International workshop Venice - March 11-12 1999 Concepts and Paradigms of Urban Management in the Context of Developing Countries
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Serge Allou, Marcello Balbo, Jean-François Tribillon
(GRET, France - IUAV, Italy - Ecole d'Architecture de la Paris la Villette, France)

"Decentralisation, local government and governance: a European perspective"

Serge Allou, Marcello Balbo

Decentralisation policies presently under way in most developing countries represent a sharp departure from the past, when central governments were the main and often only public decision-makers, including for matters related to urban planning and management. The few countries that have not yet taken this path have not done so mainly because of ongoing or only recently settled armed conflicts or hard-to-die military regimes.
Although one may contend that current decentralisation policies are often more formal than substantial, there is little doubt that not only are central governments more open to entrusting municipal governments with new roles, but also that, under present circumstances this is the only option available.
As pointed out by many studies, economic globalisation is sharply reducing the role of the State. The new information technologies and the development of communication systems, that made globalisation possible, together with the fragmentation of the production process have changed significantly the location factors: knowledge and low labour costs are increasingly substituting raw materials as primary factors of production. Capital being much more mobile than in the past, institutional or geographic barriers have lost much of their importance. By consequence, governments are loosing their grips on the economy, in particular where significant shares of investment come from foreign firms. Multinational corporations base their investment decisions on the level of return on their capital, calculated over an increasingly short time span and a world wide comparison of gains and losses. Secondly, as it is also well known, the liberalisation of the economy that goes hand in hand with globalisation demands the retrieval of the State. Structural adjustment programmes introduced in most developing countries these years have all been designed in view of liberalising national and local economies. Their main if not only aim has been to open up to greater competition by easing the often uselessly complex and rigid regulatory framework that limits productivity and constrains the potential of small firms and households activities. It is difficult to deny that the public sector is less efficient than the private one in producing both goods and services and that many State owned or controlled firms have been able to survive only because of lack or absence of competition. In a globalising world it is increasingly difficult to raise barriers or simply keep the existing ones and to prevent competitors to enter the market. The public sector is more and more confronted with higher levels of productivity from private firms offering better, more reliable services.
In the developing countries the State is on the defence also because its legitimacy has rarely been recognised. In many countries, particularly but not only in Africa, the State is a relatively new concept. Coupled with the fact that present States are often a legacy of colonialism, the concept of the Nation-State is still rather shaky in many parts of the developing world, including Latin America and Asia where the construction of national territories dates back to a less recent past. As a matter of fact the action of the State has often been more a burden than a help to the economy and society, with the imposition of rules and controls geared to the way they-should-be, not to what they actually were, master plans for managing the growth of cities being a typical example.
If the State did not succeed in helping the economic development, it was even less successful in performing its distributive role: in the eighties and nineties the divide between the wealth of a few and the poverty of the many grew deeper, especially in the cities, where the number of poor increased substantially.
As mentioned, globalisation reduces the importance of traditional location factors: the availability of raw materials or being on a road or rail interchange may be useful, but it is no longer essential. Even cheap labour is not as important as it was in the past, since it is available in every country of the South. Information and communication technologies make capital extremely mobile and investments are footloose, almost by definition. Investing in Manila, Nairobi or Managua makes almost no difference from the point of view of capital. All things being essentially equal, as economists like to say, the main and almost only location factor are profit levels. These depend more on "environmental" conditions than on single factors: tax incentives, political stability, corruption levels, safety conditions.
With the demise of the State local governments have an increasing say on of such environmental conditions: free or low-cost land for industries, exemption from local taxes, a dynamic mayor with a view for providing the necessary infrastructure and promoting policies for reliable services, including an efficient police are necessary if not sufficient conditions to lure investors from other potential locations.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the locational freedom that characterises globalisation makes local conditions more and more important: capitals may be mobile and rapidly moving through the virtual space of world communications, but they have to land somewhere, in the not at all virtual space of actual places, that is in cities. Thus what actually happens in the real world of cities, the conditions of their infrastructure and services, their housing situation, the capacity to handle traffic congestion, to diminish pollution, to curb violence is essential to compete with other cities in their own country, in the region or even at the world level.
Paradoxical as it may seem, with the waning of the Nation state and national boarders, local governments and city spaces are becoming the new focus of policy making and decentralisation policies an inevitable result of globalisation.
We can look in a similar vein at the process of democratisation taking place in a number of countries, though amidst many difficulties and setbacks. Many look at democratisation, of which the strengthening of local governments is an essential part, as a process concomitant but parallel to the changes affecting the economies of the developing countries.
However it seems difficult to conceal the straight connection existing between the introduction of stronger formal democracy (pluralism, democratic election of mayors and city councils, more transparency in the electoral systems) and economic reforms. The reduction of government budgets imposed by structural adjustment programmes and the related elimination of most if not all subsidies resulted in a significant deterioration of health, instruction, housing and other conditions of large parts of the population, in particular of the urban population where these social programmes are mainly found. To be accepted the reduction of welfare policies demand a larger political consensus, at least a higher involvement of the urban society, than in the past. The opening up of the economy with the sudden devaluation of national currencies, as with the Cfa in French-speaking African countries in 1995, and the privatisation of many economic activities, mean in most cases the sudden disappearance of thousands of jobs. Such outcome also demands more democracy, particularly at the local level, where protests and conflicts are likely to burst with heavy consequences, as it has been the case with the Saps' well known food riots in many cities.
Democratisation and decentralisation policies, a real première in quite a few developing countries, certainly stem also from the pressure coming from the people and their grass-root organisations. The demand for a locally established more accountable government to complement, if not substitute the often too distant central government was part and parcel of the return to democracy in Latin America and is finding its way also in countries where the power has traditionally been heavily centralised, as in North Africa.
However how much the decentralisation process is the result of the popular movements strength and how much it is functional to the introduction of the economic and social adjustments required by neoliberal economic policies and the globalisation of markets is open to discussion. What is clear is that, whatever the answer, the local society, i.e. the city, is going to be the level where policy options will be open to choice in the years to come, perhaps the only one.
One of the main features of structural adjustment is the reduction of government expenses.
Decentralisation is part and parcel of this reduction insofar the powers on a number of matters are transferred to the local governments without transferring the resources necessary to deal with them. Those who complain about decentralisation policies entrusting local governments with increasing responsibilities without providing them with adequate financial resources seem to forget that this is one of the primary objectives of the redistribution of powers, that is the reduction of government expenses by obliging municipal governments to find locally the resources they need to build schools, roads, water and sewage systems, or more simply to keep the existing ones running. The politics of cost recovery on urban projects is the clearest indicator of the shift not only from government to households, but also from central to local in meeting the costs. Thus in the global competition cities have to face two contradictory thrusts. On one hand local governments have to provide at least the primary services to a rapidly growing population, large shares if not the majority of it being low income or below the poverty level On the other, if they want to attract investments they have to offer a favourable urban environment, that is provide the infrastructure and services sufficient to compete in the global locational competition. It is the usual conflict between efficiency and equity, but the few resources available to local governments in developing countries make it all the more difficult to face it. Shrinking role of the State, decentralisation of powers and globalisation are changing radically the role of local governments. Until a few years ago more than to local governments one would refer to local administrations. The task of mayors and municipalities was essentially implementing and managing what had been decided at the central government level by the different ministries and government agencies. Depending on the importance of the city the mayor might have a say, at best, on the share of resources that should be granted to its city, but most of them were earmarked and there was little room for choosing how to allocate them: in fact there was no political autonomy at the local level.
Faced with limited resources, conflicting demands, growing competition among cities even within the same country and, most of all, a State less and less legitimised to choose how to allocate funds that it has only partially contributed to raise, mayors and municipal councils are no longer sheer administrative bodies but are assuming growing importance as real political subjects, with the city and its future development being at stake.
This is a major shift in local politics, where the issue has always been how to manage a given amount of resources in order to satisfy the different demands, holding the central government as responsible for what could not be distributed, i.e. for the regulations or investments that could not be Moving from administration to government has various consequences. First it implies the agreed upon, if not consensual definition of an "urban project", the idea of what the city ought to be in the years to come and what directions should be taken. In turn this demands a medium-term perspective channelling urban investments and planning decisions within a common framework, banning the ad hoc approach peculiar of most urban governments.
An urban project also requires that information be available and reliable: a major problem local governments face at present is their very limited knowledge and understanding of the city.
Third, the feasibility of an urban project stands on the consensus, or agreed upon acceptance by the local actors: the Municipality cannot establish objectives and policies for achieving them without the support of those who largely produce the city and make it work every day, the private sector, the ngo's, the local community. Involving the local stakeholders not only in the definition but also in the realisation of the city-that-ought-to-be means moving from participation, a necessary but not sufficient condition, to partnership, i.e. effectively mobilising the local resources in order to reach the agreed upon objectives.
This raises the issue of the stakeholders and their capacity to become real actors on the urban scene. Though traditionally weak, its long established presence allows to think of the Municipal government in Latin America as the most suited subject for the construction of a consensual, or agreed upon, urban project: in this case international co-operation should focus on the strengthening of local governments political as well as technical capacities. Conditions are different in sub-saharan Africa and in most Asian countries where the stake appears to be that of consolidating also cbo's and ngo's as effective actors of the urban scene for the definition of a common vision of the future city. Shifting from the role of local administration to that of local government ultimately corresponds to changing from bureaucracy to politics. This is certainly a great opportunity for giving real autonomy to the local government and, in so doing, for paving the road to democracy recently opened in many countries of the South. At the same time it is challenging and risky.
It is challenging because most if not all municipal governments, particularly those of smaller cities, are ill equipped to take up their new tasks. Not only local governments generally lack the resources necessary to fulfil them, but local politics often lacks what may be termed the "culture of government". This is the idea that objectives are less and less set by the central government but have to be identified locally, that they must be set in the framework of an increasing national and international competition, that new approaches are needed and new tools have to be experimented. Most of all local politicians and government officials are not used to thinking in terms of society mobilisation, involvement, compromising, concerted actions, enabling, what makes the difference between administering and governing.
At the same time it is risky since should providing greater autonomy to local governments not come up to the expectations, this could result in a possible setback in the process of democratisation. The introduction of market mechanisms for the allocation of resources, including the provision of basic infrastructure and services, may ensure greater efficiency and higher productivity to the urban economy. However it is likely that market mechanisms will have perverse effects on the distribution of wealth if the rules are not clearly defined in advance, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Decentralisation will lay the blame on the local government, held responsible for not providing enough housing, infrastructure or jobs; maintaining that resources and local powers are not sufficient to cope with liberalisation and globalisation will not be easily accepted as an excuse.
This brings us to the almost abused issue of governance, often presented as an exciting innovative idea, even an invention. In fact the concept of governance is not new nor, what is more important, politically neutral.
The idea that in order to make a society work - be it urban, regional or for that matter of any size - one cannot resort to the institutional structure formally entrusted with the decision-making power, but has to rely on the action of governing, that is the action of involving in the decision making, choosing, penalising, compromising is widely recognised and has been experienced since long in most European countries. Governing and by consequence governance cannot be thought of simply in terms of sound administration and managerial skills, as the World Bank proposes when referring to the idea of "good governance as synonymous with sound development management". Governance has to refer to the idea of a government able to guide the many segments making up the urban society towards a set of objectives that will make it better off, understanding the different social and, in particular, economic relationships on which the society is based and works. This political meaning of governance is clearly understood in the European context where politics is perceived as the act (and the art) of compromising among different interests, values and preferences, particularly at the local level.
Secondly, it should be clear that the concept of governance, at least in the sense it is referred to in the debate on development issues, relates to a strictly western notion of society and government. What emerges from the idea of governance, in particular from its administrative and managerial terms adopted by the World Bank, is that the political and economic model the notion refers to is that of western democracies. The four areas of governance identified by the World Bank as the central focus for better government action, i.e. public sector management, accountability, the legal framework for development, and information and transparency (The World Bank, Governance and Development, Washington D.C., 1992), are in fact conditions necessary to the efficient functioning of the market and the private sector in a perspective that takes the current neoliberal policies as the only possible road of development.
If, as it currently seems, neoliberal politics is the only alternative left open to the developing countries, the question is whether decentralisation and better, more accountable and transparent governments can really help. The success stories in south-east Asia, at least until the recent economic crisis, do not rest really upon policies featuring a particularly high degree of democracy, decentralisation, nor "good governance".
It should be clear therefore that development is not simply a matter of "good governance" but of politics. Otherwise the chances that decentralisation will really succeed in creating better conditions in the city are very poor and strengthening local governments may turn out to be the necessary but insufficient step to face the increasing inequalities between cities and within them.

Jean-François Tribillon

La ville-marché

A force de concevoir et d'appliquer les projets urbains financés par l'aide bi et multilatérale, nous en sommes venus à adhérer totalement à la pensée qui les animent et qui forment une espèce de vulgate: les villes sont comme certains gâteaux formées de couches successives de crème pâtissière qui sont autant de:

• marchés (de terrains urbains, de logements, de crédits, de communications, de services aux entreprises, de services au ménages, du travail salarié, du travail libre...)
• services marchands (eau, assainissement, enlèvement des ordures ménagères, certains transports de personnes );
• services de régulation et de répression, qui sont indispensables au bon fonctionnement de l'ensemble.

La ville-cité
A cette conception de la ville-marché s'oppose celle de la ville-cité. La cité est une construction politique. Cette construction ne peut défier localement les règles de la citoyenneté définies nationalement ou centralement par l'Etat. Mais elle peut se fonder sur une charte locale de la citadinité, sur une architecture des pouvoirs propre au lieu et à son histoire... Cette conception repose sur une croyance forte à la spécificité de la formation sociale locale et sur la légitimité pour la municipalité d'inscrire cette société sur une trajectoire de développement social.
Le travail principal consiste ici à construire une alliance socio-politique assez large. Elle est souvent fondée sur des couches sociales notabilaires qui se déclarent en charge de leur ville. L'objectif de cette alliance est avant tout d'assurer la cohésion et l'intégration sociales. Ce qui la dispense par exemple de lancer un programme d'éradication de la pauvreté. Les pauvres, elle les situe à l'intérieur du corps social. C'est une forme de prise en charge que consolideront des subsides municipaux. Les municipalités les plus avancées vont jusqu'à pratiquer une politique que l'on pourrait qualifier de politique municipale de sécurité sociale: les citadins les plus fragiles sont affiliés à des réseaux quasi-gratuits de services de restauration, de santé, de culture, de transport, de vacance...
Dans ces conditions l'hôtel de ville est la place centrale de la gestion urbaine, le lieu d'un véritable gouvernement qui s'intéresse beaucoup plus au gouvernement des hommes qu'à l'administration des choses. Dans certaines configurations conservatrices, le maire est élevé à une sorte de dignité de « patron », de « maître des lieux », s'occupant de tout, contrôlant tout, outrepassant parfois ses droits et ses devoirs, mais assurant une fonction irremplaçable et efficace de direction de la ville. C'est autour du pouvoir municipal que se tissent les réseaux de personnes et d'associations qui assurent un continuum politique entre la municipalité et les habitants. La gestion de la ville comme espace physique et cadre de vie tel que la pratique ce type d'institution est facile à caractériser. Ce sont les dirigeants notables qui presque toujours imposent leur conception de la ville comme ensemble unitaire, dont l'unité est assuré par les réseaux d'équipements municipaux et par une constante référence au centre (identification de la ville à son centre ou organisation de liaisons rapides avec lui).
C'est une véritable politique de l'espace et de la ville qui se pratique ici, faisant une large place à la production symbolique, à la mise en scène spectaculaire (au sens étymologique) de la ville corps matériel de la cité, elle-même corps politique de la société qui l'habite.
Nous sommes bien loin du fonctionnalisme sommaire que pratiquent les gestionnaires de la ville-marché.

Conclusion

Nos conceptions actuelles d'exportateurs de modèles de gestion urbaine vers les pays en développement sont dominées par la première thèse. Mais nous pratiquons nous-mêmes en tant que citoyens presque toujours la deuxième. Cette situation ne nous semble pas politiquement tenable.