Understanding Local Participation Amidst Challenges: Evidence from Lebanon in the Global South
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Scholars frame local participation as a continuum of tools, processes, and values, with outcomes primarily serving implementers or beneficiaries. Donors have adopted participation in their policies and are asking local partners in the Global South to implement participation in their work on the ground. Development management practitioners in the Global South have unique understanding and practice of local participation. This article analyzes the status of local participation in Lebanon using recent empirical data. We address Lebanese DM practitioners’ perceptions of participation. They relate that participation is used in a limited way, as a tool at best. We also identify some of the underlying conditions: weak readiness and understanding; lack of coordinated efforts; and rhetorical use of the participation paradigm. The form of participation changes as these conditions change. We recommend modest expectations of citizen participation, investing efforts to develop organizational readiness, enhance cross-sector coordination, and secure more serious donor engagement.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".