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URBAN GOVERNANCE | Democracy
and Empowerment
This section includes the
enhancing representation and participation at the local
level, supporting community and neighbourhood self-government,
the extension of local electoral registration, and innovative
practices in deliberative democratic assemblies.
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local level
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Appadurai, Arjun (2001) - "Deep democracy: urban governmentality
and the horizon of politics" - Environment &
Urbanization, Vol 13 No 2, IIED [pdf]
India - This paper describes the work
of an alliance formed by three civic organizations in Mumbai
to address poverty – the NGO SPARC, the National Slum
Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan, a cooperative representing
women’s savings groups. It highlights key features
of their work which include: putting the knowledge and capacity
of the poor and the savings groups that they form at the
core of all their work (with NGOs in a supporting role);
keeping politically neutral and
negotiating with whoever is in power; driving change through
setting precedents (for example, a community-designed and
managed toilet, a house design developed collectively by
the urban poor that they can build far cheaper than public
or private agencies) and using these to negotiate support
and changed policies (a strategy that develops new “legal”
solutions on the poor’s own terms); a horizontal structure
as the Alliance is underpinned by, accountable to and serves
thousands of small savings groups formed mostly by poor
women; community-to-community exchange visits that root
innovation and learning in what urban poor groups do; and
urban poor groups undertaking surveys and censuses to produce
their own data about “slums” (which official
policies lack and need) to help build partnerships with
official agencies in ways that strengthen and support their
own organizations.
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Etemadi, Felisa U (2000) - "Civil society participation
in city governance in Cebu City" - Environment
& Urbanization, Vol 12 No 1- IIED [pdf]
Philippines - A high proportion of Cebu
City’s population lives in informal settlements. This
paper describes the range of partnerships between government
and non-government organizations in the city which provide
services targeted at low-income groups or at settlements
with a predominance of low-income households. It also describes
how a coalition of NGOs and people’s organizations
seeks to ensure the election of mayors with pro-poor policies
and to ensure these policies are implemented. It discusses
the successes, which mainly involve improved service provision,
and the limitations, which include very limited economic
benefits for low-income groups despite rapid economic growth,
the difficulties that such groups face in acquiring land
for housing and the limited influence of NGOs and people’s
organizations on the policies of city government.
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Masud, Mohammad O. (2002) - Co-producing Citizen Security:
The Citizen-Police Liaison Committee in Karachi - IDS
[pdf]
Pakistan - Beginning in 1989, the Citizen
Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) has become an important
component of policing in Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan.
Rooted in the business community, and dependent largely
on private donations and on the volunteer labour of business
people, it has taken on core police intelligence functions.
The CPLC is an example of the kind of hybrid
arrangement for the provision of public services that, we
are beginning to realise, may be widespread where there
has been a breakdown of conventional governance arrangements.
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UN-Habitat (2002) - Best Practice - BRAC, Dhaka
- [pdf]
Bangladesh - Two
major goals of BRAC are to alleviate poverty and empower
the poor. In response to these goals BRAC has defined its
mission. BRAC works with the people whose lives are dominated
by extreme poverty, illiteracy, disease and other handicaps.
With multi-faceted development interventions, BRAC strives
to bring about positive changes in the quality of life of
these people.
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UN-Habitat (2002) - Best Practice - Program on Community's
Participation in Environmental Infrastructure, Batu
[pdf]
Indonesia - 'Program on Increasing the
Community's Participation in the Development of Environmental
Infrastructure' is an effort to develop the community itself,
as a process of democratization and regional autonomy. In
this program, community is treated as the subject of the
development process. The community has its rights and chance
to actively participate in every step of development process,
planning, implementing, and enjoying the result.
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city level
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Burra, Sundar (s.d.) - A presentation on Empowerment
and Infrastructure - SPARC [pdf]
India - The focus of this paper on empowerment
and infrastructure has been upon the importance of partnerships,
the role of community based organizations and the obligations
placed upon international financial organizations like the
World Bank to go beyond strait-jacketed perspectives. Can
we develop in this area, using the philosopher John Rawls's
evocative phrase, an 'overlapping consensus' to involve
communities of the poor in the production and maintenance
of infrastructure? I am sure this forum will throw more
light on this question.
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UN-Habitat (2002) - Best Practice - Affirmative Action
for Women's Economic Independence, Para [pdf]
Brazil - Instances of social exclusion
and poverty among women of Brazilian Amazon region that
were prevalent before 1996 gave rise to social and economic
empowerment initiatives. These initiatives by feminist organisations
from Belem were important in the implementation of the popular
democratic government's first management experience in the
largest city in the Amazon State - Belem.
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UN-Habitat (2002) - Best Practice - Participatory Management
System, Municipality of Quito [pdf]
Ecuador - The proposal seeks to promote
the involvement of the community in local government; to
enforce a comprehensive, decentralised and deconcentrated
administration throughout the territory of the District;
to build public-private alliances for priority development
projects; to enforce transparency, accountability and control
by the community, and to establish strategic agreements
with Universities, NGOs, CBOs and other urban actors.
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international level
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Barten, Françoise; René Perez Montiel, Eduardo
Espinoza & Carlos Morales - "Democratic governance
– fairytale or real perspective? Lessons from Central
America" - Environment & Urbanization,
Vol 14 No 1 - IIED [pdf]
Central America - This paper examines
the concept of democratic local governance and its relevance
for health development in Central America, a region which
was torn apart by conflict in the 1980s. Peace-building
has been taking place since the 1990s in a difficult macro-level
context, as stabilization and structural adjustment policies
in the postwar period have led to drastic state reforms
with high social costs for the marginalized population.
Innovative experiences and strategies in health have also
developed in the region over the last decades, based upon
local participatory governance, contributions to public
health policy, development and peacebuilding at the local
level. This article describes two of these municipal health
development processes, the SILOS (Local Health Systems)
in the northern zone of San Salvador, El Salvador and the
municipal health process in León, Nicaragua. The
paper examines the relevance and sustainability of these
local initiatives and the importance of democratic local
governance for (health) development.
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Benevides, Maria Vitoria (2002) - Texto da palestra
proferida durante o painel Quais são os fundamentos
da democracia e de um novo poder?, dia 26 de janeiro, Eixo
I - World Social Forum [pdf]
É uma grande satisfação e uma grande
honra participar deste Fórum Social Mundial. Nesta
conferência vou discorrer sobre quais seriam os fundamentos
da democracia e de um novo poder. Vários aspectos
poderiam ser abordados, e eu escolhi falar sobre a democracia
como soberania popular e tocar em algumas questões
por meio das quais poderíamos pensar sobre o que
poderia ser feito no Brasil para obtermos avanços
em termos de novas formas de democracia direta.
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UNDP (s.d) - Thematic Trust Fund - Democratic Governance
- UNDP [pdf]
The United Nations Millennium Declaration represents the
strongest unanimous and explicit statement to date of UN
Member States in support of democratic and participatory
governance. The declaration clearly articulates that the
Millennium Development Goals must be achieved through good
governance within each country and at the
international level. It also states that member states “will
spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the
rule of law” and goes on to resolve “to strengthen
the capacity of all countries to implement the principles
and practices of democracy and respect for human rights…”
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UN-Habitat (2001) - Women and Urban Governance, Policy
Dialogue Series: No.1" [pdf]
The main part of the paper presents a discussion and analysis
of the questions relating to women and urban governance.
The analysis suggests some directions for policy action
by governments, local authorities and international agencies,
including UNCHS (Habitat). These are summarized in the seven
policy issues at the end of the paper. The format used for
the policy issues is intended to provide the basis for a
policy debate or dialogue among stakeholders. It addresses
the background, possible courses of action and constraints
surrounding the issue.
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UN Habitat - Local Democracy and Decentralisation in
East and Southern Africa: Experiences from Uganda, Kenya,
Botswana, Tanzania and Ethiopia Global Campaign on Urban
Governance, UN-Habitat [pdf]
The overall region-wide project, of which this study is
a part, focuses on one of these broad norms, i.e. decentralization.
Several countries in Eastern and Southern Africa have, over
the last two decades or so, initiated reforms on decentralization
of local authorities, while others are considering new local
government legislation or amendment of existing legislation.
One of the main purposes of these reforms has been to accommodate
new and emerging realities, including: (i) the transformation
towards more democratic governance that has characterized
many African countries during the last decade or so...
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Olowu ,Dele (2001) - Decentralization Policies and Practices
under Structural Adjustment and Democratization in Africa
- UNRISD [pdf]
Africa - This paper focuses on African
countrieswithout precluding occasional references
to other developing countriesin order to make the
discussion more manageable. While the relationship between
adjustment and democratization, and the institutionalization
of local government in Latin America and the Eastern European
countries has been the subject of systematic research and
analysis, decentralization policies have remained poorly
analysed and developed in African countries.
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Pont, Raul (2002) - Representative democracy and participatory
democracy - World Social Forum [pdf]
The central theme of this seminar has been present in humanity’s
political debate for at least two centuries. The roots of
political systems of representation are found in the constitutional
regimes of Modern States. The ancient and medieval political
regimes, being slave or serf societies, cannot be identified
with the situations which began with the Modern State. Even
with Absolutism, where the idea of a ‘contract’
already appears, and the subject holds certain rights, his
situation is far from the qualification of ‘citizen’.The
origins of representative systems were born from liberal
conceptions which expressed the development and maturing
of mercantilist societies and the objective conditions for
the rise of capitalism – the accumulation of capital
and the existence of freedom of labour.
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Rasimelli, Giampiero (2002) - Democrazia Partecipativa,
Associazinoismo del Cittadini, Globalizzazione (introduzione
al focus su "Democrazia Partecipativa") - World
Social Forum [pdf]
Se si vuole affermare la faccia positiva della globalizzazione,
quella delle opportunità, dei diritti di cittadinanza,
delle solidarietà e delle responsabilità,
il tema della democrazia partecipativa è fondamentale.
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Saramago, José (2002) - From Justice to Democracy
by Way of the Bells - World Social Forum [pdf]
And what of democracy, this age-old invention of a few
ingenuous Athenians for whom, in the specific social and
political circumstances of the time and according to the
standard expression, meant government of the people, by
the people and for the people? I often hear it argued by
sincere people of proven good faith, along with others with
an interest in feigning an appearance of goodness, that
although the state of catastrophe most of the planet is
in constitutes irrefutable proof, it is precisely within
the framework of an overall democratic system that we will
be most likely to attain human rights fully or at least
satisfactorily.
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Westendorff, David (2002) - From Unsustainable to Inclusive
Cities - UNRISD & Swiss Agency for Development
Cooperation [pdf]
The five core chapters of this volume are country/city
case studies written from the perspective of urban development
practitioners assisting in efforts to achieve dignified
living and working conditions for some of the most vulnerable
groups in large cities of the South. The authors were asked
to reflect on actual content of sustainable development
as practiced in their cities and how they personally would
envision sustainable development for her/his city? What
efforts, official and unofficial, are being made in the
name of achieving sustainable development there? What are
the shortcomings of the actors and institutions that are
expected to partake in realizing this goal? What steps need
to be taken to move forward? The remaining articles are
by researchers who have worked closely with or studied efforts
by the international community to influence urban development
in developing countries.
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Yash Ghai (2001) - Human Rights and Social Development:
Toward Democratization and Social Justice - UNRISD
[pdf]
This paper aims to assess progress toward the objectives
of the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development (referred
to as "the Declaration") and Programme of Action
by using a human rights strategy. The Declaration seeks
to make human rights the framework for policies to achieve
the goals of the World Summit for Social Development, held
in Copenhagen in 1995. This strategy assumes that the norms
and machinery of human rights would inform decisions on
development policies.
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Habitat
Agenda:
Paragraph 45
We further commit ourselves to the
objectives of:
(a) Enabling local
leadership, promoting democratic rule, exercising public
authority and using public resources in all public institutions
at all levels in a manner that is conducive to ensuring
transparent, responsible, accountable, just, effective and
efficient governance of towns, cities and metropolitan areas;
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![DFID](../images/main/dfid2.gif) |
Documents highlighting DFID's published
work in support of democracy and empowerment in urban
areas: |
"Community
Decision-Making for Basic Services" (2001) -
Implementing the Habitat Agenda: In Search of
Urban Sustainability - DFID / DPU [pdf]
India - This initiative by the West
Bengal Government set out to improve the environmental
conditions of two suburban towns in Calcutta Metropolitan
Area.
Infrastructure facilities have been extended to the
slums to reduce environmental health hazards and make
the city fabric more cohesive. With the decline of
the local jute industry over the last two decades,
the economic condition of Titagarh, a
town within Calcutta Metropolitan Area in India, is
poor.
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"Sustainable
Initiative Penang" (2001) - Implementing
the Habitat Agenda: In Search of Urban Sustainability
- DFID / DPU [pdf]
Malaysia - The Sustainable Penang
Initiative aims to incorporate popular consultation
into a more holistic and sustainable type of development
in the State of Penang, Malaysia. It is an example
of a process that draws together many stakeholders
to shape a common vision for the future of the community
and to monitor achievements and progress over time. |
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