The Potential of Community Development

Community development offers a distinct approach to respond to the problem of diminishing free spaces where citizens can exchange views and learn about democracy and citizenship. It involves citizens as co-creators of the common world rather than as consumers. It has been supported by governments in different countries as a way of defusing tensions within communities, addressing the crisis of political legitimacy, encouraging citizen responsibility, as well as co-producing services with the state. This chapter tracks the ways in which community development has played these different roles over time and the implications for the relationship between state and citizen. It reviews its changing relationship with the state, and the critiques generated by different approaches and programmes. It concludes with an assessment of the challenges it faces in seeking to deepen democracy and foster creative citizenship, in the face of recurring attempts to shrink the state and leave the market as the principal mediating factor in society.