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IACCI Baghdad Office
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TI Source Book 2000Chapter 13: Local GovernmentLeave Truth to the police and us; we know the Good; |
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As the world becomes increasingly urbanised, the role of municipal governmentsbecomes correspondingly more important. In many developing countriesfor instance, the urban population has surpassed the number of ruraldwellers. According to a recent United Nations' estimate the number of Asiancities of more than one million inhabitants will grow from 359 in 1990, to903 in 2015, which means that their number will have nearly trebled withinthe space of 25 years.
A citizen's civic duties and participation in a democratic system, first takeplace at the city level. A citizen casting his vote in a municipal election isexerting some influence over the way his or her city or community is beingmanaged. Contact with local government, for many citizens, represents theirfirst experience with public administration. Decisions and services relating to city planning,road maintenance, schools, public utilities, policing and administrative services such as licensingand the provision of services, generally fall with the local government. Local governmentshave greater contact with the public in the course of their daily lives than do national governments,as they are directly responsible for the community's health, housing, education,waste collection, environment and the basic needs such as sewerage and water.
The National Integrity System covers nation-wide situations. The growing realisation that corruptioncan sometimes be better fought from the bottom up, rather than from the nationallevel down, has led anti-corruption strategists to target municipalities as a new focus of theirwork. It is indeed at that level, that the devastating impact of corrupt management can be feltby citizens, and where coalitions of concerned players can be formed around common goalsfor the creation of more humane and more sustainable living conditions. It isnow a widely held view that good city administration can only operate effectivelywith increased transparency in its decision-making process, and withthe greater involvement of civil society.
Increasingly, governments are being encouraged to decentralise their activities,and to follow the philosophy of "subsidiarity", whereby decisions aredevolved to the lowest practical level. There is a paradox here. As more andmore responsibilities are being shifted from central to local government, activitiesare being moved away from corrupt central bureaucracies and placedwith institutions which are even less dependable. Local institutions lack numbers,and so often lack the human and material resources essential to ensureproper stewardship of the public duties they are increasingly being required to perform.
As is also the case with central governments, many of the tasks which have to be carried outby local governments require cooperation with the private sector. This creates the potential forprivate interests to intervene and distort the decision-making processes against the best interestof the citizens. The zoning of land, for instance, is an area of local government activitywhich in many countries poses particular threats to integrity. Land values can increase dramaticallywhen permitted uses are changed. The temptation to bribe councillors and councilofficials to ease zoning changes through the processes is a considerable problem in manycountries, developed and developing alike. At the local level, relationships between the variousactors tend to be much closer than at the national level, and as such, the problems offavouritism and nepotism become all the more acute.
Honest, transparent, and effective local management of cities is essential tooptimise the living conditions of citizens, and to foster trust in the way inwhich they are governed. Thus, it is crucial to address corruption and to promotetransparency and accountability not just at the national, but also at thecity level. As elsewhere, the best way to curb corruption is by creating coalitionsand by involving government, the private sector and civil society inanti-corruption initiatives.
Such reforms can only be undertaken after some public awareness raising hastaken place as to the need for such changes and the benefits they can yield.The messages must bear directly on the lives of citizens, and the issue of corruptionshould not be treated simply as a "moral" one. Authorities should beprovided with an assessment of who benefits from corruption, what theincentives are for corrupt practices, and how employees are affected by it. Inthe case of a very demoralised institution, these findings may provide anavenue to deal with the problem, for instance, by having meetings or workshopswith employees to discuss them, and even by involving those who maythemselves be engaging in corrupt practices.
When asked to identify the "pillars" in their own local governmentintegrity systems, mayors from several African cities, identified theequivalents, at the local level, of the "pillars" and practicesdescribed in this Source Book[1],and interestingly, added as a final pillar, the "National IntegritySystem" itself--as the provider of national judicial and policeservices, and as a major partner for local administrations. Therefore, inthe "municipal integrity system" the National Integrity System isrecognised by itself as comprising a "pillar". It is, of course,augmented by local arrangements for procurement, audit, public access tomeetings of elected officials, and so on.
Local government integrity system handbooks and local integrity workshopsThere is scope, and seemingly a need, for city-specific "local government integrity systemhandbooks" to be prepared. This could be an outcome of a local integrity workshop whichwould bring together the various pillars of the local integrity system such as the Mayor, CityCouncillors, the tender board, financial managers, watchdog agencies, religious leaders, communityassociations, local business associations and the local media, to assess the strengthsand weaknesses of the existing integrity system. The forum could also lead to the developmentof an action plan aimed at improving the municipal integrity system.
The issues which could be discussed in such a workshop could cover, for instance:
Change at the local level faces much the same obstruction from vested interests and alliancesas it does at the national level. Added obstacles, however, include the need to operate withinthe framework of the laws and practices of the national administration, the absence of a largenumber of players in the private sector, and the human and financial resource constraintsunder which local governments are forced to operate in most countries around the world. Noneof these obstacles should be underestimated.
However, there are also many advantages at the local level. These include:
For young politicians in particular, there is, too, the appeal of being able to build a strong localfollowing through demonstrably improving people's lives, rewards that are more noticeable atthe grassroots. Given an active civil society in the local setting, and the growing need formunicipalities to "market" their areas in order to attract private sector activities, "champions"for reform among Councillors and senior staff should not be hard to find.
For all these reasons, and because major change at the national level is usually so much moreproblematic and difficult, civil society is increasingly focusing on what it can do to bringabout change at the local level. Transparency International chapters in Central and EasternEurope, too, have begun to focus on this area, devising strategies for building civil societygroups "around" municipal institutions.[3]
If sustainable change can be made at the grassroots, the reasoning runs, the case for changeat regional and national levels becomes all the more compelling.[4]
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