# Introduction

Community-led service delivery is an effective method of providing basic needs to populations and, at times, the only option. Yet, despite attempts by development practitioners to improve the sustainability of this method of delivery, the evidence remains mixed. Studies have documented the failure of community-led water points<sup>1</sup> as a critical concern in most parts of the world (Andres et al. 2018; Borja Vega et al. 2017; Fisher et al. 2015; World Bank 2017b). Globally, 30 to 40 percent of community-managed water systems are estimated to be malfunctioning much sooner than their infrastructural life.<sup>2</sup> The cost of these failed water systems is estimated to be US$1.2 billion to US$1.5 billion in Sub-Saharan Africa alone. The question, pertinent as ever, is this: under what conditions can we expect foreign aid projects to create sustainable community management of local service delivery? This paper offers some evidence on this.

Studies have examined the role of community participation in public goods provision through a large multidisciplinary literature.<sup>3</sup> Specifically, the conditions of sustainability are studied by Ostrom (1990) in the classic work comparing state initiated versus organic groups in their ability to sustainably govern the commons (Ostrom 1990; Somanathan, Prabhakar, and Mehta 2005). The seminal World Development Report 2004 similarly argues for community participation as a solution for public goods provision. Though the report gave rise to a gamut of follow-up work elucidating or responding to it,<sup>4</sup> very few of these examined aid projects or linked participation to concrete infrastructure sustainability (Mansuri and Rao 2013). Among the few, Khwaja (2009) and Mansuri (2012) compare state versus community constructed systems, and Trent and Chavis (2009) analyze the impact of competition on infrastructure quality among subprojects. This paper contributes to this small but growing literature on the ability of project-induced participation to generate long-term local infrastructure management.

We use a 10-year old panel data from Indonesia’s community-led rural water project, the Program for Community-Based Water Supply and Sanitation ( _Program Air Minum dan Sanitasi Berbasis Masyarakat_ , PAMSIMAS) to explore why some communities have been able to manage water systems for over 10 years on their own while the majority breaks down much sooner. Using project- and village-level data, we first test for determinants of sustainability and then use in-depth qualitative analysis of outlier cases to explore mechanisms or channels of impact.<sup>5</sup>

> 1 The terms ‘water systems’, ‘water schemes’, and ‘water points’ are used interchangeably in the report.

> 2 Failure of handpumps is as high as 67 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa (RWSN 2010) and 33 percent in South Asia (World Bank 2003). Nationally, surveys reveal failure rates of 46 percent in Nigeria (Andres et al. 2018), 42 percent in Nepal (NMIP 2011), 25 percent in India, 34 percent in Peru, 19 percent in Cambodia (Improve International 2012), and so on. Statistics on water point failures by Improve International 2012.

> 3 For impact of commuinty participation on (a) improving targeting (Besley, Pande, and Rao 2005); (b) generating accountability (Aiyar 2010; Baiocchi, Heller, and Silva 2011; O Meally 2013); (c) improving equity (Bardhan et al. 2009); and (d) realizing deliberative democracy (Heller et al. 2007; Sanyal and Rao 2018).

> 4 On the necessary political incentives, governance arrangements, and types of direct citizen action required for participation to be successful (Ahmad et al. 2005; Batley and McLoughlin 2010; Brixi, Lust, and Woolcock 2015; Khemani et al. 2016).

> 5 The use of mixed methods to analyze positive deviants is increasing among development scholars who are moving away from strategies based on identifying success through word of mouth or reputation, in which the same success cases are scrutinized several times over (Peiffer and Armytage 2019). These newer studies include Andrews (2013) and Tendler

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