Community Development and Democratic Practice

Paul Lachapelle is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Montana State University-Bozeman, USA, and serves as the Extension Community Development Specialist. Working in partnership with the Local Government Center, his responsibilities involve providing research, technical assistance, and training on various community development topics in communities across the state. Specifically, he provides resources and programs in many areas including community strategic visioning, local governance, and leadership development training.

This book contains writing at the forefront of thinking about the intersections of power, participation, and engagement in the realm of community practice, serving as a heuristic framework for 'democratic community development'. It was originally published as a special issue of the journal Community Development.

Introduction: Community development and democratic practice: pas de deux or distinct and different? Michael Rios and Paul Lachapelle 1. Metis, craft, civic mindedness: essential attributes of democratic citizenship in communities David Campbell 2. The essential and inherent democratic capacities of communities Patrick L. Scully and Alice Diebel 3. Democratizing democracy as community development: insights from popular education in Latin America F. David Bronkema and Cornelia Butler Flora 4. Solidarity economy and community development: emerging cases in three Massachusetts cities Penn Loh and Boone Shear 5. The civics of community development: participatory budgeting in Chicago Rachel Weber, Thea Crum and Eduardo Salinas 6. Towards a robust democracy: the core competencies critical to community developers John Gruidl and Ronald Hustedde 7. Strange bedfellows: community development, democracy, and magic Esther Farmer