RLAW academic writing

CPD 6000-2
By: José Fabián López Cepeda

What is the problem with decision making exogenous to place?

Currently in Chile, we are living a situation in which the political and economic power is concentrated in
a specific place. I am talking about Santiago de Chile. This city was founded in 1541, and since then, the
administrative power has been concentrated there. This problem is called "centralism" not only
because of its geographical location, is because there is a vicious circle where the colonial practices are
so repeated, that have become hierarchies of power, that have altered the decisional balance of
regional territories.

The problem of centralism is its impact on decision-making due to the fact that a large part of the
decisions that affect regional territories, are taken from outside the territories. The increasing
concentration of powers has caused that, the territories far from the capital, are receiving the
consequences of bad decisions from authorities that don’t live in those territories, affecting the local
knowledge and the daily dynamics of the cities out of the capital.

An example of centralism is what happens with higher education. To give just a number, in Chile there
are 56 universities which 30 are located in Santiago, this means that a large percentage of professional
and other specialized careers are not in the regional territories, causing people who live on regional
territory, once they finish high school, decide to move to the capital. This situation generates a high
rate of migration of future human capital, increasing centralism.

During the years 1995 to 1998, a 25% of the public inversion was concentrated on “Región
Metropolitana”. Contrarily, in other regions such as “Arica y Parinacota”, “Aysén” and “Magallanes”,
just received a 19.8% of the public budget. On the other hand, exists particular cases, for example in
“Calama” city, which is the most important mineral center in Chile, is where is produced what we call
“the salary of Chile" because near to this city is the higher deposit of copper, giving to Chile, high gains
to the economy, thanks to its high price on international markets.
If it were true that power and wealth must be concentrated according to natural resources, the
production of wealth would have remained in the same place where it was produced, but in the case of
Calama, the city just receive 5% of the profits. According to this, is possible to say that authorities in
our capital city do not know the daily routine of their inhabitants, because, most of the decisions that
have been made, are influenced by the context, it is not the same, make a decision in Santiago than
other place outside, for example, Calama.

The author, Sergio Boisier indicates that in addition to the geographical problem of Chile, the principal
reason of centralism has historical roots that come from colonial times. Furthermore, in his work
entitled: "Development? (Local) what are we talking about?" (1999) He argues that, there are various
adjectives to refer to the idea of “development", a situation that confuses to politicians have wrong
notions of how to achieve the well-being for a place, affecting governability local. For this reason, Chile
has high centrality conditions that are difficult to reverse, Boisier proposes a radical change: federalism.

The political decisions they are given from outside territories, don’t have the local knowledge of the
place who are affecting, furthermore, the "decision makings", generally, don’t live in the place where
are affecting with his decision. Sometimes they have the best intentions, but they do not have the
necessary experience of a place, in order to make a good decision. Any exogenous of the place decision
is destined to fail because they do not result from the needs of their inhabitants. These ways of politics
and types of decision generates deterritorialization, affecting the cultural dynamics and destabilizing
social structures of the place.