The role of local governments in the processes of local development (página 2)
On the other hand Political Sciences has been one of the
disciplines that has deepen the most in the different approaches
of local governments stating three main approaches (Rehren
Bargetto, 1992):
Doctrinal approach or model of local
autonomy: it relates local government to democratic
theory. It is defined a group of local and autonomous
institutions which the members of the community are closely
identified with and feel motivated to participate with them.
Usually, it is considered that local autonomy and
decentralization are equivalent to democracy and a people"s
school for political education.Public administration approach: it is based
on the theory of the organization and on the
interorganizative analysis and it is the result of
development in terms of public administration.Compared policy approach: it considers that
local government is not descriptive or normative activity but
an structure of government that is related to the general
working of the political system, it orientates the analysis
to the individual and its orientations towards the community,
local political institutions and their role on the local
policy taking into account the organic nexus between the
other hierarchical levels.
Local government can be defined as: "a kind of
political institution whose authority or competence is limited to
a territorial portion of the State that is historically rooted.
Though the subordination to national government and the different
grade of autonomy and discretion it seems to be a practical need
in the authoritarian and democratic political systems.
(Márquez Cruz (1997:143).
Local government as a political and administrative
organization is included in the Constitutional Regime from which
it receives its legacy. In this frame it is part of the State and
it exercises public power. Consequently, its function is not only
administrative but essentially governmental, of definition and
execution of territorial social and economic policies at local
level. Territoriality characterizes the municipality and defines
the spatial limits of its jurisdiction. That is the reason why it
is a political, administrative and territorial organization based
on local community (Garda, 2006).
The government can be considered as local when it
corresponds to territory in which an specific community lives (in
geographical terms is a locality), when it responds to a
socioeconomic area with certain grade of coherence and internal
interconnection (in anthropological and social terms is a
community) and it is subordinated to its opposite term which is
the State or government (central
administration)[2].
Local development requires an active role and an
expansive attitude by municipal government and social actors that
impulses the potentialities of the endogenous development. The
Municipal Government must form a real instance of the local
society representation and participation by means of truly
participative mechanisms. From the technical point of view, the
municipal government must be able to systematize the information
about the needs, inquietudes and local resources processing it in
order to produce what is traditionally known as Diagnosis of Need
and to consolidate the process of decision-making (Institutional
Strengthening). Municipal governments should enlarge its field of
action by adding the design and execution of the strategies of
local development to its traditional functions.
At present it is visualized a real tendency to consider
local government as the key piece in the project of a future
society[3]The municipalities due to its proximity
to the citizens should carry out an efficacious and efficient
action by the citizens that legitimizes them in a direct
way[4]In the complex scenario of the globalization
and restructuration of the ways to govern there emerge some new
challenges for local governments such as (Gallicchio,
2004):
To have mobility with the complexity.
To govern through connections instead of
hierarchies.To manage through the influence instead of the
exercise of authority.To make emphasis on relationships instead of
rules.
On the other hand, the policies of local development of
the 80"s and the first half of the 90"s are making possible the
emergence of new policies in relation to local governments.
(Gomá y Blanco, 2002):
The tendency to integration and transversalization.
On one hand the sectarian definition of policies and the
segmented and specialized management of services start to
coexist clearly with processes of integral formulation and
horizontal management of policies. For example, in the field
of services to people: the transversal plans as a result of
territorial and thematic or people"s collectivity points of
view.They are getting more important than the
departmental and professionalized regicides.
Form different approaches emerge some strategies of
global lecture of the locality which make possible the
development of multidimensional processes of actuation but are
connected by a conducting string, by an axis that is projected on
multiple specific fields of local development policy.
Some authors such as the North American David Osborne y
Ted Gaebler make reference to a true "global revolution" in the
case of the municipalities. "The rise of government with a
managerial approach"[5].
In different occidental countries have been implemented
a group of reforms in order to transform radically its
conceptions and traditional systems of the local administrations.
Among the most outstanding examples are included: the United
Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Norwegian, Netherlands, Belgium,
Germany and Spain and some other such as United States, Canada,
Australia, New Zeeland and Japan[6]
From a critical perspective Préteceille (1989)
notices that at present it is established an almost inverse
scheme between the Central State and local governments. The state
is given a secondary role in relation to economy while the
policies of local government reflex the economic development as
main objective. This very same logic has been developed in many
countries of the Occidental Europe, especially in ward of those
who have been able to preserve the central governments upon local
powers.
In the Latin American reality local spaces have been
stopped during so many years from developing a group of actions
within its respective territories due to the strong dependence
they have to the federation especially regarding financial
resources, but also due to the few faculties they are given. As a
result local governments are more than agents; they are simple
executors of the decisions that are made higher spheres of
government. (Mota Díaz, 2004).
The new paradigm that has emerged in these countries and
is aimed to the New Public Management strongly characterized by
the incorporation of the empresarial principles and techniques to
the public field, especially to the new role of local
administrations. According to Freidman, in the analysis of the
cases of municipal reforms in these countries covers the
following dimensions[7]
Relations between the different administrative
levels, (distribution of power and task between the central
and local levels).The initiatives called free communes in the
Scandinavians countries are very interesting. These are
communes to whom the central government has given a special
status (through the experimental special clause, by periods
of test of models they are free form administrative and
juridical norms).Relations between administration and citizens
(market mechanisms, information, participation and so
forth).Internal structures (management, organization,
personal, financial system and so forth), and redefinitions
of the relation between politics and
administration.
In these conceptions administrations are intended to be
an entity that is able to catalyze, manage and organize the
processes, essentially a coordinator, an entity that does not
suffer any erosion carrying out and assuming the tasks that must
be assuming and carried out by some other actors. As Boisier
says, "to find out a catalytic and synergic ability in the local
government". The modernization of the municipal administration
according to this point of view means to be orientated to the
user (client): it is to change from an Administration of
Authorities to an Administration of Services. For example: Delft
(Netherlands), and especially some municipalities in Scandinavia.
(Friedmann y Micco, 1993).
Local governments should tend to go beyond the classic
operative roles of the municipal government as much in its old
bureaucratic versions as in its recent versions of management.
The increasing of the traditional functions is projected in two
dimensions: towards the strengthening of local agendas and
towards the development of new strategic and qualitative roles in
such agendas (Gomá y Blanco, 2002).
A crucial aspect for local governments in the new
context is how to identify strategic and prospective actions that
might reduce the emergent complexities derived from changing
environments and new institutional arrangements and designs of
public policies with an impact on local territories. This implies
to dimension different ways to management and planning that
assume the leading of their own modernizing processes.
It is about to articulate and enhance a local vision of
municipal system, this redounds on an important increasing of its
own complexity and ability for governance of webs, actors and
processes that have an influence in its territories. This
governance is the management of the interdependence between the
governments and the non governmental actors in order to create or
strengthen webs of cooperation for the collective building of the
community development. (Haefner, 2007).
The role of promotion of the local government consists
mostly of stimulating and orientating people"s energies to the
collective wellbeing and civic coexistence. The potential of
local governments as agile forms fro the management of what is
global, with the cooperation of their national and international
tutorial institutions can be improved by means of the
participation of their personals, the technological modernization
of their management, the increasing of their financial resources
and their administrative competences. This implies a deep
restructuration of the public administration at all levels. (Mota
Díaz, 2004).
The main function of the municipal administration is not
necessarily to produces direct services and goods but through
diverse redesigned procedures it should create, develop and
regulate specific markets that contribute with needed services
and goods in conditions of competitions that assure the quality
and price. (Osborne y Gaebler, 1992). Here it is also emphasized
that people are stimulated by the administration to undertake own
initiatives. Local governments at present should play a
relational role through the strategic alliances to the economic
and social agents of their territories in order to improve the
development of such territories as well as people"s living
conditions.
The strengthening of local governments is not produces
under classic ways to instrument processes of government where it
can be distinguished a triple transaction:
From a strictly physical and hierarchical image of
the territory to a new image of space-web with simultaneous
elements of connectivity (virtual) and proximity
(material).From a monopolist conception of government of the
cities-localities to a conception of governance of proximity
as management of horizontal webs.From a specialized vision of the local government to
a vision that is entirely inserted in multilevel webs of
governance. (Gomá y Blanco, 2002).
Facing the difficulties of the traditional governments
the new articulations of governance imply:
The recognition, the acceptance and the integration
of complexity as an intrinsic element to the political
system.A system of government through the participation of
diverse actors in the frame of plural webs.A new position of public powers in the processes of
governments, the adoption of new roles and the utilization of
new instruments.
The concept of the web has turned
itself into "the new paradigm for the architecture of the
complexity" (Börtzel, 1998). This implies not only the
recognition of a plurality of actors but the articulation of
these actors to common organizative frames from which it is
possible to interchange resources, negotiate priorities and make
decisions related to shared public projects. What defines
basically a participative web of governance is (Gomá y
Blanco, 2002):
The no existence of a hierarchical centre able to
fixate the processes of government in a monopolist way, it
means a multirelational structure of the web and the
relational determination of processes and results.The inter independence. It is the existence of
mutual dependences in the multiplicity of the actors in the
moment to solve problems, follow objectives and achieve
certain results.A certain institutionalization in the less
structural sense of the term. So, the existence of some
interaction, more or less sustained with some level of
stability or sustainability.
Challenges for
local governments
Though the processes of decentralization that have taken
place as much in developed as in developing countries and more
extended in Latin America (Meyer–Stamer, 2006), local
governments still experimenting a serious lack of human and
financial resources for the strategic planning. This approach of
local development with an emphasis on strategic planning has
important requirements in terms of skills and abilities for
planning. It requires large resources in terms of financial
capital and
human energy fro the diagnosis, development and supervision of
the actions aimed to local development.
Local Development Strategies are frail because they
hardly achieve the substantive objectives to incorporate in a
participative way the relevant actors of the localities. Due to
this it is recognized a low ability for the orientation in the
making of strategic decisions as much at public, sectarian and
municipal level as in the social and productive sectors. Usually
it is stated from the municipalities, an ignorance of the
strategic guidelines to follow in the formation of their plans
for social investment and the generation of the plans for
municipal development and to presuppose an important weakness of
the decentralized sector to face the present and future social,
political and economical contingences. (Haefner,
2007).
Larger quotas of autonomy and transfer of enough
resources are needed in order to work properly offering to the
citizens the indispensable services and making more dynamic the
development. Local government should be able to catch, manage and
control their own
resources which can come either from the State or the locality.
These actor must have certain grade of autonomy that make
possible fro them to make their decisions taking into account
their competences and resources.
The internal structure of local governments should be
more and more horizontal, integrated and participative in order
to facilitate the efficient action of their components in the
response to the challenges of their local situations. Local
governments should act as efficient public servers. For doing so
they must have good information, permanent training; implication
and conscience needs-potentialities in their demarcations in
order to facilitate processes of local development. There should
be a policy for the development of municipal human resources as
much as antecedent to the creation of initiatives of local
development as in their entire implementation. Local governments
must have a stable technical structure that is able to provide
efficient advising to local design and the process of
decision-making.
The full advance of local governments is to achieve
positively their competences, make their management transparent
and to canalize the active participation of their citizens and
private, public and non governmental agents. Local citizens and
organizations should participate in local policies and in the
administration of public services through some strategies and the
control and evaluation of the functions they have in the local
community. The modernization of the State implies the
apprehension of these new ways to make politics, with renewed
ethic, with new systems of job performance accountability to
citizens and an enlarged transparence of all the public
management.
The main function of local governments is to promote
local development in its different spaces. Their actions to
achieve this goal should be developed taking into account an
integral and historical vision of the territory. In these spaces
should come together into an agreement national governments,
ministries and companies at different levels, governmental and
non governmental institutions and so forth where local
governments must play role of integrating and conciliating agent
of all efforts in order to achieve an integrated local
development. An integrated development means besides that the
actions within the development should be supported by a
conception that groups the different main elements of
developments such as the political, social, economic, cultural
and environmental.
The concrete way in which every local government assures
the provision of a local government does not depend on rigid
principles but constitutes the application of policies,
strategies and actions according to its position in the local,
provincial, national and international context an the specific
way in which it can work for the wellbeing of the citizens
through the harmonization between resources and institutions at
all levels and the particular way to react to the challenges of
the reality.
Local governments must also integrate to the local
government all the actors that can be promoters of the
development of the local community where it is inscribed the
historic-cultural heritage, the natural heritage the physical
capital and technological knowledge. Local governments in their
vision of local development should articulate the identities to
local culture as collective heritage and potential for
development where the preservation of these characteristics is
crucial. Local governments while using these resources must
protect the environment in order to assure the rational use and
the benefits fro the present and future generations. The
territorial order and the planning are the ideal tools to fulfil
these complex tasks.
Local governments are responsible for their actions and
they must involve the citizens and actors in the actions related
to local development which includes the diagnostic, formulations
of actions, implementation, supervision, systematization and job
performance accountability to citizens. The strategic plans for
local development elaborated and applied in a participative way
make possible to mobilize extraordinary local energies and
resources promoting in that way dynamic and self supported
processes of development.
The local development strategies from local governments
must act in function of the elimination of poverty as the main
problem that attacks most of the entire Latin American region. So
it is required a conception of development that generates
permanents processes of increasing of the local productions of
goods and services. It is necessary that local governments in
Latin America act more and more as agents of the economic
development. Local development is a really complex task that
requires the commitment and mobilization of all the actors under
the scheme of strong private and public alliances with strategic
goals and long term agreed commitments. The alliances among
economic actors and not for local development should be leaded or
stimulated by local governments that act as facilitators to build
up the strategic plan and help to
negotiate and define the roles of the different agents. The
academic institutions can help with initiatives of innovation,
creation of new products through actions of extension and
technical assistance.
An important task for local government is to support the
integration of the processes for the territorial development. The
administrative spaces of the municipalities are not isolated and
the processes of development usually go beyond the municipal
limits. It is necessary that local governments incorporate to
their agendas the activities, information and services to support
the integration of local policies and to produce positive effects
of synergy.
In the 80s was produced a revaluation of local
governments. However, in the practice they had to face different
obstacles since in most of our Latin American countries the
decentralization has not been made with the appropriate resources
and tools that allow local governments to develop an efficient
management of the local development and intervene in the cities
which explain partially the problems of illegalities, disorder,
marginality and poverty that have been present in the process of
urbanization.
The territorial differences impact directly on the
municipal organization, they impact on the ability to generate
own resources, the ability to face the administration of public
services and programs. In general, the ability to provide
solutions to people demands. In that way, local spaces are being
permanently irritated by the multiple economic, political,
cultural, social and environmental effects that are derived form
the processes of internationalization of the economy, new public
dynamic and socio demographic policies and so forth. These are
factor that make the local governments to think about their
evolution since such forces can act indistinctively as
opportunities or risks in the territories. (Haefner,
2007).
The need to staff the municipal system with competences
in prospective planning is getting more and more evident because
in the present scenarios of open economy there is a multiplicity
of forces of market. These forces aim their actions to achieve
specific short term economic goals that can put seriously at risk
the environmental and socio territorial sustainability of the
local territories unless it is produced the mediation of
processes of negotiation and technical and political articulation
that make possible to dimension, forecast and regulate the
potential impacts of such forces.
It is required a municipal system that incorporates to
its process of decision-making the urgency to count on
competences that make this system be the author of its own local
development instead of acting reactively to the tendencies and
actors that act in the territories.
As long in developed countries as in Latin America to
achieve an articulation of the different actors in order to plan
the local development with a prospective approach presents
complex aspects. It is always conditioned by the situations,
particular interests, electoral analysis, bureaucracy, lack of
vision, inflexibilities in the organization and resources, but
most of all it requires to have a proactive leadership and
animation that make possible the emergence of initiatives and its
inclusion in strategic objectives and to motivate people to
participate in the process of social conception of the
territory.
To advance to the ideal local governments also requires
competences in prospective planning with a prospective approach.
It is an organized, creative and systematic, committed and
systemic search in order to change the future of the local
territory. To plan prospectively the territory implies to
formulate scenarios and determine the objectives, goals,
strategies and priorities, to assign resources, responsibilities
and periods of time for the actions, to coordinate efforts and
evaluate the stages and results and to assure the control of the
processes.
Besides that, to plan prospectively presupposes the
ability to select among different alternatives the one that is
more suitable for the planned and possible futures not only fro
the municipal organization but for the citizenship that is
empowered of its own development. It implies to decide at present
the actions that will be carried out in the future in order to
achieve the objectives that have been previously established.
(Miklos, 1993)
To modernize the local governments means to bring them
nearer to the community and make them be conscious that to
achieve their efficient municipal management means to fit
together with the increasing social and cultural complexity of
the present societal system.
Local governments present limitations to design
efficient mechanisms that make them able to listen (in the sense
to process) solutions-increase the spaces-of the civil society
and the increasing people"s demands to participate in the making
of strategic decisions that are related to their territories and
at the same time, to manage appropriately with efficiency and
efficacy the services and goods that the community expect from
them. (Haefner, 2007).
The present and future challenges that local governments
face in a great part of the region are (Mota Díaz,
2004):
The permanent expansion of the middle and small
citiesThe worsening of the environmental
problematic.The increasing tendency to urban unemployment and
poverty due to a serious lack of policies fro sustainable
development.The weakness of the processes of democratization and
decentralization.The increasing inequality.
The aggravation of the social problems of exclusion,
inequality in the distribution of incomes, unemployment and
social segregation.
As we have already analyzed, the implantation of this
process in any country requires a deep institutional
transformation aimed to generate a symbiosis between
participation and efficiency and to assure at the same time the
achievement of the requisite equity (North, 1990). It would be
necessary to eliminate the Latin American centralist tradition
and to promote a culture of decentralization that implies the
culture of self management, management, participation and so
forth. However, there is no doubt that the main responsibility in
relation to these transformations lies on the political will in
these regions, where the states play a determinant role not only
in relation to these transformation but in the recognition of the
importance of local governments.
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[1] The emphasis made on economy ignores the
importance of the links between local and national level
stating that the process of decentralization is an attribute
that the different political system have or do not have,
instead of consider it as a continuous between poles of
centralization and decentralization. Behind a
façade of sovereignty or local autonomy could
hidden rigid mechanism of central control, especially in the
case of Latin American countries where central autonomy and
decentralization not always are synonymous of democracy due to
a strong centralist tradition in the exercise of the state
policy. On the other hand, the structures of power at local
level are ignored. It is in this level where the interests of
the traditional groups are firmly stated and usually related to
political parties at provincial and national level. On the
other hand, when it is referred to the necessity of
modernization and efficiency (from a technocratic point of
view) in the local governmental organizations, this goal of
efficiency can be contradictory with the ideal of democratic
participation. (González, Villar, 2004).
[2] In Latin America there are about 16
thousand local governments. With the names of Municipality,
Alcaldy, Ayuntmiento, Intendancy or Prefecture depending on the
country local government have in common that they have a
territory, a population with multiple social relations, they
constitute a space for development of a unique and particular
culture and also have a local government elected by the
citizens. Local governments always play the main role on
complex and dynamic social systems that must be respected when
they generate their own development. (FLACMA, 2002).
[3] Bervejillo, F. Gobierno local
en América
latina: Casos de Argentina de Argentina, Chile, Brasil y
Uruguay En:
NNOHLE, D. (Ed): Descentralización Política y
Consolidación Democrática, Europa-América del Sur, Síntesis
Editorial Nueva Sociedad,
Caracas, 1991, Pág. 280.
[4] Friedmann, R y Micco, S. Descubriendo la
comuna. Manual de las
Ciencias
Políticas Comunales, Cuadernos del CED no
18 Santiago, 1993, Pág. 3
[5] Osborne, D y Gaebler, T. Rieventing
Goverment €“ How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is
Transformeing the Public sector, Reading, 1992. Tomado de
Reinhard Freidman. Hacia el municipios del siglo xxi, Persona y
sociedad , Instituto Latinoamericano de Ciencias
Sociales, Universidad
de Alberto Hurtado, Pág. 133
[6] Ibídem, Pág. 134.
[7] Ibídem, pág. 134
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