The Complexity of Decentralisation Reforms: An analysis of the spaces for community participationin the education sector in Cambodia

This book analyses the characteristics of communityparticipation in Cambodian rural schools. It looksat the spaces for participation created by thedecentralisation reforms that the government ofCambodia has undertaken in the education sectorthrough two main policies: school clustering andPriority Action Programme. While institutionalisedspaces of participation created by these policies arerelatively new, Cambodian communities, despite twentyfive years of political turmoil, have traditionallyprovided support to schools through schoolassociations. The study refers to bonding,bridging, and institutional social capital toexplore, respectively, the characteristics of thehorizontal links between community members as well asdifferent forms of collective action, and thevertical links between community, schools and localgovernment institutions. The analysis should be especially useful to academics, researchers, policy makers, and development practitioners involved and interested in the complexity of the link between participation and local governance reforms.

Arnaldo Pellini has a PhD in education and development from theUniversity of Tampere in Finland. He has worked on communitydevelopment and local governance in Nepal and Cambodia and onresearch management with UNDP in Vietnam. He is working for theOverseas Development Institute on evidence informed policy development for poverty reduction.