An attempt has been made to provide a summary in order to link consideration of the risks posed by decentralization, on the one hand, and, on the other, the advantages, experiences and knowledge which the different FAO services have built up. Thanks to this summary, it is possible to propose a tailored decentralization methodology and a set of support policies which are fundamental to the success of decentralization. Hence, it represents an ordering of FAO’s different lines of action and focuses into a participatory decentralization model, called the RED-IFO model.
The objective of the model, which comprises two parts, is to deal with the risks posed by decentralization. The first consists of a decentralization methodology, based on the regionalization of the needs of rural populations and policy differentiation (risk 1). The second part proposes three support policies: information (risk 2), training (risk 3) and organisation (risk 4). One of the model’s principal components is dialog (this offers a form of solving risk 5).
In order to avoid the first risk posed by decentralization (that of a supply philosophy being simply replaced by one that is demand driven), the RED-IFO model suggests the construction of an intersection area between rural development partners with a global philosophy and policy supply (international organizations and states), on the one hand, and the partners with knowledge of local circumstances and a specific demand for support projects and programs (rural populations, NGOs, the private sector) on the other. This interface is the natural area for the decentralized formulation of a rural development strategy.
In other words, in order for the State’s policy supply not to be too global, there is a need to be able to differentiate policies and, therefore, obtain typologies of producers and regions, which would permit the institutional instruments which are best suited to each type of producer, product and region to be identified. However, at the same time, in order to treat rural populations’ demands (which are necessarily specific and local) consistently, it is necessary to regionalize the needs and wishes of rural populations in order to give them a wider impact.
From a rural development perspective, the aim of differentiated policies would be to allow each type of producer or each type of target group for institutional interventions, to have access to the assets they require in order to implement economic and social integration strategies. The goal would be to assist them in developing the assets which they have, while providing them with access to other assets which, together, would allow them to achieve enhanced market integration. In any event, in rural development terms, it is a matter of supporting efforts by rural populations to augment their development levels and the degree of maturity of their organizations. Two main types of policies would be accepted and diversifed:
1. Policies for the most underprivileged population. These are well targeted policies whose rural development impact, however, may be limited, given the quantity and quality of the resources which the target population has at its disposal. To a greater extent, these are targeted social policies for combating poverty. They are not designed to set rural development in motion, but rather to assist the poorest to institute strategies to improve their situation.
2. Appropriate, differentiated policies for social groups with a real potential to become a launch-pad for a rural development strategy, which can generate employment, income and a diversification of agricultural and non-agricultural revenue. The RED-IFO decentralization model has been proposed to guarantee an adaptation and diversification of policies for this type of rural producers. This model would make it possible to: i) support organization processes so that farmers’ organizations can attain a higher level of maturity; ii) create means by which this type of producer can access strategic environmental information, and iii) support training processes, in order to ensure that rural populations themselves assume responsibility for rural development action.
A decentralized, differentiated policy which responds to regional demands, should give priority to instruments which, by their very nature, may be more readily targeted to suit the specific problems of each type of producer or region. From this point of view, it would be more effective to utilize direct support for labour capital, infrastructure investment, the creation of new production or manufacturing procedures, or even to finance consumption by most underprivileged producers. Given that a tradition does not exist which would make it possible to work with differentiated, region-specific policies, FAO’s role can be very important, since it supports institutional restructuring aimed at developing differentiated policies and provides supply methodologies for drawing up producer typologies, and technical assistance for regional demand analysis. It is in this general framework of differentiation and regionalization, therefore, that support policies for decentralization should be devised and implemented.
Under this model three policies are deemed essential to supplement the regional analysis and differentiation methodology of the RED-IFO decentralization model and create the necessary conditions for participation by rural populations in the decentralization process: i) access to information; ii) training and iii) support for the organization of rural populations. FAO has built up a wealth of experience in these three spheres.
A lack of or imbalance in information between the development partners does not facilitate co-ordination of activities or a global analysis of local demands. If this risk is to be averted, decentralization must be accompanied by a two-pronged information policy: i) production of information relevant to a rural development strategy and ii) the creation of conditions for a continuous flow of information among all rural development partners, including local levels of government. Information, and a balanced distribution thereof are a condition for dialog between the States and the rural development partners, without which a truly participatory development strategy cannot be achieved.
In fact, in order for a true dialog to be created between the development partners, common ground for such a dialog must exist, or, in other words, the partners must have at their disposal the same quantity and quality of information on institutional, macro-economic and technological constraints and opportunities, market developments, comparative advantages for products and regions, as well as on any complementarity between the member countries of a sub-regional trading bloc.
Therefore, information production and flows play a dual role: i) they grant rural populations a degree of control over development actions and ii) they ensure the global consistency of actions, since rural populations would have information stretching beyond their local conditions and circumstances. This is a priority in order to provide the economic, technological and participatory content to decentralization.
In order to prevent decentralization producing a diminished supply of support services, it is necessary for the transfer of functions to be accompanied by a transfer of powers to local levels of government, as well as to rural populations and their organizations. It is only through such a transfer of powers that the execution of decentralized functions can be guaranteed. Following a long period of paternalism and strong intervention by the central State, which blocked the autonomous action capacity of rural populations, technical skills for other development partners must be created or reinforced.
The demand for training is also of decisive importance given that the capacity for formulating demands is not equally distributed across the different municipalities and producers’ organizations. In fact, such a capacity hinges upon the prior accumulation of social capital and specific organisational experience. In this respect, in the absence of a very strong training policy, decentralization may benefit the richest, best organised local communities and organizations, simply because they are the ones with greatest capacity to formulate their demands in terms of development projects. Training, therefore, should be geared as a matter of priority towards municipalities and rural organisations with a weak demand-formulating capacity.
Support for these communities and organizations in the shape of training for the formulation of profitable, business-focused, production projects, may be a priority sphere of action for collaboration between states and international organizations, but also for the promotion of partnership relations with the private sector and the mexperimental use of a rural development approach which emphasizes access to productive, human resource, and organizational and network assets. FAO has gained a certain amount of experience with regard to the organization of exchanges between institutions in civil society aimed at permitting them to enhance their participation in decentralization processes and strengthening local levels of government.
Lack of preparation to deal with the challenges of decentralization does not affect only producers. Even local level State officials do not always have the necessary skills to lead the dialog with policy beneficiaries, accustomed as they have been to only implementing policy lines determined above, and in whose formulation they have not participated.
Availability of relevant, global information, as well as training and the transfer of powers form the first obstacles to a possible appropriation of decentralization by local elites. These curbs may be insufficient if rural populations do not have the strength of organization needed to take part in policy design, implementation and evaluation. This is why the third decentralisation support policy put forward by the RED-IFO model is support for existing organizations and, in certain cases, the creation of intermediate associations and recognition of the latter as the State’s favored dialog-partners, through the creation of a legal framework to encourage participation. The importance of organization is multi-dimensional.
Organization can, firstly, guarantee that decentralization in its different forms is more a response to a real demand for participation on the part of the rural populations than a policy decided upon and formulated from above, in centralized fashion. Thus, the objectives, forms and pace of the decentralization policy could be defined and negotiated with the beneficiaries of decentralization themselves.
Next, organization may be a condition for the success of decentralization since it can lead to endogenous innovations which allow intermediate associations to actively participate in the differentiation and regionalization of policies. It is by organizing that producers can bring about development for themselves, since it permits them either to create or strengthen their capacity to appropriate previously centralized functions.
Finally, organization is important to decentralization strategy because the latter’s success is dependent on the creation of local and regional conflict-mediation structures, which enable social pressure to be channelled into the definition of development projects and programs. Decentralized mediation mechanisms can afford a means of structuring demands and summarising them in a rural development strategy.
However, institutional weakness on the part of the State and/or rural organizations can only lead to the failure of mediation. Without mediation, there can be neither consensus, nor a strategy for viable, sustainable, participatory rural development, nor a general framework of dynamic relations between the rural development agents. Now, mediation conditions do not always exist; they should be created through dialog, proximity to specific situations, and creating an awareness on the part of the State that it can improve the effectiveness of its actions if its sees the rural organization not as an obstacle to its intervention but as a means of capturing demands for intervention. In this way, the organisation can help to build the concept of economic and social citizenship, and develop a new relationship between the State and the intermediate associations made up of dialog, mediation and partnerships.
