10.1177/0739456X04270467 ARTICLEChaskinDemocracy And Bureaucracy Democracy And Bureaucracy in a Community Planning Process

Community intervention takes a range of different forms, encompassing variouscombinations of development, organizing and advocacy, and planning, service provision and coordination (Rothman 1995; Dreier 1996). Although differing in strat-egy, scope, and organization, much of this practice, from the work of settlement houses to that of community development corporations (CDCs), has held in common a few broad principles to guide action. These principles include a geographic focus on local communities (often neighborhoods in cities), an attempt to address comprehensively the needs and circumstances of people in these communities, and a focus on citizen participation, along with professionals, in the planning and implementation of community-change efforts (O’Connor 1999; Halpern 1995). Starting in the late 1980s, a number of targeted, community-change efforts have been launched that came to be known as comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs). CCIs have both revisited and revised the structures and approaches to meeting commu-nity-change goals that earlier and ongoing efforts have engaged (for overviews, se