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The Fragile Flower of Local Democracy: a Case Study of Decentralization/ Participation in Montevideo

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The Fragile Flower of Local Democracy: a Case Study of Decentralization/ Participation in Montevideo POLITICSBENJAMIN & GOLDFRANK SOCIETY The Fragile Flower of Local Democracy: A Case Study of Decentralization/ Participation in Montevideo BENJAMIN GOLDFRANK This article analyzes the decentralization/participation (DP) program implemented by the Frente Amplio (FA) in the municipal government of Montevideo. Based on original surveys, interviews, and direct observation, the article argues that the DP program contributed to improvements in city services by providing the government with better information about citizens’ needs and preferences, but failed to boost civic engagement among city residents because the channels of participation offered did not convince average citizens that their input in public forums would have a significant impact on governmental decisions. Decentralization and participation...must be made into complementary mechanisms that will reinforce each other for the sake of better management and a deepening of democracy. —Jordi Borja1 [W]e may discover to our sorrow that “participatory democracy” can mean the end of both participation and democracy. —Daniel Patrick Moynihan2 A pair of strange bedfellows advocating decentralization and participation emerged in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s. From one side of the bed, inter- national development donors like the World Bank and the United Nations Devel- opment Program (UNDP) have pushed decentralization/participation (DP) pro- I would like to thank the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley for funding this research and Ruth Berins Collier, Peter Evans, Christopher Ansell, Gerardo Munck, Timothy Kessler, Aaron Schneider, the UCB Latin American Politics Seminar students, and the editorial board at Politics & Society for their comments and suggestions. All errors are my own, of course. POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 30 No. 1, March 2002 51-83 © 2002 Sage Publications 51 52 POLITICS & SOCIETY grams on recipient nations as tools for improving government provision of services and convincing citizens that democracy works. From the other, leftist political parties have been at the forefront of implementing such programs at the local level under the banner of “deepening” democracy. This article focuses on a particularly interesting case of a DP project at the municipal level, that carried out in Montevideo by the Frente Amplio (FA, or Broad Front), a left party with a his- tory of strong opposition to military rule in Uruguay but with no prior administra- tive experience. The Frente has now governed the city for eleven years since winning the 1989 mayoral elections on a platform proposing the decentralization of the city admin- istration and the opening up of new channels of citizen input to give citizens, espe- cially the poor, a larger voice in local government. Through these instruments, the FA hoped to achieve more responsive and effective service delivery on the part of the government and more civic engagement3 on the part of city residents. While there is substantial evidence that city services have improved since the FA began implementing its program, Montevideans do not seem to have become more civi- cally engaged nor have the excluded gained a much larger say in decision-making processes. The article argues that crucial to this outcome was the program’s design. Specifically, the DP program aided the advance in city services by provid- ing the government with better information about citizens’needs and preferences. At the same time, this process failed to boost civic engagement because the chan- nels of participation offered did not convince average citizens that their input in public forums would have a significant impact on governmental decisions. The article proceeds in seven sections. The first examines theories of why decentralization and participation might or might not improve government per- formance and civic engagement. The second suggests why Montevideo is a com- pelling case for analysis. Section three provides a history of the DP process, including the crucial switch from a more direct form of participation in the 1990-1993 period to a less direct form in the period that followed. The fourth sec- tion shows that this change engendered a decline of citizen interest in the partici- patory mechanisms. In the fifth and sixth sections, I argue that both forms of par- ticipatory decentralization engendered improvements in city services, yet only the first form stimulated wider civic engagement. City records collected during field research from May to August 1999 and opinion surveys conducted in August 1999 provide the empirical basis for these claims. The conclusion considers rival explanations for the expansion of city services and the stagnation of civic engage- ment, comparing them with the institutional design argument presented here. It then moves to a more theoretical terrain to suggest that for local governments to improve service delivery, participation as information provision is sufficient. But to build civic engagement they need to offer participation as deliberation, in which citizens make collective decisions over important issues and these decisions have significant bearing on policy outcomes. BENJAMIN GOLDFRANK 53 1. DECENTRALIZATION AND PARTICIPATION: THE KEYS TO DEEPENING DEMOCRACY? Debates over how much participation democracy should entail, which level of government is most effective, and the nature of the relationship among participa- tion, decentralization, and democracy have often been intertwined. Simplifying, one group of scholars views decentralization and participation as linked, and sees their combination as the key to improving government performance and activat- ing citizens, thus deepening democracy. Another group holds instead that one, the other, or both together endanger democracy by leading to ungovernability and cit- izen frustration. Before summarizing these arguments, let me provide a general definition of decentralization as the transfer of either resources, responsibilities for public services, or decision-making power away from the central government either to lower levels of government, to dispersed central state agencies, or to the private sector (either businesses or nongovernmental organizations). Decentral- ization and participation are separate but complementary concepts, in that the for- mer is often viewed as a necessary step to achieve the latter. Although the refer- ences to decentralization in the literature cited below typically refer to that from national to state or municipal governments, rather than from municipal to lower tiers (as in the case of Montevideo), the logic behind the arguments about the rela- tionship between decentralization, participation, and democracy remains essen- tially the same. Vocal adversaries of decentralization and excessive participation emerged in the 1960s partially as a response to calls for participatory democracy and commu- nity empowerment in the United States and Western Europe and to the establish- ment of new nations in the developing world. Moynihan and Huntington best reflect this early generation of scholars who argued that too much participation leads to inefficiency, problems of governance, and ultimately dissatisfaction on the part of citizens. Huntington wrote that a “surge of participatory democracy” weakens government by overloading the system with demands and making it impossible to govern effectively.4 Those who participate end up alienated because their demands cannot be met.5 In a different kind of argument, McConnell, who favored centralized government, contended that because some interests are con- centrated locally, decentralization would benefit the powerful and jeopardize local minority interests.6 More recently, centralists have criticized the notion that lower levels of government are “closer” to the people and therefore more appro- priate spheres for encouraging participation.7 Nunes, for example, argues that decentralization transfers social conflicts to the local level, where there is greater political inequality, thus reinforcing relationships of subordination and “pulveriz- ing the relative strength of subaltern actors.”8 Corruption and clientelism are also more prevalent at the local level, making participation unattractive to many citi- zens (and making participation itself not democratic). In addition to the dangers to 54 POLITICS & SOCIETY participation, decentralization hinders development because local governments are less technically capable than the central government and because the State loses regulatory capacity and fiscal control.9 Advocates of decentralized government and participation, beginning with Rousseau, and later John Stuart Mill, argue that civic participation educates peo- ple to become full citizens, reduces conflict by helping people accept government decisions, and integrates the community.10 Tocqueville’s visit to the United States helped make him an advocate of independent townships and active citizens and a critic of centralization’s dampening effect on “civic spirit.”11 In recent years, development scholars12 and urban planners13 have again taken up these themes, arguing for decentralization of government and an increase in some form of citi- zen participation in public policy making. These changes would make govern- ment more responsive, effective, and efficient, citizens more socially integrated and public spirited, and because of the changes in government and citizenry, local economies more prosperous and more equitable. For example, Rondinelli et al., along with the mainstream development donors,
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