Competing for Development: How Programme Design in Community-Based Development Can Undermine Local Collective Action Capacity

In areas with entrenched poverty and weak state presence, community-based development (CBD) initiatives offer a means to secure the provision of local public goods and services. In CBD approaches, today widely employed by governments and donors, communities prioritise local needs and may contribute resources and labour. External actors provide supplementary funding and support, sometimes subsequent to some form of application and selection process. Proponents predict the approach can strengthen local cohesion and mobilisation capacity. This article argues that some CBD designs may, counter to expectation, erode local collective action capacity. Programmes that combine significant upfront effort with a low probability of receiving external support require that communities mobilise and coordinate under considerable uncertainty about the payoff. If iterative, this may undermine willingness to contribute to collective endeavours. Drawing on data from 87 interviews, we examine a government-backed CBD programme and compare with an NGO-backed programme with a different design fielded in the same local context. In the main case, high uncertainty of funding depresses residents’ willingness to engage in collective efforts, while a shadow case substantiates the counterfactual. The analyses contribute to our understanding of how competition in CBD programmes, intended to stimulate local organising and ownership, may have longer-term negative implications.