This paper asks why policy processes in Zimbabwe have consistently reinforced a highly technocratic approach to natural resources management, while excluding alternative perspectives and framings of problems for policy. Political contexts and interests, it is argued, shape policy discourses.
While there has been continuity between the colonial and immediate post-colonial periods, in more recent times the range of actors engaged in the policy process has widened, responding to state reform, the growth of a diverse range of civil society organisations and a post-Rio international environmental agenda.
Reflecting these changes, policy processes have taken on new shapes. Participation has become a key theme. The paper takes four case studies to ask how substantive this participation is. It concludes that, while much participation is ‘instrumental’ and only succeeds in reiterating early narratives and technocratic approaches, policy spaces can also emerge where actor-networks can be constructed promoting more fundamentally ’empowering’ forms of participation in policy processes.
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