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Planning and Managing for Human Development: What Contribution Can the Capability Approach Make?

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The Capability Approach, Empowerment and Participation

Part of the book series: Rethinking International Development series ((RID))

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Abstract

In this chapter, Ferrero and Zepeda consider what the capability approach can bring to planning and managing development projects. They seek to provide fresh guidelines for the design of new participatory research methods and tools that can contribute to a broader approach to development based on capabilities. They begin by identifying some of the requirements for better methods and tools implied by the capability approach before critically reflecting on the limitations of predominant methods and approaches for the preparation, management and evaluation of development initiatives. They also show how alternative methodologies (the ‘process approach’ to planning, and participatory learning and action) can help put the capability approach into practice. Ferrero and Zepeda attempt to achieve this through building on ‘learning process approaches’ which are geared to the promotion of valuable capabilities and are informed by a decade of fieldwork experience in Central America and Morocco that draws on a range of participatory techniques. In doing so, the chapter advocates a ‘process freedom approach’ and identifies and develops a set of open-ended principles for guiding development interventions from a capability perspective that embrace multidimensionality, non-linearity, uncertainty, experiential learning and power relations (amongst other things).

If you were tosaytothegrown-ups: ‘I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof,’ they would not be able to get anyideaof that house at all. You would have to say to them: ‘I saw a house that cost $20,000.’ Then they would exclaim: ‘Oh, what a pretty house that is!’ (Saint-Exupéry, 1946)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term ‘intervention’ rather than ‘project’ is used to delimit the unit of analysis in order to include projects, programmes and policies intended to achieve a desired development objective. This includes a wide range of development interventions at different levels, sectors and scales (community, local, sub-national, national or global levels), whose development management methodology is determined by the corresponding donor agencies’ mandatory guidelines.

  2. 2.

    See Ferrero (2003), Ferrero and Zepeda (2007), Baselga (2007), Montoya, Escobar, Hernandez, Hernandez, and Vega (2005) and Shaffer (2013) for further details.

  3. 3.

    This is why scholars frequently refer to it as the ‘Blueprint Approach’.

  4. 4.

    In both directions, one project was highly valued in terms of outputs achieved, while it was very detrimental to cooperative relationships between local institutions; the other project was prematurely ended by the donor due to a lack of tangible results, while latter impact evaluation demonstrated a high impact on institutional development in the long term.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. United Nations High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security (HLTF), United Nations, New York, NY, USA

    Gabriel Ferrero y De Loma-Osorio

  2. Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, London, UK

    Carlos Zepeda

Authors
  1. Gabriel Ferrero y De Loma-Osorio
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  2. Carlos Zepeda
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Carlos Zepeda .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    David Alexander Clark

  2. Action Research for CO-Development (ARCO), PIN-Educational and Scientific Services for the University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    David Alexander Clark  & Mario Biggeri  & 

  3. Department of Economics and Management, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Mario Biggeri

  4. Development Planning Unit, University College London, London, UK

    Alexandre Apsan Frediani

Additional information

This chapter is dedicated to the memory of José María Ferrero Corral and Sara de Loma-Osorio y VegaAIVega, L., who left us before this text was published.

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© 2019 The Author(s)

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Ferrero y De Loma-Osorio, G., Zepeda, C. (2019). Planning and Managing for Human Development: What Contribution Can the Capability Approach Make?. In: Clark, D.A., Biggeri, M., Frediani, A.A. (eds) The Capability Approach, Empowerment and Participation. Rethinking International Development series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-35230-9_12

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