capacity4dev

Decentralisation is not always easily implemented and many developing countries have failed or are failing to introduce effective decentralised governance systems. But why? Francois Vaillancourt from the University of Montreal, Canada, considers the obstacles, conditions for success and how these might be relevant to European Commission staff.

Speaking at a recent event in Brussels, Mr Vaillancourt presented the findings of his book ‘Obstacles to Decentralisation: Lessons from the Developing World’ written with Jorge Martinez-Vazquez. Key to Mr Vaillancourt’s approach is that decentralisation is a tool for better service delivery and not an end in itself.

“Decentralisation should never be a goal, as such. Decentralisation is a tool for better public policy,” said Mr Vaillancourt. “Decentralisation usually makes it easier for people to get the level of services and the type of services they want in the region they live in than when it’s provided at a central level simply because the central level is physically, and in a sense intellectually, further away.”

In his presentation, Mr Vaillancourt drew on decentralisation lessons from 15 countries worldwide to offer practical guidance for development practitioners under two headings: the obstacles to decentralisation and the conditions for its success.

Obstacles

According to Mr Vaillancourt, there are as many answers to the question ‘Why has decentralisation failed?’ as there are countries that have failed to decentralise. But to make his findings relevant for development practitioners, Mr Vaillancourt boiled his findings down to six obstacles that can be grouped as:  legal barriers, societal impediments or some sort of perceived threat to the state.

“Either [decentralisation is] not well designed in the text, either there’s resistance on the ground and lack of demand or there is a fear that decentralisation can bring about issues,” Mr Vaillancourt said.

In some developing countries, especially in fragile or post-conflict environments, decentralisation can be seen as the first step on the slippery slope towards dissolution, making it a potentially dangerous issue for the government of the day.

Conditions for Success

In all, Mr Vaillancourt offered eleven conditions for successful decentralisation, but highlighted a handful of factors that he considered crucial for EC staffers working in the field.

“You’ve got to have buy-in from most political powers, parties, groupings and so forth,” said Mr Vaillancourt. “Once you’ve got that, then I think that the three key conditions, from the European Commission or donor’s perspective, are: to have a local champion, competent civil servants…and they must have the financial resources to carry out the work.”

A local champion might be an individual, but it could also be an institution or organisation. The most important factor, is that there is partner support and energy to drive the process.

As Mr Vaillancourt puts it, you have got to have the properly trained people that are likely to stay around and to do this, the conditions are "championship, competent people and sufficient resources".  Capacity development is an essential basis for decentralisation and local governance. The decentralised levels of governance need to have sufficient capacity to absorb the transferred responsibilities and to perform the delegated functions effectively.

Decentralisation Checklist

Perhaps most useful for EC staff, is the way that Mr Vaillancourt’s eleven conditions for success can be used as the basis for a checklist for development practitioners working on decentralisation projects, especially for deciding whether to fund activities through local rather than central authorities.

“The idea is simply to get people to think ‘How can I best use my last euro?’” said Mr Vaillancourt, who encouraged development workers to adapt his 11-point list of conditions for success to the context in which they are working by adding or taking away criteria. The resultant document could work as a country-specific decentralisation checklist that might, according to Mr Vaillancourt, “get a slightly more efficient policy.”

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11 Conditions for Decentralisation Success (Adapted from Martinez-Vazquez & Vaillancourt):

1) Goal of society

2) Acceptance of new power centres

3) There has to be a local ‘champion’

4) Strengthening of existing tiers of government, rather than creating new ones

5) Exclusive responsibilities, clearly assigned

6) Adequate revenues

7) No threat to macroeconomic stability

8) Decentralisation is taking place at the local, as well as regional level

9) Adequate human resources

10) Strong central government institutions

11) Coordination of donors by country-driven priorities