Updated December 1997
| Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | United Nations Capital Development Fund | International Fund for Agricultural Development | German Agency for Technical Cooperation | Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation | World Bank |
Rome
16-18 December 1997
Technical Consultation on Decentralization
Much of the literature on decentralization, especially in English-speaking countries, is the work of economists and specialists in public administration. In the literature on Latin America and Francophone Africa, somewhat similar approaches derived from legalistic modes of analysis loom large [13]. Scholars working in these traditions have done much to enhance our understanding, but there is a tendency in their writings to underemphasize and misperceive the motivations and actions of politicians, and the political (rather than the administrative or legalistic) preoccupations of bureaucrats. Many of them also pay less attention than they should to social contexts and the interaction of decentralized political institutions and social forces. These are serious problems. It is almost always politicians who make the key decisions about decentralization. And they have great influence over the manner in which these initiatives are (or are not) implemented. Even if an experiment with decentralization has little or no democratic content and is almost purely administrative or fiscal - that is, if it largely excludes politicians and social groups at lower levels from influence - it is still politicians higher up who usually decide to craft it in that way. When bureaucrats influence the process of decentralization, their political calculations often loom larger than technocratic imperatives.
Before proceeding further, we need to consider the dissonances that often develop between two sets of views concerning decentralization - since this will help us to understand the different ways in which the issues set out below can be perceived. The first set of views bears the imprint of an administrative mentality, while the second arises from a concern to foster democracy and the vitality of decentralized institutions.
Most politicians and technocrats at higher levels of government tend strongly to the first set of views. Most elected leaders in decentralized authorities tend to the second. These dissonances (which are inevitable) can sometimes become so acute that they undermine attempts at decentralization. (When fiscal or administrative decentralization is undertaken, unattended by democratic elements, the dissonances are usually more severe.)
As Blair (1995) has helpfully noted, each of four ideas concerning decentralization can be expressed in two different ways: as part of an administrative mentality, or as part of a democratic way of thinking.
It is crucial that decentralized systems have:
A number of other conditions are less than crucial, but their presence is quite helpful. It is especially helpful if a country has had some experience of democracy at higher levels prior to decentralization. Sustained experience with this acquaints both elected politicians and bureaucrats with the idea that the latter should be accountable to the former. It acquaints everyone with the idea that elected politicians should be accountable to citizens, and that government has obligations to the people. (The latter idea is not nearly so widely accepted as is often supposed). It enables large numbers of political activists to develop skills at making a success of the politics of representation, coalition building, bargaining, and so on. It often provides citizens with a realistic set of expectations about what open government can and cannot achieve. Democracies also tend to provide considerable freedom for the press, which is also helpful to the workings of democratic decentralization.
Two other important and closely related factors are the existence of a lively civil society and the availability of social capital. It is nearly always helpful to have the former. (There is a huge literature on "civil society," but let us define it here simply as "organized interests with a significant degree of autonomy from the state"). The words "nearly always" are worth noting, since very occasionally, organized interests can be lively in severely conflictual ways which make it more, not less difficult for decentralized authorities to work creatively.
The term "social capital" refers to the density of interactions within and among social groups and voluntary associations, which generate mutual trust that can facilitate public activity. This is a concept developed by James Coleman and famously elaborated by Robert Putnam (Putnam, and others, 1993). This is closely related to a lively civil society, but it is not the same thing.
There is little doubt that when these two things are present, they almost always tend to assist decentralized authorities to work well. But the presence of these two factors is not sufficient to ensure the success of decentralization, since if a system lacks resources, accountability, and so on, it will founder. And it is not necessary to have either of these things on hand to enable decentralized institutions to function creatively.
Some readers have expressed doubts that decentralization can achieve much in the absence of these two things, especially a lively civil society. To reassure them, let us briefly consider four points.
First, when elected authorities at lower levels are established, their members tend to act quickly and forcefully to undertake projects which they think the people who voted for them desire - whether or not civil society is vibrant. In that early phase, they do not need energetic advice from organized interests to identify at least a few much-needed innovations which will be widely welcomed. Such innovations are usually obvious.
Second, those elected representatives need no coaching from civil society to understand that they must assert themselves in their dealings with bureaucrats. It is again obvious that this is an urgent priority. The problem in that initial phase is typically that these representatives act too aggressively, not too timidly, towards bureaucrats.
Third, we need to consider the setting in which such actions occur. Before decentralization, bureaucrats were nearly always far less responsive to or aware of the views of local groups than they become once it occurs. And most governments were so preoccupied with grand, centralized undertakings that they neglected (often grossly) the kind of small-scale but badly needed initiatives which decentralized authorities almost always undertake. The psychological impact of just a few such small-scale projects is usually quite considerable, since they appear to be (and generally are) radical departures from the near-vacuum that often preceded them. So in that first phase after decentralization, the creation of representative institutions alone suffices to get the new system off to a promising start - even in the absence of a lively civil society, or indeed, abundant social capital.
Finally, that psychological impact swiftly catalyzes greater participation and associational activity among interests at lower levels. So civil society soon emerges to begin to play a creative role in such systems. This happens not just where civil society is sluggishly active, but even where it has long been systematically repressed by the state. An example of such an extreme case was Côte d'Ivoire in the mid-1980s (Crook, 1991; Crook and Manor, 1994). It should be clear from all of this that decentralization usually produces entirely adequate achievements in the absence of a lively civil society - and it does not remain absent for long.
Land reform. It is common to hear people from the Indian state of West Bengal - where the Communist Party of India-Marxist governments since 1977 have developed impressive decentralized institutions - say that success is impossible unless serious land reform precedes decentralization. Prior land reform helps facilitate success, but it is patently not essential. Such institutions have also worked well in areas where land reform has made little headway, such as neighbouring Bangladesh or the Indian state of Karnataka. This is, of course, not to deny that disputes over land control will sometimes surface as heated issues within lower-level arenas once decentralization occurs. There is evidence from, for example, Mali, to indicate that this can happen (Evers, 1994, p. 31; Hessling and Ba, 1994). But this does not mean that land reform must take place before decentralization.
Market orientation and private sector development. Consider, by contrast, a World Bank document which alleges that an "effective and broad market orientation and private sector development" are crucial "preconditions" for successful decentralization. The same document claims that "another essential process" is "the emergence and development of entrepreneurial middle classes" (Fuhr, p. 2). Once again, such things are helpful (unless private sector development is attended by the rise of extreme inequalities or severe social conflict, or both). But even when the state has loomed large in the economy, decentralized authorities have functioned well and provided, inter alia, greater accountability and responsiveness from governments. And in numerous societies where the middle classes are badly underdeveloped - and in rural arenas where it is difficult to find more than handful of people whom we could describe as middle class, decentralization has yielded similar benefits. If we waited either for significant land reform or for the emergence of a strong market economy before decentralizing, we would miss opportunities to make creative changes in a very large number of countries.
The British imperial penchant for local councils, usually elected on a first-past-the-post basis, has inspired plenty of each. French colonial regimes did less decentralizing, and both they and their successors in Africa have operated according to distinctive principles which impart centralist tendencies to recent decentralized systems there. One of these - the notion of unicite de caisse (the unity of the exchequer) - implies that resources raised by local authorities should go into a national revenue pool. Those authorities sometimes have difficulty persuading central governments to release funds on demand. Another - the concept of cumul des mandats (the accumulation of mandates) - encourages leaders of local authorities simultaneously to seek and hold offices at the national level. That inclines them to a preoccupation with national rather than local affairs and priorities.
When the Americans took over the Philippines, they rushed to organize elections of mayors all across the archipelago, before they had constructed bureaucratic agencies at, or reaching down to, the local level. (In so doing, they reversed the sequencing seen in the French and British Empires, where bureaucracies were in place long before democratization.) The result was that Filipino mayors developed their own local bureaucracies and packed them with their friends and relatives - creating a system of local bossism which survives to this day. These sorts of legacies clearly need to be understood if we are to grasp how decentralization might work in such varied contexts.
We also need to look at the failures, the successes or the complete absence of prior experiments with decentralization in these places. Also important are certain elements of indigenous political culture - Gandhian traditions in India which facilitate decentralization, and the Chinese fear of "localism" (a word which implies assertiveness not only at the grass roots, but in regions as well) - which impedes it.
Varied experiences of commandism and centralization also need to be considered. The failure of authoritarian regimes in Latin America in the 1970s to produce economic growth inoculated people there against the notion that autocracy is economically productive [15]. Commandism can also entail attempts to repress civil society which create problems for decentralization. But the more liberal commandism of the Nehru years encouraged civil society to flourish in India - something which partly explains the success of decentralization in some states there. The presence or absence of multiparty systems, press freedoms, an so on - which are part of these countries' inheritance - also create opportunities and problems for decentralization. An in-depth understanding of such factors is essential when decentralization is assessed in any setting.
In the Indian state of Karnataka, for example, two severely disadvantaged groups (the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) have seats on local and intermediate-level councils reserved for them in proportion to their numerical strength - usually around 22 percent of the population. (All voters cast ballots in elections for such seats, but only members of these groups may stand for office.) Additionally, not less than one-third of the seats in all councils are reserved for women, and another third are reserved for groups called the "backward classes." These groups stand above the severely disadvantaged scheduled castes in the traditional hierarchy, so that they occupy the middle levels on the status ladder.
The complications do not end there, however. The backward classes are divided into group A (consisting of relatively more backward groups) for which 80 percent of their one-third of the seats are reserved, and group B (less backward groups) to which 20 percent are allocated. And to complicate things still further, the posts of chairs and vice-chairs of all councils are also reserved for these various groups in these varying proportions, on a rotating basis every few years. The result is a thicket of complexities which may produce more confusion than justice. Architects of decentralization need to avoid such over-elaboration if it is at all possible.
Unfortunately, most politicians fix on the influence which they lose through devolution. In 1988, one quite enlightened member of the cabinet in the Indian state of Karnataka (an unusually successful experiment) complained that "I am the Minister of Education, but I cannot decide on the location of a school in my own constituency - the Zilla Parishad (District Council) does that now." [16]
When they see such things happening, many politicians try to claw back the power passed to decentralized bodies, and they are often assisted by high-level bureaucrats who share their sentiments. This is especially likely when changes of government at higher levels occur (but not only then). In an election in the Indian state of Maharashtra in 1995, for example, the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party ousted the Congress Party from power. They found the elected bodies at lower levels dominated by the Congress and promptly set about depriving them of powers and resources [17].
This sort of jealousy is the greatest (and an omnipresent) threat to decentralization. It has wrecked many promising experiments. This has occurred for example not only in Ghana, where the promise of decentralization was open to doubt, but also in Bangladesh and some Indian states where its potential was beyond dispute (Crook and Manor, 1994). There is not much that can be done about it, other than to try to prepare high-level power holders for the loss of powers which will attend decentralization, and to explain the more subtle and substantial gains that will accrue to them if they can tolerate those losses.
For useful ideas on how central governments can play more creative roles in making decentralization work well - and, in the process, become less antagonistic to decentralization - see the section below "Mistakes at Higher Levels." See also, "Popular Pressure for Decentralization" below on approaches which may ensure greater consultation between elected members of decentralized councils and their constituents.
This often happens because the expectations which senior politicians and bureaucrats had of decentralization turn out to be inaccurate and naively optimistic. Such naiveté can take many forms. (These problems are discussed in great detail in Part 4 of this paper, but they are worth a brief mention here.)
It is common for architects of decentralization to overestimate the ability and inclination of decentralized authorities to engage effectively in planning exercises from below. When no coherent plans emerge, or when plans consist of local politicians' ill-conceived wish lists - as they often do - people higher up tend to react with astonishment and dismay. They often have similar reactions to unexpected problems with monitoring and evaluation. This can take two forms. Power holders at higher levels may discover that they are far less able than they had hoped to monitor and evaluate the doings of decentralized authorities. They may also find that those authorities are far less able or willing to monitor and evaluate projects which they initiate, or that they are unable or disinclined to convey their evaluations (especially of failures) to higher-ups.
Those at the apex of a political system may also suffer disappointment over the incapacity - or again, and more crucially here, the disinclination - of decentralized bodies to mobilize local resources. Newly elected leaders of local or regional councils may prefer not to levy fresh taxes or to press for more efficient collection of existing taxes because they fear that this will make them unpopular. They may prefer to make do with the funds provided from above.
Higher-ups may also be surprised and distressed at the limited capacity of decentralized bodies to implement even slightly complicated development projects - even when the administrative machinery available to such bodies is so insubstantial that this should come as no surprise. This problem can be especially acute when central leaders see their own programs poorly implemented by decentralized agencies.
The same reaction can occur when those at the apex of a system see decentralized authorities diverting resources from areas dear to the hearts of central leaders, in order to pursue their own rather different agendas. Things like this reinforce the inclination of high-level leaders to give way to their jealousy towards decentralized bodies, and to seek to claw back powers and resources that have been devolved.
Tendler anchors her work in a criticism of the literature on development which, she argues, fixes excessively on self-interest and rent-seeking as motivations for government employees' behaviour. She quotes Charles Sabel's view that much recent social science is a "science of suspicion. It makes the pursuit of self-interest and the fear of deception...the spring of individual action and the guiding motive of institutional construction" (Sabel, 1997, quoted in Tendler 1997). Sabel reminds us of Talleyrand's comment that "the most suspicious people make the biggest dupes" (Sabel, 1997).
Tendler prefers to draw upon the literature on industrial performance and workplace transformation, which stresses initiatives which provide employees with greater job satisfaction and which inspire both dedication to their work and trust between them and users of the services that they provide. Her research focuses on a remarkably successful set of policy initiatives in northeast Brazil. The government there fostered a sense of pride and commitment among its employees who were providing services in new, local-level programs
with repeated demonstrations of admiration and respect for what they were doing. It built a sense of calling around these particular programs and their workers. It publicized the programs incessantly, even their minor successes. It gave prizes for good performance, with much pomp and ceremony....When it recruited and trained workers for some of these programs, it talked to them like a chosen people (Tendler, 1997, pp.136-37).All this contributed to a new
respect for these workers by the public - remarkable in a time of widespread contempt for government. Workers revelled in the new respect and, in a kind of virtuous circle, they wanted to live up to it. Note the difference in this sequence of improved performance from that implicit in development advice, where the public servant is presumed guilty of self-interest unless proven otherwise (Tendler, 1997, pp.136-37).The sustained publicity campaign which the government mounted also created popular enthusiasm for the politicians higher up who created the programs - something which will appeal to high-level leaders everywhere - but there was more to it than that. Employees carried out more and more varied tasks than is common in most such settings. These included "the brokering of connections between clients and the larger world of government agencies and private suppliers." This gave them greater job satisfaction and
cohered together in a client-centric, problem-solving approach to service delivery. It gave rise to trusting and respectful relationships between clients and public servants (Tendler, 1997, p. 138).This approach also persuaded people at the grass roots to monitor programme implementation and to protest when government employees performed badly. It encouraged local interests and nongovernmental organizations to play active roles in influencing programs, to that they conformed more to local preferences and were adapted to local conditions (Tendler 1997).
Tendler rightly stresses that her findings imply the need for decentralizing governments to continue playing centralized roles even as they devolve power. But the evidence amassed in the present study suggests that she carries this too far, into an unnecessarily negative judgment on the promise of decentralization. It makes more sense to consider incorporating the approaches which she suggests into experiments with decentralization.
This could serve several useful purposes. Consider two examples. It could encourage nonofficial associations to engage more actively with decentralized institutions and persuade citizens that local governance is not the sole territory of the elected local council (de los Reyes and Jopillo, 1995). It could also reassure central leaders by giving them an important role, even as it encouraged both the dedication of government employees and the active involvement of people at the grass roots.
Also note, in connection with the section below on the uses of participatory rural appraisal techniques, that such techniques require sustained intervention from atop political systems to ensure that they are implemented and understood (Gaventa, 1997).
Our evidence indicates that the people tend to anticipate a lot even without official encouragement. This is closely bound up with their eagerness for small scale development projects which have usually received less attention from higher levels of government than villagers wish. However much decentralized bodies may seek to respond to this, they may not be able to deliver enough, quickly enough to satisfy popular appetites.
We should understand that people at the grass roots seldom have a realistic understanding of the limitations on what decentralized bodies can achieve. If a decentralized system functions tolerably well for a sustained period, many citizens will eventually acquire such an understanding. But in the early stages, when the system is most vulnerable to the jealousy of higher ups, this problem needs to be anticipated, lest the new system lose popular legitimacy. One way of easing this problem is to provide plentiful resources to decentralized bodies, but that is often difficult if governments are hard pressed for funds and especially if they see decentralization (wrongly) as a means of cutting overall expenditure.
The anxieties which these people express often call attention to the problem of clientelism, that is, the tendency of leaders to get themselves elected by using networks of clients to whom they then show inordinate favoritism once in office. A certain amount of such behaviour is inevitable, indeed it is - up to a point - democracy in action and needs to be seen as such. But it can also be a genuine problem.
When it is, it would help if decentralizers everywhere would emulate their counterparts across much of Latin America (Nickson, 1995) in recognizing that the best (if imperfect) solution to this political problem is itself political. If fair elections are held at regular intervals, the poor performance of politicians who carry clientelism to excess or who behave irresponsibly in other ways will often ensure their defeat. Since politicians are preoccupied with gaining and retaining power, most of them will eventually see that such forms of irresponsibility can hit them where it hurts most, and they or others will develop more responsible modes of governance. This was apparent, for example, in Bangladesh after 1985 (Crook and Manor, 1994).
Such systems may be highly personalized - and in authorities located at or near the local level where everyone knows everyone else, that is hardly surprising. But many of the more successful ones - which often ensure leaders' reelection - acquire a more institutionalised character. That is to say, they are focused less on assisting the leader's small circle of cronies and more on reaching an array of social groups who can ensure his political survival. When that happens, the leader seeks to reach certain types of people rather than certain known individuals, and he becomes preoccupied with impersonal policies that assist those groups rather than personalized hand-outs. There is a fine line between clientelism and this more constructive type of patronage politics, but we need to look for the subtle differences between these things, lest we dismiss much that is creative in the doings of elected leaders.
The key requirements wherever laws and rules are devised are to make them as unambiguous as possible, to construct them on the understanding that it is politics and not bureaucratic regulation that mainly matters in democratic systems, and to craft them in ways that maximize the chances for two kinds of accountability to be achieved. These are first, the accountability of bureaucrats to elected politicians and, second, the accountability (frequently and fairly) of politicians to citizens.
First, it means that the development bureaucracy will need little or no restructuring or enlargement. This makes the process of decentralization easier, cheaper and more likely to succeed. If bureaucratic agencies need to be deconcentrated at the same time as devolution occurs, this greatly complicates things. If it is neglected or done inadequately or funded insufficiently, decentralized authorities will have major difficulties accomplishing things. If numerous new hirings of bureaucrats are required, this can increase both the cost of decentralization and the risk that inexperienced and ill-qualified staff will cripple the new institutions.
There is some evidence to indicate that decentralization within federal systems may in fact cause problems. The devolution of much of the power over investment decisions to provincial governments in China is said by some, though not all, commentators to have produced macroeconomic imbalances and inflationary pressures (Naughton, 1995).
And yet even if this view is accurate, it appears to be an exception that proves the contrary rule. Anwar Shah has noted a number of cases in which fiscal decentralization to provincial levels correlates with welcome trends, in macroeconomic management and much more (Shah, 1996).
Or consider the case of India. In recent years spending by state governments has triggered anxieties among officials in the national Finance Ministry about their ability to keep the overall government deficit down. But the mechanisms which India's and most other national governments have to curb spending at the state level usually suffice to minimize this problem. Indeed, in India, we see state governments developing new strategies which hold considerable promise for improvements in macroeconomic management. The most striking, if little known, example of this is the tax reform program of the Rajasthan government which entails both the simplification of the tax system and a reduction in some tax rates - which has led to higher revenue collections [19]. The anxieties over the dangers of decentralization within federal systems are overstated.
There is much less reason to worry that decentralization to still lower levels will cause difficulties. It is argued elsewhere in this study that central governments should consider at least modest increases in spending on these lower-level institutions, especially in the early phases when decentralization is initially undertaken. This is helpful in enabling these institutions to break down popular cynicism which in many countries has built up over long periods when government has achieved very little. But we are talking here about relative small amounts of money, and in any case, officials in national finance ministries usually retain control over how much is committed to this purpose.
Lower-level institutions are very unlikely to possess either the power or the inclination to increase public spending by very much. The evidence on decentralization worldwide clearly indicates that it is highly unusual for those institutions to be granted substantial tax-raising powers by central governments - indeed, they often have none at all. And even when they are empowered to impose at least modest taxes, elected representatives in those institutions are (as we have noted elsewhere) exceedingly reluctant to do so since this will make them unpopular with voters. When they have substantial powers, they often tend to exercise them quite carefully - in, for example, the Philippines where "conservative fiscal management practices" have prevailed (de los Reyes and Jopillo, 1995, p. 88).
Indeed, there is evidence from Central Europe to suggest that democratic decentralization may make a positive contribution to programs of economic liberalization and macroeconomic stabilization in general, and to the success of austerity programs that are aimed at curbing inflation in particular [20]. It is impossible on present evidence to prove a causal connection. But it appears that serious efforts by certain post-Communist governments there to promote democratic decentalization have helped to erode popular disenchantment with government in general, so that citizens became more inclined to tolerate the pain of austerity programs and to accept official explanations of the need for such programs than they would otherwise have been.
This problem never goes away, but it is especially acute early in the life-span of decentralized authorities. If they are given the resources from central government in that initial phase to enable them to achieve useful things, they have a chance to convince their constituents that they have tangible promise. Once that idea takes root - often in places where people have good reason for cynicism about government institutions (and paying taxes) - the authorities will be in a better position to impose taxes, on the understanding that this will make further accomplishments possible. They will also be better able to create conditions that encourage private investment - in profit-making enterprises which hold promise to eventually increase local revenues (World Bank, 1997), and in local development funds which may emerge out of cofinancing initiatives from higher levels of government. But even then, elected members of these bodies should not be expected to shed their hesitations about imposing fresh levies.
Others have observed that this has little relevance in developing countries - especially in rural areas (for example, Bardhan, 1997). People there are often less mobile, and when they do move in numbers, it tends strongly to be for extreme reasons such as environmental devastation or the outbreak of epidemics. The evidence on which this study is based offers not a single example to corroborate Tiebout's model. This is explained in large part by two things. First, in the real world, decentralized authorities usually lack significant tax raising powers. Second, even when they possess them, they are reluctant to court unpopularity by imposing fresh taxes. As a consequence, marked differences in tax rates and resulting service provisions tend not to develop. Tiebout's model should therefore be disregarded here.
Politicians in decentralized bodies are far more able than is usually supposed to exercise autonomy - by informal means, including (often creative) concealment. Given the limitations on the mobilization of local resources, a significant element of funding from above is inevitable in most decentralized systems. If higher level authorities maintain the stability of funding for decentralized bodies, the latter are often able to function effectively, accountably, responsively and largely as they please. Decentralizers should concentrate on providing stable funding and on ensuring that mechanisms exist to facilitate accountability. They should also seek to promote the formal autonomy of decentralized bodies, so that this can be achieved within the rules and not (as will usually happen) by stealth.
Decentralized authorities have several other, less objectionable reasons for this bias. Many of them derive special satisfaction from creating something tangible, to which they can point as evidence of their creativity - not only to voters, but to their family and friends as well. Many of them prefer to commit resources to relatively simple, straightforward projects rather than to more complex innovations in service delivery. They also tend to have rather limited administrative resources, which can manage these simpler matters, but which may not be equal to more complex undertakings.
Finally and not least, their preference for small-scale infrastructure projects tends to be shared by most of their constituents - as systematic surveys of villagers views have demonstrated (Crook and Manor, 1994). However beneficial large-scale development programs may have been, rural dwellers tend to have a rather different conception of what constitutes "rural development." They are enthusiastic about efforts to look after the little things that have received little attention for a very long time.
It is worth stressing that politicians atop political systems are not immune from foreshortened time perspectives. They can also be impatient for quick political payoffs from decentralization, which can be damaging to fledgling authorities at lower levels. Witness, for example, the temperamental reaction of one genuine enthusiast for decentralization, Chief Minister Digvijay Singh of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, when the new decentralized system's teething troubles were explained to him [23].
So may a number of other things that are more or less inevitable in countries which are emerging from autocratic phases. It will take time for elected representatives to grasp that in the new system, they are accountable to voters. They may at first behave in the autocratic manner of power holders in the old system. Voters may, for a time, be disorganized, naive and easily gulled. It will take time for political parties to organize themselves so that they can provide voters with clearer choices than are available in the first, often chaotic and rather personalized elections - see section V below).
Many of these things - especially those in the paragraph just above - are likely to change over time (see for example, Gazaryan and Jeleniewski, 1996). Impatience can destroy the considerable promise of decentralization.
Consider, for example, the case of India where the Constitution (since 1993) requires the government of every state to undertake decentralization. This has worked and is working well in a few states where social conflict is not severe and where state governments have been serious about empowering decentralized bodies. It could work well in most states, if governments would be more generous in devolving powers and resources. But no matter what the government in the state of Bihar might do, the extreme economic disparities and social turmoil that exist there are bound to wreck any undertaking - as is currently happening.
It is possible that over time, decentralized institutions can also become arenas within which political bargains and accommodations develop, so that conflicts moderate. And as less prosperous and powerful groups develop a better understanding of how to turn the decentralized system to their advantage, they may make gains. But the available evidence suggests that this will be a very slow process. To expect decentralization to promote substantial social change anytime soon - or to help to pacify a society which is wracked with such severe inequality and conflict that decentralization will probably fail - is naive.
The first is more relevant to the performance of state institutions at higher levels than to decentralized bodies, but it could conceivably have some impact upon the latter as well - although no evidence for this has emerged during this study. A recent study of the political management of economic reforms in India indicates that the Narasimha Rao government succeeded in liberalizing partly because it could "soften the edge of political conflict (which might have arisen from the reforms) by promoting change amidst the appearance of continuity." Its success, which international development agencies that have "good government" agendas applaud, owed much to concealment rather than to transparency (Jenkins, 1995). In this connection, Jenkins recalls Albert O. Hirschman's findings that land reformers often had to rely on "the use of ambiguity and obfuscation" in pursuing their ends [25]. The greater transparency of decentralized, democratic institutions makes it much more difficult for politicians in them to use such tactics for reformist purposes, should they wish to do so.
That may seem a loss only in theory, and perhaps it is. But another problem for decentralized authorities is very real. Transparency is supposed to enhance the legitimacy of political institutions, and it often does so in many ways. But it can also, simultaneously, produce the opposite result, even when this is not justified by events.
The creation of elected district and local councils in the Indian state of Karnataka in the late 1980s, and the devolution of resources and responsibilities onto those councils, caused the overall amount of corruption in the political system to decline. And yet, most villagers believed that corruption had increased because it was now far more visible in the more transparent decentralized system than it had been before. This misperception acted as a counterweight to their tendency to regard the decentralized system as more legitimate than the one which preceded it. That decentralized system was quite successful, so that it was not greatly damaged by this. But in other cases, where decentralized institutions achieve less - which is to say, in most decentralized systems - this sort of thing could prove deeply damaging. There is little that can be done about this, but analysts and advocates of decentralization need to be aware of the problem.
First, it will not work. In countries that permit competition between parties at higher levels in the system - and even when this is curtailed - party leaders will find ways round bans on their participation in local elections, by modest acts of subterfuge [27]. Since the tendency towards various types of subterfuge is unhealthy in any democratic system, it is best to avoid unenforceable bans which invite it. At first glance, we may be attracted by proposals that "community-level elections should be depoliticized through mechanisms to replace the parties with territorial neighbourhood groups and corporative organizations" (Carvajal, 1995, p. 47). But in practice, such schemes are unworkable.
We also need to recognize that the involvement of parties in local council politics yields numerous benefits. In democratic systems, it helps to integrate elected councils at the grass roots with representative structures higher up and, thereby, to deepen democracy. If conflicts of interest develop between central government and decentralized authorities, the presence of parties at all levels become easier to manage (Gibson and Hanson, 1996).
If local councillors find that they lack the leverage to render bureaucrats responsive or accountable (because the latter have links to superiors higher up in their ministries), parties provide them with connections to elected leaders at higher levels who may be able to put things right. It assists parties in building their organizations, which by and large is a healthy thing. It enables parties to ease the discontents of ambitious people at lower levels by providing them with responsibilities and the chance to learn useful political skills. Those who perform well in local councils can then move up to higher-level posts with useful experience at making democracy work. Allowing parties into local elections also creates political prizes which they can win, even if they have failed in elections higher up. This reduces the winner-take-all nature of higher-level elections and eases despair and alienation among unsuccessful parties [28]. The (usually unsuccessful) attempts by autocratic regimes to ban parties from local elections - the military governments of H. M. Ershad in Bangladesh in the late 1980s and Sani Abacha in Nigeria in 1996 are examples - is eloquent testimony to the contributions which party involvement at the grass roots can make to democracy.
Finally, the presence of parties in local councils helps to promote accountability, which is crucial to the effective working of democratic decentralization. It helps, first, by organizing the opposing forces on a council into clearly recognizeable groups which at subsequent elections will offer themselves to the voters for judgement. If contending forces are merely a jumble of sometimes shifting factions and alignments without labels, it is very difficult for the electorate to register a focused verdict on their record.
Second, by structuring debate and conflict on councils into a more clearly discernible pattern of ruling versus opposition groups, the presence of parties facilitates accountability between elections. It does this because opposition parties naturally seek to criticize poor performance and to unearth malfeasance - calling the ruling party to account constantly (Gazaryan and Jeleniewski, 1996, p. 62).
First, would be decentralizers should not expect concerted action from the local level in support of their plans. Rural dwellers often respond enthusiastically after decentralization occurs, but anticipatory shows of support do not - on present evidence - occur.
Second and more crucially, even when decentralized institutions take root and become popular, threats to them do not elicit grass roots protests, never mind resistance. It is common to hear enthusiasts for decentralization laugh off the jealousy of higher-level politicians by saying that the masses will rise up to thwart any efforts to weaken it. They are mistaken and characteristically naive. In all of the many cases where higher-ups have eroded or destroyed decentralized authorities - some of which were quite successful and popular (for example, Crook and Manor, 1994, chapter two) - there is no evidence of preventive action at the grass roots.
Finally, it follows that the absence of such protest from below should not be taken to imply that a particular program of decentralization is unpopular. It may or may not be.
Decentralizers have tried various institutional means to require representatives to engage with the citizenry. In Ghana, a novel attempt was made to require elected members of District Assemblies to perform manual labour alongside ordinary folk! But the usual approach is to demand that periodic encounters be held which tend to resemble village meetings, where constituents' views and discontents can be aired. These tend to fail (as indeed the Ghanaian provision did) because representatives either stage meetings with picked sympathizers or because they avoid any such encounter. The main problem is that the arenas within which elected representatives operate are usually so numerous and far flung, and the monitoring capacities of central governments are so limited, that politicians find it easy to elude such encounters.
A way round this problem may have been found in Bangladesh, where a new arrangement is currently under consideration - although at this writing, it has not yet been put into practice. Instead of proposing all-inclusive meetings, the authorities are considering the creation of large committees in each local council constituency, consisting of spokespersons for a wide range of interests, including several of the more prosperous and powerful local groups. Their presence is crucial because it will make it very difficult for local councillors to avoid regular meetings with them. Enough non-elite, disadvantaged groups will also be present on these occasions to ensure that a wide array of views are heard [29].
Some will object, rightly, that this solution is less ideal than village-wide meetings. Making the lowest level body a consultative rather than a deliberative and implementing institution curtails it powers. And since co-optation may be used to constitute part or all of such bodies, they may be less representative in an electoral sense - though co-optation, when properly handled, can enhance representativeness. Representatives of poor and excluded groups (including women) will have more clout if they are elected rather than cooped. And since such bodies are likely to be less formally institutionalized than elected councils higher up, there may be a tendency not to empower them as much as those higher-level councils. But given the minimal implementation capacity at the lowest levels in all political systems, little will probably be lost as a result. And, crucially, since encounters are more likely to take place than village-wide meetings, this approach is well worth trying. (There may be similar arrangements elsewhere, particularly in some Latin American countries, but the available information from there is currently fragmentary and unclear.)
These techniques are not infallible and should not be overestimated or oversold. But, as readers of the literature on participatory rural appraisal have seen, they can help to identify what rural dwellers perceive as their most urgent problems and what they prefer as solutions - thus drawing on local knowledge and often well-tested, informal local solutions to them. (For evidence on the urgency of this, see Leach and Mearns, 1996.) They can assist in monitoring efforts to solve problems and in identifying deserving beneficiaries among the poor.
Certain other advantages which participatory rural appraisal techniques offer may, however, be less familiar. Like democratic decentralization, they tend to catalyze increased participation and associational activity at the grass roots. And when used by or in conjunction with decentralized authorities, they can help to knit the responsiveness of those institutions together more intimately with the quickening participation and associational activity that those authorities inspire. They can heighten popular awareness of local problems and potential solutions among rural dwellers. When this happens in one locality, neighbouring communities tend to hear of it and seek to follow suit (Gaventa, 1997) [30].
The use of participatory rural appraisal techniques can also heighten the appetites and demands of ordinary people at the local level for greater participation and consultation. This intensifies pressure on decentralized authorities to be accountable to ordinary folk - a matter of crucial importance. It can facilitate accountability, but such demands also promote conflict both with local elites (sometimes including elected members of local authorities) and with power holders at higher levels in political systems. A certain amount of such conflict is inevitable and healthy, since it helps to promote social justice and more effective partnerships between state and society. But it can also create problems. This kind of politics is not necessarily a zero-sum game (Arnstein, 1969 and Gaventa, 1977). Such conflict can cause influential people to lose some of their enthusiasm for democratic decentralization and, in extremis, place its survival in jeopardy.
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