Participatory rural development without participation: Insights from Ukraine

As participatory approaches to rural development are adopted in post-communist countries, there is a growing need to evaluate their success. Centralized and hierarchical governance systems pertinent to these countries may introduce serious challenges for community-driven development (CDD) and newly established community-based organizations (CBOs). We address these concerns by critically assessing whether CBOs in rural Ukraine engage in meaningful partnerships with local governments. In doing so, we examine the link between participation and CBO establishment and clarify how lack of local governments' fiscal autonomy may undermine CBOs' sustainability. We use unique primary data and employ both qualitative and quantitative methods to test hypotheses about how these organizations were established. We find that newly-established organizations are disconnected from local inhabitants and are aligned with the fundraising incentives of local governments. The context of incomplete decentralization reforms common to post-Soviet countries distorts local governments’ incentives and, as a result, jeopardizes the sustainability of the CDD efforts.