Title:	Collective Action and Urban Poverty Alleviation: Community Organizations and the Struggle for Shelter in Manila
Authors:	GAVIN SHATKIN Professor Peter Roberts, Professor Graham Haughton
Keywords:	Local Development
Issue Date:	2007
Publisher:	Ashgate
Description:	This book examines the implications of dramatic reforms for decentralization and civil society involvement in politics in the Philippines for the country’s urban poor. It specifically focuses on the potential for significant community improvement through an emerging poverty alleviation agenda, centered on self-help in shelter and infrastructure development, that assumes a strong role for community-based collective action through urban community-based organizations (CBOs). In addressing this issue the book aspires to address larger questions concerning the role of community-based collective action in urban planning and policy. The role of collective action has come to be of increasing interest in recent years, as some have proclaimed a global ‘associational revolution’ that is transforming state-civil society relations. Yet the role of grassroots organizations in this process, and the factors that enhance or impede their capacity and effectiveness, remain little understood. The book is based on an extensive study of CBOs. Since the wave of protests popularly known as the ‘People’s Power’ revolt ousted the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippines has witnessed reform that has created a framework for governance that, at least on paper, is one of the most decentralized and participatory in the world. In addition, the organizing infrastructure left over from the popular mobilization against Marcos, and the reentry into mainstream society of hundreds of cadre from the country’s waning communist insurgency, has generated a whirlwind of organizing and ideas in civil society. The country has, according to some, more organizations of civil society per capita than any other in the world, and they play a major role in community organizing and political advocacy in urban communities. This study found that there are more than 2000 CBOs operating in Metro Manila alone. However, the country is also characterized by the historical political dominance of local elites, and individual CBOs have faced intense contestation at the local level. The Philippines is therefore an excellent case to illustrate both the possibilities for and obstacles to political change
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/28246
ISBN:	978-0-7546-4786-7
Appears in Collections:	Regional and Local Development Studies

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