Community-driven development, governance, and collective action: Overview of the evidence

Jessica Leight, Anne Angsten Clark and Katherine Reynolds

Project notes from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: As foreign aid declines, which interventions should we prioritize? Advocates of community-driven development (CDD) have long argued that we should ask this question of the communities and people whom aid is meant to serve. CDD provides village-level grants and facilitation that support communities in choosing and implementing the projects they consider local priorities, including basic health and education services, local infrastructure, income-generating activities, or other community priorities. In recent years, a growing body of evidence has begun to document and assess the effects of this approach. This brief and a companion brief1 synthesize findings from a range of rigorous evaluations to describe what we know about the multidimensional impacts of CDD in low- and middle-income contexts and highlight gaps that should be addressed in future research. Here, we focus on the effects of CDD on governance and collective action.

Keywords: development aid; community development; governance; social capital; women's participation; collective action (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:prnote:182189

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