PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Publ. Admin. Dev. 18: 85±92 (1998)

Local government and the transition to democracy:

a review article
B. C. SMITH*
University of Dundee

INTRODUCTION

Despite the all too familiar dif®culties in enforcing tight adherence to the major
themes in collections of essays, of which Teune's is a bad example, the four books
reviewed here1 provide important comparable information from different regions of
the world on one of the most important topics for students of local government: the
relationship between it and the democratization of society.
Liebmann describes the legal position of village and neighbourhood institutions in
Britain, France, Germany, the United States, China, Russia and Japan, intending
them as `an application to the problems of developed nations of methods . . . that
they have freely prescribed and practised in connection with economic development
in underdeveloped countries' (Liebmann, 1995, p. 146). McCarney's volume is a
collection of ten country studies2 from Africa, Asia and Latin America, com-
missioned by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to provide its International
Of®ce with descriptions of the structure and functions of local government in the
selected countries. The focus of the collection edited by Reilly is the relationship
between civil society and municipal government in Latin America. Field work in six
countries3 was carried out in 1990±91. Teune's collection derives from a research
programme on democracy and local governance in Europe and Asia.4
Interest in the relationship between national and local democracy has been given
new impetus by the transitions from authoritarianism to democracy currently being
attempted with varying levels of success in most regions of the world. Democratic

*Correspondence to: Professor B. C. Smith, Department of Political Science and Social Policy, University
of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, UK.
1
Liebmann, G. W. (1995) in McCarney, P., (ed) The Little Platoons. Sub-Local Governments in Modern
History, Praeger, London; (1996). The Changing Nature of Local Government in Developing Countries,
Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, and International Of®ce, Federation of
Canadian Municipalities; Reilly, C. A. (ed) (1995). New Paths to Democratic Development in Latin
America. The Rise of NGO-Municipal Collaboration, Lynne Rienner, London; Teune, H. (ed) (1995).
`Local governance around the world', special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science, 540, July.
2
Zimbabwe, Burkina-Faso, Uganda, CoÃte D'Ivoire, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Mexico, Ecuador and
Chile.
3
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.
4
The country studies in this disparate collection are of India, Turkey, Spain, Belarus and Ukraine, with
thematic essays on central±local relations, party formation in central Europe, the environmental concerns
of local elites, the reorganization of the welfare state, border regions, and global change.

CCC 0271±2075/98/010085±08$17.50
& 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
86 B. C. Smith

local government is widely taken, largely as an act of faith, to be a prerequisite of

national democracy. Sustaining a form of local government that is democratic thus
becomes of critical importance. This article ®rst explores what these books have to
say about the relationship between local and national democracy, then considers the
global context within which local government operates, and ®nally examines the
relationship between local government and civil society. The ®nal section is
speci®cally concerned with the conditions that support a democratic system of local
governance and the role that civic associations play in this.

LOCAL DEMOCRACY AND THE DEMOCRATIC STATE

The conviction that democratic government at the local level is a necessary condition
for democracy generally, is stated most explicitly by Teune and in case studies of
central Europe, Thailand, Vietnam and Mexico.
The causal relationship is believed to work in the following ways. First, following
J. S. Mill, democratic local government provides a pertinent political education for
the citizens of free societies. Local government gives education in the management
of joint concerns and the pursuit of public motives. McCarnery notes that local
government is frequently reorganized as countries undergo democratic transitions,
which `may stem from the Tocquevillian notion that local government is a training
ground for democracy or simply from the assumption that government closer to the
people is part and parcel of democratic reform' (McCarney, 1996, p. 9).
Secondly, local governments restrain the excesses of national governments and the
anti-democratic tendencies of centralized power. This is particularly important in
transitions from authoritarianism. The only dissenting note is struck by Kjellberg
who urges that the normative case for local government based on the values of
liberty and participation should be quali®ed by other values, namely the rule of law,
geographical redistribution and macroeconomic steering, all involving central
interventions and equally important to the legitimacy of the political system. This
is a strong point, given that, as will be seen later, the remnants of authoritarianism
can equally be left over in local government.
Thirdly, local democracy provides a better quality of participation than does
national government. Based on community and a familiarity with society and its
members, it provides more meaningful participation. Teune also claims that there are
stronger incentives for participation at the local level because its consequences are more
visible and immediate. The smaller the number of interests to be reconciled, the easier it
is to form political coalitions and reach compromises (Teune, 1995, pp. 17±18).
Finally, the Colombian case suggests that the legitimacy of government centrally is
strengthened when it legislates for municipal reform.
The fact that there is very little hard evidence to support these convictions presents
a problem that can only be solved by research into the causal relationships or by
incorporating local democracy into one's de®nition of the democratic state. The
former course is not well represented in these volumes. A number of authors opt for
the de®nitional solution.
The dif®culty of establishing a causal link is well illustrated by the case of Turkey.
Koker states that `It is generally agreed that local government has been and still is the

& 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Publ. Admin. Dev. 18: 85±92 (1998)
 Local government and transition to democracy 87

cradle of modern democracy', only to point out that `Turkey's relative success in
sustaining a representative democracy over the past half century did not involve a
successful decentralization'. Local government in Turkey `has been initiated by the state,
re¯ecting administrative and ®scal concerns of the centre, and has not been a source of
democratic citizen participation'. It can, of course, be questioned whether Turkey has
had even relative success in sustaining representative democracy when the period 1923Ð
1945 was characterized by `centralist, authoritarian rule' under a single party which
maintained `the statist-centralist frame of the Ottoman past', when the military ruled
from 1971 to 1973 and 1980±1983, and when recent political developments nationally
threaten to counter with authoritarianism some of the democratic trends locally based
on new social movements like feminism and environmentalism.
Furthermore, the direction of causality is unclear. In Latin America local
government has, according to Marcondes, gained in political importance `as a result
of democratization processes', which have involved `great interest in fostering local
democracy and more effective public participation'. Reilly notes a growing interest in
`place' as an alternative to centralization as part of the transition to democracy in
Latin America, with the emergence of organizations, in addition to strengthened
municipalities, serving speci®c populations, loyal to speci®c territories, and linking
localities with government. In Mexico `only with consistent social and political forces
committed to democratic change in prevailing structures and policies, will municipal
empowerment become a real possibility'. In Chile it was not until the return to
civilian rule in 1989 that legislation was passed to allow the election of mayors and
councillors. From all this it is dif®cult to assess in what way local democratization
contributes to a viable democratic polity.

GLOBALIZATION

Local government is now accepted as being part of a new transnational system,

affecting the course of local politics in a wide variety of ways, though `globalization'
is in danger of becoming one of these concepts that explains everything and therefore
nothing, and it is easy to exagerate its in¯uence.5
First, other countries and international agencies provide alternative sources of
support and resources to those ¯owing through more familiar inter-governmental
relationships. Local autonomy is now presumed to include the right to establish
relationships with local governments in other countries and with international
institutions.
Second, as international economic agencies penetrate localities in pursuit of new
markets and cheap production, conventional local governments as well as social
movements are drawn into confrontation and sometimes collaboration with
international capital, as in the case of India. Another response is to pressure central
governments to take responsibility for economic and environmental goals that are
produced by `thinking globally'.
Third, from a Third World perspective globalization can be perceived as the
imposition of a type of democracy originating in the West. However, in Burkina-Faso,
bilateral aid from France is conditional upon a form of decentralization that

5
Mlinar's chapter is a good example of this danger.

& 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Publ. Admin. Dev. 18: 85±92 (1998)
88 B. C. Smith

corresponds to the speci®c requirements of the country and deepens the democratic
process as well as developing reliable urban services. Vietnam is learning from models
of administration in neighbouring south-east Asian countries, including Singapore.
Fourth, the urban problems that confront city governments include the new
commerical centres, free trade zones and enterprise development areas arising from
the internationalization of capital, services and culture. Multinational corporations
pressure city governments to provide high standards of services and quality of life.
However, local governments feeling the international consequences of under-
development ®nd it hard to respond to these and other needs. International
indebtedness results in budget cuts for urban expenditures, leading to urban decline,
especially in poor neighbourhoods. Dependence on single exports for state revenue
(as in Uganda) means that there is little propsect of expanding local government
activities. Such pressures lead to structural adjustment programmes and conditions
for bilateral and multilateral aid, including reform of the structure of government at
all levels. Local communities are left to fund their own services, either through
taxation or fees and charges. Efforts in Uganda to improve urban services have been
supported by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, but the drive for greater
ef®ciency, privatization and revenue enhancement (the Bank's priorities for
Kampala) ignore questions of political legitimacy and support, and the conditions
in which citizens live. In CoÃte D'Ivoire the economic crisis of the early 1990s and the
`severe measures imposed by the country's international ®nancial supporters' led to
deferment of the democratization of local administration in rural communities
accounting for 52 per cent of the population. The debt, structural adjustment, and
austerity that affected Latin America in the 1980s led to a growth in poverty, a
decline in the quantity and quality of urban services, and food riots. Structural
adjustment is truly `one of the most signi®cant forces affecting the role of local
government' (McCarney, 1996, pp. 8±10).
Finally, a signi®cant part of civil society in the Third World, the non-
governmental sector with which local governments increasingly interact, has an
international dimension in the form of linkages through which resources are secured,
especially in environmental projects and sometimes in competition with the state.

SUSTAINING LOCAL DEMOCRACY

The political conditions necessary to sustain local democracy provide the ®nal theme
to be considered. These include the relationship between local government and civil
society. Levels of success in specifying the nature of this relationship vary greatly in
the books under review, but it is nevertheless possible to construct a typology of the
factors that support democracy at the sub-national level.

Representative government

Administration at the local level should be the responsibility of bodies that owe their
authority to electoral representation. Local democracy is impossible without
democratic local government. The case studies of the Philippines, Colombia and

& 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Publ. Admin. Dev. 18: 85±92 (1998)
 Local government and transition to democracy 89

Chile show how periodic elections to local councils can be augmented by other forms
of participation within the structure of local government. Stronger local government
can also attract the involvement of social movements and civic groups, as in Mexico.
In the transition from authoritarianism local government is likely to be
reorganized but, as some of the case studies show, local political elites may
represent the old order and resist democratization, as in Belarus and Ukraine.
Competitive elections will be new to the political culture. Powerful elites may be able
to restrict the franchise, as in Zimbabwe.

Administrative capacity

Local democracy will not ¯ourish if local governments are administratively

incapacitated. Many of the case studies testify to concerns about excessive central
control, inadequate ®nancial resources, the poor quality of public of®cials, the use of
local government for party political clientelism, shortages of management skills, and
inadequate means of cooperation with social organizations. Such incapacity has a
destructive effect on local government's standing in the mind of the public and its
ability to take on new roles within programmes of decentalization. The latter might
include contributing to development efforts and dealing with growing demands
resulting from the poverty, unemployment and in¯ation caused by strucutral
adjustment policies.

The legitimacy of local structures

Local democracy requires a structure of decision-making that is regarded as

legitimate by those involved and affected by it. A number of case studiesÐBurkina-
Faso, Sweden, UgandaÐidentify decentralization of power as a response to the
growing legitimacy of sub-national government.

A culture of democracy

Local democracy needs the support of an ethos of democracy and this varied
considerably in the cases under investigation. A culture of democracy will support
decentralization and participation, as it has recently in Thailand. When there is
authoritarianism at the centre and distrust of the political elite the relationship
between local authorities and the community will not become more democratic.
There may equally be support for democracy at the centre, but the appointees of the
former dictatorship may remain in power locally. Democratic decentralization is
anyway unlikely to command the support of all political interests.

& 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Publ. Admin. Dev. 18: 85±92 (1998)
90 B. C. Smith

The contribution of civil society

The importance of the civic community of neighbourbood associations, political

parties, non-governmental organizations, civic associations, private voluntary bodies
and grassroots support organizations, as social movements essential to the successful
functioning of democracy, is a theme running through all four volumes. Civil society
complements state and market, forming `the informal sector of the polity'. Such
bodies have a long history in developed democracies, as Liebmann shows. They
often proliferate in transitions to democracy, having (as in Brazil) been formed
during the authoritarian regime when political participation was banned. They
contribute to the democratic content of local government by negotiating and
bargaining with it so that the relationship between NGOs and local governments can
be a cause, as well as an effect, of enhanced democracy.
However, conditions in developing countries are not always supportive of an
active civil society. It may also be dif®cult to move from protest and political
confrontation to constructive dialogue with local governments. A contribution to
local democracy may be dif®cult when authoritarianism is deeply rooted, political
representation a recent phenomenon, and political organizations traditionally
monopolized by parties, as in Thailand and Vietnam.

Empowerment

The organizations of civil society contribute to local democracy by empowering

people to become critical of conventional local government, forge alliances with
similarly placed people in other localities and cultures, represent their interests
effectively through pressure group action including the democratization of local
government, and acquire representation on administrative bodies.
By passing on their participatory approaches for strengthening local organiza-
tional capacity, such bodies help people acquire political skills and practise
citizenship in preparation for encounters with the state at local, regional and
national levels. They strengthen political pluralism by competing in elections. They
can join with local governments to mobilize pressure on the central authorities to
meet citizen's demands. In the transition to democracy municipalities may be the
allies of social groups or, as legacies of the recent authoritarianism, their opponents.
There is also a danger that the leadership of NGOs will become incorporated into
political clientelism.
NGOs often embody considerable expertise, enabling them to act as an educative
force, raising awareness of problems and solutions within municipalities and the
public generally. Their support for other grassroots mobilization can lead to the
proliferation of groups and the further enrichment of civil society.
Civil society thus creates a staging post on the way to full citizenship.
Collaboration between local governments and NGOs `has contributed substantially
to expanding citizenship for the excluded . . .. The secondary citizenship of member-
ship in NGOs and social movements converts readily into primary citizenship, with
rights and obligations initially concretized through local-level governments' (Reilly,
1995, pp. 2, 267).

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 Local government and transition to democracy 91

Sharing the burden

Involvement in local governance means that civic associations and the informal
private sector provide services that might otherwise be provided by the state or in
association with local government. In the transition to democracy local governments
are likely to suffer from inadequate resources and need the non-governmental sectors
to share the burden. NGOs increasingly engage in joint ventures with local
governments in service delivery and cost sharing in housing, health care, waste
disposal, environmental protection and education. They introduce new methods of
service delivery and support local councils in the mobilization of self-help and
democratization initiatives.
Many civil associations have emerged in order to substitute for the shortcomings
of government, including local government. They may bypass local government
and deal directly with the centre or donor agencies, especially if local government
is dominated by the residues of authoritarianism, clientelism, populism and
corporatism, and thus unlikely to respond to the needs of disadvantaged sections
of society. There is then a risk that people will be more prepared to support
informal institutions than local governments, so that civil society actually works to
undermine some democratic institutions. However, the more democratic local
government is, the more likely informal associations will be seen as partners rather
than rivals.

Strengthening civil society

Municipalities can play a facilitating role in the development of civil society. One way is
by involving voluntary groups and NGOs in the management of services, facilities and
programmes or supporting self-help projects. This may mean mobilizing resources such
as cash contributions and labour. It can also take the form of formal structures within
the local government for neighbourhood participation. Neighbourhood and other
associations may attract the attention of competing political parties seeking support
through clientelism.
There may be a risk that `domesticated' NGOs supported by municipal contracts
and subsidies will lose their autonomy, initiative and capacity for critical assessment
of government programmes. Widespread citizen participation of this type may
require local government to be organized on a small scale.
During the transition to democracy the revival of local government may
signi®cantly alter the pattern of civic organization and discourage community
action of certain kinds, replacing community-based associations with sectional
interest groups that may nevertheless be incorporated into the system of local
governance. The study of Spain by Garcia is a fascinating example of this.

CONCLUSION

The relationship between democracy at different territorial levels of the state awaits
precise speci®cation. It is too easy to confuse questions about the conditions

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92 B. C. Smith

necessary for local government to be judged democratic with questions about the
foundations of sustainable democracy nationally. Tautologies lie in wait for the
unwary. However, this is a growing ®eld of interest to which the four volumes
assessed here have made an important contribution.

& 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Publ. Admin. Dev. 18: 85±92 (1998)