Fostering Community-Driven Development : What Role for the State?

States can do much to tap
community-level energies, and resources for development, if
they seek to interact more synergistically with local
communities. The broader spin-off is creating a
developmental society, and polity. Using case studies from
Asia and Latin America, the authors show how: 1) State
efforts to bring about land reform, tenancy reform, and
expanding non-crop sources of income, can broaden the
distribution of power in rural communities, laying the basis
for more effective community-driven collective action; and
2) Higher levels of government can form alliances with
communities, putting pressure on local authorities from
above, and below to improve development outcomes at the
local level. These alliances can also be very effective in
catalyzing collective action at community level, and
reducing :local capture" by vested interests. There are
several encouraging points that emerge from these case
studies. First, these powerful institutional changes do not
necessarily take long to generate. Second, they can be
achieved in a diversity of settings: tightly knit or
loose-knit communities; war-ravaged, or relatively stable;
democratic, or authoritarian; with land reform, or (if
carefully managed) even without. Third, there are strong
political payoffs in terms of legitimacy, and popular
support for those who support such developmental action.