A shift has taken place in the structures of local governance in many developing countries. Whereas in the past, the central government provided local infrastructure (water and sanitation systems, roads, electricity, schools, and healthcare), today communities face these responsibilities themselves. The shift has been prompted and accompanied by changing global thoughts on appropriate development approaches and forced by difficulties in fiscal affairs. The shift matches a belief that more participation and more decentralization result in more democracy and better development. To this effect, neoliberal decentralization policies have been enacted in various countries to promote this "bottom-up" strategy. The strategy favors decision-making at the local level, through an alliance among local governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), private firms, and citizens to identify, prioritize, implement, and monitor projects. This study examines the impact of the participatory approach in two communities in Kenya-one of several East African countries to have instituted participatory development programs over the last decade. The study assesses the physical, socioeconomic, and political impact of the Local Authority Service Delivery Action Plan (LASDAP), a national development program. The findings are based on interviews conducted with government and local officials, reviews of documents, interviews with local residents, and visits to project sites within the boundaries of two local government councils: the Municipal Council of Nakuru (MCN) and Gusii County Council (GCC). Examination of the LASDAP program in Kenya suggests that despite the ideological fervor that often accompanies this development approach, program outcomes failed to measure up. Very little of the development funds were spent on the implementation of projects, local participation rates were low, and the process did not fare well at promoting greater transparency and accountability within local governance structures. Furthermore, local power dynamics were simply too strong, too complicated, and too intertwined to be inconsequential to the development process. As a result of these shortcomings, residents have developed an attitude of resignation rather than enthusiasm, with participation. In the conclusion, technical solutions are recommended for addressing the key problems encountered within these two communities' development processes. However, this research finds that achieving long-lasting solutions to these communities' social ills will require both a technical and sociopolitical approach to development. A sociopolitical approach is required because elite capture of the development process has not only resulted in an unequal distribution of new resources, but also continues to reinforce the norm of inequality. Prior development programs did not fare any better. Thus, addressing the underlying issues of social justice and unequal power will demand that the development process be politicized, and not simply be conducted as a technical exercise. Rather than focusing on the primacy of the individual, this research focuses on the state, and finds that the state needs to play a bigger role in the provision of basic needs. An interventionist state is proposed, one which enacts socially democratic policies to ensure that amongst other things, the basic needs of each community's most vulnerable members are met. Without such, this and future development programs will only be trying to eradicate the very inequality that is being recreated by the current system of neoliberal policies.