The role of local governments in the processes of local development

2. Bibliography

The strategic planning of development from local governments is one of the most extended approaches of local development in Latin-America and the developed countries where these initiatives are applied (Meyer-Stamer, 2006). The public responsibilities and warranties towards the social and economic promotion have traditionally devolved upon national governments. However, with the beginning of the new conceptions, these activities are shared giving an important role to local governments.

Due the complexities in which societies are immersed, the national level has been assuming its limitations and ignorance regarding local conditions where according to Francisco Alburquerque (2001) has prevailed a macroeconomic approach with a preference for short term results and eminently reactive designs.

The traditional democratic government has at present lots of difficulties to face efficiently an environment which is more and more complex, uncertain and dynamic. The democratic legitimacy of the public institutions is getting deteriorated in front of a more and more reflexive and critical people with new values that can not satisfied with the simple technocratic provision of public services. The main difficulties of the traditional democratic government are based on four very dynamic aspects:

• The increasing difficulties on learning due to the intrinsic uncertain character of the postindustrial society and the high level of cognitive fragmentation that it implies.

• The complexity of the values, interests and preferences at risk, which not only have multiple subjects but they are themselves changing and unstable.

• The unsustainable character of the hierarchical conception of the processes of government.

• The increasing interdependence between problems and political actors that place in doubt seriously the segmented and unidirectional traditional model of public policies. (Gomá y Blanco, 2002).

From the 80"s on is perceived a certain reaction of local governments which of course have been gaining in space within their respective contexts with a special attention to the importance of the micro social processes. The new roles and responsibilities of governmental structures are (Alburquerque, 2003):

• To support through subventions, co financing, administrative facilities the initiatives that reinforce the competitiveness of local economic structures.

• To decentralize as much as possible the information, knowledge and decisions.

• To delegate the functions of control and contribution to the most autonomous organizations (public, private or mixed).

• To enhance the processes of evaluation in order to make compatible a higher level of delegation of responsibilities with a more strict control of the process.

In the Encyclopedia of Political Intuitions Bogdanor (1994) defines local government as "a kind of political institution whose authority or competence is limited to a territorial portion of the state". It characterized by its prolonged historical evolution, by its constitutionally subordinated position, by local participation, the capability to establish taxes and a wide spectrum of responsibilities.

There are two great traditions in relation to the topic of local governments. The origin of these traditions goes back to specific historical conditions (the North American federalism and the European traditions that were more interested in the relations between national and local levels and the importance of the political and administrative control carried on by the headquarter) making emphasis on two different series of relations. In the model of autonomy, the local government is considered a bastion of democracy, decentralization and delegation of power. On the contrary, the prefectural and centralist model remarks on the relations between local and national levels and the relations between the center and the periphery (Rehren Bargetto, 1992)[1].

The different positions in which the interest for local governments has been dealt can be resumed in the following orientations (González, Villar, 2004):

• From pluralist perspectives locality is defended in terms of its democracy, the system of election-representation and autonomy in relation to centralist models.

• The New Right"s policies, very well established in the theory of rational election, reduce the leadership of local government, stating the need to restructure the process and mechanisms of decision-making at local level based on management and efficiency models (they give priority to the relation adequate facilities-efficient purposes)

• The application of the Marxist model to the conceptualization of the local system conceives the local state as part of the State in the capitalist society and therefore reproducer and maintainer of the relations of production, extraction of appreciations, crystallization of the ideology and so forth.

• The structural and functional analysis would try to find out which are the true competences of local governments and try to explain why they exercise much more authority. In this scheme the political system would have certain functions and each on would correspond to a respective organizative structure, that is to say, an institution. This scheme of analysis presents the difficulty to find a sufficient and coherent explicative design of the functions that local governments have been carrying out. (Subirats, 1997:412-413).