Paper short abstract:

The participation of the vulnerable group in the development process is the core of the Community-driven Development (CDD) approach. This paper examines the impact of the empowerment and the inclusion of females and the poor on the outcome of a community-based poverty reduction program.

Paper long abstract:

Government-citizen relations have evolved. Citizens are no longer served merely as the object of development programs. In the Indonesian case, all stages of the Community-based Poverty Reduction Program, from information dissemination, planning, proposal preparation, project selection, resource allocation, implementation, and monitoring, require a high degree of citizen participation, particularly of the marginalized. Yet it is still questionable whether citizen participation plays an effective role or the engagement of citizen itself creates more socioeconomic disparities.

This paper examines the effectiveness of the CDD approach in relation to the empowerment and the inclusion of females and the poor in the Community-based Poverty Reduction Program (PNPM-Mandiri Program). This national-scale poverty reduction program, which was launched in 2007 and was completed in 2014, covered most of the provinces and implemented to boost the empowerment of the whole local community, particularly females and the poor. Indeed the government administrative data on PNPM-Mandiri shows that females and the poor were underrepresented in the decision-making process and this, in turn, affects the selection of CDD projects. Using a quantitative approach, this study investigates the government data on PNPM-Mandiri to examine how the existing inequality in power and resources influences the decision-making process of CDD, which then can influence the outcome of the CDD, potentially widening the disparities.