This book examines the conceptual foundations of participatory approaches to building local institutions and builds an analytical framework in which civic participation is viewed as a potential solution to specific civil society, market, and government failures. It then uses this framework to review the evidence on the efficacy of participatory pproaches to problems of development nd to identify the ways in which bserved policy choices for inducing participation are intimately shaped nd constrained by the historical, sociocultural, and political context. In assembling the evidence, the authors take a broad multi-disciplinary view, drawing on the evidence to provide key lessons for policy