ABSTRACT
A proposal for this study was developed in early 1966 because of “the central place which citizen participation occupies in the rapidly expanding program of the Office of Economic Opportunity.” It was felt that a cross-community evaluative study of the Community Action Program experience could “provide an essential element in the further development of CAP’s.” In the late spring of 1969, as the final study report was being written, Community Action Programs were contracting and the new OEO Director would soon announce a shift in focus from providing extensive service programs through Community Action Agencies to limited experimental and demonstration programs. The talk in many target areas was not of “participation” but of “community control.” The emphasis in this article therefore is not on the significance of the participation experience in 1967–68 for the administration of an on-going program; rather it is on the relation of that experience to the larger and continuing issues of citizen involvement and citizen action in a society that is both democratic and contentious.
