PARTICIPATION, POVERTY, AND ADMINISTRATION.

A program of maximum participation proved to be politically unfeasible, while the very concept of participation displayed a brilliant ambiguity. Maximum feasible participation emerged unclear, unexamined and ununderstood. Because it served many agendas, it enjoyed a vitality, which permitted it to grow in this uncertain terrain. The theme of participation confronts administrators in two basic ways, one is that it focuses attention upon the poor, a group largely neglected by many public bureaucracies and second, it emphasizes degrees of citizen involvement which have not been typical in public bureaucracies. The increasing use of professionals and the redefinition of administration as a professional field has fed the notion that planning is politics-free. Policy involvement in community action planning is propelled by the contention that citizens read poor citizens and thus should have a focal role in developing plans, which affect them. The demand for policy involvement today is different because leaders of the black and the poor recognize the importance of policy involvement and are organizing to see that it becomes reality.