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PART I. CONCEPTUAL ASPECTS

CHAPTER I. WHAT WE MEAN BY DECENTRALIZED PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

1) SEEKING THE GREATEST PROTAGONISM POSSIBLE

22. In this book, we will take as our starting point the fact that we want to build a society that is radically democratic, solidarity-based and respectful of nature. This will be a society consciously built by the people, where the people, and not an elite, decide how they want to live and how to share the social wealth produced within that society so that everyone can live a full and meaningful life (Sumak Kawsay⁴). Such a life will be based on equity, solidarity, efficiency and efficacy. To accomplish these several goals, we have to create spaces and methods that allow us to achieve these objectives.

23. We need geographic spaces where people have the opportunity to become informed, state their positions and make decisions (community level, workplace, schools, universities, interest groups).

24. We also need methods that can facilitate the greatest possible participation of the people, where they become informed, discuss and vote, where their decisions become a reality. With properly defined units and appropriate methods, they can actively participate in the construction of that more just and solidarity-based society we all want to live in. We believe that the best method for achieving these objectives is locally based participatory planning.

2) WHAT WE MEAN BY PLANNING

25. Before turning to the issue of participatory planning, we would first like to explain what we mean by planning.⁵

26. One can govern in a good or bad manner. Sometimes we are not sufficiently clear about the goals we want to reach or we base them on an incorrect reading of the reality we are trying to change, and therefore make mistakes that drag us away, rather than bring us closer to those goals. It is also possible that, even having clearly set out our intentions and correctly chosen our actions, we underestimate the resources we need to carry them out or are not capable of visualizing sufficiently in advance certain obstacles that could prevent us from reaching our goals.

27. What distinguishes a good government from one that isn’t good? Why do some achieve their aims while others get shipwrecked along the way?

28. A good government does not improvise; instead it reflects before moving into action and makes decisions based on appropriate information that allows it to achieve the results it is looking for.

29. Decisions based on concrete facts, something that should accompany all government actions, are part of what we understand planning to be.

30. Planning therefore requires thinking before moving into action. The opposite of planning is improvisation; that is, making decisions without thinking about or having prior knowledge of the possible consequences of our intentions. Of course everyone in government has to plan to some extent given that, in one way or another, they have to think before moving into action. Sometimes however, they think things through so little or base their thoughts on such flimsy information, that their actions come across as if they were improvising.

31. This process covers different elements that are closely linked to the tasks that any government must carry out. The planning process includes:

■ have a goal to strive towards;

■ closely study the reality you are seeking to change;

■ clearly define the sought after changes;

■ explore the different actions that could be taken to achieve these changes, and the material, human and financial costs required to implement them;

■ select the most efficient and viable actions;

■ carry out the selected actions; and

■ evaluate the final results in order to make any necessary adjustments.

32. A society may decide to plan its development because it believes that in order to achieve the objectives it has set out, this process cannot be left to chance or to the whims of the market. Conscious collective actions are required to overcome injustices and redesign economic policies and practices so as to improve people’s wellbeing.

33. Achieving these objectives in their totality takes years and involves actions that go beyond simply improving services and public infrastructure, as important as these are. Development requires actions that will impact on society as a whole: eliminating or reducing inequality; creating jobs; using available resources in a sustainable manner that protects the environment; developing cooperatives and other initiatives that go in the direction of eliminating exploitation; and reducing dependency on foreign markets, among others.

34. Lastly, we should not forget that development occurs in a defined geographical area that has particular characteristics: watersheds, mountains, coastlines, rivers and lakes, land that is more or less fertile, tourist regions, land that is suitable for building houses, high-risk zones, urban areas, etc. Every area will also go through a particular process of demographic change that, in one way or another, is inter-related to what happens in neighboring communities and in the country as a whole. That is why it is also important to take demographic information into account.

3) TOWARD DECENTRALIZED PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

35. Now, there is no single formula for planning. It can be carried out behind closed doors by a technical team or involve different levels of people’s participation, from a simple consultation to direct involvement in decision making.

36. The type of planning we advocate is the antithesis of the centralized planning implemented in the former Soviet Union. There it was thought that to coordinate all efforts towards building a new society, a central authority had to decide objectives and means. It was a process in which decisions were always made from above, on many occasions without taking into consideration the fact that down below was where people best understood their problems and possible solutions.

37. On the other hand, processes that claim to be participatory budget processes often limited themselves to being processes of consultation only. Rather than promoting a process of decision making by citizens, those in power restricted participation to only consulting them in regards to public works and services that need to be implemented. A willingness to listen to people represents a step forward, but it is very limited. In such cases people in local areas are called upon to participate in working groups where they are asked to point out their main priorities for public works and services for their respective communities. A technical team collects these priorities. Here it is the technicians and not the people who then decide which projects to implement.⁶.

a) The need for planning to be participatory

38. We advocate a more empowered participation process, in which the people genuinely discuss and decide their priorities, as much as possible design their own projects and implement them if they are capable of doing so without having to depend on higher levels (although the door is always left open to ask for specialized technical assistance if required).

39. If the project is too big, or is technically very complex, or its impact will affect a more extensive area, then the capacity to execute it should be assumed by a higher up level. We are therefore talking about a planning process that seeks to involve the citizenry in as many aspects of the process of planning as possible; that is why we call it participatory planning.

b) The need for planning to be decentralized

40. If the state decides everything, there is no room for local initiatives. Therefore, in order to ensure the full participation of people, we must take the plans of small localities as our starting point – where the potential of people’s participation is greatest – and apply the principle that everything that can be done at a lower level should be decentralized to that level. Only those tasks that cannot be carried out at the lower levels should be assigned to the higher levels of administration and technical proficiency. This approach is referred to in much of the development literature as the “principle of subsidiarity.” In addition to providing a logic for decentralization, this principle allows for a back-and-forth planning process as the different levels communicate their needs and their competencies (responsibilities) to each other. We describe this principle in more detail, with reference to Kerala, in paragraph 132.

41. Of course, we are not talking about anarchic decentralization. The ideal scenario would involve a national system of participatory planning that would bring together community plans, the plans developed by territorial areas or communes, and those of municipalities or cantons, as well as the plans of any other level of government.

42. While recognizing the need for a national plan, the type of planning we are proposing allows local institutions to play a fundamental role not only in contributing to the design and implementation of the national plan but also by having the autonomy to plan within their own territory and carry out an important part of the national plan. The national plan has a real existence in the degree to which it expresses itself in the lowest, most local levels of decentralization: the reality of the nation emerges from the neighborhoods and villages.

43. Of course, we are referring here to a relative autonomy, as the general guidelines of the national plan have to be respected. What we are talking about is adjusting it to the specific social, cultural and economic realities of each geographical area.

44. Moreover, we envisage a decentralization that is infused with a spirit of solidarity, which favors the most disadvantaged localities and social sectors. One of the important roles of the state and local governments is to redistribute resources in order to protect the weakest and help them develop.

45. In order to emphasize the fact that decentralization is a crucial element in the type of planning we are proposing, we have called the process decentralized participatory planning.

46. Just as we were initially influenced by the emphasis President Chavez placed on planning at the level of the communal councils, a topic we will return to later on, our current understanding of planning has been further influenced – as we mentioned in the introduction – by the experience of decentralized participatory planning which they have developed over more than a decade, and with much success, in the Indian state of Kerala.

4) ACHIEVEMENTS AND WEAKNESSES OF PARTICIPATORY BUDGETS

47. You might be asking why are we talking about participatory planning instead of participatory budgeting.

48. We cannot ignore the contribution made by participatory budgeting, a process whereby people participate in the design and implementation of an annual investment plan, that is, in prioritizing where resources assigned to municipal public works and services should be invested. This process has been implemented in various regions across the world and has helped increase the level of people’s participation in public policy making. It has also helped improve the performance of municipal governments and, above all, made municipal governance more transparent, while also benefiting the most disadvantaged sectors.⁷

49. Participatory budgeting can become an effective weapon in the fight against corruption and the diversion of funds. People not only prioritize certain public works and services but also organize themselves to follow up on their implementation and monitoring to make sure that allocated resources are used for the objective that had been decided on This also increases the chances that the works or services are carried out to the required standard of quality.

50. Participatory budgeting is also an ideal means for speeding up the administrative machinery, making it more efficient and decreasing bureaucracy given that so many eyes are monitoring the process and pressuring to make sure public works are completed on time.

51. When people see the efficiency and transparency with which resources that come from their taxes are used, they begin to feel more willing to comply with taxation regulations and are less prone to evade taxes. This tends to lead to an increase in municipal tax collection.

52. In times of economic crisis and budget cuts, when it is necessary to “tighten belts” because there are fewer resources than the year before, the method of participatory planning is particularly useful and revolutionary as it places in people’s hands the decision as to what should be done with the scarce resources they have. There is a big difference between a people suffering cuts when they are made from above and when the people themselves, via participatory planning, make these decisions.

53. However, this process also has its limitations.

54. On the one hand, given that the objective of participatory budgeting is to determine which public works or services should be prioritized given the resources available each year, the discussion carried out with participatory budgeting tends to focus solely on these issues rather than on longer term goals that can allow us to move towards the kind of society we want to build. The fact that participatory budgeting is restricted to the framework of an annual investment plan limits the scope and horizon of government actions.

55. On the other hand, in many cases, public works and services prioritized by the people during the participatory budgeting process do not fit within any plan, which can lead to chaotic development.

56. In contrast the participatory planning we advocate is not limited to discussing investment in public works and services that the population deems necessary. It goes further and proposes actions that affect society as a whole: the development of cooperative industries that offer employment to underemployed or marginalized sectors; finding sustainable solutions based on the natural and human resources available within the territory; the elimination of intermediaries in the distribution of food; mechanisms for the redistribution of natural resources, rents, etc. In sum, participatory planning should create the basis for a new, more just and humane society.

57. Thus, participatory planning is not in competition with participatory budgeting; rather, it seeks to go further. Ultimately, annual budgets should reflect yearly provisions within a longer-term plan so that investment plans included as part of these budgets represent the advances made in the implementation of the multi-annual investment plans.

5) Political importance of our proposal

58. According to the experiences we have studied, a mass decentralized participatory planning process can have a lot of positive political outcomes. Apart from those already noted above, when we speak about the positive aspects of participatory budgeting, we can add the following:

59. Although the process starts with a diagnosis of problems and deficiencies, its aim is to orient people towards imagining the kind of community they would like to live in. It helps stimulate them to think of initiatives that go beyond merely material things, such as the idea that emerged in Caracas when Aristóbulo Istúriz was mayor to get children to paint murals on street corners.

60. Participatory planning can help to transform the traditional logic of distribution of public resources that has always benefited those sectors with higher incomes, in order to now favor greater social inclusion. By promoting popular participation – especially among the most disadvantaged sectors - participatory planning becomes a powerful weapon for better redistributing public resources, thereby inverting priorities that previous governments had until now. Those that were previously humiliated and unprotected are now the most cared for.

61. Given that projected public works and services should emerge from a collective discussion based on national, regional and state or provincial development plans, and that projects are prioritized according to certain criteria, investments are no longer carried out in an anarchic manner or in line with the personal criteria of a particular mayor or governor.

62. Participatory planning is also an instrument in the fight against clientelism and the exchange of favors. As the community itself designs the project, the potential for cronyism is considerably diminished, as is the influence of administrative leaders, councilors or so-called “managers.”

63. It strengthens the work of existing organized communities and promotes the organization of others.

64. It can act as an instrument with which to measure whether politicians and elected representatives are committed to participatory processes. It reveals whether they are really willing to promote participation and allow people to exercise power.

65. It is a school for popular education and for promoting new values and new social relationships. As we said in the Preface to this book “those who participate learn to inquire about the causes of things, to respect the opinion of others, to understand that the problems they face are not exclusive to their street or neighborhood but are related to the global situation of the economy, the national social situation, and even the international situation. They learn that everyone’s problems and every community’s problems should be examined within the context of the reality of other people and other communities that perhaps face a much more difficult and urgent situation. Through this, new relations of solidarity and complementarity are created that place the emphasis on the collective rather than the individual.”

66. Perhaps one of the most significant achievements of participatory planning is having been able to motivate citizens’ participation in the tasks of government, and to facilitate their initiative and creativity. Citizens knowing about and deciding upon public issues in face-to-face meetings is one of the most concrete ways to create spaces for participation and strengthening grassroots organization.

67. Carried out properly, this process has nothing in common with the co-optation of popular organizations by the state or their dissolution into the state. On the contrary, through it other powers are created outside of the traditional institutions of the state, making it a highly revolutionary experience.

68. Lastly, as we said in the Preface, this form of planning is more than just the ideal instrument to achieve the full participation of citizens in the management of public matters. When people are involved in the process of planning, they no longer feel like beggars demanding solutions from the state. They feel themselves to be the builders of their own destiny.

69. In short, this process not only facilitates the creation of a plan, something that is tangible and visible for all to see, but also helps transform the people who participate in it. Those who involve themselves are transformed; they are no longer the same persons they were at the start of the process. They begin to not only worry about themselves, their self-interests; instead they think about their community, their territorial area, and finally, their municipality as a whole. They learn to express solidarity with those most in need.

4. A quechua word.

5. Paragraphs 8 to 13 are taken from Flavio Carucci T, Agendas sociales. Construyendo acuerdos para el desarrollo local (Caracas: GTZ, Escuela de gerencia social, ILDIS, 2009), 14.

6. In November 2004, at a meeting of 800 high-level cadres from the government of President Chavez, it was recommended to put participatory planning into practice across the country. However, despite this clear directive from the president, this method was implemented by very few mayoralties and in many cases it was limited to a merely participatory consultation.

7. In this regards see Marta Harnecker, Delegando poder en la gente: presupuesto participativo en Porto Alegre, Brasil (Habana: MEPLA, 1999).