The Crucible of Local Politics

...These councils in turn formed several regional networks to increase their autonomy and bargaining power vis-ai-vis state and federal authorities...

...In contrast to Lula's 1994 presidential campaign effort to broaden the PT's coalitions, many more orthodox PT branches rejected coalition politics in state and local elections...

...3 In both countries, the national government has instituted local programs under tight federal control...

...At a time when radical parties have failed to project convincing national alternatives, local government provides the opportunity to begin to build states that both listen and deliver...

...If a local government is already democratic and responsive to its citizens, then the outcome is promising...

...Opposition governors are leading the fight for local access to funding in Mexico and Venezuela...

...In some rural areas, new channels are being created for the representation of outlying villages in the town centers...

...Gabrielle Watson, "Water and Sanitation in So Paulo, Brazil: Successful Strategies for Service Provision in Low-Income Communities," MIT Dept...

...5 Local democratization in Latin America is also blocked by persistent human rights violations...

...2 (April, 1994...

...As Peter Winn explains in this issue, this process has been especially vibrant in Montevideo, where the left coalition Frente Amplio created elected local councils to encourage non-partisan participation and representation...

...How important is it to win, for example, if it means having to share power with more moderate parties...

...International economic integration limits the scope for national governments to regulate markets, to generate employment or to redistribute income...

...12 (Dec...

...There prag are clear trade-offs between the ideological commitment that inspires They h party cadre and the political base- to broadening and compromises needed to govern...

...Left parties still face the major challenges of (re)building public institutions to treat all citizens with equality and of representing the vast majority of the excluded who remain outside the organized grassroots movement...

...Pinochet's military dictatorship in Chile, for example, devolved huge policy responsibilities for social services to appointed mayors...

...The most dramatic recent change in the direction of rural decentralization is Bolivia's new "Popular Participation Law," which not only gives rural municiNACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18REPORT ON LOCAL POLITICS palities control over 20% of the national budget-up from 9% in 1993-but also creates new "base territorial organizations" that give power over these funds to the outlying villages rather than the town centers...

...See Leon Zamosc, "The Political Crisis and the Prospects for Rural Democracy in Colombia," in Jonathan Fox, ed., The Challenge of Rural Democratization: Perspectives from Latin American and the Philippines (London: Frank Cass, 1990...

...Not only have leftist candidates gotten elected, most have managed to successfully govern huge, complex cities...

...First, they must do what their voters expect local governments to do: deliver basic services as broadly and efficiently as possible...

...Others are militarized, such as Brazil's state police and Chile's carabineros, or may be under the control of "elected" but authoritarian civilian governments, as in much of Mexico...

...cient governance, voters in Latin America's cities have been remarkably willing to experiment with alternative candidates...

...16NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16REPORT ON LOCAL POLITICS Political and economic tensions between local and national governments also strongly influence the possibilities for consolidating alternative forms of governance at the local level...

...The balance sheet is surprising: of Latin America's dozen largest cities with elected governments-mayors of Mexico City and Buenos Aires are still presidentially appointed-nine were governed by left or center-left mayors at some point over the past decade.' The capital cities of Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay, for example, all recently elected radical mayors...

...Pro-business parties are staying in power by successfully marketing "economic stability" to fearful and cautious national voters...

...They typically call for the creation of new institutions that would make policy more transparent and the government more accountable, while creating an enabling environment for participation and representation by traditionallv excluded erouDs...

...The last decade has seen a dramatic weakening of both political-party strucStures and ideological appeals throughout the region...

...Overall, however, elected local government's lack of control over the key police forces is a major constraint on the construction of accountability...

...There is a trend, however, towards replacing overtly political criteria for revenue-sharing with more "objective" technical criteria, such as population size and poverty levels...

...Though the PT did win its first two governorships in 1994-in the Federal District and Espiritu Santo--in many governors' races where the PT had little chance of winning alone, party branches preferred challenging the center-left to being the junior partner on a winning ticket...

...In contrast to the optimistic, radical pro-decentralization discourse of the 1980s, some left analysts have now gone to the other extreme, concluding that decentralization must be inherently negative if conservative national governments and the World Bank favor it...

...54 (August, 1992) ; Pedro Jacobi, "Extent and Limits of Local Progressive Governments in Brazil--The Workers' Party Administrations," presented at Columbia University's Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies, March, 1994, and Athayde Jose Da Motta Filho, et al, "Angra dos Reis: Uma experiencia de gestao democrdtica," Democracia/PG (S5o Paulo), 102 (May-June, 1994...

...If one looks at electoral contests for local and state offices in the 1990s, alternative parties-including those that are unconventional but not strictly speaking of the left-have done quite well...

...and Fabio E. Velasquez, "The Municipality: Colombia's New Scene of Political Activity," The Urban Age (Winter, 1994...

...Pilar Gaitan Pavia, Poder Local: Realidad y utopia de la descentralizacibn en Colombia (Bogota: Tercer Mundo/IEPUN, 1992...

...Since assembly-style direct democracy is hardly viable for cities of millions of people, institutionalizing popular participation in large cities means making representative government more representative by bringing it closer to the citizens...

...In the povertyecome stricken northeastern state of Ceard, natic...

...Rank-and-file voters usually want broader and better-quality basic services...

...Voters also want public-sector workers to do their jobs without bankrupting the city, which can mean conflict between mayors and militant unions of city workers, as has occurred in Montevideo, Sdo Paulo and Brasilia...

...These "autonomous multi-ethnic regions" are on the cutting edge of institutional innovation Lefti, to better represent indigenous citizens...

...it n b a e e Ic i n r t Local politics has also sharpened the question of coalition-building on the left...

...The Workers Party, for example, has pursued ambitious experiments in governing in new ways...

...Mexican analysts use the term "selective democratization" to refer to the uneven process of political opening at local and state levels...

...Decentralization, which had long been a banner of the left during the difficult return to civilian rule, turned out to be politically compatible with conservative economic policies at the national level...

...5. For the first overview of the opposition in power, see Rodriguez and Ward, Opposition Government in Mexico...

...gover All told, the most widespread have trend among leftist local governments is toward pragmatism...

...2 Much of this devolution of power was enshrined in new or recently reformed constitutions, though the actual resources and autonomy ceded to local authorities varied greatly...

...At most, left parties have become very junior partners in centrist governments, as in Chile and Venezuela, or institutionalized minority oppositions with partial veto power, as in Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, El Salvador and Nicaragua...

...Voters are allowed to choose their rulers in some regions (mainly in those areas where the opposition comes from the center-right PAN) but not in others (mainly in the south, where much of the opposition comes from the left...

...Indeed, this obscure but crucial issue has entered public debate for the first time...

...BogotA just elected an anarchist university professor as mayor...

...2. For overviews of decentralization in Latin America, see Jonathan Fox, "Latin America's Emerging Local Politics," Journal of Democracy, Vol...

...N The Crucible of Local Politics 1. The data ranking Latin American cities is from Thomas Angotti, "The Latin American Metropolis and the Growth of Inequality," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...

...See Silvio Caccia Bava and Laura Mullahy, "Making Cities Livable...," in Charles Reilly, New Paths to Democratic Development...

...See also Victoria Rodriguez, "Mexico's Decentralization in the 1980s: Promises, Promises, Promises...," in Arthur Morris and Stella Lowder, eds., Decentralization in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1992...

...Yet the city seems to have done little to open new channels for citizen decision-making...

...Brazil's military recently occupied Rio de Janeiro's poor favelas...

...For VOL XXIX, No 1 JULY/AUG 1995 17REPORT ON LOCAL POLITICS many democratic activists trying to defend the exercise of political freedoms at local levels, civilian control over the police and their private-sector allies is a major issue...

...The key issue driving "inter-governmental" relations is money: how to collect it and how to spend it...

...But state power is not limited to the "commanding heights" alone...

...Ceard state )gical governments promoted a program of rural community health that mantment aged to reduce the state's infant mortality rate significantly...

...Porto Alegre, as Ricardo Tavares points out in this issue, has had the most success at broad, sustained citizen participation in the city's budget process, and Belo Horizonte is reportedly making rapid progress in the same direction...

...Only ideological cadre care if that involves such heresy as privatization...

...Since the transition to elected civilian rule swept Latin America, left parties in local office have implemented significant "good government" reforms...

...Dieter Nohlen, ed., Descentralizacion Politica y Consolidaci6n Democritica (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1991...

...Local political life in rural Guatemala remains highly militarized by the army's infamous "civil patrols...

...8. See Judith Tendler and Sara Freedheim, "Trust in a Rent-Seeking World: Health and Government Transformed in Northeast Brazil," World Development, Vol...

...55 (San Jose: FLACSO, September, 1992...

...Nevertheless, local and state politics have turned out to be the most viable arenas in which the left can compete for power, experiment with progressive reforms, and learn how to govern...

...If not, then decentralization can reinforce patronage politics or even authoritarian rule at the local level...

...In Mexico, the Zapatista rebellion set off a broad indigenous civic uprising that threw out the mayors in one third of Chiapas municipalities-far beyond the area of military conflict-creating in their place multi-party, multi-ethnic local councils...

...In the 1988 local elections, the Workers Party (PT) won mayoralties in cities acounting for 40% of the national economy, including Sdo Paulo, the largest city in South America...

...This shift towards pragmatism also raises basic questions about whom left mayors are supposed to represent...

...for example, two successive governors from the center-left Brazilian ive had Social Democratic Party (PSDB)lake the party of President Cardososhowed that effective and honest -offs public administration is indeed pos- sible in a region renowned for cor- en the rupt patronage politics...

...Since the region's widespread turn to elected civilian rule, political parties that call for participatory social policies and redistributive economic reforms have had little role in governing at the national level...

...and Gerd Schonwalder, "Popular Participation in Latin American Local Governments: Inroad or Impasse...

...Nor is decentralization of service delivery alone likely to promote increased accountability...

...This means both "deconcentration"-making central city services more accessible to outlying neighborhoods-as well as decentralizing decision-making by creating new channels for local representation at the neighborhood and district level...

...Luis Alberto Restrepo, "Movimientos civicos en la decada de los ochenta," in Francisco Leal Buitrago and Leon Zamosc, eds., Al filo del caos: Crisis politica en la Colombia de los alios 80 (Bogota: Tercer Mundo, 1991...

...The Mexican left's problems getting elected are not, however, only the rPlt nf onvePrnlmPnt fnnnnitinn Thp ed shut-offs by national governments more difficult, or at least more public...

...of Urban Studies and Planning, Master's thesis, 1992...

...But despite these diverse outcomes, decentralization did pave the way for left victories at the local and regional levels...

...3. See John Bailey, "Fiscal Centralism and Pragmatic Accommodation in Nuevo Leon," and Victoria Rodriguez, "Municipal Autonomy and the Politics of Intergovernmental Finance: Is It Different for the Opposition...

...Left-led local governments face the challenge of pursuing two different avenues of change at the same time...

...In their search for honSest, transparent, accountable and effiJonathan Fox is the author of The Politics of Food in Mexico: State Power and Social Mobilization (Cornell, 1992), and is currently doing research on the World Bank's role in Latin American social programs...

...Left-led governments, of course, claim they can do more than this-that they are distinctive because of their commitment to change the way in which decisions are made and resources are allocated...

...While the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) is a member of Venezuela's o govern, governing coalition after having backed Rafael Caldera in the general elections, the party is now struggling to establish its own identity and power base in the president's shadow...

...paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association, Atlanta, 1994...

...Brazil's center-left Democratic Labor Party (PDT), often considered populist, governed the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba in the 1980s, and Recife was governed by a mayor from the progressive wing of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB...

...Mexico is the best-known case, where the Civic Alliance watchdog coalition found that ballot secrecy was violated in 38% of polling places in the 1994 elections...

...Economic growth has not led to significant job creation or poverty reduction in most Latin American countries, and income distribution is becoming more and more uneven...

...Revenue-sharing is also a hot topic in Brazil, where electorally motivated overspending by state and local governments is widely blamed as a structural cause of inflation, and recently elected President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has promised a constitutional amendment to rein in state governments...

...and Lima was governed by the United Left in the 1980s...

...8 spires Coalition-building is, however, a cadre double-edged sword in ways that Steve Ellner discusses in the case of political Venezuela in this issue...

...4. In Colombia, for example, municipal democratization was a direct response to citizen protest in the 1970s and 1980s, though it has met with an especially violent response...

...This willingness to support the opposition does not always favor the left-for instance, Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city, recently elected its first opposition mayor from the far-right wing of the National Action Party (PAN...

...Brazil's developed south also has Curitiba, world famous for its pioneering public transportation and waste-recycling innovations...

...As in the United States since the 1970s, national policies have exacerbated the structural causes of poverty while shifting the burden of increased demand for services to local governments...

...Pedro Santana Rodriguez, "Local Governments, Decentralization and Democracy in Colombia," in Charles Reilly, ed., New Paths to Democratic Development...

...4 (January/February, 1995), p. 15...

...Local governments have very limited scope to pursue alternative economic policies, and decentralization of responsibility for service provision often involves the thankless task of "administering the crisis...

...Such reforms break down the classic ideological dichotomy between direct and representative democracy...

...Local authoritarian enclaves remain entrenched in many areas as well...

...Some decentralization programs create new concentrations of elite power while others actually do decentralize control...

...For an excellent overview of the PT in government, see Sue Branford and Bernardo Kucinski, Brazil: Carnival of the Oppressed (London: Latin American Bureau, 1995...

...1994...

...National governments often retain a great deal of control over how to allocate funds to localities...

...124, 1991...

...When different levels of government are controlled by parties that are in competition, some degree of negotiated power-sharing is necessarily involved...

...In practice, decentralization has been carried out differently in different countries and regions, so there is little reason to assume that its social and political effects will be uniform...

...Conflicting definitions of accountability emerge: is the mayor supposed to follow the party line, subject to party discipline, or does the mayor consider her/himself subject to majority rule via the electorate...

...Exclusionary political practices continue to be problems of national scope in a number of countries, including Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic...

...Decentralization does not necessarily involve the democratization of local government...

...6. On the PT's municipal reform experiences, in addition to Nylen's article in this issue, see Ana Maria Doimo "Movimentos Socials e Conselhos Populares: desafios de institucionalidade democratica," presented at ANPOCS, 1990...

...In El Salvador or Mexico, the central government in fact recentralized while appearing to decentralize...

...Charles Reilly, ed., New Paths to Democratic Development in Latin America (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1995...

...28, No...

...This "technical fix" actually favors local governments controlled by opposition parties hecanle it mnko nolliticnllv mntivnternment is the winner-take-all political tradition, a style deeply entrenched across the spectrum...

...The struggle usually revolves around the amounts and terms of revenue-sharing...

...This tension has pro- trad voked conflicts between elected reform politicians and their original betwi base-the parties and social move- ideo ments that expect the new officials to put their agenda first...

...National and international economic trends that have worsened poverty have severely constrained progressive local agendas, while political constraints have been created by combative relations with conservative national governments, and by entrenched authoritarian enclaves that block local democratization...

...and thE This raises questions about what alternative local governments can comp actually achieve in practice, and how needed they can successfully bridge the left's traditional commitment to lo social with the new importance of lo civico...

...5, No...

...Decentralization is new, and so are the rules for sharing power...

...6 One of the most promising areas for institutional innovation is the process of decentralizing decentralization-that is, using the mechanisms of decentralization to facilitate popular participation in governance...

...Brazil and Argentina have reduced the amount of discretion national governments have in revenue-sharing, while recent municipal democratization in Chile and Colombia was accompanied by greatly increased local access to revenue-sharing...

...Some police forces are under direct military rather than civilian control, as in Colombia, Guatemala and-until recently-Haiti...

...22, No...

...As many leftist mayors have discovered, a city hall in permanent confrontation with state or national government will have great difficulty delivering basic services or bringing innovative programs to large numbers of citizens, making reelection unlikely...

...The issue of local coalition politics is relevant because the PT does not have a monopoly on iments local-government reform and innovation in Brazil...

...Mexico's uneven political transition now includes several different "subnational regimes," ranging from the PAN's four democratically elected state governments to the militarized authoritarianism in the states of Chiapas and Tabasco...

...On the recent presidential elections, see Jonathan Fox and Luis Herndndez, "Lessons from Mexico's Elections," Dissent (Winter, 1995...

...the special issues of the journal Proposta (Rio de Janeiro), No...

...In practice, however, the popular councils had difficulties representing those beyond the minority of already organized citizens...

...While left parties encountered obstacles of their own making, including inexperience and internal conflicts, opposition local governments also faced powerful external constraints...

...In the course of the 1980s, just as left parties were beginning to win municipal elections, most national governments in Latin America were devolving major responsibilities to local governments, mainly for services such as health and education...

...But decentralization has always been ideologically compatible with both the left and the right, just as centralization was...

...At the same time, however, local governments are gaining control over an increased share of what public spending is left...

...Where these parties have been successful in sweeping away entrenched traditions of corrupt clientelism, they have gained national political influence even if, as in Brazil, they have been out of national office...

...On Brazil, see Anwar Shah, "The New Fiscal Federalism in Brazil," World Bank Discussion Papers, No...

...The Brazilian experience is the most striking...

...in Victoria Rodriguez and Peter Ward, eds., Opposition Government in Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1995...

...While some hostility from conservative-dominated national governments is to be expected, opposition mayors have considerable incentive to establish a working relationship...

...45 (August, 1990) and No...

...Roy Rivera, "Politica Local y Descentralizaci6n," Cuadernos de Ciencias Sociales, No...

...Because of their narrow base, some feared that these new channels for direct democratic participation in local government might turn into a new kind of left corporatism, trading access to services for controlled participation based on political loyalty...

...The PT won two successive elections in the industrial city of Porto Alegre, as well as an overwhelming majority in 1992 elections in even larger Belo Horizonte, VOL XXIX, No 1 JuLY/AuG 199515 VOL XXIX, NO 1 JULY/AUG 1995 15REPORT ON LOCAL POLITICS Latin America's ninth largest metropolitan area...

...While the popular councils generally failed to consolidate, PT administrations did introduce innovations in other areas, making city finances and budgeting more public and accountable, as well as encouraging significant community participation and decentralization, as in the case of health care and self-managed housing in Sdo Paulo...

...4 Another major obstacle to "peaceful coexistence" between competing parties at different levels of govParty of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has had difficulty convincing much of its potential base that it is a viable alternative...

...His appointees continued in power for two years after elections were reinstituted at the national level, until a constitutional amendment in 1991 permitted municipal elections...

...The PAN's strategy of "gradual accumulation of forces" at local and state levels hasso far-borne more political fruit than the PRD's bet on a dramatic nationwide "transition through rupture...

...The voters who elect radical mayors are usually much more pragmatic than the party cadre who organize the campaigns...

...Overall, left local governments have made significant progress towards making city halls operate cleanly and openly, though few have managed to create the alternative institutions called for in their party platforms...

...El Salvador's current effort to launch its first civilian police force, as part of its negotiated transition to full democracy, is a crucial test case for the region...

...Andrew Nickson, Local Government in Latin America (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 1995...

...While grassroots movements in Latin America have managed to influence national politics at critical junctures in several countries, the left has fared poorly in recent national elections...

...7. Jack Epstein, "Reversing its History, Bolivia Gives Power to Indigenous People," Christian Science Monitor, February 16, 1995...

...At first, PT governments emphasized the creation of community-based "popular councils" to participate in the municipal policy process...

...Yet the first comrr political fact that newly elected authorities must face is that they that i inherit a not-very-flexible appara- part) tus-and a city council that may well be controlled by other parties...