For local government to work

Jan 20, 2013 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

---

There is a great hue and cry for local government elections in our country.
Even the western embassies have put in their two cents worth. Maybe it’s part of their recent exportation of ‘democracy’ initiative.
Everyone insists that local government will return power to the people – which is where our Constitution locates that precious commodity.
But we repeat once again that unless local government is embedded within a constitutionally defined decentralised state i.e. a federal state, it will fail.
Federalism specifically looks at the distribution of power from a bottom up perspective rather than from top down. From a political standpoint, (i.e. from the standpoint of the allocation of state power under a standard of justice) federalism achieves its ends of freedom and autonomy for the people themselves, by diffusing state power amongst a central common government and several region/state/province governments, with each entity having constitutionally defined authority or competencies.
The distinguishing feature of the federal structure is that the powers of each unit is constitutionally defined and those powers cannot be altered unless all of the parties agree to the change.
This shifts the balance of power towards the people – who therefore are not “bottom” anymore.
The functioning of both the central and regional governments is based on bargaining and compact – the principle of federal comity.
The regional governments’ powers are not “delegated” but rather the central government functions in such a manner so as not to infringe on the integrity formers’ authority.
Most writers focus on this juridical understanding of Federalism, which stresses rigid divisions of power.
Three fundamental rights characterize the legal configuration of the states/provinces/regions: the right to existence, the right to act in specific areas (competencies) and the right to participate in federal/central government.
After surveying the development of the nation-state in the modern era, one can appreciate the insistence that all diffusion of power must be seen as “devolution” of power from a centre.
It is a reaction against the premises of most practitioners and analysts of politics, especially Marxists, who conceived of “integration” as making a centralized state even stronger. Thus, even when, for whatever reason, a Federal structure was introduced in a country, many viewed Federalism as a form of decentralisation from a centre that remained strong.
But the very fact that power must be “de-centralised” (or located from “bottom up”) should alert us to the reality that in most instances of such initiatives, the power still has a centre and since the centre can centralise or decentralise at will; there is always the potential for abuse.
The power structure would still retain a hierarchical pattern with the Federal centre poised on top of increasingly larger layers of first state, and then local authorities. The Federalist approach is to go beyond a mere division of powers and to propose a model where politics functions from many distributed centres.
Federalism, as applied to our Guyanese needs, therefore proposes a matrix of power centres in which there is no hierarchy, since the centres are “non-centralised” rather than “decentralised”. It seeks to diffuse power to such an extent that it cannot be legitimately re-centralised without violating the letter and spirit of the constitution.
In the words of Daniel Elazar, “The measure of political integration is not the strength of the centre as opposed to peripheries – it is in the strength of the framework: both the whole and the parts can gain in strength simultaneously.”
This vision originated with the US experience that turned the traditional allocation of power on its head, when it located power in the people themselves.
The US Constitution delegated powers from bottom up – necessitating that the states, which were closer to the people, were the original recipients of the delegated powers.
This is particularly unlike the experience of the British ex-colonies (even federated ones), in that the regions/provinces/ states are not creatures of the central government, to be made and unmade at will.
The Federalist allocation of powers span a broad spectrum of governmental arrangements and the precise mix of competencies between central and regional governments are determined by the people themselves as to which level of government could best take care of the task at hand.
The principle of subsidiarity, declares that the task should be delegated to the lowest layer that can handle it.
Substantively, Federalism is centred on the values of liberty and freedom – which, because of our history of slavery and indentureship, should be core values for our society.
It seeks to give life to those values by integrating diverse groups within societies through accommodation, and not obliteration, of their differences.
In the post-modern, post-colonial world there is not only an acceptance, but a celebration of diversities.
Federalism thus seeks to achieve and maintain unity and diversity: it addresses the innate need of people (and politics) to unite for common goals and yet to remain separate and preserve their respective integrities.
Let us not give local government “basket to fetch water”: make it real under federalist principles.

---

---