Case Study Bolivia

Programa de Apoyo a la Democracia Municipal (AOS - PADEM)

Capacity building in the Associative System of Municipal and Local Governments

La Paz, January 2011

Contributors: Marcelo Rojas,Martín Pérez
Peer-review: Central America, Cuba

Video Intro
Have a look at the video intro to get an overview of the case study and its contents.

Fact sheet

1. Context

This paper briefly develops the proposal for strengthening local capacity building carried out by the “Programa de Apoyo a la Democracia Municipal, PADEM” in English Support Program for Municipal Democracy, which is mandated for execution to the SAH (Schweizer Arbeiterhilfswerk).

PADEM is part of the Program”Citizenship Capacity Building Programme” in Spanish “Programa de Capacitación Ciudadana” (PCC) which is also implemented by the SAH (SAH has the mandate for the overall coordination of the program as well as for the implementation of the project PADEM). The PCC works on strengthening an inclusive society that respects human rights and it complemented by the other, complementary governance program in Bolivia, the Program for Strengthening Institutional Capacities FORDECAPI. Both programs are conceptualized in terms of the “human rights based approach” and based on the hypothesis that good governance is a product of an integrated intervention from the state and civil society.

As an introduction to this case study, there is brief analysis made on the following issues:

• The context of the country before and after the enactment of the Popular Participation (LPP) and the Framework Law of Autonomy and Decentralization (LMAD)
• The characteristics of the "Municipal Decentralization" carried on with the LPP (intergovernmental transfers and skills)
• Of the obstacles that municipalities still have to face to promote, improve and/or preserve the technical capacity of municipal governments (GM)

Once you know the context, it will be developed the theory of change driven by AOS / PADEM to develop technical capacities in the municipal associative system (SAM) and the municipal governments of Bolivia, through the Competitive Fund for Capacitating and Municipal Technical Assistance (FOCAM).

The situation in Bolivia

Until April 20, 1994, Bolivia was characterized by high centralization of decision making and public resource management. Then the country began one of the most important milestones in its democratic development with the decentralization of the State since the enactment of the Law of Popular Participation (LPP). Until that time, there only existed 24 sections of the province in the country and there were only these that received some resources to manage their basic local needs, particularly urban, and their authorities were appointed directly by the President of the Republic, without any involvement of citizens through a vote. With the enactment of the LPP, five main elements were incorporated into the life of the country:

• 311 municipalities were created
• Municipal authorities were elected and legitimized through the vote, promotion and political decentralization seeing only the local level.
• A system of intergovernmental transfers was designed where the municipalities received for the first time, revenue-sharing resources from the national level, based on a number of powers and responsibilities defined by law, to make visible the development of municipal country. We have the following:
• Development of municipal health policy, education, production, gender, etc.
• Construction of health infrastructure, education, roads, sanitation, culture and sport.
• Provision of equipment, furniture, supplies, health supplies, education, sports, culture, sanitation.
• Attention to complementary feeding, including school breakfasts.
• Management of records and registers of taxpayers required to own revenue collection, based on rural and urban cadastre and national plan for land use.
• Promoting rural development and micro-irrigation infrastructure development of roads.
• Maintenance and secondary roads passing through the municipality.
  
• Implemented participatory planning, a civic exercise that promotes the participation of indigenous and peasant communities and neighborhood groups in the definition of programs, projects and municipal budgets.
• Social control was introduced for municipal management through the audit Committee.

The results of the process become visible in greater citizen access to education, health, productive infrastructure, roads, etc... And on the principles of efficiency in public management ca, citizen participation, social control, transparency and accountability, which is kept up to date but must still be strengthened to help strengthen local governance.

Contributions and weaknesses of decentralization in Bolivia

The Bolivian decentralization model was installed at the local level. Where before none elected mayors and councilors existed, civic participation and social control, began a process that promoted the exercise of citizenship from the local level. After 16 years, the municipality's contribution to national development is evident, although it has been checked out from the national level:

• There is more educational and health infrastructure and the item of equipment is being better attended. Therefore, the coverage of education and health is progressing in the country
• Most rural communities, towns and urban areas have expanded the coverage of water to the population.
• The infrastructure to support production (roads, irrigation) has been a main theme,
• It is with the participatory planning that one works with the inclusion of women in decision-making spaces, promote the participation of youth and its impact on public policy and budgets

Although the way gone through has been very rich in experience and learning, it is also undeniable that there is persistence of weaknesses and problems that must necessarily be worked in the future. On one side are those that are inherent to the political-institutional and municipal level:

• High mobility of personnel, especially at election time and changes of authorities. This makes the skills developed in a municipal government lost and building process has to start again. However, it also should be noted that the staff moves between the two municipal governments, which somehow makes that the skills developed are not lost, but move to another municipality.
• Currently, there are a percentage of municipal authorities with a low strategic vision, susceptible to corruption, with much dependency on the support of trade union organizations and especially subordinate to the chain of command of the party of government (national government).
• Low capacity to develop policy actions of concurrency both with the departmental as national level.
• Technical establishments which accompany the new authorities have little experience and a lack in their professional formation.

And on the other side are those that result from the technical - institutional and municipal level:

• A significant number of rural and some urban municipalities have not yet developed fiscal responsibility, so that their ultimate weakness is the lack of generation of resources and high dependence on transfers from the national government (at first resources revenue-sharing, then the HIPC and HR - direct tax on hydrocarbons)
• Unclear and not specific administrative procedures of the municipal governments open possibilities for corruption.
• The quality of education is still a pending task for all levels of government. Although it is on municipal level, where they could develop best efforts.

Finally, those who make the social control:

• Existence of the watch committees with few tools to exercise control over the use of public resources. And mainly they are not very proactive and co-responsible for development, but more with the goal of controlling as the "police.”
• Social organizations are permeable to corruption. There are several experiences in which union officials made improper use of resources (example purchase of building materials with surcharges and low quality.)

In July 2010, the Popular Participation Law is repealed and instead promulgated the Framework Law of Autonomy and Decentralization (LMAD), which considers that the advanced matters enter the field of provincial autonomy and indigenous levels, levels which the government is keen to develop in relation to local authorities. In this regard, since 2005 (year that raises the current government) there where developed actions that were to weaken municipal institutions mainly:

• National policies of technical assistance and training to municipal governments were dropped. This impacted negatively on financial areas (generation of own revenue, financial statements, the municipal budget) and planning (annual operating programs, strategic plans, etc.).
• The LMAD violates municipal autonomy and legitimacy of the votes of citizens with the removal of mayors elected through the intervention of the judiciary.
• There is uncertainty in intergovernmental transfers provided by law with the LMAD not yet clear whether the transfers received by municipalities will continue or be eliminated in favor of national, departmental or indigenous autonomy.

With the given context since 2005, the municipal governments of the period 2004-2009 and the period 2010-2015 (just started) began to demand training and technical assistance to improve and strengthen its management and to satisfy public demand for more and better public services and meet the responsibilities, powers and duties established by the LMAD.

Given this scenario, the municipal associative system (SAM) was established as a body capable of offering training services and technical assistance for its proximity to the municipalities and by its own institutional structure, which includes strengthening its partner’s technical and political representation before national and departmental mental. What was missing was a methodology to strengthen its institutionalization that creates opportunities for sustainability and necessary to meet the needs and demands of their partners. Competitive Fund for Municipal Training and Technical Assistance is designed to fill this gap.

2. Activities and approaches

In this context AOS PADEM designed in 2007 the Competitive Fund for capacity building and Technical assistance to municipalities (FOCAM), which first had the objective of filling the void of technical assistance and training made by the central state level, and then support the technical capacity of municipal associations, departmental policies and, through them, improving the technical capacities of municipal governments and strengthening local governance.

Starting point

The FOCAM started operations considering the problems that municipalities should deal until 2005 and between 2005 and 2010:

Before 2005:

• Policy of institutional strengthening of the municipal level (FIM) based on subsidizing the offer and not the demand
• Presence of various sources of funding also for the different objectives and modalities of FIM
• Weak coordination between the financing institutions and national government
• High dependency on international cooperation to advance the process of FIM
• Little stimulation or self-effort
• Not garantized sustainability of the processes
• weak relationship between supply and demand being much greater supply

From 2005 to 2010:

• Lack of public policy to provide training and technical assistance to municipal governments
• Preeminence of vision or tilted indigenous autonomy
• Dismantlement of technical capacity built by the national government to provide training and technical assistance to municipalities

Based on this analysis, FOCAM is designed with an approach that:

• Prioritize the municipal demand for capacity building and Technical Assistance in Financial Management, Strategic and Operational.
• Promote self-effort by municipal Many Counterparts.
• Encourages networking and partnership development, and develops elements that contribute to the sustainability of partnerships, entities des strengthened by the FOCAM to work on capacity building of municipal governments.

Features FOCAM

The Trust develops services in the municipalities of categories A, B and C according to the following principles, objectives and requirements.

• Principles
• Ensure the strengthening of democratic governance
• Promote local management with a focus on human rights
• Promote local management with a focus on human rights
• offer structured training and technical assistance based on local demand subsidies

• Objectives
• Capacity building and technical assistance to local governments of municipalities in categories A, B and C, strengthening its financial management, strategic and operational.
• Ensure that the technical staff of local governments improves their technical capacities, and management.
• Strengthen the institutional capacities of the AMDES, to provide capacity building services and technical assistance.
• Support the system or municipal associations for the development of a market for ser-vices municipal building.

• Conditions for access to Fund
• High level of governance or the applicant municipality.
• Payment of counterparty or a percentage of the cost of service
• Payment of counterparty or a percentage of the cost of service

Flow of execution FOCAM

The logic of work, made visible in the flow involves the following main areas:

1. Coordination of FOCAM (PADEM AOS) designs all capacity building services and technical assistance, its terms of reference and quality standards. Also conducts capacity building to technical staff of the AMDES;
2. The AMDES promote and implement all training services and technical assistance in the municipalities targeted by the Fund;
3. Local governments are monitoring the implementation of services and evaluation.

3. Experiences

Considering that problems do not focus solely on the absence of a state policy of capacity building and technical assistance, but also in the lack of flexibility in spending (as the proceeds of transfers are increasingly conditioned), the lack of own resources so that the municipal governments could hire services and the culture of corruption among officials and technicians, FOCAM dedicated all its efforts on generating capacity, subsidize demands and contribute to the generation of municipal policies that promote citizen participation, efficiency in the administrative financial management, transparency and accountability.

In this regard, between 2007 and 2010, FOCAM developed capacities in 120 municipal governments in the country, in particular in:

• Increased municipal revenues through the SIIM (integrated service local taxes), which helped local governments in small and medium municipalities in the collection of real estate taxes.
• Equity in budget formulation through participatory planning, promoting the participation of women organizations, youth groups, producers, etc. And besides, creating spaces for planning in risk prevention, local economic development, among others.
• Effectiveness and efficiency in the implementation of local economic development projects, promoting the strengthening of producers and employment generation.
• Transparency in the use of resources through services that promote information on the status of implementation of investment projects.
• Accountability of municipal resources to training and technical assistance in the preparation of financial statements and accounts are closed.
• Participative formulation of the POA and the municipal budget and the preparing of financial statements reinforce the image of the town, build credibility and prevents its fiscal accounts are frozen.

FOCAM the hypothesis is: the further development of local capacities, public demand for more and better services is satisfied and strengthening local governance is effective.

Confirmation of itself indicates that in the period 2007 - 2010 95% of the participating municipalities in the program have had no problems of governance that are attributable to management problems, especially with regard to participatory planning and accountability.

4. Lessons learnt

Running the program shows the following lessons learned:

• A municipal government more responsive to citizen demands for more and better public services, for equity in the participation of citizenship who conducts periodic reports where it reveals the use of resources, generating greater trust, strengthen governance and promoting local development.
• The recognition that the AMDES are responsible for services, gives them a certain positioning on the market of their departments and more credibility in the execution of the FOCAM.
• Training services and technical assistance formulated based on local demand are successful but it should not be overlooked the importance of some services developed on the basis of the institutional supply (for example, municipal transparent transition)
• Involve the municipal governments in the evaluation of activities of technical assistance undertaken, generates positive outcomes for the program.
• A structured program to strengthen local government under the principle of procedural simplifications produces quick results.
• The official stability is fundamental to strengthening the municipal level.

 

Success factors:

• The official stability in AMDES and local governments creates better conditions for municipal management.
• The appropriation of the work methodology of the FOCAM by AMDES and the municipal governments, promotes better local government and municipal development impact.
• A well positioned municipal association with high credibility among its partners makes that an instrument of building capacities and technical assistance has good receptivity among municipal governments.

 

Risk factors:

• Official instability is the product of electoral processes and the uses and customs.
• The complex political environment that prioritizes political discourse and not governance.
• Authorities, managers and civil society at various levels of government which belong to one political line (governing party) put at risk public participation, gender equity, transparency and accountability
• Institutionally weak municipal associations generate distrust among local governments and do not allow processes of training and technical assistance to develop

5. Conclusions

• Local governments have carried out successful services that have improved their capacities to increase municipal revenues, its capacity in planning and participatory decision-making, transparency and accountability. But when political discourse is prefixed to the management, capacity developed progress face serious risks.
• The institutional capacities which were developed with great effort by small and medium local governments suffer a breakdown every time there are elections and change of authorities, especially in the western area of the country. Of course, this completely denies the process of work performed by municipal governments and adversely affects any program of capacity building.
• The absence of a municipal administrative career is a weakness that harms the municipality when there are changes of mayors and when there is social pressure for employment sources.
• While FOCAM counterparts are low, there are small communities that do not cover them. In this case, there was considered convenient to encourage implementation of "joint" services that lowers costs and promotes the exchange of experience between them.
• In Bolivia there are approximately 15 municipalities that, officially, have fewer than 500 inhabitants. In these cases, capacity building does not work because their municipal governments have no technical equipment, financial resources are minimal and people do not live there.