Previous Page Table of Contents Next Page


Political competition and capacity development.


The political dimension of decentralization is the subject of another working group in this technical consultation and I will not attempt to deal with this important issue in any systematic way in this note. There is, however, one angle to the capacity development question that forces us to consider the relationship between decentralization and political reforms.

It is a fact that in Latin America decentralization has been associated with broader political reforms that, in a variety of ways, have attempted to expand democracy and citizen participation. In the late seventies less than half a dozen countries in the region had elected national governments and among them only a couple had elected mayors and/or governors. Today, there are over 12,000 elected sub-national governments in the region (Campbell [1995]). Several countries have incorporated the promotion of citizen participation as a goal in their constitutional and legal frameworks (e.g. Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela). And the resolution of some long-standing armed conflicts in Central America is also opening the doors to more active collaboration between the state, NGOs and private sector actors.

While this remains a largely controversial topic even within Latin America, over the last few years we have seen an accumulation of evidence suggesting that political competition at the local level --together with a greater involvement by non-state actors in social programs-- is a strong motivator for local capacity development. Our work in Colombia, for example, offered strong evidence of the existence of political reform/capacity development link. Namely, we found that among Colombian municipios, competition for political office opened the door to responsible and innovative leadership that became the driving force behind capacity building. The combination of added responsibilities for service delivery, more fiscal resources and political reforms that increased competition seems to have created an environment conducive to more effective local governments.

Some very recent evidence from Central America suggests that an increase in the degree of competition in local elections is having a positive impact on the development of local capacity by motivating local leaders to invest financial, human and political resources to improve the effectiveness of public action in their communities.

Whether these trends constitute a sufficient --or even a necessary condition-- for the development of local capacity in other countries in Latin America and other parts of the developing world remains an open question which I hope we will be able to address during these consultations.


Previous Page Top of Page Next Page