socially and economically disadvantaged, since genuine participation may require taking positions that are contrary to the interest of powerful groups. While the premise of participatory approaches is that the potential benefits outweigh such costs, this is by no means certain.

Some costs are easily quantifiable and some are not. Easily quantifiable costs can be indirectly measured as the opportunity costs of labor and transportation costs.<sup>16</sup> Not all individuals or groups in society face the same costs of participation. In principle, one would expect better-off individuals to participate less than poor ones, as they have a higher opportunity costs to labor. However, paradoxically, the poor and very poor often face very high costs of participation. This is so because even if the opportunity cost to labor of these groups is low, their necessity of subsistence makes their time more valuable. Another factor that is often recognized as directly raising the costs of participation is distance. Poor people often live far away from the centers of decision-making, so transport costs are high. Studies find that distance prevents poor people from participating, even when they have the legal right and the mechanisms to do so. In Ethiopia, for example, community members can approach local councils directly, but they do so very infrequently because of problems of physical distance and poor transportation (Govender 2003).

Poor and marginalized individuals and groups also face a number of other not easily quantifiable costs that have a negative impact on their capacity to make effective choices. Ex-ante, poor people face high costs for accessing information. By not having information, poor people in remote areas are not aware of the options they have to make meaningful choices. Getting that information, when available, increase their costs of participation. However, even if information were to have no cost, effective participation would not be assured, as citizens also face other social costs. Where community values and norms are not conducive to fair and democratic practices, poor and marginalized groups often bear the expost costs of deviating from social norms. At the extreme, mechanisms for citizens’ participation may be in place and formal rules may ensure that marginalized individuals have the right to participate in public decisions, but the costs can be immense, such as physical violence and ostracisms. For example, research on women’s rights has documented these costs, illustrating the physical violence that women and face when they choose to participate in the political sphere (Kabeer 1999).

All the previously described costs are borne by individuals or groups that choose to participate, but often costs accrue also to local governments that are formally in charge of participatory processes. A study on citizen participation and local accountability in Kenya concluded that “participation is costly, both for the local governments and for citizens” (DFID 2002). The organization of town-hall planning/budgeting meetings and conducting quality surveys represent direct monetary costs for local treasuries. Also, sometimes, local governments must incur the cost of visiting communities. A study on Ethiopia, for example, found that travel from the _woreda_ capital to communities was often hindered by shortage of government budget for per diem and fuel (WB 2001).

> 16 This is a combination of the time that it takes for an individual to participate with the distance that he or she needs to travel to make a choice.

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