The Socio-economic Effect of Community-Driven Development in Conflict-affected Regions: Evidence from Cambodia

Abstract

Community-driven development (CDD) has become increasingly common approach used by mul-tilateral development banks, governments, and NGOs to address the needs of the poor local communities in developing countries. CDD is characterized by the approach of giving control of decision and resources to the local community. CDD approaches are particularly prominent in conflict-affected communities which enables local community to regain sense of social cohesion and to restore livelihood. While much of literature focused on documenting the challenges and benefits of CDD approach in conflict affected context, what is yet to be established is whether CDD in conflict affected context can generate change in social and economic outcomes. Thus, this paper explores whether or not community-driven development (CDD) project af-fects a villages social capital and economic outcomes in post-conflict Cambodia. We compare the impact of CDD by looking at data from two rounds of surveys (baseline and endline). The results indicate that the project significantly strengthens the capacity of self-reliance, especially in vulnerable groups such as low-income, less educated and ethnic and religious minority house-holds. However, CDD was shown to have very limited impact on improving economic condition. Although the project slightly increases the household monthly income, the CDD project does not generate remarkable changes in community-level economic conditions. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 explains the historical background of Cambodia and the unique features of this CDD project. Section 3 describes the intervention and data collec-tion. Section 4 outlines the estimation models used in the analysis. In Section 5, we present the results of the program and explain their implications.