Day 2. Moving Toward Integration

Country Experiences Advancing Local Development – Plenary

Chair: Dana Weist, Lead Sr. Public Sector Specialist, PRMPS (WB)
Speakers: Miroslav Beblavy, Secretary of State, Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family; Aminatou Camara-Barry, National Coordinator, Village Community Support Program (PACV); Marcelo Renjel, Vice-Minister, Ministry of Popular Participation; Joel S. Hellman, Lead Governance Adviser, Jakarta Office (WB)

In this plenary session, cases from Slovakia, Guinea, Bolivia and Indonesia illustrated how local development could be advanced using different entry points. State Secretary of the Slovakia Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Family Miroslav Beblavý presented "Advancing Local Development: the Case of Slovakia" (13Kb PDF). He began with a new development model established in the lower income regions of Slovakia, such as the Roma community and presented. Slovakia’s Social Development Fund’s objectives, community selection criteria and targeted population. Beblavý highlighted the model’s focus on marginal populations by explaining the approach to working with the Roma community emphasizing the importance of participation and building on previous experience and local knowledge. 

Beblavý suggested that a strong role for municipalities resulted from previous local development projects. Other important components of the model included local accountability and inter-municipal/inter-regional transfers and allocation of resources. He presented a number of challenges faced in Slovakia, including the small size of municipalities and their resulting lack of voice and capacity. Making a comparison with similar sized Denmark of service delivery systems, Beblavý observed that Denmark has 10% the number of municipalities Slovakia does – a more efficient number for service delivery.

Vice Minister of Popular Participation Marcelo Renjel described Bolivia’s experience with the Law of Public Participation (98Kb PDF). He emphasized that though the decentralization process began in 1994, it faces a number of challenges. These challenges include the need to foster human capital and economic development at the local and regional levels through increased involvement of the State.

Image courtesy of the Dept. of Local Government & Rural Development (LGRDD), AJK, Pakistan

World Bank Lead Governance Specialist Joel Hellman presented "Indonesia’s Country Assistance Strategy: A Platform for Enhancing Governance" (1.9Mb Flash). He recognized that the previously successful development process, which centered on a strong centralized leadership, had began to show signs of weakness. Indonesia did not lack community participation and transparency, instead, its greatest challenge was a reform program focused on establishing accountability in all sectors. Hellman noted that at the same time, the civil society movement in Indonesia is still largely centered in the capital and has not reached more rural areas of the country. He concluded that community-driven development is not sufficient as it does not adequately address the reform of institutions.

Following these presentations, participants posed the question of whether decentralization increased corruption. Camara-Barry responded that decentralization allowed for easier identification and punishment of culprits. In Slovakia, smaller municipalities appeared to have less corruption than large municipalities. Renjel explained that in Bolivia, the capacity to control corruption seemed to have increased overtime. Hellman observed that in Indonesia, there was greater corruption with decentralization, which undermined public support of the process. In turn, he recognized the need to identify how institution-building can be used to address corruption. Another participant suggested that Indonesia’s large size undermined provincial governments and questioned whether this dynamic increased corruption. Hellman responded that building up from CDD and working through municipal governments were potential solutions.

Country Experiences on Local Development. At the end of the day, participants had the opportunity to attend country-specific parallel sessions during which they actively participated in exchanging ideas and challenges faced in promoting local development in their countries.

Many sessions focused on the evolution of Social Fund projects and decentralization process, describing the organization of individual social funds, their investments, outcomes and challenges. 

The projects presented were varied, ranging from infrastructure development, such as water, schools and roads, to focusing on human capital development and employment generation. Some countries chose to target vulnerable groups such as disabled people, orphans and other children and youth at risk. Most social funds learned the importance of including local government and capacity building in their strategic plans and programs incorporated empowerment and sustainability among their principal objectives. These country contexts provided participants with the perspectives from transition economies, post-conflict and politically unstable countries, as well as the approach of working with traditional authorities, using existing social networks, and creating new ones.

Accomplishments among individual countries were:

• High levels of satisfaction with Social Fund outcomes
• High levels of community participation
• Local economy benefiting directly by involving local contractors and generating temporary and permanent employment and
• Enhancing social networks and building local level trust and ownership of social fund projects

Country case studies and participants also noted the following challenges:

• Slow fund disbursement and uptake within communities
• Lack of sufficient legal recognition of CBOs and municipal entities
• Institutional sustainability and assigning responsibility for maintenance costs

Participants also inquired about criteria for project selection and handing a project’s financial management over to the community. They discussed how to build a community’s trust for projects, as well as what precautions to consider when involving local governments. Participants also questioned whether Social Funds would eventually impose a debt burden on local governments and communities.

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