Planning and Decentralization

Contested Spaces for Public Action in the Global South

Victoria A. Beard, Faranak Miraftab, Christopher Silver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134120642
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

The first in-depth study of the impact of economic and political decentralization on planning practice in developing economies, this innovative volume, using original case study research by leading experts drawn from diverse fields of inquiry, from planning to urban studies, geography and economics, explores the dramatic transformation that decentralization implies in responsibilities of the local planning and governance structures.

It examines a range of key issues, including:

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• public and private finance
• local leadership and electoral issues
• planning in post-conflict societies.

Offering unique insights into how planning has changed in specific countries, paying particular attention to South East Asian economies, India and South Africa, this excellent volume is an invaluable resource for researchers, graduate students and planners interested in urban planning in its international political and economic context.

Chapter 1
Situating contested notions of decentralized planning in the global south

Faranak Miraftab, Christopher Silver and Victoria A. Beard

Introduction

One of the most pervasive trends of the current global era in developing nations is the devolution of governmental responsibilities from strong central governments to localities, a process generally referred to as decentralization. In the past two decades, decentralization has been actively promoted by powerful international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations and many bilateral development agencies. At global gatherings such as the 1992 United Nations’ Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro, and the 1996 United Nations’ Urban Summit, in Istanbul, international organizations identified local authorities (distinguished from central government agencies) as the lead agents for achieving sustainable development. Given the financial clout of the international agencies advancing this position, many national governments followed suit. Within the past decade, no fewer than sixty-five of the seventy-five developing nations with populations of over 5 million have had active decentralization policies or initiatives (Dillinger 1994).

Despite the global dimensions of the decentralization movement, little is understood about the rather dramatic transformation of the responsibilities of local planning and governance structures, or about the consequences of these transformations for other actors in planning. Decentralization policies in much of the global south, for example, have transferred the responsibility for providing basic services to local governments, yet often the transfer has occurred in the absence of demonstrated leadership capacity to meet service needs and also without the transfer of necessary decision-making power and financial resources. To handle their newly assumed responsibilities, some local governments have even had to divest themselves of the very powers conferred by decentralization. To achieve entrepreneurial governance for fulfilling their expanded yet under-funded mandate, they have turned to the private sector as well as to civil society organizations, and have adopted market principles. This shift has grave, but little understood, implications for local planners and urban managers, who have to redefine their roles and relationships vis-à-vis local governments, the private sector and non-state actors.

Practitioners as well as scholars often assume that several positive outcomes follow from decentralization. For example, decentralization is often associated with democratic reform and the strengthening of civil society (Diamond 1999; Manor 1999; Wunsch 1998). In terms of democratic reform, decentralization advocates assume that bringing the state closer to people allows more public participation in decision-making and ensures transparency and accountability (Diamond 1999). Advocates believe that curtailing centralized state power and national policies through the devolution of power yields a more responsive and inclusive governance (Bennett 1998; Blair 2000; Fiszbein and Lowden 1999). Other supporters promote decentralization in the belief that it increases the efficiency with which public goods and services are delivered (Bateley 1996; Burki et al. 1999; Savas 2000). One aspect of the efficiency argument contends that decentralized planning and service delivery can more accurately identify and satisfy local needs and expectations, especially those of marginalized populations (Burki et al. 1999; Cheema and Rondinelli 1983; The World Bank 2001). Another point put forward is that the private sector will deliver resources more effectively because a willingness to pay for services is brought into being by their being organized locally rather than provided by a distant regional or central government (Ostrom et al. 1961; Roth 1987).

Critics of decentralization, and especially of policies promoted in developing countries by large, global development institutions, draw upon a historicized understanding of the process. Critics emphasize the importance of the history of colonial domination and the role played by external institutions in developing societies. In the global south, colonialism worked against a tradition of local responsibility; over a long history it buttressed despotism to accommodate colonial rule. Decentralization critics underscore the dangers of an a historical understanding of decentralization, as when technocrats ignore the role of the global political– economic relations of dominance and how they shape the structure of governance in developing countries (Mamdani 1996). From this critique, what appears a straight forward process of devolving power may in actuality multiply the sins of the centralized state, creating a decentralized despotism (Agrawal and Ribot 1999). George and Sabelli (1994), for example, interpret the decentralization arguments based on prospects for “good governance” in developing countries as camouflage for a continuation of the colonial past. They see the celebration of decentralization for making government more accountable and transparent as yet another marketing strategy of international development agencies, such as the World Bank—a rubric under which to sell more debt and, hence, dependence. They argue that decentralized and participatory governance can actually work to sustain the status quo, by repackaging it in a new form aligned with the rhetoric of participation (Cooke and Kothari 2001).

To begin our exploration into the complex and often contradictory expectations and interpretations of decentralized planning, the chapter first sketches the genealogy of a global trend in decentralization policies and how such policies articulate with a widespread move from centralized to decentralized planning in the global south. Next, the chapter identifies and discusses significant sources of confusion and misinterpretation of decentralization that underlie the false expectations of it. Pointing out the contradictory potentials of decentralized planning, the introduction urges examination of those causal factors, conditions and contexts that can enable decentralization to produce more democratic, inclusive and equitable planning outcomes. The chapter concludes with a summary of the organization of the book and the contributions of each chapter.

The genealogy of decentralized planning

The call for governmental decentralization goes back to the 1970s’ crisis of legitimacy for central government, with its lack of transparency and its exclusive decision-making processes (De Angelis 2005; Santos 2004). Movements included disenfranchised youth, ethnic minorities, women and the poor who all questioned the legitimacy of a state that monopolized the decision-making power over all local affairs. These movements sought greater inclusiveness in the state and demanded the participation of non-state actors in decision-making, some even calling for “governance without government” (Rosenau and Czempiel 1992). In the 1980s, a political opposition called for devolution of the state’s decision-making power to lower levels of government, and for the state’s permeability to disadvantaged groups. The objective was to achieve a more inclusive and transparent state and, consequently, processes of democratization.

Concurrently, proponents of post-cold-war economic liberalization pointed to the inefficiencies of government bureaucracies in the developing world as the root problem of state legitimacy. Economic neoliberals advocated decentralization to remedy the wastefulness of the state bureaucracy by opening the state and the government to presumably more efficient non-state actors (e.g. an increased use of the private sector in subcontracting, outsourcing and public—private partnerships). The intent was also to transfer management of local services from state responsibility to a business model in which individual residents would have to pay more of the real cost of basic services, and, as a result, state responsibility for providing basic service costs would shrink.

In the 1990s, this logic of state decentralization, by which restructuring of the state would facilitate neoliberal economic policies, overshadowed the earlier core logic of decentralization that sought political devolution and democratization (De Angelis 2005; Santos 2004). Thus the popularization of neoliberal economic policies as the way to “good governance” and their mainstreaming by international organizations are accomplished largely by subordinating decentralization’s earlier political agenda. Decentralized planning, too, has gone through that transformation. Whereas the 1970s’ and 1980s’ call for decentralized planning had a political logic of democratic, inclusive and redistributive planning as articulated by equity planning and radical planning practice, the more recent rationale for decentralized planning has been an economic logic of efficiency, cost recovery and entrepreneurship.

Traditionally, the planning profession was equated with state planning in concert with problem-solving by technical experts. Since the 1960s, under substantial pressure from its critics both within and outside the profession, planning has broadened beyond a state-centered, elite-driven professional practice to acknowledge the important role of non-state actors (e.g. Castells 1983; Davidoff 1965; Douglass and Friedmann 1998; Escobar 1992; Fainstein 1992; Forester 1989; Friedmann 1987, 1989; Holston 1989; Krumholz 1982; Piven 1975; Sandercock 1998; Scott 1998). By the late 1980s, the problems with, and limitations of, centralized planning had been well documented (e.g. Hall 1980; Holston 1989; Peattie 1987). Centralized planning was criticized not only for its political elitism, but also for its limited administrative effectiveness and efficiency. An assertion now common in planning is that “urban infrastructure is definitionally harder to plan and control from the center” (Kingsley 1996: 1). These political and administrative rationales promoted a move away from top-down planning to diverse forms of decentralized planning. Decentralized planning broadens the planner’s role to encompass being not only technical expert, but facilitator as well as social activist, so as to ensure the articulation and incorporation of local as well as professional knowledge in the planning process.

Although participatory planning and local community-based planning gained increased recognition and epistemological legitimacy in the 1980s, it was not until the next decade that decentralized planning was mainstreamed by government agencies and global development organizations. Global institutions and key global summits, such as the UN’s 1992 Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and the 1996 Urban Summit in Istanbul, pushed a leading role for local authorities in development planning (Local Agenda 21) to the head of national agendas in the global south. The 1990s shift from centralized to decentralized planning was popularized and mainstreamed to an unprecedented extent. Development constituents had been demanding more public participation, a greater role for civil society, and more power in general over the planning process and its outcomes through the strategies of collaborative and community-based planning.¹ For example, during the 1990s, the fastest growing strategy for development assistance by the World Bank, which is the major engine for development planning in the global south, has been “community-driven development”—that is, projects that claim to increase community power over development (Dongier et al. 2002; Mansuri and Rao 2004).

The concurrence of the trends sketched above, in decentralization, economic liberalization, and participatory planning and civil society participation, should not be attributed to coincidence. Decentralization policies and the shift in planning articulate with the global trend of neoliberal state restructuring. It is unproductive, however, to embrace the position that decentralization is nothing more than a neoliberal strategy for advancing the project of capital accumulation by defusing authoritarian rule. On the other hand, it is overly simplistic to assume that decentralization will promote meaningful participation by communities and civil society organizations and therefore a more transparent and accountable local government. Hutchcroft (2001: 33) critiques a common oversimplification in much of the work from this perspective: “If the goal is to build analysis rather than propagate faith, it is essential to move beyond the association of authoritarianism with centralization and democracy with decentralization.” From that perspective, we contend that it is essential to examine both empirically and critically the complex processes of decentralization and its potential for achieving democratic, inclusive and equitable planning.

This volume aims to take a first step in that examination. The research included here examines the articulation of decentralization policies and planning in diverse socio-political and institutional contexts. Some key questions are whether and under what conditions can decentralization lead to, and has it led to a more democratic, participatory and inclusive planning process? And if decentralization can have such disparate outcomes as the opening up of progressive spaces for political action and also the facilitation of market domination or capture by local elites, how should planners intervene to ensure that decentralized planning does promote more democratic, inclusive and equitable outcomes? Given the widespread implementation of decentralization policies, it is urgent to pursue these questions carefully. We hope that the case studies in this volume will contribute to a more empirically grounded understanding of decentralized planning and leave it less vulnerable to misinterpretation.

Conceptualization, contradictions and contested spaces for public action

Conflation of the terms used for the complex set of phenomena comprising decentralization is a significant source of confusion. Decentralization is commonly used as a general term that can refer to any of several distinct processes, which can occur in isolation, but which usually occur (to some degree) simultaneously—and which have distinct outcomes. For example, subtle yet important differences distinguish two forms of decentralization: administrative decentralization and political decentralization (Hutchcroft 2001).

Administrative decentralization concerns the “hierarchy and functional distribution of powers and functions between central and non-central governmental units” (Cohen and Peterson 1999: 23). It can entail either deconcentration, which moves the central government offices and administrative units to more localized government bodies (e.g. regional, provincial and/or municipal bodies) (Cohen and Peterson 1996),² or devolution, which is a more extensive transfer of authority and responsibility to local government bodies. Deconcentration can actually further centralize state power when, for example, it simply moves the guns of the capital city to the village (Slater 1989: 514); but it is hoped that devolution can result in more democratic decision-making if it is supported by a transparent and accountable political structure and by adequate financial resources. To voice that hope is not to imply a guaranteed democratic outcome for devolution of state decision-making power to local governments. Evidence from the global south, including some research in this volume, reveals how perverse outcomes of devolution can occur where democratic political institutions are weak and lack transparency and accountability. In such contexts, it is possible for decentralization to result in decentralized authoritarianism or elite control (see Beard et al. in this volume). Decentralization can also simply facilitate privatization, by which the local state sheds unfunded mandates and responsibilities (see, for example, chapters by Miraftab, Bond and Libertun de Duren in this volume).

Political decentralization attempts to build a democratic culture within a given polity—it is the transfer of political power to local government bodies and civil society organizations, and the inclusion of popular participation in governance and planning.³ With respect to the interacting realms of administration and politics, it is often, though tenuously, assumed that changes in administrative structure will promote democratic reform. Some have pointed out, however, the danger in assuming that local democracy can be achieved while ignoring the national or macro-political structures (Mohan and Stokke 2000; Purcell 2006). Furthermore, the evidence from the global south, where decentralization policies have been aggressively promoted, challenges the assumed relationship between decentralization and democratization (see Crook and Manor 1998). A number of chapters in this volume examine that relationship. Silver and Sofhani, in Chapter 10, explore the relationship between political decentralization and democratization in Indonesia. That case exemplifies the rise of civil society and grassroots movements in the wake of decentralization in the global south. In Chapter 13, Shatkin explores these phenomena from a different perspective. Using a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: situating contested notions of decentralized planning in the global south
• Section One Decentralization: contexts and outcomes
• Section Two The challenges of fiscal and administrative decentralization
• Section Three The role of civil society and community actors in decentralization