In response to the well documented limitations of top‐down, modernist and authoritarian approaches that have dominated development, practitioners and academics increasingly promote more community‐based approaches. The World Bank uses the term ‘community driven development’ to describe projects that increase a community's control over the development process. In an analysis of a community driven poverty alleviation project in Indonesia, this article examines the vulnerability of such an approach to elite capture. The expected relationships among a community's capacity for collective action, elite control over project decisions and elite capture of project benefits were not found. In cases where the project was controlled by elites, benefits continued to be delivered to the poor, and where power was the most evenly distributed, resource allocation to the poor was restricted. Communities where both non‐elites and elites participated in democratic self‐governance, however, did demonstrate an ability to redress elite capture when it occurred.

S ince the Second World War, planning theory and practice has increasingly focused on how local people engage in the planning process. Indeed, this constitutes one of the most interesting theoretical and practical conundrums in planning. This focus is exemplified by work on citizen participation in synoptic planning, collaborative planning, and radical planning, which, taken together, can be understood as representing a continuum of varying degrees of citizen involvement, local power, and social and political consciousness. In broad terms, this continuum ranges from examining how local residents are incorporated into established planning processes to examining how they become empowered to plan for themselves within, outside of, and even in opposition to established planning and societal structures. At the same time, this continuum has expanded our understanding of what constitutes planning. This article is interested in a mode of planning that has not hereto been represented by this continuum-how local residents engage in planning for social transformation within the context of nonliberal, nondemocratic societies.It is argued that a theoretical gap exists regarding our understanding of how local residents engage in planning to achieve social transformation. This gap has occurred because of the close association between our understanding of social transformation and the political expectations created by Western liberal democracies. In other words, we have not begun to theorize about how local residents engage in social transformation in an environment where there are threats of violent repercussions for social activism. 1 This is not to suggest that community agency within limited social and political spaces has not been recognized. For instance, Douglass (1999) observes community agency in the form of "resilience" in the face of economic crisis; and Scheyvens (1998), along with other feminist scholars, documents the "subtle strategies" women use for self-empowerment. However, this work does not make the explicit connection between community agency, the character of social and political spaces for action, and how these activities represent an initial step in planning for broader social transformation.Within restrictive political environments, like those found in Indonesia, planning for social transformation does occur, but it occurs in ways that are not yet represented in our theorization of this process. In many restrictive social and political environments, overt challenges to dominant power configurations are an ineffective and even AbstractPublic engagement in planning can be viewed as a continuum ranging from local inclusion in synoptic planning schemes devised by the state to participation in grassroots social movements that seek broader social transformation. This continuum is incomplete because it does not elucidate how local people plan for social transformation within highly restrictive political environments where responses to social activism encompass real physical and social harm. The article draws on...

This article examines how citizens in authoritarian political contexts learn radical planning for social transformation. After identifying a series of gaps in the radical planning literature, the article uses a longitudinal study (1994-2001) of collective action in an urban settlement in Indonesia as a heuristic device to develop a more nuanced model of radical planning. The study illustrates how cumulative participation in state-directed planning, community-based planning, and covert planning over time resulted in a sense of collective agency that served as a foundation for demanding political reform at a moment when state control was weakened.

Given the new decentralization legislation in Indonesia, citizen participation is an increasingly important factor in planning and development policies. Yet policymakers have inadequate information about the types of individuals likely to contribute their knowledge, time, and economic resources to the development process. This paper provides a background and conceptual framework for understanding citizen participation in community development as well as the related components of civil society and social capital in Indonesia. A series of logistic and ordinary least squares regression models are used to analyze the effect of individual demographic and socioeconomic characteristics on the likelihood of participation in community development. I conclude that participatory community development (1) restricts women's participation beyond the role of family caretaker, and (2) has a limited capacity to help the poor.

The article analyses differences in collective action in rural and urban communities that participated in a poverty alleviation project in Indonesia. It was found that the main determinants of collective action are relationships among multiscalar social, political and historical factors, internal and external to communities. Two distinct forms of collective action are also identified. The first form is based on community cohesion, stable social relationships and adherence to social hierarchy. The second form is based on a community's perception of an interdependent future and a shared desire for structural change. Both forms of collective action are effective in delivering project resources to beneficiaries; however, only the second form demonstrates potential for social transformation.