The riddle of community development: Factors influencing participation and management in twenty-nine african and latin american communities

Much emphasis has been placed on designing development projects to include community participation (CP), which is normally seen as a way of ensuring project effectiveness, but less attention has been directed to identifying households that exclude themselves and their reasons for doing so. This paper uses household-level survey data from twenty-nine African and Latin American communities to show the extent to which some socioeconomic characteristics of a household influence the members' willingness to participate in community development (CD). It provides answers to the question, 'in what ways do income, education, security of tenure, household type and household size correlate with variables that are measures of CP and management?' From the findings, the paper concludes that income levels and housing status have positive correlation with factors influencing CP and management. On the other hand, educational level, household size and family type have no significant correlation with CP and management. Two lessons are drawn from the study. First, efforts to promote CP as a useful approach to CD require a sociological study of household characteristics. Prior information about a community's household set-up can help project organizers and outsiders to develop realistic expectations about CP. Second, the findings that certain groups of households do not participate while others are more likely to play a leading role have implications in terms of the distribution of the benefits of community intervention programmes. Those who play leading roles will not only capture the benefits but will also translate their dominance into unequal power relations at the community level.

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