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Voice and Vote

Stanford University Press

Contents

List of Illustrations...............................................................ixAcknowledgments.....................................................................xi1 Peru's Fragile Democracy..........................................................32 Peru's 2002 Participatory Decentralization Reform.................................273 Explaining the Decision to Empower New Actors.....................................514 The Role of Political Interests in Constraining PDR Outcomes......................635 Six Experiences with the Participatory Institutions...............................836 Factors That Facilitate Successful Participatory Institutions.....................1247 Concluding Notes and Looking Ahead................................................147Notes...............................................................................163Works Cited.........................................................................183Index...............................................................................207

Chapter One

IN LATE 2000 and early 2001, Peru faced a political crisis. The former president, Alberto Fujimori, had fled the country in disgrace and faxed his resignation to Congress after evidence surfaced that he and his chief of security had bribed legislators, judges, and the media. Congress rejected his resignation and then ousted him, calling him "unfit" to govern the country. Allegations of corruption and human rights violations by party politicians dominated the headlines. The international media followed the crisis closely, noting that videos of the corruption "scandalized" the country and calling Peru "crisis-ridden" later that year.

After Fujimori left, Peruvians were extremely dissatisfied with their political system. Congress and the judiciary struggled to regain legitimacy and autonomy after ten years of authoritarian rule. Many argued that the future of democracy in Peru partly rested on its ability to decentralize its highly centralized government and incorporate new actors into decision-making processes. Peruvians were not alone. Their neighbors in Ecuador and Bolivia were also clamoring for change. Farther away in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, citizens of the Philippines, the former Yugoslavia, Haiti, and Tanzania were calling for the end of politics as usual. Representative political institutions no longer met the demands of citizens who wanted their voices to finally be heard.

In Peru, a newly elected government decided to meet the crisis head-on. Influenced by participatory models of governance, such as the experience with participatory bud gets in areas of Brazil, local councils in the Philippines, and town hall meetings in the United States, the newly empowered political elite designed a comprehensive decentralization reform that explicitly mixes representative and participatory democratic institutions. As one Peruvian congressman stated during Congressional debates:

This proposal defends participatory democracy within the regional governments by establishing an adequate combination of representative democracy by those who have been elected and participatory democracy with the presence of civil society (December 17, 2002; italics mine).

By 2002, the reform—an example of what I call "participatory decentralization reforms," or PDRs—had been finalized.

Peru's PDR restructures the state in several ways. In addition to empowering several levels of new governments—including regions (akin to states in the United States), provinces (akin to counties), and municipalities (akin to cities)—the reform also creates new ways for civil society to participate formally in regional and local decision-making processes. As such, it is one of the most ambitious examples of a participatory decentralization reform in recent history.

Peruvians designed and implemented several new participatory institutions (PIs) at the regional and local level. These institutions are also starting to appear around the world. As Brian Wampler (2007a, 57–58) writes, "directly incorporating citizens into participatory decision-making venues has been a central feature of institutional innovations in Brazil, South Africa, Spain, Venezuela, Indonesia, and other new democracies over the past two de cades."

This book focuses on two PIs in the newly created regions: (1) a mandatory participatory budgeting process, in which civil society actors participate in regional bud get planning; and (2) Regional Coordination Councils (Consejos de Coordinacion Regional, or CCRs), which bring together mayors and elected civil society representatives twice a year to discuss development plans and bud gets. These new participatory institutions are considered by some to be the real success stories of the reform (PRODES 2007a, 2009).

THE ARGUMENT

The Peruvian experience presents a multilayered story about why countries decentralize, why particular designs are chosen, and the constraints that these designs put into place. It also demonstrates the power that local factors can have in overcoming these constraints once the reform starts to be implemented around the country. The book begins by addressing national-level design issues. Specifically, Part 2 tackles three questions:

1. What explains national policy-makers' decision to devolve power to regional governmental and societal actors through constitutional reform?

2. What factors help us understand the particular design of the participatory institutions?

3. How does this design then condition the implementation of the reform?

The analysis highlights the important role that electoral strategies and domestic politics play in the origin and outcome of PDRs. In answering the first question, I argue that the post-Fujimori democratization process provided the right context, or opportunity structure, for this kind of reform. A window of opportunity opened for reform-minded agents. National politicians, specifically presidential candidates, then made strategic electoral calculations to push through a constitutional decentralization reform very quickly after Fujimori fled the country. Thus, the case suggests that in countries like Peru, with weak political parties and few subnational political elites, strategic calculations by national political elites explain the decision to decentralize.

What led these same reformers to embrace participation in the early phases of the reform? Again, the return to democratic rule provided the opportunity structure. Three additional factors combine to help us understand the emergence of a PDR in this case: (1) experiences with corporate structures in the 1970s and 1980s; (2) the experiences of some participatory planning processes in a few localities in Peru during the 1980s and 1990s, some of which implemented by these very reformers; and, in the case of the participatory bud get, (3) institutional relations between the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Congress.

Debates in Congress also help us understand the specific PI designs that emerged during the reform process. Congressional debate surrounding the PIs became politically charged at times, especially as regional elections approached. When debating the...