A commune in Grand'Anse built its own road, and Dubuisson uses that case to argue that konbit and protest, both grounded in critical citizenship, can put politics back into community development.

Critical citizenship is usually framed around how civil society cooperates with or opposes the state. Dubuisson adds transnational actors to the picture. International NGOs in Haiti act as parastate bodies, taking on what the state should do, which turns civil society's attention away from an absent government and toward the organizations themselves. Unlike a state, though, those organizations present themselves as apolitical, which protects their bureaucratic dominance.

Christian Vannier has suggested konbit could serve participatory development, but such projects tend to misuse collaborative labour and treat the people involved as objects to be studied and managed rather than as citizens. The road initiative differed: residents owned it, and they applied protest and other democratic pressure to see it through.