Power, Participation, and Policy ─ The Emancipatory Evolution of the Elite-Controlled Policy

Masaki (studies on global citizenship, Seisen U. in Japan) questions the arguments underlying recent calls to expand citizen involvement in development policy-making through institutionalizing countermeasures to current decision-making processes, suggesting that stakeholders already manage to influence decision-making through a complex form of "cultural politics." He defends this theory through an analysis of the micro-level power struggles that resulted in the failure of Nepal's decentralization and participation agenda in flood control policy during the 1990s, highlighting how "the multi-faceted and fluid nature of the subject positions of national, district, and village-level actors opened avenues for the general public to participate in shaping the evolution of the overarching policy process." Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Katsuhiko Masaki is associate professor in the Department of Studies on Global Citizenship at Seisen University, Japan.