Participation and Consent: The Local Politics of Urban Upgrading

• In Event: Development Beyond Aid: Civil Society Actors in the Global South

Abstract

How do governments cultivate ties with grassroots organizations in order to secure civil society’s
consent to state policies? What effects does such embeddedness have on governmental political authority?
The role of public–private partnerships in public policy implementation has expanded significantly in
recent decades across both developed and developing countries. Across contexts, states rely on nonstate
actors to implement public policy—NGOs and advocacy groups in the United States, and unions and
grassroots organizations in developing countries (Amengual 2016; Bradlow 2024; Clemens and Guthrie
2011; Clemens 2020; Garay 2016; Gibson 2017; McDonnell 2024; Rodríguez-Muñiz 2017; Rich 2023).
NGOs, social movements, and grassroots organizations often possess local networks, intimate knowledge
of community dynamics, and legitimacy among individuals, making them effective intermediaries
between state bureaucracies and beneficiaries. As a result, they have become indispensable partners in
governance. While scholars have extensively documented how states rely on nonstate actors to implement
policies on the ground, we know less about how governments construct these relationships in the first
place—particularly when grassroots organizations are not aligned with the government.

Author

• Alejandra Cueto Piazza, University of Southern California