It is sometimes assumed that there exists a close correlation between the size of the subnational entity and its capacity. The argument is that small units (local governments, communities) will never have the capacity required to perform certain functions. It is impossible to disagree with this statement at such high level of generality: no one in his or her right mind would suggest, for example, that a municipio of a few thousand in the Bolivian altiplano should be in charge of trade policy or attempt to run a graduate program in physics. The question becomes relevant when specific functions are considered: running schools and health clinics, operating irrigation systems, building and maintaining roads, taking initiatives for local economic development, etc.
From that perspective, the argument should be that certain dimensions of capacity require a certain scale before they can fully develop.[2] For example, when conducting field work in Colombia to analyze the development of local capacity to deliver services in three sectors (roads, water and education) we considered three dimensions of capacity: labor (quality of staff), capital (equipment, buildings) and technology (internal organization and management style). The evidence collected does not support the view that scale is an intrinsic barrier along these three dimension (see World Bank [1995]).
It’s not that we didn’t find areas in which scale presented a problem in terms of the municipio’s capacity to deliver these services. Not surprisingly we found that most rural municipios had difficulties in hiring a cadre of professionals that could effectively deal with the technical challenges presented by the variety of areas in which they had service delivery responsibilities. But, interestingly, we found that many of them were coming up with ”market” or “bottom up solutions”. The most typical one was the constitution of associations of local governments for specific purposes. It is not unusual to see half a dozen small rural municipios sharing construction equipment and professional staff, for example.
Even so, we found that some very small and isolated municipios simply found it impossible to, for example, hire even a part-time supervisor in charge of the local schools that would satisfy national professional standards. But, what we also found is that, before decentralization, this community de facto did not have the benefit of that service either. Formally, the regional deconcentrated office of the Ministry of Education provided that service but in reality the supervisor hardly ever showed up. In fact, the main change since decentralization was that the sole white colonist leaving in the community ceased to be the local teacher and was replaced by several indigenous people trained in bilingual education by an NGO.[3]
After we completed our research, another team conducted further field work in rural municipios. The evidence collected, led them to argue that when it comes to local capacity “small might be better” (Rojas [1996]). Their paper suggests that, in fact, there appears to be some advantages in being small from the point of view of identifying community needs and establishing partnerships with non-governmental actors. To this last aspect I will now turn my attention.
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[2] While poor fiscal capacity
will certainly limit what a local government or community can achieve,the way I
understand institutional capacity is in terms of what outputs can be achieved
with a given resource base. [3] There is growing evidence coming from Bolivia indicating that the 1994 Popular Participation Law is facilitating the development of innovative and effective locally-initiated programs to expand access and quality of education in rural areas. For an example where the beneficiaries were girls, see Montaño [1997]. |
