DIME – FRAGILE STATESDUBAI, MAY 31 – JUNE 4

Existing Evidence and Unanswered Questions about Community Driven Reconstruction

Ryan SheelyKennedy School of GovernmentHarvard UniversityDIME Workshop, DubaiMay 31, 2010

Outline of Presentation

Concepts and Definitions Community Driven Development Community Driven Reconstruction

What are the effects of CDR? Theory and Evidence Institution Building and Governance Reform Social Capital, Social Cohesion, and Conflict

Management Economic Recovery

Unanswered Questions and Implications for Program Design and Evaluation

What is Community Driven Development (CDD)? Community Driven Development-

Development Projects in which residents of localities are given direct control over key project decisions (Mansuri and Rao 2004)

Two Components of Community Driven Development: Decentralization-Central Government Cedes

Some Degree of Decision Making to Lower Levels of Government (Ostrom and Agrawal 2004)

Participation-Active engagement of individuals in the process of choosing, implementing, and managing a project (Gibson and Woolcock 2008)

Hypothesized Benefits of CDD

Better Targeting of Both Private Transfers and Public Goods

Higher Quality Provision and Management of Infrastructure

Empowerment and Inclusion of Marginalized Segments of Society

Reduced Elite Capture and Increased Accountability

Increased Social Cohesion and Capacity for Collective Action

Source: Mansuri and Rao 2004

What is Community Driven Reconstruction (CDR)?

Community Driven Reconstruction- Decentralized and Participatory efforts at social, economic, and political reconstruction in both emerging and stable post-conflict settings (McBride and Patel 2007)

Components of Typical CDR Programs: Creating or building the capacity of democratic

local institutions- Community Development Councils (CDCs)

Facilitating processes to identify priorities for infrastructure and economic recovery

Providing grants for the implementation of projects selected by CDCs

Oversight, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Projects

How is the Context of CDR Projects Different from CDD Interventions? Destruction of physical infrastructure and

loss of household assets Poorly Functioning on Non-Existent Law

Enforcement or Representative Institutions Disenfranchisement of entire communities

and especially vulnerable sub-groups, including: Women Youth Ethnic or Religious Minorities

Need to reintegrate and reconcile ex-combatants and victims of violence/ displaced civilians

Source: McBride and Patel 2007

Hypothesized Benefits of CDR

The Decentralized and Participatory Nature of Community Driven Development has been argued to be ideally suited to the challenges associated with post-conflict reconstruction (Cliffe et al 2003), including:

Institution Building and Governance Reform Local Accountability and Participation as a starting point

for scaling-up Democratization and Decentralization initiatives

Promoting Social Cohesion, and Conflict Management Increasing trust between and within social groups,

preventing conflicts from escalating to violence Economic Recovery

Infrastructure Creation and Upkeep Livelihoods

What evidence is available about the effectiveness of CDR ?

Institution Building and Governance Reform Randomized Evaluation of a CDR Program in Liberia

(Fearon et al 2009) found moderate positive effects on democratic attitudes

Randomized Evaluation of NSP in Afghanistan (Beath et al 2009)- Institutional design can reduce elite capture of public projects

Social Cohesion and Conflict Management Strong effects of CDR on cooperation and trust in Liberia

(Fearon et al 2009) Data from Indonesia (Barron et al 2007) indicates that

CDR institutions can prevent escalation from conflict to violence

Economic Recovery Fearon et al (2009) find limited effects on material well-

being

Consistently Overlooked Aspects of Post-Conflict State Building

Institutions and Governance Efforts to build new CDR institutions often

overlook existing community governance institutions that enforce norms and provide collective goods (Swidler 2009)

Qualitative evidence suggests that these institutions can be resilient, effective, and legitimate even in the face of substantial violence and displacement (Baker 2002)

Social Capital and Cohesion Civil War settings are often characterized by

high levels of collective action and social cohesion (Wood 2003, Kalyvas and Kocher 2007, Bellows and Miguel 2009)

Unanswered Questions about CDR Which particular aspects of reconstruction

outcomes (if any) are caused specifically by the participatory nature of CDR institutions?

What is the effect of decentralized vs. centralized control at each step of a local reconstruction project: Planning and Priority Setting Revenue Raising Contracting and Implementation Maintenance and Sustainability

To what extent does incorporating traditional local institutions in the design of Community Development Councils affect reconstruction outcomes?

Conclusion: Implications for Designing and Evaluating CDR Programs

CDR Project Design is less a matter of adopting best-practices and more about asking a set of context-sensitive questions, including: Who is the community? How was this community

affected by violence and conflict? What governance institutions already exist in these

communities? To what extent are they effective? How directly or indirectly will community members

participate? What local social factors may prevent inclusive participation?

What governance responsibilities should be devolved to community councils? What responsibilities should remain with municipal or central governments?

Conclusion: Implications for Designing and Evaluating CDR Programs

Evaluating the Effectiveness of CDR Projects Requires careful research design related to: Specifying Valid Measures for Governance,

Social Cohesion, and Infrastructure Outcomes Measuring Outcomes Before Intervention to

Understand How Baseline Community and Individual Characteristics Interact with CDR Project

Measuring Outcomes After Intervention to Understand Sequencing and Sustainability of Program Effects

Varying specific institutional components of CDR to understand why programs do and don’t work

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Anand, P. B. 2004. “Getting infrastructure priorities right in post-conflict reconstruction.” Work 4: 5.   Arcand, J. L. 2008. “Decentralization, Local Governance, and Rural Development.” Agriculture and development:

147.   Arcand, J. L. “The Making of a (vice-) President: Party Politics, Ethnicity, Village Loyalty and Community-Driven

Development.”.   Arcand, J. L., and L. Bassole. 2007a. “Does Community Driven Development Work? Evidence from Senegal.”

Etude et document CERDI.   Arcand, J. L., and L. Bassole. 2007b. “Essential Heterogeneity in the Impact of Community Driven Development.”

processed, CERDI-CNRS, Université d’Auvergne, novembre.   Baker, B. 2002. “African Anarchy: Is it the States, Regimes, or Societies that are Collapsing?.” Politics 19(3): 131-

138.   Bardhan, P. 2002. “Decentralization of governance and development.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 16(4):

185-205.   Barron, P., R. Diprose, and M. Woolcock. 2007. “Local conflict and development projects in Indonesia: part of the

problem or part of a solution?.” World.   Barron, Patrick et al. 2009. Community-Based Reintegration in Aceh. The World Bank. Beath, A., F. Christia, and R. Enikolopov. 2008. “RANDOMIZED IMPACT EVALUATION OF AFGHANISTAN’S NATIONAL

SOLIDARITY PROGRAMME (NSP).”.   Bellows, J., and E. Miguel. 2009. “War and local collective action in Sierra Leone.” Journal of Public Economics.   Cliffe, S., S. Guggenheim, and M. Kostner. “Community-driven reconstruction as an instrument in war-to-peace

transitions.” World Bank CPR Working Paper 7.   Coleman, E. A., and M. C. Lopez. 2010. “Reconstructing Cooperation from Civil Conflict: Experimental Evidence

from Colombian Development Policy.”.   Fearon, J. D., M. Humphreys, and J. M. Weinstein. 2009. “Can development aid contribute to social cohesion after

civil war? evidence from a field experiment in post-conflict liberia.” American Economic Review 99(2): 287-291.   Gibson, C., and M. Woolcock. 2008. “Empowerment, Deliberative Development, and Local-Level Politics in

Indonesia: Participatory Projects as a Source of Countervailing Power.” Studies in Comparative International Development (SCID) 43(2): 151-180.  

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Kalyvas, S. N., and M. A. Kocher. 2007. “HOW “FREE” IS FREE RIDING IN CIVIL WARS?.” World Politics 59(2): 177-216.  

King, E. and C. Samii. 2009. “Interventions to Promote Social Cohesion in Sub-Saharan Africa.”.   Mansuri, G., and V. Rao. 2004. “Community-based and-driven development: A critical review.” The World

Bank Research Observer 19(1): 1.   Mansuri, G., and V. Rao. 2007. Update note on community-based and-driven development. mimeo.

Washington DC: World Bank. McBride, Lizanne, and Naina Patel. “Lessons Learned on Community Driven Reconstruction.” Available at:

http://www.theirc.org/resource-file/lessons-learned-community-driven-reconstruction [Accessed May 25, 2010].

Moehler, D. C. 2010. “Democracy, Governance, and Randomized Development Assistance.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 628(1): 30.  

Olken, B. A. 2008. Direct democracy and local public goods: Evidence from a field experiment in indonesia. National Bureau of Economic Research Cambridge, Mass., USA.  

Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge Univ Pr.  

Ostrom, E. and A. Agrawal 2001. “Collective action, property rights, and decentralization in resource use in India and Nepal.” Politics and Society 29(4): 485-514.  

Putnam, R. D. 2001. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster.   Putnam, R. D. 2002. Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton university press.   Singleton, S., and M. Taylor. 1992. “Common property, collective action and community.” Journal of

Theoretical Politics 4(3): 309.   Swidler, Ann. 2009. “African Chiefdoms and Institutional Resilience: Public Goods and Private Strategies.”.

Unpublished Manuscript, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley. Voors, M. J., and E. H. Bulte. 2008. “Unbundling Institutions at the Local Level: Conflict, Institutions and

Income in Burundi.” Institute of Development Studies, Sussex: HiCN Working Paper 49.   Wood, E. J. 2003. Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador. Cambridge Univ Pr.