Contents

This is a study about the “spillover effects” of civic participation: Does participation in one domain of civic life, in this case, community managed schools (CMSs) in rural Honduras and Guatemala, lead to new forms of participation in other domains? CMS are perfect examples of participatory governance (PG), government initiatives that give decision-making authority to citizens. CMS emerged in Central America in the late 1990s to close the severe education gaps in rural areas, deepen decentralization, engage parents in schools, and enrich democratic life. Our goal is to assess the last two components. In particular, we examine whether parents who participate in CMS develop “political capabilities” in the form of political learning, creation of new or strengthened networks, and emergence of new forms of representation. In contrast to more pessimistic studies, we find positive spillover effects. However, we also find that even where spillovers abound, new groups’ autonomy and scope of action remain limited.

This chapter traces the evolution of the concept of “participation” in studies of development, governance, and democracy. Participatory governance (PG) evolved from participatory development (PD), which in turn evolved from theories of participatory democracy developed in the 1960s. PG emphasizes citizen participation in state-run or state-sponsored public initiatives. We discuss the arguments proposed by advocates and critics of this form of organizing state-society relations. We also propose the concept of “political capabilities” framework as a way to measure the spillover effects of PGs.

This chapter traces the history of CMS in Central America. CMS are one of the most radical forms of education decentralization. Many education reforms were introduced in Latin America in the 1990s, but few countries in the region went as far as Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua in adopting CMS. Why did Central America, of all places, adopt this type of reform? We focus on the international and domestic factors that gave rise to this unusual education experiment in Central America.

The first part of our empirical discussion presents an analysis of a large survey—among the broadest of its class—of participants in CMS in all of rural Honduras and in the department of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. We describe the survey design, the implementation of the survey in the field, and the preliminary results. Despite various obstacles to spillovers, once initiated, participation can engender further participation. Many participants acquire and apply new skills, and some join new organizations. These spillover effects are stronger if participants receive state support and perceive the participatory arena to be democratic.

We present a series of regressions testing four hypotheses that probe deeper the factors that might give rise to spillover effects. We confirm the "virtuous cycle hypothesis"—namely, that those who have participated more before are more likely to participate and learn from subsequent experiences. In addition, for outcomes related to networks, the greatest predictor remains the prior level of involvement. But initial characteristics are not the whole story: One of our breakthrough results is that when participants receive adequate training to fulfill their CMS-related duties, participate in a substantive way, and perceive CMS council as being effective and democratic, spillovers are more likely. This suggests that both state-related variables (which control level of training) and design features (which determine whether CMS act effectively and democratically) play a role in producing spillovers.

We introduce our comparative case study of eight communities in Honduras and Guatemala intended to probe deeper into the causes of spillovers. We begin by justifying our case selection: we selected communities that offer diverse values on the dependent variable (spillovers). Drawing from our ethnographic study, we describe each community in terms of socioeconomic conditions, gender dynamics, and spillover outcomes.

Scholars debate whether state involvement helps associational life more than it can hurt it. We find qualitative evidence that states can play a positive role in stimulating spillovers. By creating an arena for participation and offering technical support once CMSs got underway, states fostered transformations in the civic life of individuals and communities. Examining variables such as the amount of training one receives and preexisting individual characteristics, we dissect the impact each of these factors has in the learning that occurs as a result of participation in CMS projects. Moreover, we analyze the influence of variables such as socioeconomic status, education level, previous council experience, and gender on participation and the composition of school council leadership.

The previous chapter examined an exogeneous factor (the role of the state) in shaping spillovers. This chapter focuses on two endogenous (i.e., program-related) factors: 1) the time and resource burden of participation, and 2) the democraticness of school councils. On the former, we find that while the time and resources required of leading council participants may have depressed non-CMS participation in the short term, they did not appear to have any negative lasting effect on parents’ participation once these parents ceased being school council members. On the latter, we operationalize levels of democraticness by focusing on rotation of council leadership, and find that schools that had more rotation produced more skills acquisition and subsequent participation. Furthermore, we found evidence linking the state variable discussed in the previous chapter and the rotation variable introduced in this chapter: more state-provided training increased the chances of leadership rotation, and thus, of spillover effects.

Despite its many positive effects, CMS did not produce spillover effects among the majority of participants. This chapter explores the factors that might have hindered such spillovers. We break down obstacles to spillovers that are common in both countries—material poverty, low levels of education, and gender dynamics. We then briefly discuss country-specific barriers, most notably the legacies of pervasive exclusion of indigenous people in Guatemala. Lastly, we balance our analysis from Chapter 7 on state-related variables with a discussion of the other side of the coin: ways in which the state might actually hinder spillovers.

Building on the previous chapter’s discussion of obstacles to spillovers, this chapter addresses the two most important political impediments in each country: patronage in Honduras and polarization in Guatemala. While elements of both obstacles exist in both countries, party-based patronage is a more salient problem in Honduras than in Guatemala. We show the incidence of patronage in Honduras at the national level, the education sector in general, and within CMS. The ruling party can use patronage in PROHECO to reward and sustain party activism, strengthen the party's network, and favor particular constituencies with new schools. In Guatemala, in contrast, the key problem is intense mistrust among parties, and between parties and civic groups. We show how this mistrust makes this participatory governance initiative politically vulnerable.

We probe deeper into the impact of patronage and polarization. We focus on negative and positive effects. On the negative side, we demonstrate how patronage and polarization can undermine accountability in CMS. Whereas supporters argue that CMS increases accountability, partisan incursions in Honduras systematically block parents from selecting teachers and influencing other features of program management. Polarization in Guatemala reduced parents’ roles in their children’s schools. On the positive side for CMS supporters, we found that patronage increased the incentives of politicians to safeguard the program once external funding declined. We examine the survival of CMS in Honduras and contrast it with reversal in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and find that patronage—in addition to the scope of CMS and the degree of external funding—has helped ensure program survival.

Previous chapters treated spillovers as a dependent variable to be explained. This chapter considers the spillover as a possible independent variable on democratic life. Do newly acquired skills and civicness strengthen civil society’s capacity to take on new challenges, bargain successfully with the state, and reverse traditional gender roles that disenfranchise women? The evidence is not terribly encouraging, at least in the short term. While spillovers led to a “thickening” of civic networks in many communities, this effect may not necessarily connote a stronger civil society more empowered to advocate on behalf of the community and engage with the state. We also find that CMS led to some degree of inter- and intra- community fragmentation, brought forth by regulations governing the initiation of CMS projects; this fragmentation does not necessarily make local communities more democratic and it likely obstructs collective action. Lastly, we do not find major changes in the unequal gender dynamics of visited communities.

We provide a summary of our key findings. Participatory governance can attract new participants. Participation in these PG projects are not a dead-end affair: new participants generate the capacity to participate in other forms of participation. Several factors stimulate spillovers: state input in the form of training and resources, perceptions that the program is run effectively, and councils that are run more democratically. By the same token, we are less optimistic about the extent to which these spillovers can positively transform the quality of democracy in local communities: the opportunities to enact change are limited, the number of new participants is never large enough, and local politics in the form of polarization and clientelism can undermine many of the positive gains from participation.