The boundaries and limits of community management: Lessons from the water sector in Ghana

Community management, a central part of community development, has gained wide acceptance among service intermediaries as a result of the failure of the top-down approach to community development. Govern- mental policy instruments therefore aim at a bottom-up approach in basic service delivery such as health care, water supply and sanitation without adequate critique of the circumstances. Operationally, the extent to which community management can be inserted into develop- ment strategies has remained elusive with mixed and often costly results. This paper critically examines community management and suggests some recommendations to help service intermediaries in the application of community management in communities larger than rural villages.

[1]  J. Briscoe,et al.  Water for Rural Communities: Helping People to Help Themselves , 1988 .

[2]  John Abbott,et al.  Sharing the City: Community Participation in Urban Management , 1996 .

[3]  William Cronon,et al.  Changes in the Land , 1983 .

[4]  P. Evans,et al.  Community management today: the role of communities in the management of improved water supply systems , 1993 .

[5]  M. Shucksmith,et al.  Rural development in practice: issues arising in Scotland and Northern Ireland , 2001 .

[6]  Michael Wood.  Community management of rural water supplies , 1994 .

[7]  T. Allen.  The Right to Property in Commonwealth Constitutions: The meaning of property , 2000 .

[8]  C. Moser,et al.  Community participation in urban projects in the Third World , 1989 .

[9]  Linda Milazi,et al.  Community management of rural water supply , 1997 .

[10]  David Sauri-Pujol,et al.  Environment and Economy: Property Rights and Public Policy , 1992 .

[11]  A. Cotton,et al.  COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT OF URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. (INCLUDES APPENDICES). , 1994 .

[12]  Barry Checkoway,et al.  Six strategies of community change , 1995 .

[13]  Daniel A. Mazmanian,et al.  Implementation and public policy , 1983 .

[14]  N. O. Laryea.  Challenges and prospects of community management in Ghana , 1994 .

[15]  William Cronon,et al.  Changes in the land : Indians, colonists, and the ecology of New England , 1984 .

[16]  E. O’Rourke.  The International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade: Dogmatic Means to a Debatable End , 1992 .

[17]  Glenn Laverack,et al.  An identification and interpretation of the organizational aspects of community empowerment , 2001 .

[18]  Alan Gilbert,et al.  Sharing the city: Community participation in urban management , 1997 .