Participatory Policy Research
The Institute for Policy Alternatives coordinates a series of research initiatives intended to put citizens at the centre of inquiry, and to register citizen voices in the debates about policy outcomes and impacts. IPA’s research capacity includes:
- Decentralization and Community Governance, including the diverse strategies through which the policies of decentralization are being articulated. Central to this research effort are (a) issues of public participation in local governance; (b) democratic representation and technocratic efficiency of local government; ( c) gender equality strategies and local governance; (d) decentralization and services for the poor.
- Access of the Poor to Basic Services: comprising a series of research efforts, using participatory tools, such as Citizen Report Card and Community Score Cards to collate and analyze citizen satisfaction with basic services provided to them in the name of poverty reduction. In 2003, IPA completed a study on Access to Justice and Basic Rights for the Poor in Northern Ghana. Other studies are underway, focusing on Citizen perspectives on Water Supply, Education, Health services, among others.
- Poverty Reduction Strategies – Examining their global perspectives and the local impacts. In seeking to engage the debate about strategies for poverty reduction, IPA focuses on the interfaces between global paradigms for coordinating resources to developing countries for the purpose of reducing poverty, and the micro-realities where the poor struggle for resources, capacities and voice to improve their wellbeing and livelihoods. Through a series of issue papers and participatory impact analyses, IPA interrogates the shifting boundaries of global paradigms and their impact on local discourses about poverty.
Poverty affects women more severely
Research Approach & Principles
All research efforts at IPA are founded upon the following approaches:
- Engaging Communities & Citizens, to enhance capacities of citizens to collate and analyze information, while providing them voice in the process of knowledge creation.
- Returning information Communities by Creating an Interface: As the cycle of research concludes, IPA ensures that communities and stakeholders from whom information was collected get a chance to receive feedback on the use to which their information is put.
- Engaging with Policy Practitioners: Most of IPA research efforts are oriented towards influencing policies. Our research therefore feeds into an advocacy initiative, to use empirical research as evidence for policy reform.
Communities actively engaged in information gathering
Communities get feedback after research