SOME ANALYTICAL ISSUES IN MEASURING EMPOWERMENT FOR THE POOR, WITH CONCERN FOR COMMUNITY AND LOCAL GOVERNANCE

Devising operational measures of 'empowerment ' is particularly challenging because of the inherent ambiguity and elusiveness of what is to be measured. It can be argued with justification that empowerment does not really exist in its own right, that is really a reflection of other things that do exist. While this does not mean that we cannot measure empowerment, it does require of our concepts and methods greater sophistication and deeper thought than when measuring phenomena whose ontological status is simpler and more certain. It may seem pedantic to raise ontological questions in a forum intent upon producing practical results for a very desirable purpose: empowering the poor. But we need to be clear about what it is that we want to measure before getting heavily engaged with criteria and methodologies. Empowerment presents special problems because what it refers to, i.e., 'power, ' even though reified without a second thought in common parlance, has long raised serious ontological issues.1 Even the weak criterion sometimes suggested for things as ill-defined as 'art ' or 'pornography '--you'll know it when you see it-- does not work with power and empowerment because the latter terms can be identified or verified only by their results. These results are associated, in ways that are complex and often undeterminable, with various processes that lead to these outcomes