Outside Funding and the Dynamics of Participation in Community

The poor and disadvantaged are widely seen as having weak organizations and low rates of participation in community associations, impeding their political representation and economic advancement. A number of policy initiatives aim to build participation and organizational strength among the disadvantaged by funding local community associations. Taking advantage of random assignment in a program which provided support to women's community associations in Kenya, we find little evidence that outside funding expanded organizational strength but substantial evidence that funding changed group membership and leadership. The program led younger women, more educated women, and women employed in the formal sector to enter the groups. Men, educated women, and new entrants moved into leadership positions, and government officials increased efforts to build vertical links to the groups. The rate at which members left groups due to conflicts doubled and exit rates among older women, the most socially marginalized demographic group, increased by two-thirds. A dynamic model based on the findings may help explain the relative weakness of organizations of the disadvantaged and low civic participation among the disadvantaged. 1 The authors would like to thank the World Bank Social Capital Initiative and the National Bureau of Economic Research for funding. We also thank the staff of ICS for their participation and support of this project, especially Robert Namunyu, Moses Osia, and Sylvie Moulin. This paper has benefited from discussions at seminars at Harvard University, UCSD, the World Bank Policy Research Division, Yale University, the Working Group on African Political Economy at the UCLA Center for Comparative and Global Research, and the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) as well as from research assistance from Dave Evans, Nava Ashraf, Stephen Barham, and Maria Gomez. . We thank Ben Olken and Dan Wood for suggestions on this model. We thank David Evans, Archon Fung, Jennifer Hochschild, Jessica Leino, Malgosia Madajewicz, Edward Miguel, and Aseem Prakash for comments. All errors are our own. 2 University of Washington, Box 353055, Seattle, WA 91891. (206) 297-7142. [email protected] 3 Harvard University, Littauer Center 207, Cambridge, MA 02138. (617) 496-9195. [email protected] “What is it...that the poor reply when asked what might make the greatest difference to their lives? They say, organizations of their own so that they may negotiate with government, with traders, and with nongovernmental organizations. Direct assistance through community driven programs so that they may shape their own destinies. Local ownership of funds, so that they may put a stop to corruption.” James Wolfensohn, former World Bank president (Wolfensohn, 1999).