Participation: Making a difference? Critical analysis of the participatory claims of change, reversal and empowerment.

Participation has become very popular as a new strategy and approach in research, in policy, in private and public
affairs. As an alternative to top-down approaches participation promises to empower people, to acknowledge and to build
competence and (local) knowledge, to recognise and to be responsive to people’s different and differentiated needs and
interests. The difference participation promises to make concerns above all an engagement with questions of difference.