Community Capacity and Development: New Approaches to Governance and Evaluation

Broadening the view of development beyond economics is necessary to reduce poverty. Alternative development with a special focus on rural areas and communities is proffered as a more diverse way to address pressing international development needs. Community capacity provides a framework for understanding the comprehensive nature of alternative development. This book unpacks the concept of community capacity and its important relationship to governance, elaborating on the understanding of community to include the local government, organizations and all stakeholders. Governance issues such as decentralization, localization, democracy and participatory practices are advocated to build community capacity and affect development. Tools to improve governance, including the logical framework, policy management cycle and evaluation are explored. The new concepts of community-driven economics and community leadership are introduced to address alternative development and community capacity building. The new A-A-A framework of community capacity develops through a post-modernist, post-positivist, qualitative look at case studies of rural revitalization in Japan and the Philippines.