*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
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Local Funds Fail: FrontlinePREMISE OF LOCAL FUNDS – THAT DECENTRALIZED, LOCAL GOVERNMENT IS MORE DEMOCRATIC -- FAULTY Jo Beall, Director Development Studies Institute-London School of Economics, 2005, Funding Local Governance: small grants for democracy and development, p. 30 Decentralization nevertheless has its skeptics. Heller (2001) points out that there are no a priori reasons why more localized forms of governance are necessarily democratic and suggests that under some contexts decentralized authority can be quite pernicious. The most obvious example of this is indirect rule under colonialism, when local despots in the service of an imperial power exercised decentralized authority. Localized forms of governance offer no automatic improvement on central government. Local government has as much, if not more, potential for elite capture and might not have the human or financial resources to cope with the demands made upon it by decentralization strategies. Indeed, it has been pointed out that there is little empirical evidence to support or refute the efficacy of decentralization. What is clear is that local government occupies an ambiguous and perhaps even contradictory role. On the other hand it is undoubtedly part of the state but on the other, it can appear as a relatively autonomous sphere of government given that it is close to if not actually part of civil society. As such, achieving effective local governance—a sound relationship between the local state and society at the local level—is crucial to the project of democratic decentralization. It is to this end that a number of local funds programs have been employed. However, the question is, how is the notion of “sound” governance understood and does it relate to increased local democratization or efficient and effective management or, ideally, both? LOCAL FUNDS INEFFECTIVE AT DEMOCRACY PROMOTION Jo Beall, Director Development Studies Institute-London School of Economics, 2005, Funding Local Governance: small grants for democracy and development, p. 29-30 Factors militating against democratic governance are multiple and no one seriously expects local funds on their own to transform difficult governance relationships and institutional environments. Moreover, as pointed out in the introductory chapter, there are tensions associated with democracy promotion in the context of development. Western notions of democracy, whether in the Tocquevillian or Westminster traditions, do not necessarily travel and transplant well and are not always well received. Further, donor governments and aid agencies are habitually uncomfortable with the idea of democracy enhancing governance, “fearing that grassroots political activity would veer into leftist political movements”. It is for this reason that local funds though starting out with the objective of promoting democracy, often fall into a concern with the more technical dimensions of governance. This tension is paralleled in the different approaches to decentralization, or which local funds have often been an integral part.
Jo Beall, Director Development Studies Institute-London School of Economics, 2005, Funding Local Governance: small grants for democracy and development, p. 31-2 The early generation of local funds, emerging in the wake of the critique of social funds, was less likely to be located within government. Taking the form of civil society assistance through NGOs or CSOs, problems sometimes arose through local funds setting up parallel institutions, thereby failing to have an influencing effect on existing government organizations. Thus, local funds ran the risk of setting in motion a substitution effect, whereby they or the organization they support took on duties that should have been performed by government. Linked to this was the problem of fungibility, with government agencies reducing their allocations to areas covered by local funds. This has been particularly documented in relation to social funds. In Egypt, for example, which has one of the largest social funds, central government allocations to local government were explicitly cut back because of anticipated resources coming from the social fund. Similarly, in Honduras allocations to the Ministries of Health and Education declined when the local government received resources from the social fund. This in turn led to further problems of facilitating the mismanagement of local government resources. Thus it could undermine attempts at enhancing the transparency and accountability of government.
Jo Beall, Director Development Studies Institute-London School of Economics, 2005, Funding Local Governance: small grants for democracy and development, p. 32 A further anxiety regarding the relationship between local funds and decentralization is that strengthening local institutional capacity could be at odds with state-driven efforts towards decentralization. By financing projects outside the remit of line ministries, local funds are thought to potentially erode the commitment and interest of government towards the promotion of local development. At one level this objection is fairly simply overcome by promoting sub-projects and criteria that engage government institutions, rather than exclude or bypass them. At another level, however, a different mindset is required. After all, decentralization is not just a technical exercise. Heller puts the case well: “Strengthening and empowering local government has been justified not only on the grounds of making government more efficient but also on the grounds of increasing accountability and participation...in its contemporary incarnation, decentralization in the developing world, especially when driven by international development agencies, has more often than not been associated with the rolling back of the state, the extension of bureaucratic control and the marketization of social services.” Where then do local funds fit it? Are they part of a technicist or managerial agenda or can they serve to democratize decentralization? LOCAL GOVERNMENT FUNDING INEFFICIENT AND UNACCOUNTABLE Bishwambher Pyakuryal, Economics Professor-Tribhuvan University, et al, 2008, Is Foreign Aid Working? An analysis of aid effectiveness and growth, p. 61 Of crucial importance for the promotion of good governance is an effective decentralized mechanism of working and a firm institutional base. In the 1990s, the Government has enacted the DDC and VDC/Municipality Acts and the Decentralization Act to pave the way for enhancing the local level capacity for decentralized program implementation. During informal discussions, most donors stated that the decentralization projects have comparatively less evidences of corruption. This view, however, was not fully endorsed by senior government officials, who in informal interviews, showed apprehension of local level shortsightedness brewed out of inexperiences, lack of capacity and an assertion of authority without a proper sense of accountability. They were of the view that an inefficient parallel government may crop up at the grassroots level, provided a prudent, fully accountable and capable system of working is not developed at this level. Significant amount of resources including donor assistance is therefore required to enhance the local level capacity building. ACCOUNTABILITY IS THE ESSENCE OF GOOD GOVERNANCE Jo Beall, Director Development Studies Institute-London School of Economics, 2005, Funding Local Governance: small grants for democracy and development, p. 27 The term “governance” has been around for a long time and has a number of meanings. It is often seen as a technical term for describing the administrative effectiveness and efficiency of state institutions. This is not the way it is used here. At its simplest, governance refers to the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s social and economic resources. It focuses particularly on the relationship between “government” and “citizen”. There are two ways in which the concept of governance is used to refer to this relationship: --The first and narrower definition relates to sound development supervision and is concerned with administration and management. -- The second and broader definition is also concerned with democratic politics and policy. It is argued here that both characteristics are fundamental to advancing democracy. Stoker (1998:33) defines governance as: “…the action, manner or system of governing in which the boundary between organizations and public and private sectors has become permeable….The essence of governance is the interactive relationship between and within government and non-governmental forces.” According to Stoker this implies joint action, a common purpose and value framework, as well as continuous interaction towards a shared agenda. In this perspective, good governance requires a democratic and engaged civil society that is able to ensure that neither the political nor economic system is ‘captured’ by elite interest groups and distorted to serve their needs. This can only be achieved when citizens are able to hold their institutions to account – as voters (in the case of political systems), as consumers (in the case of economic systems), and as users (in the case of service delivery). 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