The Role of Power Dynamics for Community Engagement: A Case Study in Myanmar

The participation of grassroots communities became a must of development projects. International organizations advocate for the inclusion of community members to ensure projects’ success and sustainability. However, community engagement is often undermined by existing power dynamics between implementing agencies and communities. Power imbalances result from the lack of interdependency between actors and are manifested with the employment of institutional norms and assumptions. Through a case study in Myanmar, this research explores the influence of power dynamics on community engagement in development projects. It does so by illustrating the consequences that implementing agencies’ assumptions about participation have on community engagement practices. Semi-structured qualitative interviews investigated how staff and volunteers perceive the notion of participation and whether their perceptions influence their behaviour. Results indicate that assumptions about the inherent positive value of participation simplify staff and volunteers’ understanding of this concept, its challenges as well as its enablers. Moreover, findings show that implementing agencies are constrained by projects’ structures and lack institutional incentives to question their understanding and current practice of community engagement. This, in turn, leads to three hindering community engagement practices: limited consultation, careless provision of (dis)incentives, and inadequate feedback mechanisms. The research concludes that the exercise of power negatively influences community engagement practices in development projects in Myanmar. For the achievement of meaningful community engagement, the notion of participation should be freed from assumptions. Thereby, the research recommends lengthening projects’ timeframes and rebalancing power dynamics between implementing agencies and community members in development projects by increasing interdependency between the actors