Participatory Local Governance for Sustainable Community-Driven Development ______
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Participatory Local Governance for Sustainable Community-Driven Development __________________________________________________________ The case of the rural periphery in the Kurdish region of Iraq By: Arian Mahzouni Revised: 31 March 2008 Originally submitted 3 July 2007 to the faculty of spatial planning at Dortmund University as a partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Dr. rer. Pol. I Acknowledgements I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to all individuals and institutions who in different ways contributed to the completion of this research work. I am particularly indebted to my academic advisor Prof. Dr. Günter Kroës. I thank him for all his support, care and patience with me to successfully overcome all kinds of limitations and obstacles to complete this work. I also thank my second advisor, Prof. Dr. Einhard Schmidt-Kallert for his practical and useful comments and Dr. Sebastian Müller for accepting to be my external examiner. I have no words to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for granting me a scholarship to conduct my doctoral studies and having confidence in me to work for a democratic planning system in the Kurdish region. I am also very grateful to the Martin Schmeißer Foundation which in difficult financial situation supported me to carry out the empirical work. I will always appreciate the support of Professor Jameel Al. Jaloudi from Al-Balqa Applied University and his family in Mahis in facilitating the life in Jordan while waiting for a German visa. I am also grateful to all members of the Faculty of Spatial Planning especially Dr. Katrin Weiß, Dr. Karin Gaesing, Susanne Syska-Fleckes, Alexandra Hill and Herr Reiner Löb for their valuable advice and administrative services. Sincere thanks to all colleagues from other developing countries, especially Wondimu Kenea from Ethiopia, who provided me more insights into the development problems in their countries. Many people also assisted me during the field study in the Kurdish region in Iraq and I am grateful to all of them in particular Dana Qashani (a local urban planner), Andrea Fischer-Taher (the employee at the ministry of higher education in Sulaimanyah), Barbara Dridi (Concordia manager in Kurdistan) and Kamal Tamas (a management student at the Sulaimanyah University). I thank Anwar Ibrahim (the director of planning department at the ministry of agriculture in Erbil) and Abobakar Ahmed (the employee at the ministry of agriculture in Sulaimanyah) for being supportive and helpful in approaching local people and institutions to carry out the field study. Without the enormous support, hospitality and friendly attitudes of local people in the targeted sub-districts and communities, the conduction of the field study would have been very difficult. It was in fact an encouraging factor to implement all activities as were planned despite limited time and resources. In the Seweil sub-district, I am grateful to Farhad Saleh (the head of the sub-district government), Khalid Abdullah (the Mayor of the sub-district centre), Salam Hasan (the head of school in the sub-district centre). The cooperation spirit and great hospitality of the people in the targeted communities are highly appraised. I am particularly thankful to Abdullah Mohammad, Rasool Mohammad, Mamosta Ahmad (the school director) and Dr.Khalid (health official) in Marwe and Mohammad Mesri and Osman Rahim in Bewre. As well, in the Harir sub-district people helped to facilitate the implementation process of the fieldwork activities, just to mention a few, Haje Sabir (the employee at the agricultural agency in Harir), Kak Majed and his son Jabrail in Jamasor and Namegh Abdulkhalegh and his family in Old Batas. I am indebted to all these people and institutions for their enormous hospitality and cooperative behaviour to facilitate the implementation of the data collection activities. Finally, I wish to thank my wife Rezheen and my children Mardin and Kanila for their understanding and patience and standing by me throughout my academic adventure. Without their immense support and sacrifice this work would not have been completed. Arian Mahzouni, Dortmund, March 2008. II Abstract Under the rule of Saddam’s dictatorship during 1970s and 1980s huge part of the rural area in the Kurdish region of Iraq was destroyed and caused enormous internally displaced people and consequently most social structures as part of social capital were collapsed. In 1991, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces took control over a major part of the Kurdish region and tried to build their own institutions for reconstruction and development of the controlled area by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Lack of experiences in good governance and effective management has made the social reengineering very difficult and has also created an enabling environment for power abuse, corruption and misuse of public resources. The current rural-urban mass migration in the region is a clear indicator on the lack of effective institutional arrangements for rural community development. Increased corruption as a result of poor governance has put a question mark on the legitimacy and capability of the KRG to effectively deal with the development problems. This is the background on which this thesis has been written. To effectively deal with current development problems in the Kurdish region, Community Driven Development (CDD) strategies are proposed that operate on the principles of local empowerment, participatory governance, administrative autonomy, greater downward accountability and enhanced local capacity to use social capital effectively. The principles of good governance such as rule of law, participation, transparency, and accountability necessary to achieve sustainable local development are examined in a traditional and post-conflict society that face many challenges toward a real democracy. In this process the need for fundamental but incremental change in existing institutional structure to strengthen the rule of conduct and coordination of efforts are highlighted. The study emphasises the need to introduce the “participatory local governance” where political and institutional reforms are carried out to increase the capacity and authority of the local institutions. The study also introduces “communicative planning” to build network and partnership among local institutions, which as a legitimating process requires trust, consensus-building and democratic control to direct the development course of the society. The findings justify the need for political and institutional pluralism to promote local governance for sustainable CDD. Key words: Social capital, traditional society, civil society, community empowerment, sustainability, grassroots participation, institutional capacity building, accountability, corruption, local governance and decentralization. III Table of Contents Acknowledgements I Abstract II List of Figures VI List of Tables VI List of acronyms VII 1 Introduction.............................................................................................1 1.1 The context of the Kurdish region in Iraq...............................................................2 The Kurdistan Regional Government 2 Geography, demography and culture 2 Economy 3 Politics 4 History 5 1.2 Problem statement.................................................................................................10 1.3 Research objectives and questions........................................................................11 1.4 The structure of the work......................................................................................12 2 Social capital for sustainable Community-Driven Development .......14 2.1 Sustainable Community-Driven Development .....................................................15 Community-driven development 17 The main benefits of the CDD approach 18 Critical reflections on the CDD approach 20 2.2 Social capital.........................................................................................................21 Observation levels and types of social capital 21 Complementarity and substitution of social capital among different levels 23 The need to convert cognitive social capital into local institutions 24 Conceptual and practical limitations of social capital 26 2.3 Building social capital on micro level...................................................................26 CBOs as the driving force behind the CDD 27 Social and gender inclusion 29 Community access to information 29 Simple rules and participatory evaluation 30 Subsidiarity principle 31 2.4 Building social capital on meso level ...................................................................31 Towards participatory local governance 32 Participatory local governance as a missing link for CDD 33 Institutional capacity building 36 Regional rural planning 37 Good practice for sustainable rural development and CDD 40 Critical reflections on participatory local governance 42 2.5 Building social capital on macro level..................................................................43 The incremental change in culture, society and institutions 43 Good governance 45 The principles of good governance 46 The link between poor governance, corruption and poverty 48 Institutional and organizational change for good governance 48 Decentralization as a strategy for participatory local governance 54 Institutional arrangements for decentralization 55 Critical reflections on good governance and decentralization 59