Community Involvement in Government Resource Allocation Decisions

Abstract

Community participation in government decision making is an aspect of community governance that currently is of significant interest internationally to public administrators and academics alike. Although community participation is widely used in the design and delivery of government services and policies and local priority setting, it often has not translated to involvement in resource allocation decisions.
This paper examines a historical example of community resource allocation, where communities have played a role in the decision making process in the allocation of government resources – the Australian Assistance Plan (AAP). The AAP was been seen to have limited success because of constraints imposed by the political landscape, institutional arrangements and the level of activism from the communities involved. In bringing forward the AAP approach to a more contemporary setting this paper compares the lessons from AAP with current Victorian Government approaches to community strengthening and governance arrangements. In relation to the continuing evolution of community involvement in government resource allocation decisions, it is argued that such arrangements are best used when communities are involved in local resource allocation decisions and that current governance arrangements need to be further developed to encourage and allow for this to occur.