Community futures : an evaluation of a top-down approach to community economic development

Communities throughout Canada have been faced with economic problems as a result of global restructuring, national and regional recessions, and a reduced demand for primary resource commodities. Over the course of the past decade those communities have begun to utilize various forms of community economic development (CED) strategies to overcome local economic problems. Although CED has been interpreted in various ways, resulting in no single readily identifiable definition of the term, a few concepts seem to prevail throughout most of the interpretations. Generally, CED is a process which involves community members banding together to initiate their own solutions to their common economic problems. There are, however, several impediments to this bottom-up approach to economic development Community Futures, a program sponsored by the federal government, has been designed to promote and facilitate CED by helping to remove some of those impediments. The purpose of this thesis is to determine the extent to which a government program, namely Community Futures, can promote CED. A three part methodology has been used to accomplish this goal. First, a review of the relevant CED literature was performed to determine the goals of this approach to economic development and the impediments which exist. Four goals were identified: self-reliance, local control, institution-building, and equity. Self-reliance can be achieved through policies which decrease the level of economic leakages from the community and by recognizing the significance of the informal economy. Local control is a key element of the CED model. The goal is to increase the broader community's political control over the local economy through increased participation in community affairs. Local control manifests itself in institution-building processes. Community-based institutions allow the community to better control its collective economic destiny and ensure equitable access to resources by all community members, through policies which decrease the level of economic leakages from the community and by recognizing the significance of the informal economy. Local control is a key element of the CED model. The goal is to increase the broader community's political control over the local economy through increased participation in community affairs. Local control manifests itself in institution-building processes. Community-based institutions allow the community to better control its collective economic destiny and ensure equitable access to resources by all community members. The impediments to bottom-up CED are: difficulty accessing financial resources, difficulty accessing information, and underdeveloped human resources. These are the impediments which government programs should attempt to overcome to facilitate the CED process. The second part of the methodolgy consisted of a historic review of Canadian regional and local economic development policy to determine the nature of top-down economic development in Canada. This study found some of the relevant trends which have developed throughout the past decades, thus placing Community Futures into its appropriate historical context. Among the trends which emerged, we witness that policy: has been slow to develop; has lacked significant innovation; has traditionally been firmly controlled by the federal bureaucracy; has been influenced by political disputes at all levels; has been subject to the quantifiable, efficiency indicators which characterize the policy analysis approach to planning; and has regularly failed to meet its prescribed objectives. Having analyzed the relevant theory and practice, the third part of the methodology studied the policy design of Community Futures to determine the program's ability to overcome the impediments to bottom-up CED and thereby facilitate the acheivement of the goals described by CED writers. Eligibility requirements of the program, such as unemployment and minimum levels of economic infrastructure, restrict the ability of the program to operate comprehensively and be universally available. Other eligibility requirements, such as minimum population requirements and ministerial approval requirements tend to be counterproductive to the local control objective of CED. A positive effect of the program is its ability to facilitate institution-building through the use of a community-based Community Futures Committee. However, the ability of that committee to develop a community-based plan is restricted by the limited nature of the program and by the onerous procedural guidelines set by CEIC. Five broad conclusions concerning government involvement in CED programs are drawn from the literature review, the historical review, and the Community Futures case study. First, top-down strategies do, to a degree, have the potential to promote the goals of CED by addressing the impediments to the bottom-up approach. Second, the state's potential ability to promote comprehensive CED is impeded by the scale and national focus of top-down programs. Third, the government's sectoral structure also acts as an impediment to comprehensive top-down CED. Fourth, programs which are considered to be bureaucratic innovations may not be substantially different from those programs which preceded them. And finally, quantitative techniques of analysis and evaluation which characterize the policy analysis approach to planning are not capable of assessing the success of communities in achieving the ‘softer’ goals advocated by CED proponents.

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