Bolivia's Popular Participation Law : An Undemocratic Democratisation Process?
Year: 2003
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Bolivia, one of the poorest and most socially diverse countries in the Western Hemisphere, began in the mid-1990s the most comprehensive political reforms in the field of decentralisation in Latin America in the last twenty years. The Popular Participation Law, Ley de Participacion Popular (LPP), approved in Congress on 20 April 1994, subdivided Bolivian territory into 314 municipalities, which were each given a per capita share of national resources. Known as the principle of coparticipacion (co-participation), twenty per cent of national state expenditure is now disbursed among the local governments (municipalities) on a per capita basis. Indigenous, peasant communities (campesinos) and neighbourhood organisations gained legal status as formal representatives of their constituent populations through Grassroots Territorial Organisations (OTB). The OTBs from a single canton elect representatives for a municipal Vigilance Committee (Comite de Vigilancia, CV), whose role is to oversee municipal expenditures and budgets. Citizens directly elect their alcalde (mayor) and consejales (councillors) who sit on the municipal council and run the day-to-day operations of the municipality with the responsibility of coordinating most local needs, such as education, sanitation, infrastructure, irrigation and sports facilities (Centellas, 2000). Each municipal government must prepare a five-year Municipal Development Plan (PDM) based on the Manual of Participatory Municipal Planning developed by the Vice Ministry of Popular Participation, and must also draw up an Annual Operative Plan (POA). In short, these reforms have been so radical that they have hardly left anyone indifferent: for their promoters, the reforms have been “revolutionary”, for their critics the reforms are almost the work of the devil and they have been reviled as “damned” (Blanes, 1999). The aim of this study is to assess the relationship between decentralisation reforms and the improvement of local governance. We are, of course, aware that “support for decentralisation tendencies is more closely related to existing specific institutional arrangements, and to the degree to which it is expected to influence one's own position, than to its intrinsic merits”
Authors: Rickard Lalander, David Altman
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1258491086