A história do Haiti é a história do racismo (Eduardo Galeano)
Fonte: www.viomundo.com.br/voce-escreve/eduardo-galeano-a-historia-do-haiti-e-a-historia-do-racismo/
Eduardo Galeano: A história do Haiti é a história do racismo
A história do assédio contra o Haiti, que nos nossos dias tem dimensões de tragédia, é também uma história do racismo na civilização ocidental.
por Eduardo Galeano, em Resumen Latinoamericano, via Resistir.info
A democracia haitiana nasceu há um instante. No seu breve tempo de vida, esta criatura faminta e doentia não recebeu senão bofetadas. Era uma recém-nascida, nos dias de festa de 1991, quando foi assassinada pela quartelada do general Raoul Cedras. Três anos mais tarde, ressuscitou. Depois de haver posto e retirado tantos ditadores militares, os Estados Unidos retiraram e puseram o presidente Jean-Bertrand Aristide, que havia sido o primeiro governante eleito por voto popular em toda a história do Haiti e que tivera a louca ideia de querer um país menos injusto.
O voto e o veto
Para apagar as pegadas da participação estadunidense na ditadura sangrenta do general Cedras, os fuzileiros navais levaram 160 mil páginas dos arquivos secretos. Aristide regressou acorrentado. Deram-lhe permissão para recuperar o governo, mas proibiram-lhe o poder. O seu sucessor, René Préval, obteve quase 90 por cento dos votos, mas mais poder do que Préval tem qualquer chefete de quarta categoria do Fundo Monetário ou do Banco Mundial, ainda que o povo haitiano não o tenha eleito nem sequer com um voto.
Mais do que o voto, pode o veto. Veto às reformas: cada vez que Préval, ou algum dos seus ministros, pede créditos internacionais para dar pão aos famintos, letras aos analfabetos ou terra aos camponeses, não recebe resposta, ou respondem ordenando-lhe:
– Recite a lição. E como o governo haitiano não acaba de aprender que é preciso desmantelar os poucos serviços públicos que restam, últimos pobres amparos para um dos povos mais desamparados do mundo, os professores dão o exame por perdido.
O álibi demográfico
Em fins do ano passado, quatro deputados alemães visitaram o Haiti. Mal chegaram, a miséria do povo feriu-lhes os olhos. Então o embaixador da Alemanha explicou-lhe, em Porto Príncipe, qual é o problema:
– Este é um país superpovoado, disse ele. A mulher haitiana sempre quer e o homem haitiano sempre pode.
E riu. Os deputados calaram-se. Nessa noite, um deles, Winfried Wolf, consultou os números. E comprovou que o Haiti é, com El Salvador, o país mais superpovoado das Américas, mas está tão superpovoado quanto a Alemanha: tem quase a mesma quantidade de habitantes por quilômetro quadrado.
Durante os seus dias no Haiti, o deputado Wolf não só foi golpeado pela miséria como também foi deslumbrado pela capacidade de beleza dos pintores populares. E chegou à conclusão de que o Haiti está superpovoado… de artistas.
Na realidade, o álibi demográfico é mais ou menos recente. Até há alguns anos, as potências ocidentais falavam mais claro.
A tradição racista
Os Estados Unidos invadiram o Haiti em 1915 e governaram o país até 1934. Retiraram-se quando conseguiram os seus dois objetivos: cobrar as dívidas do Citybank e abolir o artigo constitucional que proibia vender as plantations aos estrangeiros. Então Robert Lansing, secretário de Estado, justificou a longa e feroz ocupação militar explicando que a raça negra é incapaz de governar-se a si própria, que tem “uma tendência inerente à vida selvagem e uma incapacidade física de civilização”. Um dos responsáveis pela invasão, William Philips, havia incubado tempos antes a ideia sagaz: “Este é um povo inferior, incapaz de conservar a civilização que haviam deixado os franceses”.
O Haiti fora a pérola da coroa, a colônia mais rica da França: uma grande plantação de açúcar, com mão-de-obra escrava. No Espírito das leis, Montesquieu havia explicado sem papas na língua: “O açúcar seria demasiado caro se os escravos não trabalhassem na sua produção. Os referidos escravos são negros desde os pés até à cabeça e têm o nariz tão achatado que é quase impossível deles ter pena. Torna-se impensável que Deus, que é um ser muito sábio, tenha posto uma alma, e sobretudo uma alma boa, num corpo inteiramente negro”.
Em contrapartida, Deus havia posto um açoite na mão do capataz. Os escravos não se distinguiam pela sua vontade de trabalhar. Os negros eram escravos por natureza e vagos também por natureza, e a natureza, cúmplice da ordem social, era obra de Deus: o escravo devia servir o amo e o amo devia castigar o escravo, que não mostrava o menor entusiasmo na hora de cumprir com o desígnio divino. Karl von Linneo, contemporâneo de Montesquieu, havia retratado o negro com precisão científica: “Vagabundo, preguiçoso, negligente, indolente e de costumes dissolutos”. Mais generosamente, outro contemporâneo, David Hume, havia comprovado que o negro “pode desenvolver certas habilidades humanas, tal como o papagaio que fala algumas palavras”.
A humilhação imperdoável
Em 1803 os negros do Haiti deram uma tremenda sova nas tropas de Napoleão Bonaparte e a Europa jamais perdoou esta humilhação infligida à raça branca. O Haiti foi o primeiro país livre das Américas. Os Estados Unidos haviam conquistado antes a sua independência, mas tinha meio milhão de escravos a trabalhar nas plantações de algodão e de tabaco. Jefferson, que era dono de escravos, dizia que todos os homens são iguais, mas também dizia que os negros foram, são e serão inferiores.
A bandeira dos homens livres levantou-se sobre as ruínas. A terra haitiana fora devastada pela monocultura do açúcar e arrasada pelas calamidades da guerra contra a França, e um terço da população havia caído no combate. Então começou o bloqueio. A nação recém nascida foi condenada à solidão. Ninguém lhe comprava, ninguém lhe vendia, ninguém a reconhecia.
O delito da dignidade
Nem sequer Simón Bolívar, que tão valente soube ser, teve a coragem de firmar o reconhecimento diplomático do país negro. Bolívar havia podido reiniciar a sua luta pela independência americana, quando a Espanha já o havia derrotado, graças ao apoio do Haiti. O governo haitiano havia-lhe entregue sete naves e muitas armas e soldados, com a única condição de que Bolívar libertasse os escravos, uma ideia que não havia ocorrido ao Libertador. Bolívar cumpriu com este compromisso, mas depois da sua vitória, quando já governava a Grande Colômbia, deu as costas ao país que o havia salvo. E quando convocou as nações americanas à reunião do Panamá, não convidou o Haiti mas convidou a Inglaterra.
Os Estados Unidos reconheceram o Haiti apenas sessenta anos depois do fim da guerra de independência, enquanto Etienne Serres, um gênio francês da anatomia, descobria em Paris que os negros são primitivos porque têm pouca distância entre o umbigo e o pênis. Por essa altura, o Haiti já estava em mãos de ditaduras militares carniceiras, que destinavam os famélicos recursos do país ao pagamento da dívida francesa. A Europa havia imposto ao Haiti a obrigação de pagar à França uma indenização gigantesca, a modo de perdão por haver cometido o delito da dignidade.
A história do assédio contra o Haiti, que nos nossos dias tem dimensões de tragédia, é também uma história do racismo na civilização ocidental.
Mapa Haiti Map
Bandeira Haiti Flag
The Development Set, by Ross Coggins
The Development Set
by Ross CogginsExcuse me, friends, I must catch my jet
I’m off to join the Development Set;
My bags are packed, and I’ve had all my shots
I have traveller’s checks and pills for the trots!The Development Set is bright and noble
Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes
Our thoughts are always with the masses.In Sheraton Hotels in scattered nations
We damn multi-national corporations;
injustice seems easy to protest
In such seething hotbeds of social rest.We discuss malnutrition over steaks
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with open mouth.We bring in consultants whose circumlocution
Raises difficulties for every solution –
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
By showing the need for another meeting.The language of the Development Set
Stretches the English alphabet;
We use swell words like “epigenetic”
“Micro”, “macro”, and “logarithmetic”It pleasures us to be esoteric –
It’s so intellectually atmospheric!
And although establishments may be unmoved,
Our vocabularies are much improved.When the talk gets deep and you’re feeling numb,
You can keep your shame to a minimum:
To show that you, too, are intelligent
Smugly ask, “Is it really development?”Or say, “That’s fine in practice, but don’t you see:
It doesn’t work out in theory!”
A few may find this incomprehensible,
But most will admire you as deep and sensible.Development set homes are extremely chic,
Full of carvings, curios, and draped with batik.
Eye-level photographs subtly assure
That your host is at home with the great and the poor.Enough of these verses – on with the mission!
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
Just pray god the biblical promise is true:
The poor ye shall always have with you.“Adult Education and Development” September 1976
Commanding Heights
Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/story/index.html
From the book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stabislaw, first published as The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World in 1998. In 2002, it was turned into a documentary of the same title, and later released on DVD.
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commanding_Heights
Watch the videos:
The Commanding Heights Part One: The Battle of Ideas
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1466397368167658753
The Commanding Heights Part Two: The Agony of Reform
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3122039563423208507
The Commanding Heights Part Three: The New Rules of the Game
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=112129377629231653
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** Official PBS Video Page **
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** IMDB **
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** Torrent Download Available here **
Community Foudation and Community Social Investiment: a Movement to Contribute to Social Justice in Brazil
Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society
The Graduate Ccenter, CUNY – City University of New York
2008 International Senior Fellowship Program
By Jaqueline de Camargo, jaquelinedecamargo@gmail.com
“Community Foudation and Community Social Investiment: a Movement to Contribute to Social Justice in Brazil”[1]
Abstract
The main assumption of the author, Jaqueline de Camargo, is that there is a place for a strong Community Foundation movement in Brazil; that the already existing community foundations and community foundation-like organizations in Brazil are carrying the seed of this movement [adapting the Community Foundation concept for local, regional and national realities]; and that it should be fruitful to broadly engage community leaders and youth leaders, in a systematic and systemic way, to promote this in the country. Such a movement, improving the conditions for sustainability and autonomy for social initiatives, would strengthen the perspective of “social justice” that nowadays, according to the author, is one of the most relevant aspects of the concept of community foundations. For this, some recommendations are made proposing the “action-learning” methodology, broadly including perspectives and knowledge of community social investments stakeholders.
Executive Summary
The community foundation is a concept explored worldwide as a good vehicle for donors to invest resources within a sustainable perspective as well as a vehicle that looks to address community needs. The community foundation concept has raised a genuine global “intellectual curiosity” amongst practitioners and social leaders.
The main purpose and assumption of the paper is to demonstrate that there is a place for a strong community foundation movement in Brazil; that the already existing community foundation and community foundation-like organizations in Brazil are carrying the seeds of this movement [adapting the Community Foundation concept for local, regional and national realities]; and that it should be fruitful to broadly engage community leaders and youth leaders in a systematic and systemic way, to promote this in the country. These assumptions are based on the fact that there is real interest in it in addition to the engagement of important third sector leaders in Brazil with this concept of the Community Foundation. Brazil’s third sector movement would benefit from such a conceptual frame, building alternatives to improve “social justice” issues like social inclusion, which is one of the most important gaps in Brazilian culture and to which the third sector has aimed its contributions.
The paper suggests that “community philanthropy” should be translated to “community social investment” as, in countries like Brazil, “philanthropy” has attributes related to creating dependence-donations, without any objective to transform reality.
The paper proposes that for such a community foundation movement in Brazil, some important challenges should be met such as the strengthening of autonomy through the creation of endowments in a country with no relevant and well-structured tax incentives and the need to influence legal frame for community foundations.
To take into account that some of the less well known organizations [and Grass-roots leaders] have a strong potential to operate in a community foundation adapted frame, as they already operate in community-philanthropy or, in a “community social investment” model, are also a challenge which the paper proposes to explore.
Looking for the inclusion of a wider range of social actors, like youth representatives, who have enormous potential and wish to be part of the solution of social problems, but who have been much more “receivers” of private social investments to/for them than partners of social change, is an opportunity identified by this paper.
As a method of research, besides a deep immersion in the International Senior Fellowship Program, the CFC – Community Foundation of Canada 2008 Montreal Conference provided several meetings and readings that served as a source of knowledge. It permitted the fellow to constantly re-order and re-structure some assumptions as well as the previously planned research. During the CFC conference, a special meeting was organized by the author, with some CF individuals and organization leaders in Brazil. This meeting definitely proved to be an effective method and strategy for the research.
Finally, some recommendations are made for a systematic and systemic approach, proposing an “action-learning” methodology, based on a vast bibliography and experience to favor learning and interchange of knowledge processes. Such approach is proposed as a method to favor the inclusion of the perspectives and knowledge of community social investments stakeholders, for the strengthening of a CF movement in Brazil.
Acknowledgments
It is important to acknowledge The Kellogg Foundation who supported me with a grant to attend the 2008 Senior International Fellowship of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. It is imperative to acknowledge the complete team of the CPCS and I would like to refer to the excellent debates led by the director Kathleen McCarthy and the coordinator of International Fellows Programs, Barbara Leopold; to Eugene Miller who cooperated with the research, and to Amal Muhammad and Peter Waldvogel who were so helpful to the fellows team. My Senior Fellows colleagues, Ekaterina Maksimova; George Varughese, LuAnn Lovlin, and Sonia Schellino shared with me the challenges and the goodness of an immersion program: I thank them. I want to show my deepest acknowledgment and respect for the work developed by the consultants who were part of our program and for the previous fellows, community foundations, and community philanthropy and youth programs practioners; mainly the ones who gave the fellows a tour and lots of valuable information. Among them, Andrés Thompson, the Kellogg Foundation Director for the Latin American and Caribbean Region has contributed to my development and reflections. I want to acknowledge as well the Brazilian participants of the 2008 CFC- Community Foundations of Canada Conference, in Montreal, who have accepted my invitation for a special meeting on community foundation in Brazil. They are: Lucia Dellagnelo, the leader of ICom/ Florianópolis; Tatiana Akabane van Eyll, the IDIS – Instituto para o Desenvolvimento do Investimento Social representative; Cinthia Sento Sé, the coordinator of Affinity Groups of GIFE – Group of Institutes, Foundations and Enterprises representative. Last, but not least, I want to thank Willem Rabbeljee, my husband, who supported me in the research and has become a new community foundation and community social investment partner.
“It is only when social justice is achieved for all citizens,
that foundations can legitimately focus all their efforts on charity”
Emmet Carson
INTRODUCTION
Cleveland, U.S., 1914. A banker, going beyond the limits of his sector, developed a strategy which would have deep social impact in the future, crossing barriers and frontiers all around the world. It contained the characteristics of being both strongly locally aimed at specific communities based in specific territories, as well as being fluid as a concept, serving a range of diverse historical and social circumstances.
By a mechanism of structuring a community organization with a diverse and reflective board, by building an endowment and addressing community needs, a whole movement on community foundations was generated. Legislation in The U.S. was modified to improve the mechanism and successful cases started to appear.
Community Foundations have been growing ever since in The U.S., Canada and in many regions of the world, sparking the interest of practitioners and researchers. Examples of its vitality are showing and present in regions such as Europe, Russia, South Africa and Latin America[1].
What has been so successful and has attracted so much attention for “social cooperation” in the world? Being a good vehicle for donors to invest resources within a sustainable perspective and also a vehicle that looks to address community needs: what exactly is community foundation?
For Dorothy Reynolds, a Mott Foundation consultant: “[community foundation] is a vehicle for the philanthropy of individuals, corporations and organizations that have concern for a specific geographic area. It provides leadership in the community it serves as an effective, independent arena for addressing difficult issues and/or advocating for needed programs, services or policies.”[2]
As Eleanor Sacks, one of the community foundation global leaders, states: “The community foundation concept is flexible and adaptable, able to meet current needs and the changing needs of communities over time. It has shown the ability to adjust not only to local conditions, but to local impact of change from external sources, such as the ups and downs of economic cycles, the effects of globalization, the decline of centralized, social welfare programs, and evolving political, cultural and nonprofit environments. […] The adaptability of the concept makes it possible for communities to mold it to fit their own circumstances.”[3]
For these characteristics and, I believe, because of the strong and true leadership of its promoters around the world, community foundations have stimulated a genuine “intellectual curiosity” in practioners and social leaders.[4]
Another community foundation global leader, Emmet Carson, referred to this “intellectual curiosity” in his speech at the Symposium on a Global Movement for Community Foundations in Berlin in 2004. Referring about the relevance of the decision taken by CF of Canada, to address community foundations by “social justice framework” Carson cites: “In short, a social justice framework necessarily involves attention to issues of what, how, and who. The principle of fair and full distribution of benefits and opportunities requires grantmakers to take into account the nature of what they are achieving through their actions.”[5]
The approach from Community Foundation of Canada can illustrate how “social justice” has been addressed in that country and can inspire other realities around the world: “Powerful economic, social and political forces will be working against social justice in coming years – increasing competition, new patterns of human settlement and changing roles for government. Yet Canadians have the potential to address the root causes of injustice through cross-community dialogue and collaborative action. Together, they can adopt strategies for systemic change for places, for people and for public policy. Governments will have to be part of the process and part of the solution to social injustice. But they are not well placed to lead the charge. The initiative will have to come from civil society […]. Charities and foundations are likely to be the lynch-pins of these civil society efforts to mobilize citizens to address the big issues […]”.[6]
Through the convening approach of Community Foundations of Canada, the strength of a “social justice framework” to address social and local development relevant issues is clear. Among these issues, it is possible to identify some of the main themes of private- and corporate social investment, such as equity for race, ethnicity and gender, social and intergenerational inclusion.
The main assumption of this paper is that there is a place for a strong community foundation movement in Brazil; that the already existing community foundation and community foundation-like organizations in Brazil are carrying the seeds of this strong movement [adapting the Community Foundation concept for local, regional and national realities]; and that it should be possible to broadly engage community leaders and youth leaders in a systematic and systemic way to promote this in the country. These assumptions are based on the fact that there is real interest in and engagement of important third sector leaders in Brazil with the concept of community foundation and that Brazil’s third sector movement would benefit from such a concept, building alternatives to improve social justice issues, like social inclusion, which is one of the most fundamental gaps in Brazilian culture, and to which the third sector has aimed its contributions.
ADHERING STRICTLY TO VALUES; ADAPTING TO DIVERSE REALITIES: creating new circumstances
Andrés Thompson, the Kellogg Foundation Program Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, asks if “the true community foundation would be a viable option in the different circumstances of Latin America and the Caribbean?” By the term: “the true community foundation” A. Thompson refers to a kind of organization that has both “a grantmaking capacity and community responsiveness.”[7]
We can assume that the community foundation concept has convened leaders and organizations around the world because of the “democratic appeal” referring to its two main approaches, as expressed by Thompson: 1] being based on endowment, evoking sustainability approaches and being donor-oriented 2] The other being community-needs focused, evoking values of autonomy and accountability.[8]
Having analyzed initiatives, originated through partnerships and alliances in Brazil, to promote local development in specific regions that strengthen community social investments, Thompson questioned their sustainability and effectiveness after the end of the project cycle , but affirmed their potential if the diversity of conditions is considered. As he stated: “The clear conclusion is that community foundations are not a model to be copied and replicated everywhere. Their feasibility depends on the specific environment in which they are intended to grow and develop and, to large extent, on the leadership capacity of the pioneer group“[9].
However, if there is not “a model” to be replicated, there is a widely stated concept: “Whether in Barcelona or Bombay, community foundations share common features” which is the title of an interview with a Senior Advisor to the Synergos Institute and to Advisory Committee of the World Bank Community Foundation Initiative, Shannon St. John.
St. John was asked by The Mott Foundation about what it is in the community foundation concept that resonates so well with people whether they are in Rustenburg, South Africa, Togliatti, Russia or London, England. St. John answered: “I trace it back to an innate human characteristic, which is the philanthropic impulse. […] What is fascinating about the Community Foundation form is that there are a number of institutions in places as diverse as Barcelona and Bombay that have grown up with the characteristics of community foundations – such as people within a community giving to either a common pool or to individually-named funds. Also, it’s people giving to an organization that is governed by a group of people reflective of that geographic area that gives for the benefit of that community. But these organizations I am talking about have never heard the words ‘community foundation’. They never heard about this thing started in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1914 until someone comes along and says, ‘Oh, you are a community foundation’. But that wasn’t how hey started. It happens whether or not people call it a community foundation.”[10]
The democratic approach of community foundations directs the debate to a widely considered, relevant factor: the reflectiveness of the board and the values approach.
“Using what we have, to get what we need” are the convening words of Linetta Gilbert, the Senior Program Officer of Ford Foundation for the area Community and Resource Development. She was referring to the Alabama Black Belt Community Foundation serving the poor rural area of the state.
As Gilbert states: “[…] Two years later, and with much struggle to respect and embrace the potential and actual contributions of the whole community, an excited and engaged foundation exists. Its board has African American and White leaders, young and retired workers, a university administrator, a local blues singer, civil right activists, elected officials, civic and corporate leaders. Their goals are to improve educational and economic opportunities in the 11-county area to ensure an equitable community on the long term. Everyone is encouraged to give […]. The question we, as leaders of philanthropic institutions, have the courage to ask is: ‘Do we have the courage and vision to be the glue that brings diverse people together to work towards their shared aspirations for equity, rather than a glue that keeps far too many people stuck in conditions that deny their dignity and deprive them opportunity and hope’?”[11]
COMMUNITY FOUNDATIONS AND COMMUNITY SOCIAL INVESTMENTS IN BRAZIL: opportunities
WINGS’ 2008 Global Report for Community Foundations[12] lists at least three separate organizations in Brazil that are promoting community philanthropy through community foundations and/or community foundation-like organizations. They are:
Instituto Rio, established in 1995, being the first formal investment in the theme in Brazil, started with the technical support of Synergos and a grant from Ford Foundation and Avina Foundation[13]. In 2002, with the support of the Inter-American Foundation and with the participation of a family and their company [Vera Pacheco Jordão e Geraldo Jordão, and their company, Editora Sextante], Instituto Rio raised around 1 million dollars and developed an endowment worth around US$175,000. Instituto Rio has widely integrated with its in Rio de Janeiro, “by supporting projects, intermediating actions and capacity-building for organizations in the west zone, with a view to becoming an effective bridge to social investment.[14]” Operating close to the “pure” concept, has the challenge to raise more than $19 million to be sustainable as a community foundation using only a percentage of its endowment. The Inter-American Foundation, WINGS, Global Fund for Community Foundations and Fundazione Zegna [Italy] are mainly supporting the growth of Instituto Rio as a community foundation.
ICom – Instituto Comunitário Grande Florianópolis, in Santa Catarina, has proved to be a successful adaptation of the community foundation-concept. Established in 2005, it started operating its public activities in 2006[15] and has attracted resources from global partners [Avina Foundation, Kellogg Foundation], but also local, from companies, families and individuals. ICom integrates diverse social actors in its programs, having created a “Board of Investors.” They developed two major activities: a Community Social Investment Fund, which raises funds from local funders to support social entrepreneurship among youth [with the technical support of Ashoka]; and Projeto Fortalecer, to provide technical support to local NGO leaders. ICom also developed a methodology launched in 2001 by Community Foundations of Canada [Toronto Community Foundation] called “Vital Signs”[16]. According to the WINGS 2008 Community Foundation Global Status Report, “Endowment funds are a new concept in Brazil and many donors still resist the idea of ‘immobilizing’ resources in face of pressing social needs. ICom is working to introduce the concept of sustainability, and demonstrate the need for long term social investment through different strategies”[17]. A “Permanent Fund” has reached, by now, the amount of US$ 13,823 or 4.05% of the total income in 2007.
IDIS – Institute for the Development of Social Investment[18] which, since 1999, started to develop a Community Philanthropy Organization [CPO] with the support of Kellogg Foundation and the Inter-American Foundation. A CPO does not make grants itself but establishes social nets to “identify community priorities and acts as a broker and catalyst for bringing together community and individual resources in conjunction with government money to tackle priority needs in their communities”. Although, according to the community foundation Global Report, IDIS, through its main leader, Marcos Kisil, has identified in a research paper that “the potential for the development of community foundations has increased greatly in Brazil”, IDIS believes that a “more supportive environment for philanthropy could be brought about by studies and research which demonstrate the primary importance of individual giving for community needs. Also, lobbying in the Congress for community foundation-type organizations is a must”[19].
The 2008 WINGS Global Report recognizes that interest in community foundations has been growing for some time in Brazil. Besides the structured cases mentioned in the report and, certainly, at least two more initial experiences among others, are already starting and/or are contributing to the community foundation debate in Brazil:
Fundação Tide Setubal, a family-foundation led by Maria Alice Setubal, which develops projects in the region of São Miguel in the East Zone of São Paulo, engaging the surrounding community directly and actively. The objective is to “contribute to local development in a sustainable way, through the strengthening of institutions and the empowerment of community”[20].
Fundação Comunitária Baixada Maranhense[21], an organization generated by an integrated pool of projects coordinated by the social organization CIP Jovem Cidadão – Formação, Centro de Apoio à Educação Básica, in Northeast Brazil. Led by Regina Cabral, it is developing a plan, with strategic support from Kellogg Foundation, to, among other objectives, support productive small projects and to strengthen their capacity to generate social development, through two kinds of funds: a permanent community fund and a fund to support projects. The group is presently organizing a seminar to generate a debate about community foundation and the possibilities as well as juridical constraints for the legal bases for Instituto Comunitário Baixada Maranhense.
Other experiences could be mentioned, in this case agreeing with Shannon St. John, as previously mentioned, that they would not be formally recognized as a typical “community foundation” being more “community philanthropy” [“community social investment”] cases, but with a strong potential to organize and distribute strategic funds for their community. Just because they do not know the name “community foundation” does not mean that they don’t carry the seeds of good from and for their communities.
I am not suggesting, obviously, that all community based- or grassroots organizations will work as a community philanthropy organization or in accordance with the community foundation concept. Just imagine what Brazil potentially has in terms of community philanthropy or community social investments, considering their needs and capabilities to operate funds and be responsive to the community needs and opportunities, since a “social justice framework”. This potential is more or less hidden from our eyes which are often looking for structured models or which are seeing only part of the potential of community social investments. As this paper is proposing, there is a place for a strong community foundation movement in Brazil; the already existing community foundation and community foundation-like organizations in Brazil are carrying the seeds of this strong movement and it should be possible to broadly engage community leaders and youth leaders, in a systematic and systemic way, to promote this in the country.
One case is UNAS in the neighborhood of Heliópolis. UNAS is the Union of Groups, Associations and Societies of the Residents of Heliópolis and São João Clímaco, in São Paulo. Since its foundation in the 1970’s, it works to organize the residents of Heliópolis and to improve the quality of life for the population in the region. Their actions are focused on matters like the right to housing and currently they also work on education, sports, leisure, technology and professional education[22]. UNAS are located in the second biggest slum of Latin America, lead by a group of persons from the community who raise money as well as human and political resources to broadly address community needs. They are developing their potential to work independently, as they were pretty much connected to political parties’ interests in the past. They did become more and more independent after the social partnerships with Action Aid, which improved their quality and community leadership capacity.
Also in São Mateus, East Periphery Zone, a group of 4 organizations and their 7 nucleons aimed at youth, have directed efforts to establish partnerships with each other, and alliances with local corporate and public sectors to improve their participation in the community, with an inter-generational perspective. They created the São Mateus Social Responsibility Network – Youngsters in First Place. This network was supported by Associação Caminhando Juntos – ACJ [the previous name of United Way in Brazil]. One of the strategies of the Superintendent of Projects was to invite and engage volunteers [from ACJ-UWB-associated companies] with some of the skills needed for the specific project. They constituted a specific Board for the project and were consulted to give suggestions and to participate in the decisions of the local group. Together with the Superintendent of Projects, the Board of the project and the São Mateus representatives, including youth, had the possibility to educate the Board of the Organization about a more “community driven” investment in projects.
The main action by the São Mateus Social Responsibility Network, in 2007, was the planning and production of FOCO – Annual Fair of Opportunities and Connections for Youth. Among its local partners, there are: business organizations: Rotary and CDL – Clube dos Lojistas [Shop owners’ Club]; companies: SOS, IBRAM, Gê Assessoria; government: Municipal District Office; State Secretariat of Social Assistance and Development; State Secretariat of Work; State Coordination of Youth; SENAI (National Service of Industrial Education); SEBRAE (Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service); coordinators and youngsters from the social organizations: Ação Comunitária, Ação Social, Associação Pe. Moreira, Centro Social, Obra Social, Sociedade Instruções e Socorros, Bloco Amizade, Cemais; and ACJ-United Way Brasil.
One of the manifestations of the community leadership of the group can be recognized by the words of one of the São Mateus group, Flariston Francisco da Silva: “Every social, educational, corporate investment or public action should be concerned in generating human, social or economic development, with environmental protection, generating autonomy and eliminating dependence. We have to appreciate and learn how to work with the concept of integrated and sustainable local development, where every citizen and every community is called, encouraged, motivated and qualified to identify their main problems and potentials, and plan, initiating change processes optimizing what is at hand and consolidating partnerships.[23]”
The São Mateus group will have to work, however, to establish a structured base if they wish to start a community foundation or want to become a community social investment fund aimed at local development. Some of their structure can be represented by the “critical factors” for the success of a community foundation that were identified by Kathleen McCarthy[24]: 1] entrepreneurial director(s); 2] donors to tide the institution over its early years; 3] a local giving base; 4] projects that resonate with the community; 5] an existing culture of philanthropy [or community social investment]; 6] backstopping resources [umbrella organizations]; 7] buy-in from constituents; 8] participation of associations like Rotary clubs and Chambers of Commerce to broaden its base of supporters.
Some of these “critical factors” the São Mateus Group already has, or are potentially present there, but they should indeed be considered in its complexity by the group.
I believe that UNAS and São Mateus group carry the seed of a community foundation. In previous discussions among their leaders, they also would like to learn more about how to improve their knowledge about community investments and building autonomy and sustainability for their community and youth projects.
The references to these “grassroots” experiences have the objective to exemplify both WINGS’ and Shannon St. John’s statement about the vitality of the concept around the world and, in this case, in Brazil, as maybe several practitioners and social entrepreneurs can recognize.
LEARNING TOGETHER
In June 2008, there was a meeting at ICom, Florianópolis, with a global representation of community foundations. Besides ICom’s staff and board members, there were present: the GIFE General Secretary and Chair of WINGS, Fernando Rossetti and the Coordinator of Affinity Groups of GIFE, Cinthia Sento Sé; the group connected to Fundação Comunitária Baixada Maranhense; the main leader of IDIS, Marcos Kisil; the Executive Director of Mexican Community Foundation Frontera Norte, Karen Yarza.
The central presence of Monica Patten, Director of Community Foundations of Canada was quite helpful to the community foundation debate in Brazil: besides being a convener for the agenda of community foundations and social community investments, she strongly agreed with the proposition that there was a need to work collaboratively, thus improving contexts where there is still no established culture of philanthropy aimed at community strategic investments.
Another meeting was meaningful for the purpose of this paper. In the context of my learning process at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society of the CUNY Graduate Center Senior Fellowship and as a Kellogg grantee, during the CFC 2008 Conference in Montreal in November 2008, I invited the attending group of the Brazilian representatives to meet on this topic. In this meeting, 4 persons were present: representing ICom [Lucia Dellagnelo]; IDIS [Tatiana Akabane van Eyll]; GIFE [Cinthia Sento Sé, the coordinator of the Affinity Groups]; and myself. There was a good understanding among the group about how to strengthen the concept of community foundations and community philanthropy in Brazil. Lucia Dellagnelo spoke about her efforts to leverage community foundation concepts in our country, with the support of Global Fund. She shared with the group the importance of an approach on how to better explore and create a culture of giving in Brazil, considering mainly the legal constraints and lack of support via tax incentives in this area . All persons gathered recognized the present moment as important for Brazil with reference to community social investments and how strategic it would be for an organization in the country to be the base for a systematic approach to a dialogue in the country.
In this case I would like to present a successful and possibly inspirational case given by Barbara Leopold[25] during her orientation for the CPCS Program to identify successful cases of the implementation of a systematic dialogue for the strengthening of the concept of community foundation and focusing on the following question:
How to contribute to a more systematic and systemic dialogue about community foundation in Brazil, as circumscribed in the equation: social investment and social justice? How to improve a collective and shared learning about community foundations and community social investment in Brazil?
The model case is illustrated by TUSEV [Third Sector Foundation of Turkey]. A seminar was organized by them in 2006 with the following objectives: [1] Discuss the viability of the community foundation practice and its adaptation in the Turkish context [2] Introduce the community foundation practice and its various applications across the world.
It was a one-day Seminar, with one-to-one approaches taking place before the Seminar. They invited 70 national and international participants from every sector. The following are the aspects considered at the debate: governance for transparency and accountability; standards and criteria for allocating funds to NGOs; gaining the trust from donors; tax incentives and legal structures; locality: national or local?; how community foundations can make funds more accessible to NGOs?; competition for donors?; in what ways are community foundations different from or similar to existing practices?
TUSEV Seminar Recommendations can be summarized as follows: “learning by doing” [Ellis Center]; pilot program [World Bank] in a place with good balance of wealth and a good degree of “right” partners; clarifying legitimacy and taxation [Synergos];not preventing innovations, clarification on “principles and values”, and having a similar meeting in prospect locations for community foundations [Mott]; community foundation for “community development” [UNDP Turkey]; community foundation as a mechanism one gives through and not gives to [T. Philanthropic Fund and PwC Turkey]; look at existing community level organizations [CAF Russia]; local commitment as a crucial factor [WINGS].
It is relevant to highlight the fact that one year after the seminar promoted by TUSEV, a community foundation was established and registered in Turkey[26].
BEING BROADLY INCLUSIVE AND REFLECTIVE: challenges and opportunities
As it has been explored by community foundation literature, and by this paper, one of the pillars of the community foundation concept is the autonomy of communities [since an endowment is built using a community’s own resources/management]. The obvious advantage to supporting the autonomy of the social groups which are leading and engaged in the promotion of the betterment of community, is that other sources of financial resources do not always stimulate autonomy, these, being, many times more connected to the donors point of view than to the community perspective.
However, the issue “building autonomy” by “building an endowment” will have to be adapted to cultural and legal frameworks, since in countries like Brazil there are no relevant and well-structured tax incentives, making it difficult to raise money for social purposes and for social strategic goals. It is imperative that umbrella organizations seeking to strengthen community foundations start a coordinated effort to influence the legal framework.
In addition to the challenges of building sustainability and autonomy through the constitution of endowments, the issue of “being inclusive” is a challenge as well. I would like, also, to refer to important actors who should be considered and included in the consultations and convening processes about community foundations in Brazil.
Grass-roots leaders, as previously mentioned, and youth representatives have been much more the “receivers” of investments, than partners in social change. In the case of youth, there is a tendency for private social investments in Brazil to support projects for them to start an early productive life, providing them with skills to enter the work market. However, it is even more important that policies on youth, such as those supported by the World Bank, “be directed to expanding opportunities for developing the human capital of youngsters and their capacities as decision-making agents, and also offer second chances to manage consequences of bad outcomes that occur early in life”[27].
Youth should be more seriously considered by social private investments and social community investments as a source of social change.
It is important to mention that in Brazil a few organizations already have incorporated this approach. Some Initiatives aimed at youth and social entrepreneurship, like Ashoka [GMM] and IYF – International Youth Foundation [IAM], for example, have been supporting projects to empower and include youth as social change makers. These also include initiatives of GIFE members, which have invested in youth, and their participation in the GIFE Affinity Group on youth [GAJ]. Part of this group is represented by Institutes and other GIFE associated members who have been developing relevant work in Brazil with youth as a field of social investment and social development.
GIFE/GAJ has a seat on the Second National Youth Council (CONJUVE). Its representative, Rui Mesquita Cordeiro, comes from the activist and intellectual youth movement and he is Program Associate for Latin America and the Caribbean Region at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Two examples will illustrate for Brazil, and for community foundations globally, the opportunity for youth to be seriously engaged as actors who are “part of the solution of social problems” and are included in decision-making processes.
First of all, it is important to mention the place and space youth occupied at the 2008 Community Foundations of Canada Conference[28]. Their presence was amazing, not only as artists, singers and dancers, but also as being part of the invited reflectors during this 3-day conference. But what particularly demonstrates the effectiveness of their presence at the Community Foundations of Canada Conference, were some sessions driven by youth and the presentation of a project with strong presence of youngsters in its development in Vancouver [29].
There are several references about the engagement of youth in community foundation literature. The Mott Foundation publication, The Balancing Act, highlights the issue:
“A worldwide movement is developing that may help ensure the future of effective grantmaking- involvement of young people as decionmakers and, in some cases, fundraisers. The Youth in Philanthropy movement in the U.S. in the YouthBank Programs that are emerging in Northern Ireland, Russia and Bosnia, give raise to the hope that future generations will be sophisticated and effective grantmakers.
“The Mozaik Community Foundation in Sarajevo, Bosnia, has teamed with the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland [CFNI] to scale up development of YouthBanks in that country. Mozaik has secured local support from five municipal governments for the local YouthBanks, and more than 50 young people are being trained as grantmakers. Prior to this project, CFNI worked with the Community Foundation Tuzla [also in Bosnia] to establish a successful YouthBank in that city.
“Not only are young people becoming involved in philanthropy, but also they are ahead of most of their elders in terms of their global interests.
“Exchanges between YouthBank in Russia and Northern Ireland have taken place, as have exchanges between the Youth Advisory Committee in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and Togliatti, Russia.
“This is but the beginning of the international movement of Youth in Philanthropy and bodes well for its future”[30].
Through his work together with members of the youth movement, Rui Mesquita Cordeiro demonstrates that “youth actually wants to take more part in the discussion spaces and political debate in Brazil, and moreover, wants to discuss public policy not only for the youth, but also policy aimed at the Brazilian society as a whole“[31].
Referring to his “responsibility of having been recently (April 23, 2008) chosen to represent the group de Afinidade de Juventude (Youth Affinity Group) (GAJ) of the group de Institutos, Fundações e Empresas (Group of Institutes, Foundations and Company) (GIFE), at Conselho Nacional de Juventude (Counselor in the Second National Youth Counsel) (CONJUVE)” Rui Cordeiro lists the voted priorities which clearly show the potential connection between youth and social justice movements.
Since CONJUVE does not reflect a specific geographic area, but the whole nation, it is made up of meaningful communities that reflect, if not geography, communities of identities. The purpose of referring to this movement here is to indicate the vitality of a segment of population which represents almost 50 million persons (between the ages of 15 and 30) who should be increasingly included in decision-making processes.
“…With 634 votes, racial equality was number 1 among all the priorities at the 2008 Youth National Conference. The most important discussion-points in such meeting[s] were related to strengthening of racial justice policies for new black youth generations. [..] The message is clear: let us all open our eyes to the theme of Racial Justice!
[…] “Similarly, but not less importantly than such 22 top priorities, another cross theme that is more connected to the Legislative Power than to the Executive Power echoed unanimously in all the National Conference, and among all the different youth groups: that the National Congress should discuss and approve the Proposal for Constitutional Amendment 138/03, also known as the Youth PEC. [My comment: This project has been recently approved in its first phase].
“[…] After all, young people do not only want to voice their opinions on public policies relating just to young people, but also on those relating to society as a whole. And the reason for this lies precisely in the fact that the current generations of young people are not merely inheriting from the previous generation the problems and a responsibility of policies for young people, or for society as a whole, since the new generation always completely takes on the role of the previous one, and not just sections of it“[32].
Approaches which will build bridges among the sectors, generations and diverse social groups could really bring some answers the country [and Social Responsibility Movement] are looking for, to overcome some of its greatest challenges of being one of the most unequal countries in the world: rich in natural resources, a growing economy, but with race and gender deficits clearly reflected in the most important indices such as education, health and distribution of wealth.
ACTION-LEARNING PROCESSES: ways to make it happen; some recommendations
Finally, considering the previous analysis of the TUSEV case, following the recommendations and main tendencies already in process to implement the concept of community foundations in Brazil and integrating some of my previous experiences, I can identify four potential steps that refer to a methodology that has been successfully used to favor learning processes among persons and organizations in development contexts[33].
The methodological steps reflect, in the context of this paper, a technical approach to the three main assumptions the paper underscores: [1] there is a place for a community foundation movement in Brazil; [2] the already existing community foundations and community foundation-like organizations [or community social investments] in Brazil are carrying the seeds of this strong movement, adapting the community foundation concept for local, regional and national realities; and [3] it is important, as we move forward, to broadly engage, in a systematic and systemic way, community leaders and youth leaders to promote the concept in the country.
It is evident for any social manager that there is not only one way to reach a good or expected result. The recommendation of the “action learning” methodology to structure a systematic process to implement the concept of community foundation in Brazil comes from some previous successful experiences with learning processes that I have had the opportunity to organize[34].
This methodology has permitted me to contribute to learning processes that include the perspectives and knowledge of persons, who are not only part of the leadership, but also the persons who are simply beneficiaries of or general stakeholders in the projects. Because stakeholders at all levels are heard and engaged in the decision making processes, contributions to the final solutions are equally systemic and effective.
In practical and concrete terms, the recommendations of this paper, following the 4-step action-learning methodology, are:
[1] Action [Demand for Social Justice and community social investment]: Which significant things are already in place /concretized – such as, important community foundation initiatives that have started and have connected global, offering space to new experiences to emerge as part of solution for the demand for social justice?
The community foundation and community foundation-like experiences in Brazil already operating and the ones which are starting up should be better known by Third Sector community. Both GIFE and ICom meetings which reunited national and global organizations and leaders in 2008, and the consultation developed by Lucia Dellagnelo, ICom leader and Global Fund grantee, were important milestones and reflect a multiregional and diverse scope of experiences in Brazil. The dissemination of their proposals, involving youth groups and perspectives, by means of articles, documents and communications will be highly fruitful, making clear to the third sector community, the connection among these experiences and of all of them to the two most relevant bases in the concept of community foundation: social justice and social local development.
[2] Reflection [Social entrepreneur immersion; youth social-entrepreneurs engagement; peer learning and knowledge exchange; affinity groups]. Umbrella-organizations like GIFE which connect private social investors and is affiliated to WINGS; foundations and agencies which fund and support community foundations and community social investment initiatives like Kellogg Foundation; Synergos; Avina; Ford Foundation; Mott Foundation and World Bank through Global Fund/WINGS; organizations that catalyze others, such as IDIS; community foundation and community foundation-like organizations and, starting community foundation- and community social investments initiatives, such as the previously mentioned [Instituto Comunitário Baixada Maranhense, supported by Kellogg Foundation; and Fundação Tide Setubal]. Community foundation centers aimed at practioners knowledge, such as the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, an Affinity Group, for example, could improve mechanisms for working collaboratively to complement competencies and to improve opportunities in the field.
Some guide questions for this step: Do we know of any other experiences that are useful here? How are they building trust for potential donors? How and who should be broadly, but significantly, engaged? What do we share/ have in common, that can be implemented and complemented if we were put together? What are the means to allocate resources? Who, which organizations and/or groups are potentially connected to our experience? Which of them could better represent and reflect the movement in Brazil? In what ways are Brazil’s community foundations different/similar to existing practices in the sector? What/which contributions do other significant actors in the field bring to the enterprise of strengthening community foundation in Brazil? What legal structures could be better focused to benefit community foundation and community social investments in Brazil in the future?
3. Learning: [Seminar]: Organizations and connected youth previously engaged in the process to strengthen community foundation and community foundation-like movement in Brazil and other organizations, practioners and social entrepreneurs from countries where community foundations and social justice and local social development have been a coherent experience, should be part of a seminar. They should, then, engage other identified relevant actors which eventually would not been involved yet, as decision makers [like youth and community- based leaders], in questions such as: what other theories/experiences can help us to deepen these learning? What kind of community foundation concept should be adapted for Brazilian social, cultural, economic and legal contexts?
Such a Seminar would much probably look for some consensus about community foundations in Brazil.
4. Planning: [Strategic Plan: “so, what does it mean in practice? ” ] Completing the action-learning cycle, a new group and sub-groups formed after the experience of social-entrepreneurs immersion; peer learning and interchange of knowledge; affinity groups and seminar, being reflective on the diversity of third sector organizations and movements aimed at social justice and social local development, would develop a strategic action plan.
CONCLUSION
A strategic action plan, developed by a reflective group of representatives of community foundation and community foundation-like initiatives in Brazil, with the contribution of global, regional and community social investments leaders, including youth representatives, will be the guide for a systemic and autonomous process to improve community foundation concept in Brazil. It will reflect the belief of an “innate human characteristic, which is the philanthropic [or community social investment] impulse”[35] , aimed at building community capacity to face the challenges and the opportunities for social inclusion, with inter-generational, inter-sector, multi-racial and social development perspectives. This is the main objective of social leaders, but it also is what companies and corporate social responsibility might look for and, what governments are about.
[1] See List of community foundations around the world, by Dorothy Reynolds, in the recent series: The Balancing Act, The Roles of a Community Foundation, Edited by Charles Stewart MOTT Foundation, Set. 2008.
[2] REYNOLDS, D., The Balancing Act, The Roles of a Community Foundation, Edited by Charles Stewart MOTT Foundation, Set. 2008 [Preface].
See: http://www.mott.org/recentnews/news/2008/monographseries.aspx
[3] FLEURT, S. and SACKS, E. W. In: “An International Perspective on the History, Development and Characteristics of Community Foundations” in WALKENHORST, P. [Ed.] Building Philanthropic and Social Capital: The Work of Community Foundations. Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers, Gütersloh, 2001. [pp15-17].
[4] An example of the interest of practitioners and academic researchers is the International Senior Fellows Program at CUNY, The Graduate Center, Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society – CPCS, has attracted fellows from several countries, interested in improving their work as leaders through the community foundation approach.
[5] CARSON, E. D. “The Road Not Yet Traveled: A Community Foundation Movement for Social Justice”. Community Foundations: Symposium on a Global Movement. Berlin, Germany. December, 2004 [p.6] [Referring to a paper written by the Centre for Voluntary Sector Research and Development for Community Foundations of Canada’s Project: Social Justice Grantmaking-Moving Beyond Traditional Charitable Roles].
[6] CFC – Community Foundations of Canada. Strategies for Social Justice: Place, People and Policy. Prepared for Community Foundations of Canada by Judith Maxwell. September, 2006
[7] THOMPSON, A.. “Community Foundations in Latin America. Can the Concept be Adapted?”. In “Focus on Sustaining Community Philanthropy: Looking for New Models“, ALLIANCE, vol.11, number 1, March 2006 [pp 41-43] [www.aliancemagazine.org]
[8] THOMPSON, A. Idem, pp- 41-43.
[9] THOMPSON, A. Idem p. 43 A CPCS Fellow, Fabiana Hernández-Abreu [researcher of the Local Development Program, Latin American Center of Human Economy, Uruguay], agrees with Thompson’s proposition. As she declares in her paper for the 2007 CPCS Emerging Leaders International Fellows, “Community Foundations: a vehicle to endorse and sustain development processes taking place in Colonia Uruguay?”: “[…] it is possible to think that the community foundations’ concept can be utilized to endorse local development processes, and to conclude that the feasibility of a community foundation in Colonia [Uruguay] has to be discussed and imagined among Colonia’s community and local development stakeholders, by taking into account the novelties this model would bring with it.” [p. 3].
[10] See St. John interview with Mott Communications Officer Maggie Jaruze at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. http://www.mott.org/recentnews/news/2008/sstjohn.aspx. August 2008
[11]GILBERT. L. “Are we the right sort of glue?” in “Focus on Sustaining Community Philanthropy: Looking for New Models”, ALLIANCE, vol.11, number 1, March 2006 [pp 31-32] [www.aliancemagazine.org]. Linetta Gilbert, in a debate with the 2008 CPCS Senior Fellows, stated: “It is important support institutions that are value based. Strategies can change, but not the values”.
Still according to the Boards and their roles in keeping alive the values of an organization, a community foundation in Mexico – FES, Fondo de Estrategia Social, led by Marcela de Rovsar, developed a 4 step model based on “a mix between a community foundation and a social venture programme” where the board members have a strong participation in the development processes of projects and are ‘educated’ for their board responsibilities. In: ROVSAR, M. O. in “Focus on Sustaining Community Philanthropy: Looking for New Models”, ALLIANCE, vol.11, number 1, March 2006 [pp 31-32] [www.aliancemagazine.org] and in her presentation for the 2008 CPCS Senior Fellows.
[12] WINGS – Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support. 2008 Community Foundation Global Status Report., September 2008. Researched and written by: Eleanor W. Sacks.
[14] WINGS – Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support, Idem, p.82.
[16] Vital Signs methodology has a high potential to raise significant data referred to community local development, to share the information with community integrating all sectors, including local government and generating a positive relation with community. ICom launched its first Vital Signs report: Sinais Vitais, Florianópolis. Check-up Anual da Cidade, Relatório 2007 and it is the first time a report like this is developed for a Brazilian city. For more information about Vital Signs see: www.vitalsignscanada.ca; www.icomfloripa.org.br.
[17] WINGS – Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support. 2008 Community Foundation Global Status Report., September 2008. p.90.
[19] WINGS – Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support. 2008 Community Foundation Global Status Report., September 2008 p.95. To find out more about individual donors and philanthropic attitudes of individuals in Brazil, see: SCHLITHLER, C.; KISIL, M.; OTANI CORREIA, T. Descobrindo o Investidor Social Local. IDIS – Instituto para o Desenvolvimento do Investimento Social, SP, 2008.
[20] Fundação Tide Setúbal. Relatório de Atividades 2007 – Participação Comunitária e Qualidade de Vida. Atuação da Fundação Tide Setúbal. www.fundacaotidesetubal.org.br.
[21] http://www.formacao.org.br
[22] www.unas.org.br. This presentation of UNAS is part of ACJ-United Way Brazil 2007 Annual Report and was translated by its Board Chair, Mark Vogt and his working team at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
[23] ACJ-United Way Brazil 2007 Annual Report, coordinated by Jaqueline de Camargo, Superintendent of Projects.
[24] Kathleen McCarthy is the Director of CPCS – Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at The Graduate Center, CUNY. The mentioned “critical factors” were listed by her during a learning session with the 2008 Senior Fellows.
[25] Barbara Leopold is the coordinator of the CPCS – Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society International Fellows Programs.
[26] TUSEV. Community Foundations and Turkey: Summary of Conference and Working Group. 6-7 October 2006, Istanbul, Turkey.
[27] World Development Report 2007: Development and the Next Generation, World Bank. 2006.
[28] CFC – Community Foundations of Canada 2008 Conference. November 7-9, Montreal, CA.
[29] For more information, see: Youth Vital Signs [www.youthvitalsigns.ca]. “Youth Vital Signs is a youth-driven project, that gives fresh voice to the experience and knowledge of Vancouver youth aged 15-24. In: Vancouver’s Youth Report Card, presented during a specific CFC Conference Youth Session, coordinated by Barbara McMillan, the Director of Regional Strategies for Community Foundations of Canada. According to this project it looked like clear that there is a potential to address “social justice” issues and to favor inter-sector and inter-generational partnership for “local development”.
[30] REYNOLDS, D., The Balancing Act, The Roles of a Community Foundation, Edited by Charles Stewart MOTT Foundation, Set. 2008 [Highlights].
See: http://www.mott.org/recentnews/news/2008/monographseries.aspx
[31] MESQUITA, R.C. “Political Impressions about the 1st Participatory Youth Conference for Public Policies in Brazil” In: http://ruimesquita.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/political-impressions-about-the-1st-participatory-youth-conference-for-public-policies-in-brazil/
[32] MESQUITA, R.C. Idem.
[33] This methodology was applied by Instituto Fonte and Nucleo Maturi in the context of workshops to promote “Interchange of Knowledge” among social organizations in the Program organized by ACJ-United Way in Brazil. It reflects the Action-Learning process, according to the CDRA – Centre for Developmental Practice [www.cdra.org.za]. The diagram indicated was selected from: Action Learning, a Developmental Approach to Change. Adapted from Action Learning for Development: use your experience to improve your effectiveness, by James Taylor, Dirk Marais and Allan Kaplan.
[34] I refer to the learning programs I have had the opportunity to develop at MacArthur Foundation and at ACJ – United Way in Brazil
[35] See p. 8, the referred statement of Shannon Saint-John.
A Critical Approach to International Development
São Paulo, 01/Oct/2007 | By Rui Mesquita Cordeiro | rui@cidadania.org.br
A Critical Approach to International Development: Downsizing the Aid Chain for Alternative Strategies of North/South Cooperation
By Rui Mesquita Cordeiro*
São Paulo, Brazil, 01 October 2007
Especially written for the occasion of the Dutch Experts Meeting on International Development Cooperation; an event organized by The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs in cooperation with the Nijmegen Centre for International Development Issues, held in The Hague, The Netherlands, between 22-23 October 2007
Have international donors (multilateral, bilateral, nongovernmental/CSO[1] and private philanthropy) been doing successful aid for development in regions like Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Pacific in the last decades? Since the end of Cold War and the end of the 20th century, Majid Rahnema and others are voicing that development, as proposed in its early days of the 1940s and the 1950s, has achieved its end (Rahnema, 1997:378). As he argues, development was an ideology that was born and refined in the “north”, mainly to meet the needs of “northern” interests; moreover, it was “imposed on its target populations”, being “the wrong answer to their true needs and aspirations” (ibid.:379). “Northern” thinkers of the 1990s, like David C. Korten (Korten, 1992:54), highlights that 650 million people lived in absolute poverty in 1970, and twenty years latter this number almost doubled to something in between 1 and 1.2 billion people. Consequently, how can we attribute any success at all to development policies throughout the second half of the 20th century? In addition, Rahnema points that the new millennium is the beginning of a “post-development era”, that “does not imply in the end of a search for new possibilities of change”; on the contrary, it is a time to shift the focus, giving “birth to new forms of solidarity and friendship” among countries (Rahnema, 1997:391). In the end, the central point in post-development ideas is the possibility to unmake development, as it was once planed, and give it many brand new faces, where people can be in the centre of the action.
Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. This “post-development era” so begun with two main contradictory development agendas coming from the “north”: the MDG[2] and the international security crises. On the one hand, domestic budgets of many “developing” countries and multilateral agencies were oriented to aim towards the millennium goals; on the other hand, bilateral and ODA[3] budgets of many OECD[4] countries were turned towards security and international boarders issues, against the fear of international terrorism. Furthermore, “northern” nongovernmental/CSO seemed to be highly divided in between following MDG or ODA trends and diversifying fundraising sources in order to pursue more autonomous development strategies, especially those based in Europe. “Northern” private philanthropists, on their side, have been more autonomous from such trends; however, private philanthropy has been realizing rapidly about the domestic problems of their countries of origin, especially those based in the USA[5], and therefore they are starting to see ways on how to act more domestically than internationally. In sum, this new “northern” scenario is the one crucially shaping the new relationships around development matters in the 21st century. However, one important question remains: are these efforts enough to address the social challenges of the planet? I am afraid that the most realistic answer here is no!
In the “south” the scenario differs a lot from the above one. From astonishing poverty in Africa to deplorable inequalities in Latin America; from overcrowding survival in Asia to endless struggles for identity and autonomy in the Middle East; we still face the same old problems of long ago. Perhaps, the only thing new in common that some of us start to share in the “south” (apart of a persistent and mixed feeling of suffering and hope) is the new brand identity of being from the “south”. At first, at least in Latin America realities, the main goal pursued by many “southern” governments was to “become” an Europe/USA like country, what arose to a significant share of the population a feeling of not to be proud of our own countries and culture. The dreamed leap from the old fashioned “third world” to the called “first world” club seems to be aborted right now, due to the multi-folded realities of our “post-development era”. Instead, movements of political empowerment from within are starting to take place.
Latin America, being the region with the longest independency processes within the colonised “south”, is a good case study about that new era. There, the phenomena of popular movements (and sometimes populist as well) achieving political power by direct and democratic means is a clear sign of something new happening. On the other hand, certain segments of civil society are each day more and more achieving new organisation standards. I say certain segments, because others (more dependent of foreign aid) are finding space for crises, as a consequence of the change of aid flown caused by the MDG and the changes on ODA policies. Local philanthropy, for instance, is creating brand new “southern” assets to promote development from within, although still lacking a lot of expertise on how to do the proposed development work. Social movements are organising international meetings and social forums all over the continent and the world, enhancing and promoting new south-south conversations. Such movements are actually giving birth to new development agendas. Issues like participatory democracy, grassroots empowerment, renewable fuels, international fair trade, south-south aid and tech cooperation, social justice, inter-culturalism, micro-credit, direct downwards money transfers, the Doha round, international democracy, and more effective participation in international and multilateral organisations, among many others, are populating this “southern” development agenda in the 21st century. Although, and naturally, the MDG and new ODA agendas still have the largest piece of the international development cake, the cake seems to be no longer made of “northern” ingredients only.
In addition, south-south ties have been strengthened: economic blocks in Latin America, Africa and Asia are trying to find their pathway in the international economic system; the called BRIC[6] countries, although still far from being considered a block or even politically aligned, have been rapidly beginning to behave as empowered actors in the international arena; the number of multinational companies with headquarters in the “south” seems to be quickly increasing; civil society’s world social forums are spreading all over the “southern” world (right now in a phase of going grassroots, with local social forums taking place everywhere), and even in the “north” as well.
Another relevant aspect is the fact that our boundaries are disappearing. Yes, even though we are trying to re-establish them, especially because of the given security crises and the migration problems, our boundaries are actually blurring. In today’s complex world, single categorisation of relationships in East/West, North/South (as we are doing in here), intra-state or inter-state is no longer enough. Ideology, governance, ethnicity, environment and identity play today a much stronger role than in the near past. “Northern” elements and actors are easily found in the “south”, just as the opposite is also true. The notion of local and global is another idea under mutation. The catchphrase “think globally act locally” is each day more confused with the idea of “think locally act globally”. Development blueprints were basically fitting within this second idea, rather than the first one. As Rahnema suggests, they were, and sometimes still are, just “northern” thinking applied worldwide, including those “northern” like thinking that are raised within “southern” regions and vice-versa.
Development, in sum, is no longer a single sided recipe predicted by actors that are already considered “developed” and therefore should have enough knowledge about how to help others to get there too. Different countries and realities require different approaches and different strategies. The unity of analysis usually used in development studies, the country, is also under doubt. Both macro and micro analysis are also needed. How developed is our planet as a whole, as if it was considered as a single country?
But it is not enough. Neither the “south” nor the “north” can be charged of solving the development problems of the planet alone. Partnerships are strongly needed, especially what I call the “north-south/south-north” ones; otherwise, unwanted conflicts may emerge, again. On the one hand, “north-south/south-north” partnerships have been by far more proposed by “northern” actors, according to their own agenda, usually aiming the development of the “south”. On the other hand, conflicts become an unwanted outcome of this relationship, when there is little space for “southern” actors to carry on their own agenda aiming not only their own development, but the development of the planet as a whole. To avoid it and to build more “southern” trust towards “northern” actors, we can try to build more partnerships based on “southern” agendas. In the end, equilibrium between both agendas is needed and necessary, but it is time now to balance this equation, and “northern” actors have a decisive role for this. Leadership and negotiation are essential skills in this stage, for both sides.
Reinventing the models for a more efficient “north-south/south-north” cooperation
Traditional models of aid flow also differ from each other, but basically they share a common characteristic: the economical decision making power remains at the top (Biekart, 1999), and consequently its accountability is predominately upwards. Kees Biekart presents his representation of the “aid chain”, in the case of Northern ODA through CSO:
Image 1: Aid Chain – Northern ODA through CSO (Biekart, 1999:79)
On this traditional European model, at least five direct accountability chains are linked compulsorily upwards (and optionally downwards). At the top, a northern government is drafting and taking decision upon the main themes and issues to be addressed by the chain, downwards. At the bottom, southern citizens in need rarely know where the money is coming from, and how much of the original amount is actually reaching them at the grassroots. Although very much common in Europe, this model is quite costly, once a significant amount of the original money donated at the top as taxes or private donations are spent with intermediary costs (as personnel, equipment, and so on) within an elevated number of intermediaries from top to bottom.
Image 2: Aid Chain – Multilateral Agencies through CSO
Similar to the previous one, this model brings five direct chains of decision making and accountability. Some would say six, because there is also an accountability relationship between the northern government and its citizens, who pay the taxes. Even though a great example on how countries may cooperate with each other through partnerships, usually the politics within the multilateral organisations create a higher level of bureaucracy on their decision making processes. Again, this is a very costly model, maybe even more in relation to the first one. However it has a different purpose, as said: the cooperation among nations.
Image 3: Aid Chain – State Owned Aid Organisations through CSO
Another common architecture takes place when a state creates its own aid agency, to operate development donations. It is less bureaucratic and has fewer intermediaries; however, the government influence is really high. Such influence may be too much dependent of the political health and tendency of the government. Less continuity and identity shifting could be usual and a threat. Three to four levels of accountability are seen (four if you consider the relation between the northern government and its tax payers).
Image 4: Aid Chain – Private Foundations through CSO
In theory less bureaucratic, and normally established through private endowments (sometimes also through public endowments), private foundations’ aid model (or philanthropy, as many would prefer) involves three levels of accountability and decision making. Less costly, this model can be very efficient; however, the quality of the foundation’s board of trustees is critical for its good governance. Many foundations, especially in the USA, are reluctant of inviting foreigners as board members; therefore, such board configuration is less qualitative and legitimate to operate internationally. CSO-led public foundations (state originated) would certainly be a very innovative and creative manner to pursue international development.
Another common feature shared by all these models is the bet on the “northern” decision making of development processes, once always “northern” organisations are ultimately at the top. None of them, in fact, bet on “southern” decision making models for “north-south/south-north” cooperation. In times of MDG and terrorism, new models of international cooperation are needed to respond to the new complexities of our “post-development era”. A new international agenda, built from both the “north” and the “south”, should be shared. However, additional “southern” empowerment at the decision making level of the aid chains is critically necessary.
In concert with empowerment, another important concept is participation. Indeed, participation and empowerment are two close concepts, once participation is ultimately about decision making and for that empowerment is needed. Even being related, there is no causality between one and another. On the one hand participation is understood as both means and ends for the people to directly participate in political, economical or social decisions in issues that affect their life; on the other hand empowerment is meant as the ability of individuals, groups and organisations for achieving some autonomy and independence, as well as “the structural conditions which affect the allocations of power in a society and give access to its resources” (Breton, 1994). Furthermore, participation is also seen as complementary to empowerment, as a way to encourage people to assume their rights and to strengthen popular organisations, trough cognitive, psychological, political and economical dimensions (Molyneux and Lazar, 2003).
The challenge for the “north-south/south-north” cooperation lies on the connection between them, as foreseen by Sherry Arnstein (Arnstein, 1969), when she clearly defines participation as citizen power; furthermore she distinguishes the participation in a qualitative scale, the ladder of citizen participation (ibid.). Although this scheme cannot be generalised, it adds that there may be different qualities of participation/empowerment, and it opens up the box of such concepts in a more analytical and critical way.
Image 5: The ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein, 1969)
How to achieve higher levels of “southern” citizens’ empowerment through participation in a suitable aid chain model? From the current models one can say that the relationship between “north” and “south” is located somewhere in between placation and partnership, at Arnstein’s ladder. Moving this “southern” participation upwards is therefore a necessary condition to achieve such higher levels of empowerment. Another good question in order to answer our previous questioning is: how could “northern” development actors delegate more power to their “southern” counterparts?
My search for alternatives to approach an answer to such questionings meets some new discussions that already take place within the Latin American branch of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation[7], a private donor foundation created in the USA in 1930 with the mission of “helping people to help themselves”. Such discussions aim to the case by case adaptation of the Community Foundation Model of community development.
Rethinking community foundations in the light of “north-south/south-north” cooperation
Community foundations are CSO, driven by the community itself. Usually, they are created by endowments that are capable to sustain its development mission and programs in the long term. Another important characteristic of community foundations is that the owners and the beneficiaries are, in part, the same people. Higher levels of empowerment can be exercised here, if the owners are well prepared to run it, representing more realistic delegated power for citizen control. Delegated because the endowment can be done not only by the community members themselves (when that is the case, like in many places in the USA), but also by third parts, usually interested in fostering the development of the community or the territory in question.
According to Fabiana Hernandez-Abreu[8], community foundations may also act as “bridges between donors and nonprofits”. She states that the New York Community Trust, for instance, presents its funds in this way:
“Donors with every kind of philanthropic interest find that a fund with The Trust is a simple, flexible, and rewarding way to accomplish their charitable goals. There are four different funds to choose from: Unrestricted, Field of Interest, Advised, and Designated.” (Abreu, 2007:17)
She highlights that “on the other end of the bridge is the Grant-making or Programming area, in which community foundations, driven by mission and areas of interest, create programs in order to make grants to local non-profit organisations to address community needs” (Abreu, 2007:18).
Certainly, the context of creating community foundations in the USA, or in any other “northern” country, is rather different of creating them in the “south”. In the “north”, the communities themselves are probably more able to create their own initial endowments from within, but in the “south”, with the short of income, this is less plausible. In the “south”, the endowments should be raised from more diverse sources, including (why not?) international sources.
In 2005, Andrés Thompson[9] asked himself: “Is it the ‘community foundation’ concept adaptable to Latin America? And if so: under what conditions?” (Thompson, 2005:5) He argues that, despite of the variety of approaches and definitions, “community foundations are about money and community” (ibid.). For him, two simple approaches to the concept of “community foundations” are: the “money” driven approach and the “community” oriented approach.
He says that “those that see community foundations mainly as channels for the circulation of financial resources are mostly concerned with some of the following issues: Raising endowed funds from a collection of donors; Providing philanthropic services to donors by advising them how to invest their money in worthy causes; Investing the foundation’s assets (usually independently of where) and monitoring its portfolio return; Appointing trustees with influence in the richest segments of local society; Building of assets for perpetuity; Stewardship; and Accountability and transparency in the use of funds” (ibid.: 6-7); among others.
On the other hand, he ponders that “for most of the practitioners in the field of community foundations that see their potential for addressing the community’s problems their major concerns are: Building community capacity; Awareness of community needs and responsiveness to the community; Accountability and transparency in the use of funds; A focus on “living” people and their needs; Board formation and development that reflects (not represent) the varied community interests; Diversity; Building on community assets; Building of social capital; Strengthening the local nonprofit sector; and Community involvement, including governance” (ibid.: 7-8); among others.
Altogether, Thompson considers that “the general concept of a democratic, non-profit, community oriented institution that collects money from within and from outside the community and redistribute it to address the interests and needs of the same community seems a very attractive one, both as an exit strategy for external donors or for resource mobilization within communities, the community foundations’ approach appears to be the ideal one. Several cases from the developing world are there to demonstrate their feasibility” (ibid. p.9). And in relation of its adaptation to “southern” regions, he concludes that factors to be considered in such analysis are: 1) Time (it is a medium to long term strategy); 2) The local legal and tax incentives (they may facilitate, or not, the implementation of a community foundation); 3) Wealth (are the sources enough to generate a sustainable endowment?); 4) Responsiveness to community (they should answer the pressure of addressing the urgent needs of the communities); 5) Resource mobilization and capacity building (sustainable assets building); 6) Leadership role (permanent building of local leadership is essential); and 7) Strategic Grant-making (a clear development agenda to operate the built trust) (ibid. p.10-17). In the end, he concludes that “community foundations are not a model to be copied and replicated everywhere; their feasibility depends of the specific environment in which they intend to grow and develop and, to a large extent, on the leadership capacity of the pioneer group” (ibid. p.18).
The Chinese have already said it long before: where there is a threat, there is also an opportunity. If it is not another blueprint to be copied, than it should be adapted to the context-specific environment in which favourable condition may be set. From my perspective, the adaptation of the model, according to each local place where it is going to be tried, is equally complex as the “north-south/south-north” development relationship of nowadays. The idea, for instance, of a “community foundation” for South America, where South-Americans could address their own development needs through endowments gifted by “northern” development actors is not at all a bad idea to be considered (the same for other “southern” regions). In such case, a new aid chain would be configured. Image 6 bellow attempts to represent it, in a most simple way; once, depending on the context-specific environment, it could be remodelled as the context requires of it. On it, I’ll call it “southern endowment”, not to mislead it with the concept of community foundation. This “southern endowment”, as I call it by now, could be not strictly community oriented, but also thematic or even territorially oriented. In other words, it could be serving a community, a theme (or problem), or a territory (a city, a country, a region).
Image 6: Southern Based Endowment Model
With two-three direct chains of accountability, this attempt risks a downsizing of the traditional aid chain models. Furthermore, a “southern” placed endowment would also entrepreneur in bringing the decision-making of the endowment to the “south”, advancing the empowerment of the “south” on the international development agenda.
Its foreseen sources of resources may be diversified as well, not putting the charge of this asset building in single actors. Here, both resources from “northern” and “southern” sources are introduced, in a joint “north-south/south-north” endeavour.
One of the main challenges would be the board of trustees’ setting. Depending on how this board is set, downwards accountability could be drastically enhanced. For instance, a quota for the participation of grantees in the board is something that could guarantee some downwards accountability.
“Northern” and “southern” actors who gifted the endowment could also have a space in such board; as well, legitimate specialists of the community, theme, and/or the territory served would either find a space there, especially on its first configuration. It is important to highlight that, most probably, space for the endowment donors in the board (especially in the board’s first mandate circle) is also crucial to give such donors the necessary guarantee that in the long run the donated funds must be used towards agreed and shared ends. Ultimately, a culture of full accountability and transparency (upwards and downwards) is mandatory for such type of organisation.
Additionally, a democratic rotation system should be created, in order to guarantee internal democracy and legitimacy for the board of trustees. Altogether, I would defend a mixed board configuration, having on it grantees, specialists (thematic, territorially, and/or community members) and interested donors. Undoubtedly among the initial attributions of the first board, the identity, the programmatic grant-making planning and the administrative/financial use of the trust are key to be set.
The financial feasibility of such endeavour should be realistic. A large experience on trust management has been captured by many foundation officers around the world. Usually, they work with the yearly “5% budget rule”. That means that each year, an average of 5% of the total assets should be spent in both the operation and the programming of the organisation. If one takes into account the amount of ODA/OA expended by a country like The Netherlands, for instance, one could see the following picture:
Image 7: Dutch Gross Bilateral ODA, 2004/2005
For a rough example, if 50% of what The Netherlands gives to, say, India (a democratic country, and a relatively stable and growing economy) would be addressed to the creation of a CSO Indian-led Endowment Fund; that would represent USD 38 million each year, considering the 2004/05 amount to that country. In five years, that would be USD 190 million. Applying the “5% budget rule”, such USD 190 million endowment would represent USD 9.5 million of annual revenue for both operations and programming of this Indian organisation. Usually, the average share of the annual revenue of foundations is 10%-12.5% for operations and 87.5%-90% for programming. By operations I mean all administrative costs of the organisation (including salaries, office expenditures, equipments, and so forth), and by programming I mean the actual grant-making work plus the execution of some project, if that is the case. Considering the example above, this organisation would have an annual budget for operations of about USD 1 million, and a programming annual budget around USD 8.5 million, which is nothing bad at all for a brand new “southern” development organisation.
What about the other 95% of the original endowment? That would be the asset to be invested on the market in order to generate new revenues for the next year. Normally, foundations’ staff members target a minimum 5%-6% return, yearly, over this 95% amount. In our example, this 95% represents some USD 180.5 million; that amount is to be invested at the financial and economical market and it could even help to develop the local economy of the region where it is to be invested.
Please, do take into consideration that the example is very limited, including in terms that, on it, we only explore one endowment source. In general, if well managed, the outcome would be an autonomous and sustainable new way of promoting development through international cooperation efforts, with a shared power balance between “northern” and “southern” partners.
Concluding Remarks
Our new and complex world requires new and complex strategies. The one proposed in this paper is far from being simple, but it is a chance for “northern” development policy makers to listen to “southern” development thinkers, sharing agendas and delegating more power southwards. As one of the consequences, this position has a strong potential to revert a lot of the criticism against the “north” coming from “southern” voices. Moreover, more than a simple development thematic strategy, this is a sustainable legacy strategy to foster long term development among nations. You plant a seed, and let it blossom.
This alternative way would certainly require new roles of both “northern” and “southern” donors, CSO and policy makers. New researches should be foreseen, as well as new kinds of more horizontal relationships between governments, CSO and people. The locus of such relationships, in our case here, would be primarily within the board of trustees of these endowment organisations. The balance of power among the board members and a diverse composition are vital.
Southern visions of long-term structural development would finally achieve a new level of implementation; a practical one. Goals and indicators can be easily used to measure the effectiveness of such process, including social and economical indicators. Additionally, market actors could also play their role, once market expertise is a requirement for the good governance of the endowment assets and for the long term financial sustainability the organisation.
To conclude, all of that might be an effective and innovative new strategy to foster development on this planet, rejoining “south” and “north” in a common endeavour. Some practical experiments about this logic are already under early stages of planning and drafting in the western side of the Atlantic. Other initiatives would be very much welcomed, but how far this is going to get is a question for time, visioning and political will to answer.
References______________
Abreu, Fabiana Hernandez (2007). Community Foundations: a Vehicle to Endorse and Sustain Local Development Processes Taking Place in Colonia/Uruguay? New York: City University of New York.
Arnstein, Sherry R. (1969). A Ladder of Citizen Participation. In: JAIP, Vol. 35 (4). Pp. 216-224. http://lithgow-schmidt.dk/sherry-arnstein/ladder-of-citizen-participation.html (10-July-2006)
Biekart, Kees (1999). The Politics of Civil Society Building. Amsterdam: International Books & Transnational Institute.
Breton, Margot (1994). Relating competence: Promotion and empowerment. In: Journal of Progressive Human Services, Vol. 5 (1). Pp. 27-45.
Friedman, John (1992). Empowerment – The Politics of Alternative Development. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
Korten, David C. (1992). People-Centred Development, in Bauzon, Kenneth E. – Development and Democratization in the Third World – Myths, Hopes, and Realities. New York: Yeshiva University.
Molyneux, Maxine and Sian Lazar (2003). Implementing rights: participation, empowerment and governance. In: Maxine Molyneux and Sian Lazar, Doing the Rights Thing: Rights-Based Development and Latin American NGOs. London: ITDG Publishing. Pp. 50-62.
Rahnema, Majid (1997). Towards Post-Development: searching for signposts, a new language and new paradigms, in: Rahnema, Majid & Bawtree, Victoria (1997) The Post-Development Reader. Dhaka: University Press LTD.
Thompson, Andrés A. (2005). Exploring the concept of “community foundations” and its adaptability to Latin America. New York: City University of New York.
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*Rui Mesquita Cordeiro is Brazilian and is currently working for W.K. Kellogg Foundation as its Program Associate for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in São Paulo, Brazil. His Masters degree in Politics of Alternative Development Studies was achieved at the Institute of Social Studies, in The Hague, The Netherlands. Other articles of him are published at http://www.igloo.org/politica
* rui.mesquita@wkkf.org / rui@cidadania.org.br
) +55 11 8541-9186 / +55 11 4191-2233 x. 113
[1] CSO: Civil Society Organisation.
[2] MDG: Millennium Development Goals.
[3] ODA: Official Development Assistance.
[4] OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (http://www.oecd.org/).
[5] USA: United States of America.
[6] BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China.
[7] W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF): http://www.wkkf.org/
[8] Uruguayan, Fabiana is a local leader of development processes in the city of Colonia, Uruguay.
[9] Argentinean, Andrés is Program Director for Latin America and the Caribbean for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, based in Brazil.
Youth Politics and Intergenerational Relations
Youth Politics and Intergenerational Relations
A Youth Network Seeking for Development and Empowerment in Recife
Full PDF Download:
http://www.intra1.iss.nl/content/download/6519/60186/file/Cordeiro%202006.pdf
A Research Paper presented by:
Rui Mesquita Cordeiro
Brazil – rui@cidadania.org.br
In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for Obtaining the Degree of:
Master of Arts in Development Studies
Specialization:
Politics of Alternative Development (PAD)
Members of the Examining Committee:
Dr. Kees Biekart (Supervisor)
Dr. Linda Herrera (Second Reader)
The Hague, The Netherlands
17 November 2006
Full PDF Download:
http://www.intra1.iss.nl/content/download/6519/60186/file/Cordeiro%202006.pdf
______________________________________________________________________
Abstract
Since the 1950s, development researchers and practitioners have been focusing on understanding ways to overcome poverty. During this process, many actors and issues have been identified as crucial for development, such as the women and the environment. Youth comes along such process, mostly as a perceived issue (youth development), but also as social actors (the role of youth to achieve development). This paper adds a contribution to literature and policies analysing intergenerational power relations between youth-led actors and non-youth-led actors in society. The case in point is the Network of Solidary Resistance (herein mentioned simply as RRS), a youth-led network based in one of the most unequal cities of Brazil, Recife. Its political agenda towards society is contrasted with the society’s agenda towards the youth, exposing some traces of discrimination from society towards the youth, as well as some tiredness and resistance from the youth towards its external society. The central question behind this research has to do with the level of influence of organised segments of youth in society. Such influence is revealed to be higher within the communities the youth in case work with and for, rather than within macro structures of power in society, where the root-causes of the communities’ problems are reported to come from. In addition, this research brings attention to the differences between youth policy and youth politics and the need for more agency based approaches toward the youth, beyond the typical needs and rights based approaches. The empirical data is constantly contrasted with clusters of knowledge within the literature, specifically in Political Science and Sociology. The main theories used here fit within youth and society, and power and development literatures. The main arguments to study the quality of intergenerational relationships as a mean for achieving development is due to [a] the fact that youth is the only character that crosscut the whole society and change of “category” (the youngsters of today will soon become the adults of tomorrow), and [b] the phenomenon of poverty and inequality in Latin America is persisting during many generations already, from parents to offspring, creating an intergenerational poverty circles that must be broken in order to stop poverty and recover development. In the last chapter, the paper also stresses the need of further research referring to the paradoxical locus of intergenerational and agency based approaches for long-term sustainable development.
Full PDF Download:
www.iss.nl/content/download/6519/60186/file/Cordeiro%202006.pdf
Foundations and Youth in Local Development
The Hague, 01/Nov/2006 | By Rui Mesquita Cordeiro | rui@cidadania.org.br
The Role of a Private Foundation in Helping Communities to Engage Youth in Processes of Local Sustainable Development
(Or the role of a private foundation in helping youth to engage communities in processes of local sustainable development?)
Private foundations have many roles actually. Their especial condition, of being among the more autonomous and independent types of non-profit organizations nowadays, makes of them very special and unique. Furthermore, foundations are organizations that usually gather very special kinds of leadership, like servant leaders (Greenleaf and Spears 2002), what turn them to be natural servant organizations (Greenleaf 1977). To explore this uniqueness in relation to youth and development, let us start in the beginning of the development thinking.
Since the 1950s, development researchers and practitioners have been focusing very much on finding and understanding ways to overcame poverty and promote justice in our unfair world scenario. Along the process, many obvious actors and issues have been identified as crucial for development, such as the women and the environment. Youth comes along such process, mostly as a perceived issue, but also as social actors. As an issue, the youth is seen as target of development, an age-group that must be protected and prepared for a healthy and productive adult life; as actors, the youth uses its agency to promote its political agenda and interests within society, from youth’s own understanding about development.
The uniqueness of working with the youth for development ends, is that youth is the only character that crosscut the whole society [image 1] and change of “category”; all those who are young today will, under normal conditions of life, become adults tomorrow. Other actors live their uniqueness stuck in lesser changeable conditions (even though, not frozen for sure), being it of gender, ethnicity, culture or whatever. This more changeable condition makes the youth a segment that is very important to transmit changes (from local to structural ones) throughout generations, once those who experience high levels of empowerment while young, will certainly pay more attention to the youth-adult relationship in the coming generations. Another important factor still is that along the time, poverty [like wealth] is passed on from parents to offspring, creating an intergenerational poverty circle (Morán and Aldaz-Carroll 2001; Morán 2004; WKKF 2005a; Thompson 2006a) that must be broken in order to stop poverty and recover development. Once again, the transitory condition of being young is perceived here as an essential mean to fight poverty and achieve fair and just levels of development.
Furthermore, the role of youth in development seems to be changing rapidly. After feminism (1950s and 1960s), environmentalism (1960s and 1970s), democracy (1980s and 1990s) and security (2000s), youth seems to be the brand new issue blossoming in development practices and studies in the 2000s. Some evidences are found within a large spectrum, from our global governance system to grassroots. For instance, after big conferences and festivals about youth and development held in Senegal, Portugal and Panama, in April 2005 the United Nations launches its report “Youth and the Millennium Development Goals” (UN 2005b), followed, just six months latter, by its “World Youth Report 2005: Young people today and in 2015” (UN 2005a). Soon after, in September 2006, it is the World Bank that launches its World Development Report 2007, entitled “Development and the Next Generation” (WB 2006), completely focused on youth’s education, employment, health, families and citizenship. Apart of those big inter-governmental organizations, more independent developmental NGOs are also paying more attention to the youth in society, like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and its youth partnership program in Latin America (Tancredi 2005; Thompson 2006b), and Oxfam Australia with its International Youth Parliament (Oxfam 2000/2003), among some others. Yet, international academic institutions are now recognizing the importance of the field of youth and development. In the Netherlands, for instance, the Institute of Social Studies (www.iss.nl), together with other institutions, had already created an “International Centre for Child and Youth Studies”; moreover, it is now launching its brand new master program in “Children and Youth Studies”. Even though mixing children and youth issues, it is already a clear indicative of the raising public interest about youth and development.
When analyzing these new approaches, an important difference arises especially between inter-governmental organizations and developmental NGOs: the first group is still focusing primarily on youth as a targeted group to be transformed and protected by society; while, the second one seems to be investing in youth as a real actor capable of positively transform society. Furthermore, together with the first group, we can easily add governments and their public policies towards the youth, which only target youth as a age group, not taking into account youth politics, a distinction we will make clearer latter on in this essay.
It is key to clarify here that such conclusion comes from the analysis of WKKF and Oxfam Australia only, two quite more independent organizations; therefore, it cannot be generalized for all developmental NGOs. Indeed, many are still treating youth as target groups only or even do not see any need to work with/for the youth at all, especially those more dependent of government aid money to exist. It is important to stress that this may represent a natural clear signal of the differential role that more independent organizations, such like private foundations, may have in the field of youth and development: the way it perceives and tend to relate with the youth, as a partner actor within society [image 2].
One way or another, the importance of youth in development appears to be changing rapidly, but through the hand of non-youth actors. If the youth itself wants to have some agency or influence in this scenario, it will need to dig more into it. Some possible explanations for this change may lay in different reasons; among many others, we can allude to these: The current demographic “youth bulge” is one of the possible reasons: “today, 1.5 billion people are ages 12-24 worldwide, 1.3 billion of them in developing countries, the most ever in history” (WB 2006:4); as over 86% of the youth population is located in developing countries, as from the above numbers, the intergenerational poverty trap/circle (Morán and Aldaz-Carroll 2001; Morán 2004; WKKF 2005b; Thompson 2006a) is almost certainly to persist; a considerable number of incidents have been unfairly and generally attributed to young people in the recent years, like for instance: the last French youth upraise in October/November 2005 (Cordeiro 2005a); the stereotype of young male Muslims as primary suspects of terrorism (Sullivan and Partlow 2006); and in November 2005, in Recife, the youth upraise against the increased city’s public transport fare (Silva 2005); the increasing number of youth-led organizations (Queiroz 2004), and the changes in the political behavior of the youth (Abramo and Venturi 2000; IBASE and Pólis 2005; Tommasi and Brandão 2006); and the realization of the youth as a potential actors to promote positive change and to address both youth issues and the development of society as a whole (Oxfam 2000/2003; Rocha et al. 2005; Tancredi 2005).
This difference of perceiving youth as target group, and not as actors in society, may camouflage another important distinction within the field of youth and development: youth policy vs. youth politics. On the one hand, youth policies tend to target young people, either within a needs based approach or a rights based approach. This is observed not only in governmental youth policies, but also in civil society policies towards the youth. On the other hand, the political agenda of youth-led actors goes far beyond youth policies and usually privileges societal issues and problems, instead of youth related issues and problems only. This is due to the fact that youth, as a clear actor in society, is far from being self interested in their on youth issues. Their condition of being changing categories (from youth to adulthood), make them to worry about much broader and societal issues, like the environment, peace, economical processes, politics in general and so forth (Cordeiro 2006b). That is why youth-led movements always need a complement for their names, like: youth movements for peace, youth movements for the environment, even youth movements for the youth, and so on.
To make it even clearer, let us distinguish now between pro-youth movement and youth-led movement. The first one is composed by any (young or not) person or any (youth-led or not) organization that share the common objective of fighting for pro-youth policies and for youth rights, while the second one is composed by young people (as individuals) and youth-led organizations that fight for a variety of issues in society. The youth-led movement is diverse in its own essence; its nature and political agenda is equally diverse, but also complementary; and it is somehow engaged in a bigger claim for change from local to global societies (Cordeiro 2005b). The constituency of the youth-led movement has its basis on young activists, and on youth-led groups, organizations and networks. Furthermore, the spontaneous appearances of youth-led movements are means the youth has found to build up its own empowerment as actors in society [image 3]; apart of this, only participation approaches have been attempted by non-youth-led actors to try to empower the youth.
The dichotomy between empowerment and participation is brought to illustrate the difference between the society’s approaches towards the youth and the youth’s approaches towards society. In Brazil youth protagonism (Costa 2001; Costa and Vieira 2006) is the principal strategy used by non-youth-led civil society actors to implement youth right based approaches; although, still focusing on youth as target of their educative actions. Their final outcome is to change their targeted youngsters into protagonists of their own lives in society; being this an end in itself. Youth participation, hence, has been used as one of the most important tools for young people to become protagonists. As a result, many NGOs and even governments are opening more and more spaces, with their own agenda, and inviting young people to participate on them; mostly to discuss youth issues like education, health, employment, sexuality, family related problem and so forth. Many times, even well intentioned, such invited spaces become mere spaces of consultation, and sometimes of unintended tokenism and manipulation, as one can see observing two, among many, ladders of participation [image 4 and 5].
On the contrary, higher levels of youth participation in society are observed when empowerment comes first; youth-led actors – especially the more organized ones – are not necessarily willing to attend such invitations to participate in other one’s agendas; neither they are focusing on being targeted by other actors or on discussing youth related issues only. Their concerns aim the way society is structured, especially the communities and neighborhoods they live in (Cordeiro 2006b). In contradiction, youth-led actors prefer to create their own spaces of empowerment, to discuss their own political agenda towards society, rather than accepting external invitation to participate in spaces to discuss other one’s agendas (ibid.). For them, restlessness and associativism are revealed as the main baseline strategy to build up their empowerment (ibid.); furthermore, this is the way they find to actively participate in society’s life upon equal power relation with other actors in society [image 3].
Restlessness is the main characteristic demonstrated by many young individuals. The main source for such individual agitation lay especially on their concerns against the deprived social, economical and political situation of themselves, their families and neighbors. Naturally, it generates a strong impetus for doing something within those individuals, specifically against the abstract and constructed image of what for them represents the system behind the Brazilian social order: an apparent set of institutions and power holders that are able to take decision that affect their very lives, predominantly represented by big private companies and governments in general (Cordeiro 2006b). When they realize they are not alone, youth-led groups are created, above all spontaneously with no external actor facilitating the process (ibid.). These groups are linked by friendship and/or identity ties, and when they achieve more clear objectives and proposals, in a seek for more organization, they cross the blurred borderline into a youth-led organization (Rocha 2006).
Networking is the following natural step, with other youth-led organizations working in very different subjects, but still with a complementary role to come together in more strong ties of collective action. It is important to mention that all this observed process is followed by two crosscutting processes, the development of their political agenda towards society and the strengthening of their technical capacity building to act upon society with effectiveness and concrete results. Nevertheless, even with a quite clear political agenda and technical capacity for action; usually youth-led actors are still focusing to provoke change in their communities of origin, as a step for their own strengthening. A good strategy in which a private foundation could be helping this youth process is through supporting youth forums, which are usually defined as youth-led spaces to discuss the political aspects of the societies and communities they live in, in which youth may act upon to exercise some influence for the good will of the whole community/society. Youth forums may gather all kinds of youth actors together, from individuals to movements, for them to discuss their agenda towards society. Complementarily, they can also trigger the process of spontaneous youth associativism, where there is an absence of it. Ultimately, it can also achieve some desired results of this youth-led process: youth empowerment, youth participation and a youth agenda for the development of local communities.
In my view, this may represent a much more legitimate, effective and appropriated way of liking youth and development, because its main source of action lays on the restlessness of young actors that use their agency to bring about renewal to civil society as whole; moreover, it is a spontaneous processes that contribute to the political and technical development of all those involved, as a real exercise of citizenship and political attitude towards society. Furthermore, it is grounded in collective action and aims to social movement action, a needed force for the checks and balances between societies and governments. At last, but not at least, it represents the legitimate and empowered way that youth may participate in society, helping to break vicious problems circles that are lasting throughout generations in Latin America (Morán and Aldaz-Carroll 2001; Morán 2004), from the old and well known poverty and inequality gaps to the new phenomena of political apathy and disillusionment.
But it is not enough. Alone, the youth cannot be charged of solving the problems of society because their unique transitory condition. Partnerships are strongly needed, especially here intergenerational ones; otherwise, unwanted conflicts may emerge. On the one hand, intergenerational partnerships have been by far more proposed by non-youth-led actors, according to their own agenda, usually aiming the youth. On the other hand, conflicts become an unwanted resultant of this relationship, when there is little space for youth-led actors to carry on their own agenda aiming society. To avoid it and to build more youth trust towards non-youth actors, we can try to build more partnerships based on youth’s agendas. In the end, equilibrium between both agendas is needed and necessary, but it is time now to balance this equation [image 6], and non-youth actors have a decisive role for this.
On the youth-led actors’ side, if they want to provoke real structural change in their society, they will certainly need to partner with non-youth-led actors. I am pretty sure you have heard already this famous and public catchphrase “think globally, act locally”. The youth has proven to me its natural, legitimate and unique power to invert this catchphrase equation. From local to global, from micro to macro; youth-led actors may contribute to change it into something like think locally, act globally. For that, youth-led actors should use their spontaneous associativism, together with community networking and youth forums to create local intergenerational pacts proposed by youth-led actors to exercise influence over both micro and macro structures, wherever lays the main root-causes of their local community problems, and build up a new and sustainable present [image 7].
Back to the role of private foundations I strongly believe, due to their unique conditions of being servant and more independent and autonomous organizations, a private foundation that address development should seriously pay attention to the changing role of youth for development, and to context specific youth politics. As a consequence, they should not only help communities to engage youth in processes of local sustainable development, but further and beyond, they should also help the youth to engage their communities in these processes. As a consequence, this equilibrium of roles may culminate in distinctive and long-term intergenerational partnerships between such unique actors, a servant and autonomous foundation and the empowered youth, in cooperation for the sustainable future of their communities. Furthermore, due to the numerous progressist governments currently in power in northeastern Brazilian states after the general elections in October 2006, there seems to be a positive political momentum that, at a first glance, seems to be opening space to politically overcome the condition of young people as a target group into a real social actors (UFF 2006a, 2006b). Time will tell, of course, but any help from independent private foundations will be of great importance to trigger it, through supporting youth associativism and local development. Altogether, I believe these are all essential conditions to break our generational poverty circles in Latin America.
Images
Image 1 – Possible representation of society and the youth (Cordeiro 2006a, 2006b)
Image 2 – Trends in the way one deals with the youth (Cordeiro 2006b)
Image 3 – The challengeable way of creating legitimate youth empowerment (Cordeiro 2006b)
Image 4 – The ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein 1969)
Image 5 – The ladder of youth participation (Hart 1992; Marx et al. 2005)
Image 6 – Trends of agenda setting flow in intergenerational partnerships (Cordeiro 2006b)
Image 7 – “Poltergeist youth theory towards society” (Cordeiro 2006b)
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Tensions and Challenges between Youth and Civil Society
Tensions and Challenges between Youth and Civil Society
The Hague, 21/July/2006 | By Rui Mesquita Cordeiro | rui@cidadania.org.br
NGOs and Civil Society Building | ISS
Introduction
This essay deals with the relationship between the youth and civil society, trying to find tensions
and challenges of this interaction, especially with some types of non governmental organisations
(NGO), latter on specified. To start with, we initially clear the picture, defining society as a whole,
and youth as a power structure within society, with all its dichotomies and comprehensions.
Right after, we live society and focus on civil society specifically, stressing the main forms of
interaction between the youth and some types of NGOs. As a result, two main challenges are
exposed in this relationship, in terms of empowerment and participation. Such challenges are
discussed in the last part of this essay, where we elaborate more on these challenges and point
out some conclusions and considerations.
The Society and the Youth: Clearing the Picture
Alain Touraine says that the youth is just a reflex of society itself (Touraine 1996), being at the
same time its coming (a source of change and evolution) and its menace (a source of trouble
and threat). This is an interesting view that elucidates how diverse and contradictory society is in
itself, and so is the youth just the same. Both society and youth represent a collective of diverse
and heterogeneous actors, being the youth part of society’s realm.
As a result, defining society is an exercise of looking and understanding its diversity. Many try to
open up the box and to reveal the internal differentiations and variations in social structures,
like: 1. primary social relationships of identity and solidarity among kinship groups, ethnic
groups, primary groups and territorial groupings (Parsons 1961a); 2. economical relationships of
production and maintenance, like capitalists, labourers and the division of labour (Smith 1961;
Weber 1961), the ownership of private properties (Pollack and Maitland 1961), the household
micro-economic system (Play 1961), and the macro-economic development (Schumpeter 1961);
3. relationships of stratification and social mobility, like class stratification and struggle (Marx
1961); 4. relationships of social organisation, authority and power (Parsons 1961b); and lastly, 5.
relationships of religious beliefs, systems and society (Durkheim 1961). Overall, I usually define Rui Mesquita Cordeiro (9553) ②
society myself as the sum of the relationships and processes between all individuals and
organisations in a given space, time, and culture.
Within society, the main actors vary in many categories. I see five broader categories,
including the state machinery, the marketplace realm, the civil society space, the families (and
households), and the individuals (citizens and non-citizens). Besides, there are numerous other
crosscutting categories, like the youth, the men, the women, the elderly, the children, the
adults, classes, casts and so on, depending the cultural aspects of the society. These
crosscutting categories are all around those broader categories, populating part of them
[graphic 1]
.
Each one of them forms a variety of different relationships with the youth, and all other
crosscutting categories; therefore, any deep study on youth and society should analyse each of
these interactions. As an individual, a young person is subject of rights and duties towards all
broader categories of society, sometimes also subject of lack of rights also; within the family or
the household, a young person is usually exposed to power relations that make her/him
dependent of the relatives’ will; in the marketplace, young people are usually seen as consumers
and as labour force, many times cheap ones; in civil society, the youth is mostly seen as target
group, but some already see it as actors; and within the state, the youth can also be a target
group, subject of rights and duties, but as citizens it can also exercise an import political role in
societal and public affairs.
Defining youth implies the same level complexity. All above differentiations also apply to it, as it
is part of society itself. Additionally, the word ‘youth’ may suggest very different meanings, and
the simple exercise of looking at a dictionary revels to us the general public comprehensions
about it, like for instance: “1. the time of life when a person is young”; “2. the quality or state
of being young”; “3. (often disapproving) a young man:
[illustration]
the fight was started by a
gang of youths”; and “4. (also the youth) young people considered as a group” (Oxford
University 2001). These four definitions expose some of the important dichotomies
surrounding the relationship between youth and society. These main dichotomies, from my
own standpoint, are:
1. Youth as unity, youth as diversity: Youth, even in the singular form of the word, should be
understood as pure diversity and plurality, just like the word society is, otherwise, we
would always have to refer to societies (in its plural form). The most common perceived
differentiations within youth are: rural or urban youth (Carneiro 1998) (Ballinger 2006); poor,
middle class or rich youth (Tommasi 2005, 1-Nov); included or excluded youth (WEF 2000);
student and non-student youth (Dayson 2006); gendered youth and sexuality (male, female,
heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual and so on) (Edwards 2004; Russell 2006);
and different religious youth (Webster 2006); among others.
2. Youth as a biological age group, youth as a social constructed identity: The two first
meanings on the dictionary are part of a classical dichotomy within youth and development
studies, between youth as a biological age group and youth as a social constructed identity. Rui Mesquita Cordeiro (9553) ③
Youth is a concept usually related to a certain age group; therefore, to a biological concept.
The UN system, for instance, defines youth as the group of people between the ages of 15
and 24 (UN 2005); however many other definitions are available, like those by Nicola Ansell
and Ben White
[table 1]
, but there’s no common agreement on these definition; moreover,
there are many inconsistencies between the academic world, the policy making world and
the real world when applying a biological approach to define youth. Many countries have
different official definition of youth for their youth policies: for El Salvador it is between 7-18
years of age, for Colombia between 12-26 years, for Costa Rica between 12-35, for Mexico
12-29, for Argentina 14-30, for Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and the Dominican Republic 15-24,
for Guatemala and Portugal 15-25, for Chile, Cuba, Spain, Panama and Paraguay 15-29, for
Nicaragua 18-30 and for Honduras it is between 0-25 (Reyes 2004). This biological
understanding is counter argued by the idea that youth is also understood as the state of
being young; being therefore a state of mind, or a state of spirit, that varies from culture to
culture (Côté and Allahar 1996). This is a social constructed approach, and as such, anyone,
being of any age, could be considered of youthful or non-youthful behaviour. As a matter of
fact, it is usual to find older people that still keep a strong youthful attitude towards life and
the world; while, on the other hand, it is not difficult either to find youngsters which
behaviour and attitude are far from being considered youthful. Another idea upon social
constructed approaches towards youth is the cultural concept of generations and
generational conflict (Baskir 2006).
3. Youth as a problem, youth as a solution: The third Oxford Dictionary’s meaning for youth
reveals the taboo already stressed by Alain Touraine (1996) of youth as a problem and
youth as a solution; but unfortunately, the dictionary only brings about the more
conservative side of this dichotomy, looking at youth is as a problem. Indeed, there are
many defenders of such an idea, and many existing organisations dealing with it. Three main
approaches are seen within this logic: youth as thugs, as user and as victims (Jeffs and
Smith 1999); furthermore, others analyse predictive and preventive factors to avoid the
“problem” (IYD 2003). The main critique to this view is about the negative label of marginal
or rebel given to the youth, and therefore the conservative response that automatically
comes in forms of control and punishment (Foucault 1975). From another perspective, more
progressist views point to youth as source of solutions, and sources of renew. Many
conferencesi
have been held and many websitesii
created to debate and to spread solutions
coming from segments of the youth, both toward the youth itself and society in general.
Recent ideas on partnering with the youth (Rocha et al. 2005; Tancredi 2005; WKKF 2005)
show that the youth has an important role to bringing society more alternative solutions.
4. Youth as future, youth as present time: From the previous dichotomies, it is easy to
develop the question whether the youth is owner of the future or of the present time. There
is still an important concern stating that youth points to the future of society; nevertheless, it
is very importantly to realise that many young people stress that it is not only the future that
belongs to them, but as they are “natives of the present” (Margulis and Urresti), they need to
be heard and to be taken into account right now, with no delay, both in terms of youth rights
and in terms of youth empowerment.
Rui Mesquita Cordeiro (9553) ④
5. Youth as target group, youth as actor: The last Oxford Dictionary’s meaning for youth
exposes yet another dichotomy, on youth as target group or youth as group of action.
Depending how one finds herself/himself over the previous dichotomies, she/he will relate in
a very different way to the youth. On the one hand, more conservative understandings on
unity, age, problem and future may open space for treating the youth as mere target groups.
On the other hand, more progressist understandings on diversity, identity, solution and
present open space for treating the youth as an actual actor in society; therefore, realising
that the youth should be considered and should participate in all levels of decision making in
our current society, in a true intergenerational dialog. Targeting the youth is still necessary in
some circumstances, some will argue, especially in cases of poverty, delinquency, lack of
rights, and so forth; but, my main point here is to argue that the youth today faces a similar
problem that the women faced (and unfortunately still face) of being sub judged by other
actors in society, the adults. This youth-adult relationship can be a source of conflict (Baskir
2006), but also a source of partnership (Tancredi 2005) and more equalitarian relationship
(Rocha et al. 2005). The more visible circumstance where this target/actor dichotomy occurs
is probably in formal and informal educational processes, when the relationship between
young people (usually as the educated ones) and educators become a power relation (and it
usually does) (Rocha et al. 2005).
To partially conclude, I stress that it does not stop here, simply understanding youth as social
actors; in addition, we will need to differentiate the different levels of power that youth actors
can achieve, in order to exercise more influence within society. As said before, we will focus on
the relationship between the youth and civil society, not forgetting about all other ones.
Civil Society and Youth: Forms of Interaction
To be considered as a real social actor, the youth must be understood as a power structure
within society, with social, economical and political roles to play. For such, we need to overcome
the notion of youth from an individualistic outlook (young person or young people power) and to
deal with the notion of youth collectives (youth groups, youth organisation and youth led
movement). This is due to a simple assumption, that collective youth action is the most
effective and important basis for political youth action and empowerment.
By youth collective I mean any kind of youth group or organisation, being it formal or informal,
legal or not, professional or volunteer, revolutionary or reformist, composed by two or more
young people (of any age), that shares any common identity or objective. From this definition,
of course, I exclude those youth agglomerations that do not necessarily share any identity or
objective. Youth collectives are the baseline for what I call youth led movement; however,
there are few, definitions for youth led movement. If we apply social movement theories, it is
easy to get to misleading conclusions that there is no such thing as a youth led movement.
Both my understanding and my experience tell me to define it through the empirical
observation of the phenomenon, rather than through social movement theories. Through the
realisation of such impressive social phenomenon, its presence becomes undeniable and
oblivious, even though still not very much recognised, especially in the field of development.
There is a key question to help understand the phenomenon: what does the youth movement
seek to achieve? And the answer may be very tricky. Two similar, but different, things should
be distinguished: a pro youth movement and a youth led movement. The first one is composed
by any (young or not) person or any (youth or not) organisation that share the common
objective of fighting for pro youth policies and for youth rights, while the second one is
composed by young people (as individuals) and youth collectives (groups and organisations).
The youth led movement is diverse in its own essence; its nature and political agenda is
equally diverse, but also complementary; and it is somehow engaged in a bigger claim for
change from local to global societies (Cordeiro 2005). The constituency of the youth led
movement has its basis on both young activists and, mainly, youth collectives. The main
aspect to differ a bunch of youth collectives and the youth led movement is the political aspect
of it; the more politicised the agenda of youth collectives is and the more open to society they
also are, the more part of the youth led movement they are perceived to be.
Rui Mesquita Cordeiro (9553) ⑤
How does this youth led movement fit into civil society? Civil society represents the vast scope
of thinking in relation to the relationship between state and society. My definition of civil
society is an adaptation of White’s (1994) definition iii
: civil society is an intermediate
associational realm between private and public interest, populated by organisations which are
separate from the state, the market, the family and individuals, with autonomy and are formed
voluntarily by members of society to protect or extend their interests or values. In between
the private and the public interest, there is a whole spectrum of half private/public interest,
composed by many groups of interest and organisations. On the one hand, the only pure
private interest is the interest of the individual himself/herself; while on the hand, the closest
to a real public sphere in the contemporary society is the state. However, a deeper
comprehension about the topic is vital, because civil society is a multi-dimensional concept.
Kees Biekart (1999) shows the material, the organisational and the ideological dimensions of
civil society; in addition, he differs economical society (inhabited by private for profit ventures)
from civil society and draws the boundaries of the relationship between the sate and civil
society through the called political society (Biekart 1999). The two main actors within civil
society are social movements and non-governmental organisations (NGO).
Within civil society, social movements are “collective challenges, based on common purposes
and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities” (Tarrow
1998). From a social movement literature perspective, the youth led movement does not
perform as a social movement in a constant flow; nevertheless, which movement actually
does? The life circle of social movements is very fluid and dynamic, which helps it to be
constantly renewed and reinvented. In this paper, the reader should not mix up the ideas of
social movement and youth led movement. To simplify, the youth led movement can behave
as a social movement, accordingly to context specific situations, but it is not compulsorily
characterised as such in its fundamental nature.
Yet still, NGO is at least a vague term that needs to the always better explained. Academically,
its broadness is also accepted and taken into consideration; therefore, there is a need to
narrow the concept in sub-divisions of NGOs. In the 1990s, the academic fever lied on the
strongly economical “third sector” explanation of the phenomenon (Salomon 1994), a very
broad and contested concept. Usually, the term brings about ideas of being private
organisations, therefore non-governmental; in addition, they do not seek for profit, being
therefore non-profit organisations, what differ them from private corporations. Still another
refinement, the term Civil Society Organisations (or CSO) is also largely applied. By CSOs,
some aid agencies mean those NGOs concerned with influencing public policies, excluding
those other ones concerned with service delivery (Biekart 1999 p.39). Another key aspect
while looking at NGOs is in terms of ownership; more popular organisation, like membership,
community and grassroots organisations, are significantly more accountable to their
constituency than others NGOs (ibid.). NGOs also differ in their agenda and context, thus it is
always useful to add adjectives to quality what kind of NGO you are referring to; for instance,
northern NGOs are different from southern NGOs, donor NGOs differ from recipient NGOs, just
like advocacy NGOs are dissimilar to their service delivery counterparts.
To illustrate the relationship between civil society and the youth, let us look at some different
kinds of NGOs (southern NGOs, donor NGOs and youth led NGOs) and their approach towards
the youth. The indicators I will use are in relation to their intervention, organisation,
accountability, power relation and level of influence; all of this based upon my personal
experience as a development practitioner and young activist from within the youth led
movement in the north-eastern region of Brazil between 1995 and 2005
[table 2]
.
Local NGO Donors NGO Youth Led NGO
Definition
Here we refer to local based
NGOs, usually dependent on
external resources, dealing
with youth issues in their
political agenda.
Here we refer to NGOs which
fund projects of local NGOs in
relation to youth issues. They
are usually based in the
northern developed
hemisphere; although, the
number of local donor NGOs is
slowly growing in Brazil.
Here we refer to youth
collectives which opt for a
legal and official status to
operate and to be able to
receive funds for their projects
and agenda.
Intervention
(Korten 1987)
Oriented either for service
delivery or for lobbying. In the
first case, they are usually
targeting young people to
deliver education, health of
capabilities for employment.
In the second one, they are
usually seeking and lobbying
for the creation or the
implementation of youth
rights and citizenship. Most of
these NGOs in northeast Brazil
do both things in their youth
projects.
Funding is usually given to
local NGO for them to achieve
and delivery projects for the
youth, establishing an vertical
aid chain (Biekart 1999).
Rarely they establish direct
partnership with the youth,
but there are initiatives
(Tancredi 2005).
Most of them address a
diverse spectrum of issues,
and only few of them address
youth issues alone. Even
though, they easily establish
real horizontal partnerships
with other youth collectives.
Organisation
(Fowler 2002)
Usually dependent of strong
leadership and vertical
relationships with donors.
Undoubtedly, they try to
overcome traditional forms of
market-like organisation, but
frequently they fall in the trap
of inefficiency and internal
crises.
Many of them are very
traditional and vertical, but
with room for innovation,
especially among donors less
dependent of the market.
Those constituted with market
money tend to be more
business-like.
Usually they are very
horizontal and practitioners of
collective leadership, being
very similar to membership
organisations. However,
sometimes this generates a
lack of practical needed
leadership. There is a
tendency of internal tension
when the initial leaders
become older in relation to the
other members.
Accountability
(Edwards and
Hulme 1995)
Typically, they are more
accountable upwards, to their
grant makers than inwards or
downwards, to their
constituency.
Like the local NGOs, they are
also mostly accountable
upwards, to their funders,
especially northern
governments.
There is a tendency of being
more inwards accountable,
rather them up or downwards,
especially because when they
do, they manage very small
budgets.
Power Relation
(Lukes 1974;
Foucault 1975)
They exercise some power
relations towards the youth,
especially to young people as
individuals in the case of
service delivery local NGOs.
Either conflicts or dependence
are easily created in such
cases. In the case of lobbying
local NGOs, the power relation
is different, less incisive, but
still few open space of the
youth to voice their need.
Commonly adults, experts on
youth issues, set the agenda
for the youth.
Indirect via local NGOs, but
they are typically some open
for youth consultation to
better organise their program;
rarely does it go beyond
consultation towards real
participation.
When youth led NGOs deal
with youth issues, they are
generally establishing more
horizontal power relation, by
the natural identification
process that happens between
them and the targeted young
people.
Influence in
Society
Their level of influence is very
variable, depending on the
networks on which these local
NGOs operate. Those working
with lobbying are in some
advantage.
Very high, not only because
they concentrate economical
power, but especially because
they are able to assemble
public opinion leaders as staff
members or as consultants.
Still very low, due to the lack
of recognition in society. The
natural way to achieve some
influence is via mobilisations
and manifestations.
Drawing from this simple analysis, at least two elements seem to be weak in this interaction
between NGO actors and the youth within civil society, the level and the quality of youth
participation in NGOs and the question of the youth empowerment itself. As crucial elements,
they are going to be especially analysed below, in order to understand the challenge, so
needed for the development of our local and global societies.
Rui Mesquita Cordeiro (9553) ⑦
Challenges of Youth Participation and Empowerment in Society
Participation and empowerment are two close concepts, once participation is ultimately about
decision making and for that empowerment is needed. Even being related, there is no causality
between one and another. On the one hand participation is understood as both means and
ends for the people to directly participate in political, economical or social decisions in issues
that affect their life; on the other hand empowerment is meant as the ability of individuals,
groups and organisations of achieving some autonomy and independence, as well as “the
structural conditions which affect the allocations of power in a society and give access to its
resources” (Breton 1994). For civil society, empowerment is also seen as complementary to
empowerment, as a way to encourage people to assume their rights and to strengthen popular
organisations, trough cognitive, psychological, political and economical dimensions (Molyneux
and Lazar 2003).
The challenge for the youth and its relationships within society lies on the connection between
both, as foreseen by Sherry Arnstein (1969), when she clearly defines participation as citizen
power; furthermore she differentiates the participation in a qualitative scale, the ladder of
citizen participation (ibid.)
[graphic 2]
.
GRAPHIC 2 – The ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein 1969)
This quality of participation/empowerment is today really important for the youth in society,
due to the low quality of participation and empowerment, as observed in table 2 before. Non-
participation and tokenism are still present on this relationship between youth and civil
society; therefore, this initial idea of the ladder evolved into a new ladder, of youth
participation, by Roger Hart
[graphic 3]
The current level of interaction between NGOs and the youth is, with few exceptions, still
around the steps four, five and six of the latest ladder. Both ladders are important tools to
analyse the qualitative level of participation and empowerment; however, they may lead the
reader to the misleading perception that to achieve higher levels of participation it is needed to
climb the entire ladder up, step by step from the bottom to the top in a causality function,
what may not be necessarily accurate. As any other social process, participation and
empowerment are flexible and unpredicted processes, and factors like political will, power
relation and awareness are essentials to determine the movements of the quality of
empowerment and participation.
Anyhow, the challenge is to achieve higher levels of citizen’s control and youth initiated
initiatives sharing decision with adults, for a more equitable relation between youth and society.
For that, we propose more awareness about the youth internal reality and associativism, by
civil society organisations; moreover, we also suggest more awareness by the youth about the
relationships among themselves and the rest of civil society, especially about their political role
in society, as they might perceive it. From more awareness, inter-generational partnerships (or
conflicts) may result, depending on how problem is perceived and addressed by the different
actors, with their different powers. With more empowerment, the youth will be more able to
change the society in the way they perceive it, finding its place in the difficult paths of
development.
Conflictive Governance
http://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/pensamentorealidade/article/view/16432
PDF: http://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/pensamentorealidade/article/view/16432/12354
Cordeiro, Rui Mesquita. (2013). “Conflictive Governance: The disappearing boundaries of local and global governance for development and the case of Mexico and EZLN“. São Paulo: Revista Pensamento e Realidade (PUC-SP), v.28 (2).
_______________________
The Hague, 24/Apr/2006 | By Rui Mesquita Cordeiro | rui@cidadania.org.br
Introduction
In a first look, the link between governance and conflict may be a little bit diffuse, once that, in the strict sense of its Greek root, governance is understood as the way people govern themselves[1], and by conflict it is meant a state of hostility between two parties for perceived or real incompatible interests[2]; however, they have an umbilical connection, in the sense that governance may be defined as conflict management itself. A deeper comprehension of both concepts is essential to better understand their conceptual linkages and their practical implications. So be it and let us explore some ideas on governance, on conflict and on governance as conflict management.
Governance and Conflict
Governance
More than simply about how people govern themselves, governance today is a “fashionable” (Weiss 2000) but very important concept, that is usually being used to assure power control by some who historically have accumulated such power. In relation to governance and power, the World Bank and the Commission of the European Communities define:
“Governance is the way power is exercised in managing a country’s economic and social resources for development”.
(World Bank 1994)
“The use of political authority and exercise of control over a society and the management of its resources for social and economical development”.
(World Bank 1992)(Landell-Mills and Serageldin 1991)
“Rules, processes and behaviours that affect the way in which powers are exercised, particularly as regards openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence”.
(Commission of the European Communities 2001)
The World Bank uses a good and clear definition, but restricted to economical power and to national politics, missing other kinds of powers, specially the international powers of inter-state relations. The Commission of the European Communities adds more open aspects, like processes and behaviours, and opens space for civil society participation, broadening its meaning[3].
In another perspective, governance is a “continuum of both state and societal governance (government and civil society nexus)”[4]. Other definitions go from local to global spheres of governance, not only limited to economics and politics. Thomas Weiss (Weiss 2000), highlight some of them:
For James Rosenau, “whether at the grassroots or global levels, it encompasses the activities of governments, but it also includes the many other channels through which “commands” flow in the form of goals framed, directives issued, and policies pursued”.
(ibid.:796)
For the Commission on Global Governance, “it is the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, manage their common affairs”.
(ibid.:795-796)
One of the most recent uses of governance is to define what is called Good Governance, a term defined by the World Bank and today vastly used as a way to combat corruption in developing countries’ governments. In sum, good governance is an accountable, efficient, lawful, representative and transparent governance. According to the World Bank, a country with good governance observes:
· The universal protection of human rights.
· The rule of law, where laws are implemented in a non-discriminatory manner.
· Freedom of information and expression.
· An efficient, impartial, and effective judicial system.
· Transparent public agencies and official decision making.
· Accountability for decisions made about public issues and resources by public officials.
· Devolution of resources and decision-making power.
· Participation and inclusion of all citizens in debating public policies and choices.
· Fostering competitive markets and service delivery mechanisms.
In my perception, governance’s practice, rather then being about how people govern themselves, is being about how some people govern other people in order to defend their self-interests. These interests, as seen at the explanation on good governance, are usually economical, but not only restricted to it. In this sense, its practice has been a distortion of its original Greek root. For such, it is very important to understand what people mean by governance, in order to not loosing the track of its original meaning.
Conflict
What about conflict, more then just a state of hostility between two parties for perceived or real incompatible interests? A wide range of definitions for conflict is discussed in the literature. On the one hand, more economical explanations point to greed and grievance as the main root causes for conflicts (Murshed 2002)(Collier and Hoeffler 2004), while on the other hand, more sociological explanations point to a variety of context specific social and economical factors. David Moore (Moore 2004), for instance, defines conflict as associated with strongly negative feelings that may be experienced within a person, within a group or between groups; therefore, a conflict may even happen within an individual, and not only between parties. Furthermore, Moore proposes three different approaches to analyse and deal with conflicts: maximising conflict, minimising conflict and acknowledging and transforming conflict. The first one due for adversarial dispute resolution, while the second one for non-adversarial dispute resolution, assuming the use of mediation. His third approach, acknowledging and transforming a conflict, is for him the optimal approach, where specific disputes are merely symptoms of more general conflict or when there is conflict but no dispute.
For a deeper understanding of the conflict paradigms within social sciences, I come up with this summary matrix, based on the analysis of Mohamed Salih (Salih 1993)[5]:
|
Social Sciences’ Schools |
Main characteristics related to Conflict |
|
Structural Functionalism |
· From what by what (Habermas 1972) called structure of interests. · Related to the structures which make up society and allows it to function as a system (macro-level theory). · The causal agent is the social system and the causal mechanism is the “needs” or “functional requisites” of that system. · Evolutionary rather than revolutionary change is the order of social structures. |
|
Marxism |
· Conflict is produced by contradictions inherent in social structures (relations of production). · Historical materialism: –Conflict origin at the alienation from one’s own product due to exploitation. –Conflict is essential for change to happen. –In favour of class struggle and social revolution. · Neo-Marxism: –Conflict origin at inequitable access to scarce goods and services. –Conflicts arise not only from material reasons, but also from religion, culture, ethnicity, values and so forth. –Mass-culture and the media with a new important role for ideas and values influence. –Sceptical about radical and revolutionary change – institutionalised politics rather than revolutionary methods. |
|
Rational Choice Theory |
· Conflict starts at the self-interested individuals. · Rational individuals are purposive and goal-oriented actors (micro-level theory). · Individuals evaluate behavioural options in light of their costs and benefits. · Quantitative methods of analysis are commonly used to understand conflicts. |
The matrix gives us a visual explanation of the different social sciences schools, but further an analytical framework is necessary for a complete analysis on conflict and governance. For that, let us explore Kriesberg’s and Schlee’s observations.
For Louis Kriesberg (Kriesberg 2002), conflict analysis takes into account three main principal elements: the involved parties, the incompatible goals and the means of dispute. On his first element, the parties (or the adversaries), it is important to look at their degree of organisation, institutional structure and access to resources; applicable to all kinds of social structures, like governments, unions, social movements, classes and so forth. The second element of analysis, the goals, is very important to understand and solve conflicts. A careful analysis of the adversaries’ goals is very important to find out whether the perceived incompatible goals are really incompatible; therefore, some conflicts tend to be more consensual, while others more dissensual. An analysis of the goals may expose the significance of the conflict. The third element of analysis is the means on which the conflict is addressed. In this sense, the author describes the means as: violent conflicts, non-violent conflicts and conflicts under rules, like elections, for instance; the last one is not considered as a social conflict, due to its ruled nature. More then a simple definition, Kriesberg gives us an important analytical model toward conflicts analysis.
Guenther Schlee (Schlee 2004) looks forward understanding the identities involved in conflicts that make people to take their own side in the disputes. He differ at least two main reasons for taking sides: self or group identification with each other in the one hand, and advantages one could gain on the other. Identity in relation to social structures and their cognitive representations is decisive for taking side, together with process of inclusion and exclusion and economical circumstances limiting group sizes. His anthropological analysis challenges the rational choice theory and is a very useful to understand who is involved and why, in each part of the conflict, complementing Kriesberg’s analytical framework.
Both Kriesberg and Schlee models, when combined, may be of great importance of analysis. Later on this paper, I will analyse a Mexican case study in the light of Kriesberg’s and Schlee’s models.
Governance as conflict management
For Willian Zartman (Zartman 1997), governance is conflict management. Moreover, he highlights that governing a country is not only about protecting it against external threats; it is also a continual effort the handle the ordinary conflict among groups and their demands within the political life of a nation. Managing society’s demands is government’s job, but it is very hard for the government alone to manage conflicts; therefore, Zartman says there a need for national consensus on values that foster both development and conflict management, just like there is also a need for normative codes for conflict management. Regime failure or government inability to manage conflicts on sustained basis may lead a country to obdurate repression or a re-institutionalisation and regime restructuring.
Carlos Sojo (Sojo 2003) adds to Zartman while reflecting on governance as the relationship between rulers and people, between citizens and institutions, especially in democracies, because in authoritarian governance rules are clearer and control is exerted by violence or the threat of it. Conflicts between the state and the citizens may generate social conflict, revolutions, and the creation of liberation movements. Furthermore, it may generate a situation of state failure or even state collapse, as a result of society suffering from exclusion, injustices and inequity.
The importance of the linkage, by both Zartman and Sojo is due to the fact that within a state, especially democratic states with freedom of association and expression, the population is usually, if not always, very diverse and heterogeneous, in terms of social, political and economical interests and conditions. Therefore, it is important to realise that the government should operate for everyone, taking into account the diversity and the power share among the various people and institutions. The seeking for national consensus is usually very hard, what may generate internal conflicts of different types. One of the government’s main roles is undoubtedly the mediation role to accommodate the interests of all, taking into account possible situation of exclusion, injustices and inequity that should be addressed. Here I would like to bring about the issue of decentralisation and autonomy, especially for big countries, as a possible powerful mean of bringing efficiency to such kind of conflict management by the state, in more local than national instances of government. Context specifically, decentralisation and autonomy (local governance), together with national and international cooperation and solidarity (global governance) may facilitate a lot this whole process of governance as conflict management.
The Role of Local and Global Governance
The linkage between local and global governance should be observed very carefully. Many strands there are in this field, some tend to privilege more the need for global governance, while other the need to for local governance. I defend the idea of some balance between both, to foster, as said before, decentralisation, autonomy, cooperation and solidarity, but before arguing deeper the reasons behind my position, let us explore a little bit more of these ideas, and see the arguments for both sides of this dialog.
A need for global governance
The main arguments behind the need for more global governance come especially, but not only, from the today’s developed countries thinking. Scholars like Sebastian Mallaby (Mallaby 2002) and Thomas Weiss (Weiss 2000) argue that due to a certain governance deficit and authoritarianism in some developing countries, global governance institutions are needed to assure development to the whole planet. On the one hand, Mallaby refers to the eminent position of the United States as a benevolent world power and the failure of multilateral policies to avoid state failure, like foreign aid and nation-building efforts, for instance. On the other hand, Weiss says that democratisation in the developing countries was meant to build democratic institutions to manage conflicts; however, democracy opened the door wide for new types of conflicts, most of them intra-state ones, caused by nationalism, ethnicity, religion and resources. He continues arguing on the proliferation of non-state actors challenge the state monopoly over governing its territory and people, like the UN system, the international economical institutions (defending free-markets and trade as a way to avoid inter-state conflicts), international NGOs, and even trans-national corporations and the global media.
Still in the field of global governance, Francis Fukuyama (Fukuyama 2004) makes some conservative links between global and national governance, saying that global governance can only be built on what happens at the national level, and that the failed state has become the Achilles heel of the emerging international community. Moreover, he proposes that governance and conflict management link is prerequisite for state building in today’s world, where the only serious source of legitimacy is democracy. In conclusion he highlights that to be accountable and strong, the national level must intersect with the efforts ordinary people make in their own communities. Fukuyama also defends the idea of the USA as benevolent power to help democratise and develop the world, being more sceptical about multi-lateral efforts for global governance.
In the end, the discourse of the need for global governance is very vast and even contradictory. Apart of that, it is factual that globalisation (economical and non-economical) came to stay, and that each day more there is a need for organising the world through some basic rules, like human rights, for instance. This need helps to evidence all economical inequalities and cultural differences between countries, generating some new kind of conflicts, therefore. Unfortunately, since the 1940s the United Nations tries to address the issue of peace, development and global governance through multilateral ways, but it has always been very much constrained by the international power structure architecture, firstly of the Cold War, lately of unilateralism tendencies. But there are still attempt to discuss ideas on global governance based in more equality of power and cooperation among nations for a united and peaceful world[6].
A need for local governance
(Cordeiro 2006):04
It is on the local space where people are born, live and die; therefore, it is important to keep as much as possible power decision on decentralised local bases, closer and more accessible to the people. Unfortunately, this is not the current world picture. In this sense, there is a risk in developing global governance without developing and empowering local governance. Under the name of modernity, local cultures and local power is getting weaker everyday. Dilip Gaonkar (Gaonkar 2001) defends the idea that there is no single modernity, but many; that modernity is not new, but old and familiar; and that it is incomplete and necessary. He opens space to think on alternative local modernities, because depending on how one interprets the world, different and alternative modernities can emerge, making local-global flow at least at the same influence level of the global-local flow, making the global a little bit local, just like to local a little bit global.
Most scholars here come from the developing countries, defending more autonomy and more south-south cooperation. Since the 1970s, with Andre Gunder Frank and his formulations on the dependency theory, other more recent scholars are researching about the issue in various parts of the worls, like Raquel Rolnik and Renato Cymbalista (Rolnik and Cymbalista 2004) about Brazil, Jaap W. de Visser (Visser 2005) about South Africa and Reema Nanavaty (Nanavaty 2005) about India. Furthermore, many policy analyses are also being elaborated, like the ones by Boaventura de Souza Santos (Santos 2003, 2006) and many others.
Altogether, local governance has to do with decentralisation of social, political and economical power. The linkage among the local and the global governance will be very challenging from now onwards, because one can have different approaches to them. An important concept to differentiate these approaches is the concept of inclusiveness. From one standpoint, of those who defend stronger global governance in detriment of the local one, local realities need to adapt to the global reality in order to be included in the new global order. From another perspective, of those more favour of local empowerment, certainly the global reality is the one which should adapt to the diversity of the local realities; organicity is an important characteristic for the global governance in this view. The lack of organicity by global governance institutions will much probably provoke some new kinds of conflicts from the local to the global level. But where does finish the local and start the global?
The disappearing boundaries
With a growing global world claming for local empowerment and autonomy, it is each day more complex to realise the boundaries between local and global conflicts. For Kumar Rupersinghe (Rupersinghe 1992) history and wars are not ending after the end of the Cold War; otherwise, they are changing. A series of arguments is present by him to justify his claim, like, for instance, the new international division of labour and inequality, internal problems within the transition to capitalism, capitalism not guaranteeing democracy, the western modernisation model cannot easily be replicated in some countries, consumerism creates expectations which cannot be fulfilled, and free market changing property relations in many countries and communities. In today’s complex world, single categorisation of conflicts in East/West, North/South, intra-state or inter-state is no longer enough. Ideology, governance, ethnicity, environment and identity play today a much stronger role than in the Cold War period. It is impossible to attribute one conflict one single cause or one single categorisation. Many local conflicts, like the two recent youth riots in Paris in 2005 and 2006, were based in local fields, but due to much broader sceneries and reasons, like international migration and ethnicity (the 2005 one), or employment and free labour markets (the 2006 one). Rupersinghe still highlights the role of states and international institutions about conflict management, but he lacks further analysis on the role of local governments to prevent and manage conflicts. His main claim is that history goes on, together with new conflicts, in blurred boundaries and full of new paradigms. His final question is on how we are going to deal with conflict prevention and transformation. He foresees to paths, an increasing military action, or the promotion of non-violent action; the first one is unfortunately prevailing.
My analysis points to the fact that the more power is concentrated in global government institutions or in very powerful countries, the more use of military action will happen. The reason behind is simple because they concentrate military power and therefore in complex situation, it is the easiest way to quickly try to solve some localised conflicts. On the contrary, the more power is decentralised, the less military power will be at the hands of few, therefore, it may imply in more mediation and prevention, rather than intervention or resolution.
Here comes the necessary need to balance the equation of power share between global and local institutions, meaning here by local institutions municipalities, local governments, civil society, small business, and so forth. On the one hand, local governance can be able to best understand the local realities, and give more context specific solution to the possible conflicts. On the other hand, global governance can foster cooperation and solidarity among the local realities, and it can also act in case of local governance abuse. In my own view, there is a role for both local and global governance, but the local one is not as fashionable as the global one, at this situation of terrorism toward the developed countries and of poverty and inequality toward the developing countries.
Chiapas, Mexico, a Case Study
To illustrate this essay, let us have a close look to the case of the Mexican province of Chiapas, where the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (or just EZLN[7]) has been fighting for more autonomy and power share with the Mexican national government from 1994 to the date. For a qualitative analysis, we will use here an analytical framework developed especially for this case study, using a mix of Kriesberg’s, Schlee’s and Rupersinghe’s models of analysis. The main points of analysis are:
· The involved parties
· The incompatible goals
· The means of dispute
· The identity of Mexican people with the conflict
· The characterisation of the conflict
The main source of reference to this case study is James F. Rochlin (Rochlin 2003a, 2003b), plus some web sources, like the official Zapatista website[8].
Chiapas is one of the poorest Mexican states. In the extreme south of the country, bordering Guatemala, it was historically excluded from Mexico progress since independence from Spain between 1810 and 1827. Many reasons are attributed to this fact, three of them, according to Rochlin (2003a) are: the distance to the USA boarder; the lack of railway integration with other parts of Mexico, a country well served by railways serving its productive industry; and the hacienda farming model in the countryside, a feudal-like mean of production and land concentration. Another important fact is the reminiscent indigenous population, bigger in the south, where Chiapas is; making the indigenous southern states more discriminated than the Spanish northern ones. The whole context led the Mexican Revolution of 1910, led by Emiliamo Zapata, against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. Zapata was the general of an army that formed in Morelos, the Liberation Army of the South[9]. After the 1910 Revolution, Zapata’s ideas concerning to land reforms became real polices through the hands of the consecutive elected governments, what made him a national hero.
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Poster of Zapata, saying the two first lines: “My land and liberty; Civil War”[10] |
Map of Mexico. The number 5 stands for the state of Chiapas. |
In the Mexico of the 1990s, government was rolling back many of the conquests of Emiliano Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, following the pro free-markets structural adjustments of the negotiated with Mexico by the international financial institutions, due to the huge debt that the government accumulated in the previous decades, hurling Mexico in a deep economical crisis, the Tequila Crisis. As a solution for the crisis, the government signed with the USA and Canada the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), opening Mexican boarder for American and Canadian investment searching cheap labour force.
The EZLN bolted onto the international stage on the 1 January 1994, in the same day NAFTA commenced. It was a clear response to the neoliberal government polices, which were affecting the life of many people in the local southern communities. The EZLN was not a Marxist guerrilla group, as others already in place in Mexico, like the Popular Revolutionary Army (or simple EPR[11]), based in the states of Guerrero, but operating in also in Oaxaca, Chiapas and others. The EZLN initially aimed to overthrown the government, but it was much more focused in guaranteeing the indigenous rights and autonomy in Chiapas.
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The flag of the EZLN |
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Translation from Spanish:
“You are in Zapatista rebel territory. Here the people give the orders and the government obeys.”
“North zone Good Govern Directive It’s forbidden: guns, drugs, alcohol, and illegal wood trade No to the destruction of nature” |
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Under this context, let us apply our analytical model to understand the situation and the conflict. The involved parties are the EZLN and the Mexican government. In terms of organisation, the Mexican government is by far much more organised, once it controls the army, the application of the laws and it has the legitimacy to the popular vote to be in power. The EZLN, otherwise, is not as institutionalised as its adversary, but still has some level degree of organisation, especially in terms of communication capacity and intellectual background. In terms of institutional structure and access to resources, the Mexican government again win the conflict by itself. In a first look, the Mexican government would have no problem to solve the problem. From February 1995 and August 1996 a strong loss by the EZLN happened, due to armed conflicts with the army. That increased EZLN’s popular support in Chiapas, especially among the indigenous population. Rapidly, this popular support spread out not only around Mexico, but around the world; therefore, the government lost flexibility due to the visibility the conflict obtained nationally and internationally.
The goals of each party were perceived as incompatible, but soon they were aim of a consensual agreement. The EZLN main objective was to guarantee some autonomy for the indigenous population in Chiapas, through the formation of several autonomous municipalities, independent of the Mexican government, called “Juntas”, implementing communitarian food-producing programs, health and school systems, supported in part by NGOs (Wikipedia 2006). The government’s main goal was basically to maintain the control of its territory and population, and to fight the guerrilla groups, as the EZLN was declared by the government. They constitute pretty incompatible interests if we think in terms of lack of local empowerment, but they could be at least less incompatible if we think in terms of fostering decentralisation and autonomy, without loosing cooperation and solidarity. In 1994President Carlos Salinas de Gortari offered a cease-fire agreement and opened dialog with the EZLN, which three years latter culminated with the San Andrés agreement, modifying the national constitution in order to grant special rights, including autonomy, to indigenous people; however it was not carried out by President Ernesto Zedillo (ibid.), bringing the conflict to rise again. In 2001, with President Vicente Fox, new achievements were done, through dialogue between the EZLN and the Mexican National Congress, according to Rochlin, with the government using the finest art of cooptation. According to the Zapatistas communications, it seems that from dissensual, the conflictive goals slowly turn into consensual:
(Wikipedia 2006)
The means of dispute of this conflict had very different moments. At the beginning the use of violent repression by the government and a declaration of war against the Mexican Federal Army by the EZLN marked a bloody and violent start of conflict. However, right after the government opened for dialog, moments of dialog, mixed with brick of new conflicts were present for almost seven years. A visible characteristic is that the more political achievement by the EZLN the less conflict there was; while the more prone to negotiation and dialogue the government was, the less conflict happened; a direct effect of governance as conflict management.
In terms of popular identity to the cause, the EZLN was always ahead of the government. The use of Zapata, a national hero, in its own name helped considerably, due to its cognitive representation. But also the all the communication strategy and the agenda of local empowerment and local power share was always very much accepted by the local populations. For Rochlin, the EZLN communication strategy trough the internet was fundamental to set international support to the movement, including financial support by some NGOs. The EZLN’s website is still on the air at http://www.ezln.org.mx/. The Mexican political party PRI was in power since the beginning of the 1930s, until the year 2000, when the candidate Vicente Fox (from PAN political Party) promised to support the EZLN is elected, and he became the first oppositional president in Mexico after almost seventy years of PRI in power. That shows a little of the side population took in the conflict.
Finally, in relation to the characterisation of the conflict it is very clear the multidimensionality of it, confirming Rupersinghe. The conflict very much a fight for local autonomy and governance, but remarkably inserted in a global context of fight against globalisation and neoliberalism. The begun of the EZLN, in the same day of the NAFTA came into enforcement, the use of internet for the movement communiqués, and the international support and visibility it achieved makes it something that started at the local level, with a global agenda. It is a clear prove that the local can exercise influence at the global by seeking for autonomy and decentralisation of power. The ideology of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the local governance seek, the ethnicity issue of the indigenous population, the respect for the environment are all other features that make this conflict a modern one, impossible to fit in a single category and with multiple roots and consequences.
Altogether, the case study of Chiapas shows us the new complexity of the new conflicts and the role a government may play to better manage a conflict within its boarder, which in truth has international roots and implications. Openness to the external world and knowledge of the internal history and purpose seems to be fundamental for both parties of this conflict. The EZLN was at the beginning much more aware of it internal and external situation, and fought a battle knowing exactly what, how and why to do it; by, with and against whom; with very clear objectives and aware of what kind of power share they needed for their own meaning.
Conclusions
The linkages between governance and conflict management become cleared after the ups and downs of the Chiapas case for more autonomy and decentralisation. In my understanding the glue to the linkage lies on power structures and the way power is shared and exercised in a given society. The more horizontal, the less prone to violent conflict the society may become. That reflects not only in terms of a sociological analysis, but even in more economical approaches as well, where the less greed, the less grievance there is. Local alternatives should be more listened and more addressed. This could cause a new kind of revolution, different but complementary to the current globalization process, a localisation revolution, where the local is given the necessary power to the exercise influence to the global. The hope in this conclusion goes to the realisation that diversity should be respected by governments all around the world and less violent means of dealing to conflict should be prioritised. But whether this is realist enough or not is a question for history to answer.
[1] 4117 ISS course’s class notes and Oxford Genie Dictionary: “governance: the activity of governing a country or controlling a company or an organization; the way in which a country is governed or a company or institution is controlled”.
[2] 4117 ISS course’s class notes and Salih (1993).
[3] See Good Governance, explained below.
[4] 4117 ISS course’s class notes.
[5] Both Salih (1993), as referenced, and Salih’s class notes in ISS 4217 course.
[6] For more information visit, among others: http://www.worldparliamentgov.net/, http://www.alliance21.org/lille/, http://www.wfm.org/ and http://www.worldsocialforum.org/.
[7] In Spanish: Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN).
[8] Official EZLN’s website: http://www.ezln.org.mx/
[9] In Spanish: Ejército Libertador del Sur.
[10] Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata#The_1910_Revolution (24/April/2006)
[11] In Spanish: Ejército Popular Revolucionario.
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Rochlin, James F. (2003a). Mexico: The Origins, Ideology, and Support Base of the EZLN. In: James F. Rochlin, Vanguard Revolutionaries in Latin America: Peru, Colombia, Mexico. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Pp. 171-213.
Rochlin, James F. (2003b). The EZLN: Concepts of Strategy, Security and Power. In: James F. Rochlin, Vanguard Revolutionaries in Latin America: Peru, Colombia, Mexico. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Pp. 215-252.
Rolnik, Raquel and Renato Cymbalista (2004). Communities and local government : three case studies in São Paulo, Brazil. In: UNRISD programme papers on democracy, governance and human rights, Vol. 2004 (vii). Pp. 15.
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Playing of Markets, Playing with Life
The Hague, 15/Mar/2006 | By Rui Mesquita Cordeiro | rui@cidadania.org.br
Introduction
Throughout the international cleverness
The city is not that bad
Its situation is always more or less
Ones with more and others with less
It never stops, it only grows
Those up going up, those down going down
(…)
And in another sunny day Recife woke up
With the same bad smell of the previous day
(Science, 1994a)
In the middle of the 1990s, a youth activist cultural group from the city of Recife, in the poorest region of Brazil, composed the above song as a way to make people aware of their situation. Awareness is an import issue when you are busy fighting for your survival. The more important extract of this passage is the one stating that, with such an international system, those who have more tend to go up, while those who have less (or have not) tend to keep going down. It reflects the growing indexes of poverty and inequality that followed Brazilian people throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Along with the above situation were the international pro-market reforms implemented by successive governments in many countries around the globe, under the umbrella of the so called Washington Consensus. They tried to tackle poverty and inequality in the long run; however, they helped to increase poverty and inequality in the short run. Unexpectedly, economical crises stirred the world from Latin America to Southeast Asia; therefore, there was a need to change these policies in order to solve the crises. The floor was open for the called Post-Washington Consensus.
This essay will describe the Washington and the Post-Washington Consensus, their differences and similarities, the initial belief in perfect markets and the transformations this belief has suffered, and, finally, their implications to the development policies and the international power structure. Furthermore, it also provokes the question about where the people fit in between the lines of the debate.
The Perfect Market
Shortly after the World War II capitalist western countries started an ideological dispute with the socialist block in the long lasting Cold War. From the 1940s to the 1970s, strong capitalist states were needed for two basic reasons: to recover the European and Japanese destroyed economies and to be well prepared for the threat of a real war against the strong socialist countries. In my own view, these are the main reasons why Keynesianism prevailed as the main theoretical background to support economical policies in the west. Based on the idea of a mixed public and private economy, it was the basis of the western economical growth during the hottest periods of the Cold War. For instance, continuous administrated public deficits in the United States budget funded the recovery of Western Europe through the European Recovery Program (or Marshall Plan, as it was best known). Nonetheless, Keynesianism was not only used for international aid after the War, but also in national economies. According to Yergin, Cran and Stanislaw (2002), John Maynard Keynes started helping the allied governments to plan their wartime economies, and after that his ideas dominated the economy of the western world for decades.
Keynes’ ideas lasted until the decrease of the Cold War, by 1980s, when the menace of real war was slowly being left behind due to profound changes happening in the Soviet Union, like the Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika in June 1987. There was no need anymore for a strong capitalist state; the market itself could perfectly handle the economy by its own internal forces. Yergin and Stanislaw (1998: 14-15) state that:
In the postwar years, Keynes’ theories of government management of the economy appeared unassailable. But half a century later, it’s Keynes who has been toppled and Hayek, the fierce advocate of free-markets, who is preeminent.
Yergin and Stanislaw (ibid.) refer to the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, whose ideas on free-market economy are in direct opposition to Keynesian ideas on mixed economies. For Peters (1999), Hayek defends the idea of market as a spontaneous product of human action, not predicted by human intelligent design. Furthermore, he says that Hayek’s ideas on free-markets emphasis the methodological individualism, the homo economicus notion – based on assumptions of individuality, rationality and self-interest – and the doctrine of spontaneous order. Therefore, the state should leave the economy management to the market forces; forces which are well described by classical economists such as Adam Smith and his notion about the invisible hand of the market. Those concepts on free-market led economies are based in perfect market econometric analytical models that actually never were experienced in practice in the modern world due to government interference in the market.
In the 1980s Hayek’s ideas achieved political power through the hands of Margaret Thatcher (UK[1] Prime Minister, 1979-1990) and Ronald Reagan (USA[2] President, 1981-1989). Both heads of state implemented a series of national policies to reduce the role of the state in their economies. The USA and the UK, being among the most powerful and influential countries in the world, had their national policies driven to many other countries, especially developing ones, through the hands of the WB[3], the IMF[4] and the USA Treasury (Williamson 2002), with notably theoretical support the Chicago School of Economics (Yergin, Cran and Stanislaw, 2002).
The set of international policies oriented by the above institutions was named, by themselves, Structural Adjustment Program, and by others Washington Consensus. It was basically a consensus among these Washington based international financial institutions in order to reform governments everywhere in the planet, aiming to create a national and a global free-market economic system, and to retreat the state from economy matter.
Williamson (2002) summaries this set of policies in ten economic policy instruments, as follows:
(1) Fiscal Deficits: Governments should have fiscal discipline and austerity, not allowing its expenditure to be higher than its income. Williamson alerts about the different viewpoints on how to calculate the deficit, differing in terms of nominal, operational and primary deficit.
(2) Public Expenditure Priorities: If you need to cut your fiscal deficit, you need to establish a public expenditure priority in order to know where to reduce it. He highlights three major expenditure categories: subsidies, education and health, and public investment. Education and health are in higher priority of maintenance, described as “quintessentially proper objects of government expenditure” (ibid:4). Subsides are the first to be cut (helping the free-market logic), even if they are strategic for the country somehow. Public investment is also an aim of the budget cuts, especially if linked to the usually large public sector companies.
(3) Tax Reform: Increased tax revenues are seen as one of the means to avoid budget cuts and to achieve fiscal balance; nevertheless, it has been avoided by USA national policies, being argued by Williamson to be a contradiction in itself.
(4) Interest Rates: There are two main trends here; one says that interest rates should be market-determined; the other says that real interest rates should be positive. Williamson alerts that in times of crisis market-determined interest rates would be extremely high and that “segmented credit markets provide a prime environment for corruption to flourish” (ibid:5).
(5) The Exchange Rate: It should also be market-determined, in competitive equilibrium with the interests of the exporters and the importers of the country. This is one of the most important points of the Structural Adjustment stabilization policy (Toye 1994 and Williamson 2002), due to its importance to export oriented policies.
(6) Trade Policy: Market-oriented exchange rate and trade policy are essential elements for an export oriented economy. National markets should be open at the maximum possible for global trade improvement.
(7) Foreign Direct Investment: It is seen as a way to attract capital to the country’s economy, directly contributing to generate growth and know-how, for both the internal market and the exports.
(8) Privatization: Williamson says that “the main rationale for privatization is the belief that private industry is managed more efficiently than state enterprises”. But undoubtedly, free-market logic needs free competition and consequently the government out of the way; then, privatisation is a natural way to make it happen.
(9) Deregulation: The legal economic system of a country should allow easy mechanisms for creating and closing business and trade. It is, then, another important element in the argumentation for more market competition.
(10) Property Rights: Rights toward property security must be improved through legal systems that guarantee similar standards of property right as those observed in North America, including intellectual rights and patents.
Altogether, these are policies dealing with fiscal austerity, monetary stabilisation, deregulation of investment, trade and finance, and property rights guarantees; they were expected to facilitate markets to operate without government interference, in a search for a belief: a perfect market model to operate and generate economic growth.
The Imperfect Market
The 1990s was the decade of the Structural Adjustment Programs in most of the developing world in order to make free-market perfect model a global reality. You can also call it the decade of globalisation, especially when the information and communication technology issue is added. And this is not all; the 1990s is also known by a number of economic crises worldwide, remarkably in Mexico in 1995, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia in 1997, Russia and Brazil in 1999 and Argentina in 2001. What have these countries in common? All of them were involved in negotiations with either the IMF or/and the WB, and their Consensus, along the decade.
The 1997 Southeast Asia crisis brought a tremendous impact for the Washington’s policies. For both Stiglitz (2000) and the IMF (1999) these Asian countries were experiencing several decades of constant improvements in income, health and poverty reduction. This is generally explained by many due to the fact of their Developmental State economies and policies, meaning a good level of mixed public and private economic system in each country (Woo-Cumings, 1999). On the one hand, the IMF (1999:1) states that the crisis was due to “weaknesses in financial systems and, to a lesser extent, governance”. On the other hand, Stiglitz (2000:1) highlights that “in the early ’90s, East Asian countries had liberalized their financial and capital markets–not because they needed to attract more funds (savings rates were already 30 percent or more) but because of international pressure, including some from the U.S. Treasury Department”, and that “these changes provoked a flood of short-term capital” in their economies. Precisely this volatility of short-term capital flow, in and out, provoked a crisis on the currency exchange rate of these countries, throwing them in their first economic recession in decades.
The orthodoxy of the free-market belief in the Washington Consensus policies led to a crisis caused by the same market forces, once believed to be perfect. It revealed that market forces are not as perfect as assumed before by Hayek and the Chicago School of Economics. Once markets can fail, states still have a lot of work to do in order to address the problem.
Fine (2001) explains the policy reform discourse by Joseph Stiglitz in early 1998, in what he calls a move towards a Post-Washington Consensus. He says that Stiglitz, as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist to the World Bank, started to be a critic of the IMF policies, especially in relation to the Southeast Asia crisis. For Fine, Stiglitz acknowledges market imperfections and proposes a broader analytical and policy scope, however, bypassing all criticism and all alternatives by civil society and social scientists. The intellectual foundation of Stiglitz’s proposal lies on the assumption that market imperfections can justify state intervention to rectify them, and that state failure should be no worse than market failure. Stiglitz bases his assumption in an information-theoretic approach to micro and macro economics. He explains that market imperfections are due to lack of information between economic players, especially in the micro-economics field. It is, therefore, a break from neo-classical economists, who worked upon perfect economic models.
In essence, Stiglitz’s proposal emphasises two main points: (1) making markets work better and (2) broadening the goals of development (Stiglitz, 1998). On his first point, he addresses the need for macroeconomic stability (by inflation control, managing the budget deficit and the current account deficit and stabilizing output and promoting long-run growth), the process of financial reform (via transparency, prudential regulation and focus on the microeconomic), fostering competition (by promoting free trade, facilitating privatization, establishing regulation and forging competition policy), governments as a complement to markets (by building human capital and transferring technology), and more effective governance (to increase the productivity of the economy, using market-like mechanisms and making use of government aid agencies, NGOs[5], and community participation for decentralisation purposes). On his second point, he addresses the accomplishment of multiple goals by improving education (human capital), through joint implementation of environmental policy (with variation of action from country to country), by recognising the tradeoff involved in investing in technology (even if it increases inequalities by the loose of jobs), and the tradeoff between protecting the environment and increasing participation (“participation is essential but is not a substitute for expertise” [ibid.: 33]). These points are addressed by Stiglitz are the basis of what he calls a new “emerging consensus, a post-Washington consensus consensus” (ibid.: 34).
Visually, this is the Post-Washington Consensus:
Back to Fine (2001), in a broader analytical context, Stiglitz’s view is reductionist to individual behaviour and to market imperfections based on information imperfections. Furthermore, he says that economics is trying to colonise other social sciences, through concepts such as human capital; the same methodological individualism of the old consensus is used in the latter one, not explaining the division between the economic and the non-economic, for instance, social structures and institutions. In addiction, Fine also says, in a broader policy context, that the Post-Washington Consensus is a way to justify the policy change of the WB and the IMF for extended interventions beyond economic policy. For Fine, there are dangers in this view because, first, of the low consideration to the vast critique towards the old consensus, and second, for the claim and attraction in setting development agenda through the latter consensus.
By comparison, we can clearly see that there are important differences between the two consensuses; nonetheless, these differences are basically on the means to achieve their end. When comparing the ends, there are few, or even no, changes. Basically, both consensuses seek to improve market economies in the first place, as a way to generate economic growth; the first one strict to the market forces, while the second one acknowledges the role of governance, civil society and social safety nets, beyond the marketplace (Jayasuriya and Rosser, 1999). Stiglitz’s critiques toward the old consensus are worthy for the development of economic and political history; however, Williamson’s and Fine’s (and many, many others’) critiques are either commendable, but, unfortunately, they have not been taken into consideration by the policy makers.
Theories, Policies and Power
Theories themselves do not come into policy automatically after written. Just like Hayek’s ideas on free-market economics, theories need to get into power to become a policy. Hayek’s ideas achieved a strong political power through the hands of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, as previously argued. It is crucial to realise that these reforms promoted (and under promotion) by Washington institutions are not necessarily made under voluntarily basis, country by country, bottom-up; otherwise, they were part of a clear top-down theoretical agenda and belief. In order to enforce the theories and beliefs on free-markets into policy they have been largely using their financial power, mainly because more then just policy makers, Washington institutions are power holders.
The IMF likes to go about its business without outsiders asking too many questions. In theory, the fund supports democratic institutions in the nations it assists. In practice, it undermines the democratic process by imposing policies. Officially, of course, the IMF doesn’t “impose” anything. It “negotiates” the conditions for receiving aid. But all the power in the negotiations is on one side–the IMF’s–and the fund rarely allows sufficient time for broad consensus-building or even widespread consultations with either parliaments or civil society. Sometimes the IMF dispenses with the pretense of openness altogether and negotiates secret covenants.
Stiglitz (2000:3)
Stiglitz strongly criticizes IMF practices, but he forgets to reflect upon the practices of the WB, where he had been serving for a while in the past, and its agenda. Both the IMF and the WB are overpowered institutions. Upon this, Fine (2001) argues that Stiglitz’s critiques give no space of analysis for a deep discussion on class and power relations, due to his reductionism of the real world to economic models. Jayasuriya and Rosser (1999:1) state that the “East Asia’s economic collapse has exposed fractures within the orthodoxy” of the first Washington Consensus, generating disputes about the future of the policies between the WB and the IMF.
This dispute, however, is merely a dispute between different approaches among the big fishes of Washington, all believers of a free-market economics; nevertheless, there are plenty more fish in the sea, with different beliefs and theories. Together they could help each other in promoting life betterment to people all around the world, but would suppose share of power, decentralisation and democratisation of these institutions. By share of power, I mean a stop in the financial concentration of power with these few organisations based in a single city and the financial empowerment of developing countries worldwide; one of the ways for that would be the discussion on the debt relief for poor countries. By decentralisation, I mean an internal less technocratic and more bottom-up decision making processes, having the less developed member countries more influence then in the current quotas logics. Finally, by democratisation, I mean more direct people-centred democratic systems within and towards those institutions which tend to concentrate power to affect ultimately people’s life, opening them for other theories and approaches other then these on free-markets. I recognise, however, these are very difficult tasks.
Conclusions (or simply where are the people?)
Power share, decentralisation and democratisation are part of the broader agenda by international social movements for a fairer world. Many authors, such as Brown and Fox (1999), Kaene (2001), and Souza Santos (2003), already explain the rise of an international civil society in a counter-hegemonic movement, bringing alternatives to our international scenario, like for instance, what is known by Global Justice Movement, Anti-Capitalism Movement, Transnational Civil Society Coalitions, Global Civil Society, and the World Social Forum, among others.
These are all people’s movements, realising how much the power holders are playing with the markets in such way they affect directly people’s life everywhere in the world; therefore, they are also playing with life, and not only with markets. The increasing poverty and inequality in Latin America, Africa and Asia is making people aware of their role in this play, and they are seeking more international organisation to be empowered to reclaim a fair and just world for all. In the short-run, there is huge need of respect to people’s life, and not only to investors’ money.
The Post-Washington Consensus is certainly exercising a lot of influence in international development policies, especially these from the WB, but also from the IMF. However, back to Recife, in Brazil, one of the implications of this continuity is described by the same youth activist cultural group in another song representing this early moment of people’s organisation and empowerment in order to defend their life. It goes like this:
I can leave this situation to organise [ourselves – people]
I can leave this situation to disorganise [the system]
(…)
With an empty stomach I can’t sleep
And with it fuller I started to think:
If I organise I can disorganise,
If I disorganise I can organise,
If I organise I can disorganise!
(Science, 1994b)
· Brown, L. David and Fox, Jonathan (1999) “Transnational Civil Society Coalitions and the World Bank: Lessons from Project and Policy Influence Campaigns”. Hauser Center for Nonprofit Org. Working Paper No. 3. http://ssrn.com/abstract=254272 (14/03/2006)
· Fine, Ben (2001) “Neither the Washington nor the Post-Washington Consensus”. In: Ben Fine, Costas Lapavitsas and Jonathan Pincus (eds.) Development Policy in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond the Post Washington Consensus. London: Routledge. Pp. 1-27. http://www.networkideas.org/featart/sep2002/Washington.pdf (08/Mar/2006)
· IMF, International Monetary Fund (1999) “The IMF’s Response to the Asian Crisis”. Washington: IMF. http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/asia.htm (07/Mar/2006).
· Jayasuriya, Kanishka and Rosser, Andrew (1999) “Economic Orthodoxy and the East Asian Crisis”. In: Third World Quarterly (2001), Working Paper No. 94. Perth: Murdoch University. http://wwwarc.murdoch.edu.au/wp/wp94.pdf (14/Mar/2006).
· Keane, J. (2001) “Global Civil Society?”. In: Anheier et al. Global Civil Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.23-47.
· Peters, Michael (1999) Neoliberalism. http://www.vusst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/neoliberalism.htm (15/Jan/2005)[6]
· Science, Chico (1994a) “A Cidade”. In: Chico Science and Nação Zumbi (1994) Da Lama ao Caos. Recife: Chaos/Sony Music. http://chico-science.letras.terra.com.br/letras/45205/ (06/Mar/2006) [7]
· Science, Chico (1994b) “Da Lama ao Caos”. In: Chico Science and Nação Zumbi (1994) Da Lama ao Caos. Recife: Chaos/Sony Music. http://chico-science.letras.terra.com.br/letras/108267/ (14/Mar/2006) [8]
· Souza Santos, Boaventura (2003) “The World Social Forum: Toward a Counter-Hegemony Globalization”. Coimbra. http://www.ces.fe.uc.pt/bss/documentos/wsf.pdf (14/Mar/2006).
· Stiglitz, Joseph (1998) “More Instruments and Broader Goals: Moving Toward the Post-Washington Consensus” Annual Lectures 2. Helsinki: United Nations University – World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER). http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/annual-lectures/annual-lecture-1998.pdf (08/Mar/2006)
· Stiglitz, Joseph (2000) “What I Learned at the World Economic Crisis”. The New Republic Online. http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/Joseph-Stiglitz-IMF17apr00.htm (07/Mar/2006)
· Toye, John (1994) “Structural Adjustment: Context, Assumptions, Origins and Diversity”. In: van del Hoeven and van der Kraaij (eds.) Structural Adjustment and Beyond in Sub-Saharan Africa. London: James Curry. Pp. 18-35.
· Williamson, John (2002) “What Washington Means by policy Reform”. In: John Williamson (ed.) (1990, updated 2002) Latin American Adjustment: How Much has Changed?. Washington: Institute for International Economics. http://www.iie.com/publications/papers/paper.cfm?ResearchID=486 (07/Mar/2006)
· Woo-Cumings, Meredith (1999) “The Developmental State”. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
· Yergin, Daniel; Cran, William and Stanislaw, Joseph (2002) “Commanding Heights – Episode One: The Battle of Ideas”. Boston: Heights Productions Inc. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/tr_show01.html (07/Mar/2006)
· Yergin, Daniel and Stanislaw, Joseph (1998) “The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace that is Remaking the Modem World”. New York: Simon & Schuster.
[1] UK: United Kingdom of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
[2] USA: United States of America.
[3] WB: World Bank – http://www.worldbank.org/
[4] IMF: International Monetary Fund – http://www.imf.org/
[5] NGO: Non Governmental Organisation.
[6] The link only works with the capital letters on for “ENCYCLOPAEDIA”.
[7] This original text is in Portuguese. All translations were done by the author. Reference in English as follows: Science, Chico (1994) “The City”. In: Chico Science and Nação Zumbi (1994) From the Mud to Chaos. Recife: Chaos/Sony Music. http://chico-science.letras.terra.com.br/letras/45205/
[8] This original text is in Portuguese. All translations were done by the author. Reference in English as follows: Science, Chico (1994) “From the Mud to Chaos”. In: Chico Science and Nação Zumbi (1994) From the Mud to Chaos. Recife: Chaos/Sony Music. http://chico-science.letras.terra.com.br/letras/108267/
Development Issues 