Engaging Communities for Local Economic Development: Lessons from the Philippines

Cahill A¹*

1. Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

Moves towards political decentralisation across Asia have had extensive repercussions on the role that government, civil society, the business sector and international donor agencies play in development. In the Philippines, political decentralisation has accompanied economic decentralisation, with the responsibility for income generation shifting to local government units. Despite this, dominant economic discourses continue to promote neo-liberal economic reforms, such as the increasing withdrawal of government from the provision of basic services and an emphasis on income generation through foreign investment and export-oriented industrialisation. These reforms have been particularly difficult for local governments in rural areas that do not have the appropriate infrastructure, resources or capacity to attract such investment. Decentralisation has also led to donor agencies questioning the ways in which they deliver aid, as they attempt to shift from assisting centralised national government agencies to supporting initiatives at the local level.

It is in this shifting context that ‘community participation’ in governance is promoted by the media, government, development agencies and academics as essential to local economic development. This presentation, based on my research on an alternative economic development project funded by the Australian government in Bohol, the Philippines, will attempt to analyse the underlying assumptions of this view by asking: What constitutes community? What does participation mean in this context? Who are the actors driving development? What are the power relations between these actors? What new opportunities exist for alternative forms of community participation in economic development to emerge in the context of decentralisation?

Click here to view the full paper