For Democracy, the Next Revolution Is Devolution

This dusty hamlet, home to one of the greatest and longest-reigning cultures in all the Americas, is making a comeback.

It began in 1995 when the town high in the Andean plateau finally got its first library--more than two millenniums after an early, pre-Incan civilization produced hieroglyphics so sophisticated that they are still largely undeciphered.

Last year, Mayor Pablo Peralta Patti dug new wells to give the town near the shores of Lake Titicaca running water for more than half an hour a day. And this year, he hopes to bring back the outside world by building a tourist inn close to nearby stone monoliths, a sun gate and temple ruins that were once covered with thin layers of gold.

Progress is returning to Tiahuanaco courtesy of the most radical democratic experiment in Latin America. After an era of instability that averaged a coup d’etat every 10 months for 162 years, Bolivia is trying to stabilize its young democracy by transferring power and resources to its 311 municipalities.

“What we’re doing is revolutionary and irreversible,” said Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. “We’re giving power to people who are better able to solve their own problems. No other society has undergone the level of change we have. We think this is a new model for Latin America.”

And beyond.

Bolivia’s “Popular Participation Law” reflects the single most dynamic political trend in democracies worldwide in the mid-1990s: devolution of power from national capitals to regions and even municipalities. Devolution has become the front line of democratization in Latin America, Central Europe, Africa and Asia--and is taking off in the United States as well.

“Devolution is a prerequisite of democracy today,” said Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a Polish member of Parliament who was a political prisoner during the Communist regime. “How far it goes differs from country to country, but there is an eruption of different initiatives and in all of them the state is being stripped of functions. If I am optimistic about the future, it is because devolution encourages an emerging sense of community that is the key to strengthening democracy.”

Tiahuanaco typifies the transformation. In 1993, an appointed administration received less than $100 from the national government to provide for 13,000 people. Last year, the local government received $340,000.

“This democracy stuff is marvelous,” Peralta said.

Tiahuanaco has used the windfall to improve streets so deeply rutted that they were swimmable, to add classrooms for 200 children, to buy a computer for the town hall and to develop farm irrigation plans. The town’s hopes are reflected in the small library’s wall-size mural: bold colors depict an Aymara Indian breaking from chains with a book in his hands.

“Now we’re determining our own future,” said Peralta, a former plumber and Tiahuanaco’s first elected mayor, who favors a black leather jacket to ward off the perpetual morning chill at 15,000 feet.

Shifting the Burdens of Democracy

Worldwide, devolution has produced an array of imaginative experiments. The West African nation of Mali, so poor that a block of the capital’s open air market is for used underwear and rural travel is done by camel, leads the way on a continent of many centralized regimes. Its first democratic government transferred administrative and financial autonomy over education, health and development to 500 rural and urban communities.

Each community sets tax rates and spends revenues as it sees fit. Each is also empowered to negotiate with foreign aid groups, a move designed to allow local direction and limit corruption.

The goal in Mali, roughly twice the size of Texas, is to prevent the democratic setbacks witnessed nearby. Armies have undone democracies in Niger and Gambia and voided Nigeria’s first democratic elections. Benin and Burkina Faso have popularly elected former dictators. And elections in Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau and Equatorial Guinea have been marred by irregularities. Decentralization helps impede the usurpation of power at the center.

It also forces the citizenry to become engaged. “In new democracies like ours, the only way to make people feel they are part of what’s going on is to put administration in the hands of people who can decide what is good for them and what will work,” said Malian Prime Minister Ibrahima Boubacar Keita. “It’s our No. 1 project.”

In a country with 75% illiteracy, the government is so intent on devolution that the Cabinet has held all-day sessions on Mali TV and toured the country--from the southern savannah to a northern desert so dry that mud mosques in towns such as Timbuktu have survived centuries--to answer questions. During a stop in the capital of Bamako in October, then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher heralded Mali as “a democracy that listens to its people.”

In Latin America and Eastern Europe, devolution is also designed to shift burdens beyond central governments no longer willing or able to provide services or solutions.

Democratic Poland is now devolving power to gaminas, local communities run by elected councils. “The gamina is outside anyone’s control. Its decisions are final as long as they are taken by law. No one can change them unless the local population reverses them,” Onyszkiewicz said.

Last year the national government began to cede control of schools to many gaminas, which receive about 10% of national revenues to pay for services. As gamina councils feel their way, they are also passing statutes to address local needs and concerns.

“This is still a system in the making, but gaminas are becoming stronger. They have the highest public support and trust of all institutions--more than Parliament or the central government,” said Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, sociologist and executive director of CBOS, a public opinion research center in Warsaw.

Devolution is also a device to defuse ethnic or sectarian differences.

After divisive ethnic wars undermined an ancient monarchy and then Marxist rule, Ethiopia’s new democracy is trying to hold together its 80 ethnic groups--with a dozen languages and three alphabets--by devolving power on the basis of ethnicity.

Its radical decentralization program divides 55 million people into nine states, redrawn on ethnic lines, and bestows powers of self-administration as well as the right to secede.

“Ethnicity is a profound feature of society which African states have tried too long to ignore or overlook. But in a democracy it has to be given due recognition,” said Ato Kifle Wodajo, chairman of the constitutional commission. “This is the way to prevent further dismemberment of the country.”

In 1993, after a 31-year struggle for independence, the province of Eritrea successfully broke away.

In practice, devolution has not been without major glitches. High on a long list are poorly prepared mayors and local councils whose first actions often have little to do with pressing problems. In Bolivia, many municipalities first improved central plazas, symbols of civic pride, before repairing school roofs.

On the premise “build it and they will come,” a Bolivian mayor constructed a bus station to lure more traffic on a route where only one bus stopped a week. Another bought furniture for the public defender’s office, which later turned up in his home.

Narco-Democracy and Other Glitches

Mayors and council members are also coming from unusual quarters. Guido Tarqui, a portly Bolivian Quechua Indian whose wife still wears traditional dress, finished only the second grade. He could read the label on the Sprite bottle from which he was drinking only because of skills learned while in prison during military rule.

But in January he took over as mayor of 47,000 constituents with a budget of $701,000 in the Bolivian municipality of Puerto Villarroel, a muddy tropical gateway to the Amazon lowlands.

Tarqui also happens to be a coca-grower whose crop he admits almost certainly ends up as cocaine, making him one of a handful of new “narco-democrats” in the Chapare--a region that produces the second-largest amount of coca on the continent. Tarqui’s constituency is predominantly illiterate coca-growers, the poorest community in South America’s poorest state.

“We were tired of the traditional parties. We couldn’t continue being just an object for them to get our votes. They offer everything but never follow through,” Tarqui said. “So we decided the first step would be elections at the local level and then for parliament so the campesino’s voice can be heard.”

In a five-way contest, he won 59% of the vote. His priorities are schools and roads to link his remote area in the rain forest with urban centers, the closest of which is six hours away.

Western officials now fear narco-democrats will contaminate democracy. “As the political system here opens up, the danger grows as it did in Colombia that drug producers, processors and dealers could acquire political power through people who are beholden to them,” said a prominent Western envoy.

Bolivians think otherwise. “It should not worry us that they elect their own people to solve their problems. They’re not criminals. They’re simple people. It’s a survival strategy,” said President Sanchez de Lozada.

“We think it’s better to have them in rather than to have them out. Their representatives will now have to become more connected to the country’s organization and move further away from the fringe subcultures.”

For the first time, “popular participation” has brought in the country’s majority--the 65% indigenous population long excluded by descendants of Spanish colonials.

It has also expedited democracy. Towns and villages no longer have to appeal to regional or national authorities for everything from electricity to school desks. “Before, the process of getting potable water might take a year or two. Now decisions can be made in a day,” said Evaristo Maido, director of Project Concern International in the Chapare.

‘Vigilance Committees’: The New Watchdogs

One danger, however, has already developed. As power is spreading, so is corruption; it too is being democratized.

As a check on local management, Bolivia instituted “vigilance committees.” Members rotate annually to ensure they are not corrupted too. But even a year can be too long. “Vigilance committees don’t get paid, so big landowners and other interest groups, even mayors, try to buy them off by giving them food,” charged Jose Pinelo, a Bolivian sociologist.

In Tiahuanaco, Mayor Peralta’s vigilance committee accused him of absconding with school funds. He countercharged that the committee was paid off by a rival who fled with the town’s books.

Elsewhere, nations have transferred the burden of power without providing adequate resources.

Last year, the Leszno gamina outside Warsaw was granted control of local schools--but only half the funds allocated by the Polish government to run them. As a result, Stefan Batory Elementary School, named for a famed Polish king, now runs double shifts. Its chipped walls were finally repainted by parents.

The biggest question mark, however, is how devolution will ultimately alter the role of the national government.

“We’re finding we didn’t think much about what happens to the state,” said Fernando Ruiz, former national secretary for social policy at Bolivia’s Ministry of Human Development. “We’ve opened the gate and the horses are out. Now we’re running after them to figure out where they’re going.”

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About This Series

After spreading to many new countries in the past decade, democracy is in trouble in many corners of the globe.

Sunday: The paramount reason for the imperilment of democracy is its failure to meet the economic aspirations that motivated democracy’s boom in the first place.

Monday: New freedoms have unleashed a host of old evils. Two in particular--ethnic violence and political corruption--are corroding democracy from within.

Tuesday: As democracy spreads, it faces its most profound challenges from two of the world’s oldest cultures: Islam and Confucianism.

Today: Devolution--the transfer of power from the national government to the regional and even the municipal levels--is the most dynamic trend in today’s new democracies.

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ON DEMOCRACY: ROBERT MAYNARD HUTCHINS

“The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment.”

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FREEDOM FACTS

Politics Poll

For Latin Americans, “distrust” is the attitude they cite most often in a poll of their feelings about politics.

“What does politics make you feel?”

Distrust: 44%

Boredom: 30%

Indifference: 26%

Interest: 19%

Commitment: 10%

Enthusiasm: 7%

Passion: 2%

Note: More than one answer accepted

Source: Marta Lagos, “The Latinbaronmetero: Media and Political Attitudes in South America,” presented at the 1996 American Political Science Assn. annual meeting. Survey conducted of 14,400 adults in 12 countries.