The role of local governments in the processes of local development

2. Bibliography

The strategic planning of development from local
governments is one of the most extended approaches of local
development in Latin-America and the developed countries where
these initiatives are applied (Meyer-Stamer, 2006). The public
responsibilities and warranties towards the social and economic
promotion have traditionally devolved upon national governments.
However, with the beginning of the new conceptions, these
activities are shared giving an important role to local
governments.

Due the complexities in which societies are immersed,
the national level has been assuming its limitations and
ignorance regarding local conditions where according to Francisco
Alburquerque (2001) has prevailed a macroeconomic approach with a
preference for short term results and eminently reactive
designs.

The traditional democratic government has at present
lots of difficulties to face efficiently an environment which is
more and more complex, uncertain and dynamic. The democratic
legitimacy of the public institutions is getting deteriorated in
front of a more and more reflexive and critical people with new
values that can not satisfied with the simple technocratic
provision of public services. The main difficulties of the
traditional democratic government are based on four very dynamic
aspects:

• The increasing difficulties on learning due to the
  intrinsic uncertain character of the postindustrial society
  and the high level of cognitive fragmentation that it
  implies.

• The complexity of the values, interests and
  preferences at risk, which not only have multiple subjects
  but they are themselves changing and unstable.

• The unsustainable character of the hierarchical
  conception of the processes of government.

• The increasing interdependence between problems and
  political actors that place in doubt seriously the segmented
  and unidirectional traditional model of public policies.
  (Gomá y Blanco, 2002).

From the 80"s on is perceived a certain reaction of
local governments which of course have been gaining in space
within their respective contexts with a special attention to the
importance of the micro social processes. The new roles and
responsibilities of governmental structures are (Alburquerque,
2003):

• To support through subventions, co financing,
  administrative facilities the initiatives that reinforce the
  competitiveness of local economic structures.

• To decentralize as much as possible the information,
  knowledge and decisions.

• To delegate the functions of control and
  contribution to the most autonomous organizations (public,
  private or mixed).

• To enhance the processes of evaluation in order to
  make compatible a higher level of delegation of
  responsibilities with a more strict control of the
  process.

In the Encyclopedia of Political Intuitions Bogdanor
(1994) defines local government as "a kind of political
institution whose authority or competence is limited to a
territorial portion of the state". It characterized by its
prolonged historical evolution, by its constitutionally
subordinated position, by local participation, the capability to
establish taxes and a wide spectrum of
responsibilities.

There are two great traditions in relation to the topic
of local governments. The origin of these traditions goes back to
specific historical conditions (the North American federalism and
the European traditions that were more interested in the
relations between national and local levels and the importance of
the political and administrative control carried
on by the headquarter) making emphasis on two different series of
relations. In the model of autonomy, the local government is
considered a bastion of democracy, decentralization and
delegation of power. On the contrary, the prefectural and
centralist model remarks on the relations between local and
national levels and the relations between the center and the
periphery (Rehren Bargetto, 1992)[1].

The different positions in which the interest for local
governments has been dealt can be resumed in the following
orientations (González, Villar, 2004):

• From pluralist perspectives locality is defended in
  terms of its democracy, the system of election-representation
  and autonomy in relation to centralist models.

• The New Right"s policies, very well established in
  the theory of rational election, reduce the leadership of
  local government, stating the need to restructure the process
  and mechanisms of decision-making at local level based on
  management and efficiency models (they give priority to the
  relation adequate facilities-efficient purposes)

• The application of the Marxist model to the
  conceptualization of the local system conceives the local
  state as part of the State in the capitalist society and
  therefore reproducer and maintainer of the relations of
  production, extraction of appreciations, crystallization of
  the ideology and so forth.

• The structural and functional analysis would try to
  find out which are the true competences of local governments
  and try to explain why they exercise much more authority. In
  this scheme the political system would have certain functions
  and each on would correspond to a respective organizative
  structure, that is to say, an institution. This scheme of
  analysis presents the difficulty to find a sufficient and
  coherent explicative design of the functions that local
  governments have been carrying out. (Subirats,
  1997:412-413).