World Bank Document

29665 Public Disclosure Authorized Working Together for a Change: Public Disclosure Authorized Government, Business and Civic Partnerships for Poverty Reduction in LAC Ariel Fiszbein and Pamela Lowden Public Disclosure Authorized May 1998 Public Disclosure Authorized afiszbein(worldbank.org [email protected] FILE COPY Table of Contents Preface ................................................... i 0. Introduction .................................................... 1 0.1 What are partnerships? ........................................................ 5 0.2. Why are partnerships emerging as a new development alternative? .................... 7 0.3 Partnerships and social capital ....................................................... 12 1. A Partnership-Based Approach to Poverty Reduction: An Empirical Exploration .. 18 1.1. Bringing new resources to poverty reduction .19 1.2. Quantitative and qualitative productivity gains in output through complementarities and synergies .28 1.3. Creating new assets through partnerships .39 2. The Enabling Environment for Partnerships: What is Helping and What . is Hindering? . 57 2.1 Making the state an honest partner ........................................ 58 Opening the game ........................................ 58 i) Decentralization ........................................ 59 ii) Devolving authority to private actors ........................................ 65 Remaining bottlenecks ........................................ 69 i) Bureaucratic and procedural obstacles ........................................ 69 ii) Political and cultural constraints ........................................ 71 2.2 Bringing in business as a partner for poverty reduction ...................................... 73 2.3 Participation as partnership: Civil society as actor and subject of poverty reduction ................. 85 3. Conclusions ................ 103 3.1 Summary of key points .............................................. 103 3.2 Scaling up: from the micro to the macro .............................................. 109 3.3 An emerging research agenda .............................................. 112 3.4 Towards a new paradigm for poverty reduction? ............................................. 115 Annex 1: Summaries of selected case studies ........................................... 119 Annex 2: Tables of basic information on the selected case studies ............ ........ 174 Annex 3: Further Information on the Partnerships for Poverty Reduction Program: Methodology, Collaborating Partners, Case Studies and Web Site ................... 181 Bibliography ................... 190 iI i t I I PREFACE This book is the result of a process of collective research and analysis. It summarizes our views of the lessons emerging from a learning program that involved a large number of people in several countries in LAC as well as in the United States. It is written in the spirit of sharing with a diverse audience what the authors consider to be a very powerful message: that partnerships between the state, civil society and business have the potential of becoming the basis of an approach to poverty reduction that replaces old and failed paradigms in the region. In late 1996, the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank (EDI), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) launched the Partnerships for Poverty Reduction program in six countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAG): Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica and Venezuela. The program sought to promote the adoption of an approach to poverty reduction that relies on partnerships between local, regional, and central governments, other public sector agencies, non- governmental organizations, private sector companies and other civic organizations for (i) the delivery of services to the poor; (ii) initiatives to create employment opportunities or to increase the productivity of the poor; and(iii) more participatory design of public policies. The objective, then, involved: (i) informing governments, business leaders and organizations of civil society of the benefits of the partnership approach, and about practical alternatives and best practices derived from other experiences in their countries or elsewhere in the region; (ii) supporting the action of local groups committed to the construction of partnerships; and (iii) giving public recognition to innovative initiatives while creating opportunities for other partnerships to benefit from them. The approach followed by the program involved learning from experiences already in place, making use of existing local human resources, particularly in universities and research centers, in such a way as to contribute towards enhancing local capacity to build new partnerships. A network of local universities, research centers and NGOs has been in charge of identifying, studying, and systematizing concrete cases of partnerships following a common methodology developed by the authors. National Committees, involving high level representation from different sectors in society as well as World Bank and UNDP Resident Representatives, have been in charge of selecting the best experiences to be studied and guiding the activities of the program in the country. A series of workshops with members of the network as well as representatives from the case studies have provided fora for discussion and analysis of the benefits and mechanics of the partnership approach. In this fashion the program has helped create a critical mass of evidence on innovative and successful approaches to poverty reduction in Latin America that, we hope, will be an analytical resource for researchers and a stimulus to policy- makers in Latin American and elsewhere. In preparing this manuscript, we have benefited from the help and intense work of a large team of colleagues in several countries, and the support of several organizations and individuals. At the risk of omitting some, we would like to mention several of those that have contributed to this project. First, we want to acknowledge our gratitude to the three co-sponsoring institutions, EDI, UNDP (that supported the initiative through the Special Unit for Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries --TCDC-- and its Regional Project "Poverty Alleviation and Social Development) and IAF, that have made this program possible. Second, we would like to show our recognition to the national committees of the Partnerships for Poverty Reduction Program and the network of support organizations that have worked with us in the six countries. Third, we would like to recognize the coordinators of the program in the six countries: Sandra Cesilini in Argentina, Maria Isabel Arauco in Bolivia, Jairo Arboleda in Colombia, Mauricio Silva in El Salvador, Janet Cupido Quallo in Jamaica and Caterina Valero Aleman in Venezuela. They (and their colleagues) have done a wonderful job. Fourth, our discussions with Caterina Valero Aleman and Patrick Breslin have proved to be a critical input into the preparation of this document. We have a special debt with Caterina Valero Aleman, who as Regional Coordinator of the program on behalf of UNDP, worked "neck-to-neck" with us in the development of this initiative. We benefited from comments and suggestions from a large number of colleagues. Peter Evans (from U.C. Berkeley), David Winder (from Synergos Institute) and Nora Lustig (from the Inter-American Development Bank) reviewed the manuscript and provided extremely useful ideas that helped us in preparing the final version of this work. We also received very useful comments from Camilo Granada, Caterina Valero Aleman, Jairo Arboleda, Janet Cupidon Quallo, John Clark, Nigel Twose, Patrick Breslin, Peter Lanjouw, Rita Hilton, Sandra Cesilini and Vinod Thomas. Last, but certainly not least, we would like to recognize the tremendous support we have received from our colleagues and friends at EDI in the preparation of this book: Camilo Granada, Rocio Flores and Britta Hillstrom. Working Together for a Change: Government, Business and Civic Partnerships for Poverty Reduction in LAC Ariel Fiszbein and Pamela Lowden Introduction 0. INTRODUCTION This book summnarizes the lessons from the first year of an ongoing learning program, co-sponsored by the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and the Inter-American Foundation, entitled "Partnerships for Poverty Reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean". The program aims to promote and facilitate collaboration among governments, business and civic organizations of the region in initiatives with poverty reducing impact or potential. The notion of collaborative, rather than contractual or narrowly instrumental relationships among these actors, is expressed by the short-hand term "partnerships", whose meaning will be explored further below. The starting point -for the Partnerships Program as well as for this book- is the recognition that levels of poverty in LAC remain unacceptably high. This has much to do with the fact that the previous state-centric development (and poverty reduction) paradigm has clearly failed to deliver acceptable living standards to far too many people in the region. At the same time, while pro-market reforms have brought many benefits in terms of increased stability and growth, the benefits of growth continue to be felt unevenly at best. What more, then, should be done to address the range challenges implied by effective poverty reduction?

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