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Building civic infrastructure: implementing community partnership grant programmes in South Africa
Author(s) -
Adams Charles F.,
Bell Michael E.,
Brown Trevor
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
public administration and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.574
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1099-162X
pISSN - 0271-2075
DOI - 10.1002/pad.232
Subject(s) - general partnership , metropolitan area , stakeholder , politics , public administration , political science , public relations , economic growth , geography , economics , archaeology , law
This article examines recent efforts to establish Community Partnership Grant Programmes (CPG) in six South African communities. CPG programmes provide the financial and organizational infrastructure to support citizen‐initiated neighbourhood projects. We review our efforts to disseminate the CPG programme model in three different environments in South Africa—a large metropolitan area, three smaller municipalities and two tribal villages—and analyse why preliminary implementation results were positive in some communities but not others. Our findings form the basis of a model of CPG programme implementation based on the mode of implementation and the breadth of stakeholder involvement. We use this model to make recommendations to increase the likelihood of implementation success for similar programmes. The article concludes with observations about the applicability of the CPG programme idea as a way to develop civic infrastructure, and on the political lessons learned from our implementation experience in South Africa. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.