When Should a CDD Approach be Used?
2.5 When Should a CDD Approach be Used?
32. The case for using a CDD approach seems quite compelling, but many of the arguments offered would apply to community participation in general. 34 When and why should one then move to a more intensive form of community participation? Essentially, the answer is that a CDD approach is warranted in situations of local institutional failure, be it market institutions, public services, or local governments.
These failures can be of two types 35 (Figure 3):
(i) failures of omission, when local institutions are simply absent or nonexistent, as may be the case with local credit markets, management bodies for common property resources, or in post- conflict and post-disaster situations; and
(ii) failures of commission, when existing local institutions are nonfunctional either due to lack of capacity, or in more negative situations on account of corruption, elite capture, or lack of accountability.
33. Thus, the vacuum created by the absence or nonperformance of local institutions is the key mandate for a CDD approach to local development. Such vacuum of local institutions is most clearly seen after a conflict or natural disaster, and it is no surprise that the first applications of the CDD approach
were seen in a post-conflict setting. 36 The CDD approach is particularly beneficial in these contexts because it allows for micro-level recovery, building of social cohesion, and a rapid and efficient use of
31 For more on a rights-based approach to development, see http://www.unhchr.ch/development/approaches 32 The Declaration on the Right to Development states that "the right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of
which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized." See Declaration on the Right to Development, 1986. Available: www.ohchr.org.
33 Stiglitz (2002), p.168. 34 Most proponents of CDD would argue that the benefits of community participation are only fully achieved when one goes
all the way to a CDD approach rather than relying on less-empowering CBD methods. 35 Following the nomenclature of Krueger (1990).
36 Examples for the World Bank include the Angola Social Action Project launched in 1995 and the Community Reintegration and Development Project in Rwanda in 1997. The first World Bank Social Fund was also launched in a post-crisis situation
in Bolivia in response to the severe unemployment and poverty caused by the economic adjustment crisis in 1987.
emergency resources. 37 Since then the approach has been mainstreamed into numerous other sectors and country contexts. 38
34. As a corollary, where local institutions are representative, responsive, accountable, and on the whole well-performing, there is little need for
Figure 3: A CDD Approach is Warranted by Local
a CDD intervention. It also follows that CDD
Institution Failure
operations should be interim strategies (for 5–10 years) that once scaled-up are meant to
be integrated into a broader system of decentralized local government or sustainable local market/commercial relationships. It is now recognized more
Local Institutions
Local Institutions Non-
clearly by both governments and donors that Functional
Absent
- Markets absent
- Corruption
CDD operations should increasingly link
- Public services
- Lack of capacity
with local governments and eventually
absent
- Lack of
operate through formal institutions. Thus,
- Post-conflict
accountability
new-generation CDD projects are
- Post-disaster
- Exclusion
emphasizing much stronger links to formal
- Nascent
- Non-responsive
institutions as part of a local development
decentralization
local government
framework. 39
35. Further, the World Bank 40 also
emphasizes that CDD approaches are best
Resulting Application Contexts:
used for goods and services that are small in
- Rural/urban community infrastructure – rural roads,
scale, not complex, and that require local
rural electrification, irrigation, water supply, urban
cooperation for their effective provision (e.g.,
neighborhood infrastructure, education, health
common-pool goods, public goods, and civil
- Common property resource management – forestry,
goods). Further, as noted by the World Bank coastal resources, water supply OED (2005), the success of the CDD
- Micro-enterprise development/cooperatives
approach is also more likely when it builds
- Local governance/decentralization support
on existing collective action initiatives, and
- Other goods/ services that are small scale, not complex,
and require local cooperation
has political champions to support it at the local level.