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Rungs 3, 4 and 5 (Informing, Consultation and Placation respectively) constitute the second level of citizen power which Arnstein calls "tokenism". At this level citizens have the opportunity to hear and to have a voice by being informed and consulted, but they lack the power to assure that their views will be taken seriously by the power holders. With this form of participation, there is no follow-through, no power, and hence no possibility of changing the status quo. Although rung 5 (Placation) is sometimes considered a more genuine approach to participation, yet citizens are not conferred full power to decide. In this view therefore, it can simply be considered as “a higher level tokenism”. This form of participation has been seen in the School Governing Bodies (SGBs) in South Africa, which seem to be there simply as the means to contain parental discontent and mobilize additional resources for running the schools. Parents’ participation in particular, depends significantly on what they are "allowed" to do by principals (Lewis and Naidoo, 2004:106), and it is restricted to ‘token involvement’ in fund-raising and other support activities. The three upper rungs of the ladder (rugs 6, 7, 8) are levels of citizen power with increasing degrees of decision making. Citizens can enter into a Partnership that enables them to negotiate and engage in power sharing with traditional power holders. The two topmost rungs (7 and 8) involve Delegated Power and Citizen Control respectively. At these levels, citizens have strong power to make decisions. Arnstein’s ladder analogy was applied and further developed by various authors. Weidemann and Femers (1993) used it to classify the public rights and analysis of decisions needed for hazardous waste management. According to their analysis, public participation increases with the level of access to the information as well as the rights that citizens have in the decision making process. This is what empowerment consists in. The conception of empowerment by the IFAD[ International Fund for Agricultural Development] encompasses both access to resources and the capacity to participate in decisions that affect the least privileged (Moore, 1995) The critique to the eight-rung ladder designed by Arnstein is that it is an over- simplification of reality. Taking the concept of participation as a linear process of eight levels that can be presented in a ladder metaphor is unrealistic. There is no clear-cut of where exactly each level in the ladder begins and end because social science phenomena are not the same as those of the natural science. However, like any other model, it helps to facilitate understanding of the fact that there are different forms of citizen participation. Knowing these gradations makes it possible to distinguish between meaningful/genuine citizen participation and non-participation. 2.6 Operational sing empowerment Taking into consideration that empowerment is a multileveled, multifaceted and context-based concept (Schulz et. al, 1995); can we really have a common understanding about empowerment? In other words, is there a model/framework that can be claimed to be a panacea to all contexts? Certainly, it is difficult to have one. Let us take an example of a situation where we want to empower poor women to enable them to own and dispose land, and another situation where we want to empower local communities to take charge of managing their local primary school. |
