Local Development: Decentralized Sectoral, Local Govt. & Community Support, Summaries of Development Economics

Download Local Development: Decentralized Sectoral, Local Govt. & Community Support and more Summaries Development Economics in PDF only on Docsity! Summary Local Development Discussion Paper This paper was prepared as a discussion document for the International Conference on Local Development in Washington, DC on 16-18 June 2004. It aims to clarify the core principles that guide decentralized, participatory development programs; identify bodies of knowledge and practice that contribute to more effective strengthening of local governance and service provision arrangements; and outline the conceptual framework for a more integrated approach to local development. Background to Local Development Traditionally, the governments of developing countries have employed conventional public sector organizations—sectoral agencies and local governments—to provide infrastructure and services at local level. More recently, social funds using highly decentralized, participatory and demand-based methods such as community driven development (CDD) have demonstrated considerable success in getting resources to their intended beneficiaries and in achieving rapid impacts. However such innovative approaches have not always ensured adequate coordination and integration of their efforts with broader public sector governance and service provision. This has led many to question the sustainability of both the infrastructure and services they finance and the institutions and capacities they support. Three alternative approaches to local development—decentralized sectoral, local government and direct community support approaches1—have all come to emphasize many of the same principles: empowerment, beneficiary demand, administrative autonomy along with greater downward accountability, and enhanced local capacity. Despite these shared principles it has often been difficult to integrate efforts at local level due to the lack of a unifying conceptual framework, differing professional and organizational perspectives, institutional rigidity, and inadequate coordination among line agencies and program implementers. Nevertheless, practitioners of the three approaches share common objectives: increasing local access to public infrastructure, public services and economic opportunities; increasing the empowerment of local actors; and enhancing the sustainability of local development processes. Building upon their common principles and experience, this paper highlights synergies and tensions among the three approaches to help integrate knowledge and practice about participatory, decentralized development. 1 Decentralized sectoral approaches rely on functionally specialized organizations at the local level, with operational autonomy allocated through deconcentration or delegation policies. Local government approaches promote territorially organized political and administrative institutions, with policy and operational autonomy allocated through devolution policies. Direct community support approaches, such as those frequently associated with community-driven development, promote resource transfer and civil society empowerment strategies that emphasize community organizations as institutions of collective action and interlocutors between people and public service providers. 2 A spatial focus at the local level provides a way of bringing the approaches together in order to improve governance, public service delivery and the dynamism of economic activity. Although its physical extension will vary among countries “local space” is a concept of intermediate scale, above community and below regional and national. While promoting community action contributes importantly to local development, applying the subsidiarity principle to the problem of integration among communities, local governments, and service delivery organizations suggests that institutions of governance and management at the next level upward should also be engaged and strengthened. This paper asserts that local development is primarily the responsibility of local actors. Although enabled and constrained by broader social, environmental, economic and political factors and supported by external resources and institutional systems, sustainable local development depends upon agency and action at the local level rooted in the commitment by local actors to assume responsibility for improving their own well-being. The Elements of a Local Development Framework The internal elements of a local development framework include empowerment, local governance, and service provision. The external elements include an enabling environment and external support for local development. Together these elements constitute the institutional foundations for achieving sustainable development impacts at the local level. Empowerment enhances people’s opportunities and capabilities to make and express choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. People’s capability to participate in local governance and local service delivery is not only determined by individual resource endowments (money, information, skills, etc.) but also the social capital that provides the basis for collective action to address their common concerns. Local governance is the way authority is organized, legitimated, and employed by and on behalf of local people through planning, decision-making, and accountability processes. Local governance refers not only to local governments and other public sector agencies but also to a variety of community and civil society institutions by which people organize to act collectively. Empowerment Local Governance Local Service Provision Local Development Impacts Enabling Environment External Support FIGURE ES- 1 ELEMENTS OF A LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK 5 empowerment, governance, and service provision, a more effectively integrated local development strategy can be defined. This approach to integration does not eliminate the tensions associated with linking the approaches; rather it suggests a more coherent and consistent way to understand the practical challenges confronted in supporting local development. A local development framework organizes knowledge to make it more accessible to those formulating integrated strategies to meet these challenges. Approaches supporting local development that link communities, local governments and sectoral agencies have recently become more common. In many countries social funds, CDD programs, and other community support approaches have increasingly promoted greater integration with public sector systems, both upstream linkages to policies and fiscal arrangements and downstream linkages to governance and service delivery arrangements. These experiences provide a foundation for the more integrated approach to local development advocated here. Such an integrated approach involves organizing interventions around local territorial units such as districts, municipalities, or communes. It builds on and strengthen existing organizations and capacities within the local space defined by local government boundaries to develop more integrated institutional arrangements and processes. Community-based organizations, local governments, and deconcentrated sectoral agencies, as well as private organizations such as NGOs and firms, are linked more coherently in order to support improved empowerment, governance and service provision. A spatially framed approach, which links such local organizations through their respective roles and relationships at local government and community levels, promises to improve coordination, synergy, efficiency, and responsiveness in local development processes. Local Government Approaches Decentralized Sectoral Approaches Direct Community Support Approaches Integrated Local Development Approach FIGURE ES- 2 INTEGRATING THREE APPROACHES TO LOCAL DEVELOPMENT 6 While the basic elements of the local institutional system (community organizations, local governments, decentralized sectoral agencies, and service delivery units) would be part of any institutional arrangement for local development, their roles and relationships will vary according to context. In some cases communities will be the most legitimate venue for local decision making and resource management, while in others local governments will be more prominent. In some cases decentralized sectoral agencies will manage nearly all service delivery, while in others NGOs or private firms will also have significant roles. This contingency of the institutional arrangements for local development comes from the great variation across countries, and even across regions within countries, in the legitimacy and capacity of the local actors through which governance and service provision are organized. The Role of National Governments in Promoting Local Development Local development requires an institutional environment favorable to local initiative. Both the formal institutions of governance and the informal institutions of the wider society and economy contribute to an environment that supports or constrains local responsibility, local capacity, local collective action, and local accountability. This enabling environment includes the formal institutional arrangements of the public and private sectors as well as the informal social institutions and practices that influence the behavior of people and organizations. These factors can significantly enhance or constrain local efforts to improve empowerment, governance and service delivery at the local level. The enabling environment for local development can be improved by the following measures: Make national governance more supportive of local development by defining laws, policies and procedures that: Clarify the rights of individuals for equitable access to opportunities and to organize for collective action. Strengthen the legal standing of voluntary associations and communities. Recognize the role of CBOs in governance and service delivery. Improve the legal, fiscal, policy and management framework for local government. Make sectoral policies and systems compatible with LG and CBO empowerment. Foster a civil society more supportive of local development by initiatives that: Legitimize social capital and local collective action in various forms to enable citizen voice and choice. Promote democratic norms and civic institutions supporting transparency and accountability. Promote societal values such as equity, social justice and local responsibility. Enhance local capacity through investments that: 7 Reorient the local public sector to improve horizontal coordination among public sector organizations at local level and to promote participation in governance and partnership in service delivery. Build social capital by promoting collective action through community organizations and voluntary associations linked to self-help, governance, and service delivery. Strengthen local organizations, both public sector and non-governmental, to improve planning, decision-making, management, service delivery, and accountability. Increase knowledge and skills to enhance the technical, administrative and adaptive capacities of local actors. Provide external support for local development in order to: Finance local development through government budget allocations to deconcentrated public agencies and devolved local governments and through grant mechanisms to local governments and community-based organizations. Provide technical assistance to local organizations to assist in developing and implementing decentralized participatory governance and management systems as well as to fill short-term capacity gaps. Increase the availability of information to local actors to support local planning and decision-making processes . Promote transfer of expertise among both local and national actors regarding relevant lessons learned in similar settings about how to improve empowerment, governance, and service delivery through more integrated approaches to local development. The Challenges of Local Development Adopting a more integrated approach to local development is not a simple task. To effectively integrate local development processes and to systematically promote greater empowerment, improved governance, and more effective service provision at local level, several significant challenges are likely to be confronted, including: • The challenge of changing attitudes and practices in both public sector organizations and in civil society to legitimate values of equity, responsiveness, accountability, and responsibility. • The challenge of managing complex processes involving many organizational actors, both governmental and non-governmental, at several levels. • The challenge of surmounting institutional boundaries that separate sectoral, local government and community-based actors and organizations due to divergent interests and values. • The challenge of realigning relations of power to favor local actors rather than national actors and to favor communities and civil society rather than public officials. Next Steps in a Program of Support for Local Development