Over the past two decades, participatory development programs that emphasize local control and decision-making have become more common around the globe. Such initiatives respond to the thought-provoking critiques of the discourse and practice of "development" that have emerged since the 1990s. Critics have argued, for example, that the development industry promotes a paternalistic attitude that sees Western standards as the benchmark against which to measure the "Third World" (Escobar 1995), privileges donor priorities over local needs, and uses aid to grow government and NGO bureaucracies rather than directly assisting community members (Ferguson 2006). It sees recipients of aid as an undifferentiated mass of underdeveloped subsistence farmers (Lewellen 2002). Participatory development programs are one response to the need for a new paradigm in community development that empowers locals while avoiding the pitfalls of "philanthropic colonialism."
Editorial introduction: Community development in the Third World: continuity and change