the academic literature focused on participatory development approaches using empirical data. The research utilizes an intensive qualitatively-based case study methodology to look at the impacts of the National Solidarity Programme (NSP) on a community in Northern Afghanistan, thus presenting a new perspective on participatory development: a community level perspective.