Policy makers regard community capacity building as a key success factor in a range of policy interventions, including sustainability. Local Government Planning policy in particular has witnessed a repositioning of efforts towards building community capacity, and the newly formed Department of Urban Management (Qld) is seeking to ‘mainstream’ such initiatives across South East Queensland. Yet the wealth of attention focused on capacity building arguably says less about the effectiveness of such initiatives and more about how capacity building operates as a popular conceptual idea associated with benign interpretations that everyone can buy into. Indeed, there remains an incomplete understanding of the possibilities of releasing community capacity. As a term, it is rather reminiscent of Arnstein’s interpretation of public participation as being a bit like eating spinach because ultimately it is good for you. Key questions are left unconsidered. How for example is the notion of community capacity building to be interpreted? Are such interpretations sufficient to understand the processes and practices involved to drive towards a sustainable future? Michael Lunn, Principal to the SustainUs team attempts to address these issues.
The predominance of the ‘deficit’ model
The assumption at the heart of this month’s newsletter is that community capacity has, historically, been conceptualised through a ‘deficit’ model approach; a deficit to be corrected through intervention if communities are to play an active role in delivering a sustainable future. Such intervention is driven by the belief that existing practices and processes of sustainability, which have been designed and established by professionals, are more effective with the active involvement of local communities and/or stakeholders once they have been ‘brought up to speed’ with the concept of sustainability. My own definition of community capacity building in the context of driving sustainable outcomes is:
… a wide range of support, techniques and initiatives which aim build the capacity of individuals or organisations within communities to contribute effectively towards the achievement of sustainability outcomes and projects.(Lunn, 2004)
The ‘deficit’ acknowledged in standard approaches to capacity building can be interpreted as operating at different levels: at the level of the individual (policy officer or change agent), the group, and the wider community. Different policy goals may also be associated with the distinct levels of intervention, contrasting community-wide interventions designed to deliver ‘civil renewal’ with interventions at the individual and group level more focused on creating ‘good citizens’ able to engage in local governance arrangements and local economic markets. Indeed, shared assumptions about the nature of the deficit at the three levels will tend to lead to different interventions.
Assumptions underpinning approaches |
Related policy objectives |
Policy solutions |
|
Individual deficit – social pathology |
Engage in professionally determined
processes |
Tools and techniques to enhance participation – individual capacity skills
|
|
Group deficit – social exclusion
|
Engage in ‘new’ governance processes
|
Enhancement of partnership skills
Group capacity skills
|
|
Community deficit – democratic deficit
|
Ø Legitimating existing decision making structures
Ø Endorses representative democratic system
Ø Political modernisation
Ø Civil renewal
|
Ø Active community engagement
Ø Building community networks
Ø Community influenced partnerships and
Ø decision-making structures
|
Box 1 (Above) shows a range of issues, policy objectives and solutions that may be relevant to the ‘capacity debate’. It serves to make the assumptions underpinning the approaches to building capacity at the different levels more explicit and also shows how these contribute to the formation of policy objectives and the subsequent policy solutions.
A critique of the deficit model
So what are the problems with the deficit model? I have two primary concerns. First, it pays no attention to the capacity of institutions to overcome inherent barriers to engagement. This is crucial given the predominance of partnerships and governance arrangements. The capacity of individuals and communities has to be measured against the capacity and effectiveness of partnership structures and processes to engage with their communities and/or stakeholders. Second, the definition gives no indication of an end point. What is capacity being built towards, or is this merely a means in itself? Is it to build capacity towards a more effective implementation of existing policy ideas and solutions, or to build capacity towards a less comfortable, more empowered and ‘awkward’ but self determined community?
Everyone agrees that capacity building in communities is a ‘good thing’. But Michael Lunn argues that this masks a false consensus and fails to recognise models of community engagement which are built on what skills individuals already have to contribute towards a sustainable future.
Stalled debate: the dominance of ‘trait’ approaches
This partial interpretation of capacity building is not only flawed, but is hampered by ‘trait’ approaches that tend to predominate. These are lesson-seeking approaches that establish the appropriate conditions and practices to build capacity in communities and partner organisations. However, such approaches paradoxically leave us with little in the way of transferable lessons. First, built more often than not on in-depth descriptions of discreet case studies, such approaches are context-specific, casting doubts over the applicability of alleged lessons in different social, economic and political environments. Second, they tend to offer little in the way of causality or the hierarchical relationships between traits, casting doubts over whether certain traits matter more than most. Finally, trait approaches consequently facilitate policy makers and practitioners alike to talk at cross-purposes, and to fail to question the fundamental and often competing assumptions informing different traits. Each study simply adds a new practice or guidance to the ever-expanding list of traits.
Towards a new understanding: the latent capacity release model
There is an argument to say that the traditional view of capacity building is problematic and largely meaningless. At the very least it is a contested concept, particularly by communities themselves. As noted above the traditional view is based largely on the deficit model of democracy. Communities are seen as ‘empty vessels waiting to be filled’. We believe that this view of capacity building is fundamentally misconceived. Capacity is already there in communities – it just needs to be recognised, acknowledged and released. In the main, communities are awash with skills and abilities, so the task is not about building capacity, but rather devising mechanisms that can unleash or release this latent talent. An alternative model might more usefully be termed the ‘latent capacity release’ model. The number and variety of community organisations and initiatives often found in so-called marginalised or deprived areas are testament to the depth of skills and talents that lie within communities.
|
Box 2: Alternative approaches to capacity building
|
Deficit model
|
Latent capacity release
model |
|
Assumptions
|
Communities lack skills |
Communities possess high level skills |
|
Tasks
|
Teach skills |
Release skills |
|
Method of capacity building
|
Passive
|
Active |
|
Methods of Community Engagement
|
Traditional
|
Progressive |
|
Flow of communication |
One-way |
Two-way |
|
Credibility and trust |
Low |
High |
|
Effect on the system |
Facilitative |
New ways of working |
The latent capacity release model is based on a positive view of communities, which helps to conceptualise a new and more progressive view of capacity building that can help significantly to drive sustainability outcomes. Box 2 sets out a comparison between this and the deficit model.
As the above comparison indicates, a shift to the latent capacity release model of capacity building will mean a totally different approach towards working with communities. Instead of treating people as ‘empty vessels’ in often top-down and patronising ways, communities will be seen as essential partners whose skills and knowledge are vital. This view provides a significant challenge to the system to build new and positive relationships with communities based on trust and mutual benefit. Until we see capacity building in this way communities are unlikely to be engaged in the decision-making processes in a truly meaningful and sustainable way.
Conclusion
Traditional conceptual understandings of community capacity building need to be challenged. Our understanding of the tools available to us to enable this to happen also need to be reviewed. This goes beyond accepting that we might reflect more on current examples of good practice in order to do things differently. Rather, it is to acknowledge the false consensus that prevails under the banner of capacity building where policy makers and practitioners alike endorse similar language, but communicate at cross-purposes. It is also to acknowledge the political battles surrounding capacity building as different actors struggle to assemble coalitions around what it means. Indeed, somewhat paradoxically, the adoption of capacity building as a totem for local and national programmes owes much to it having been progressively emptied of meaning. It has become an organising metaphor that holds together a diverse coalition of actors in which debates about the ‘goodness’ of capacity building dominate as competing assumptions are masked over and challenge is diffused.
Making sense of these political battles widens existing debates as it requires policy makers and practitioners to ‘bring theory back in’. Only through mapping the underlying values and theoretical assumptions inherent within models of capacity building can we begin to break down the veneer of consensus structuring current debates and go beyond predominant trait approaches. This means clarifying the role of individual actors, their motivations and the constraints upon their action. More importantly, it means questioning the understanding of politics that informs existing approaches and the consensus-seeking dynamics of groups, and to stress how politics brings groups and communities to construct friends and enemies.
In short, we need a new conceptualisation that challenges existing approaches and promotes a new understanding and practice of community capacity building that drives real and practical sustainable outcomes for the future.
Member’s News
We welcome a number of new members this month. Just as a reminder to Members:
- You have the ability to post news, articles, weblinks, share stories, case studies, projects, questions, comments to a global network of sustainability change agents. Connections are being made with International Sustainability Indicators Network, and the UK Sustainability officer’s network.
- You have access to 4 Sustainability on-line Forums – including Sustainability Indicators, Sustainable Business, Sustainable Government, and Sustainable Communities. To access these you must be a registered member. Membership is free.
- More specifically, you have access to leading experts, where you can post a question, submit an article or case study etc. Our experts include Alan AtKisson, President and CEO of AtKisson Inc, Peter Hardi from IISD in Canada, David Berry, Former Sustainability Advisor to the White House, David Fitzgerald, former CEO RICS Foundation, UK, Aromar Revi, India who led the Sustainable Goa Cities Project.
Existing Members note that a new discussion page has been established on “What is Sustainable Growth?”, and this can be viewed in the Sustainable Communities Forum. We already have some interesting responses.
