fatman17
PDF THINK TANK: CONSULTANT
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2007
- Messages
- 32,563
- Reaction score
- 98
- Country
- Location
analysis: All politics is local Rasul Bakhsh Rais
By removing one basic and fundamental tier of democracy, we have harmed our democratic cause. The institutional flaws and bad practices in the local government system can be corrected with continuity, not by throwing the entire system out of the window
If there is anything real and basic to democracy, it is local government institutions. No genuine democrat can think of developing democratic culture and traditions without grassroots democracy. Thomas Phillip Tip ONeill Jr, a long-time Speaker of the American House of Representatives and an outspoken Democrat, emphasises how local political issues and rooting politics at the grassroots level would matter for any political aspirant in his All Politics is Local and Other Rule of the Game.
Although it was said and written in the American political context, it is a meaningful phrase and we cannot grasp its wisdom unless we know a bit about the the evolution of democracy and the development of democratic ideas in the western world. In almost every mature democratic country, including developing ones, that has chosen instrumental democracy for social and political development, local government institutions are considered the foundations of democracy.
Democratic systems are intended to have multiple institutional layers and that is for a purpose: to diffuse and separate powers. Horizontal separation of powers among institutions and vertical separation of powers among geographical units is meant to create a competitive political environment and create a spirit of accommodation and working together.
Contrarily, concentration of powers in a single institution or single unit, even if the governments were elected, would work against the spirit of democracy. And this practice in the past has damaged democracy, giving us civilian dictators. We have substantial evidence for this leadership flaw.
Why have the two major political parties, the PPP and PMLN, allowed local governments to die out, and have then come up with a proposed ordinance allowing provincial governments to appoint administrators at the district level?
The reasons that representatives of the Punjab government and others opposed to elected local governments have given are frivolous. Yes, there has been corruption in the projects implemented by the district governments, and yes, quite a few District Nazims supported Pervez Musharraf. But are these reasons good enough to not hold fresh electiosn? And it is also a thoughtless argument that a military dictator created the system of present local governments to serve his own political interests.
The idea and practice of democratic local governments is centuries old and has nothing to do with the political ideology of Pervez Musharraf or his regime. Even in our country, there have been so many attempts in the past to institutionalise local democracy, mostly by military dictators, but each time elected governments somehow thought they were useless.
Sadly our elected governments have yet to learn some basic principles of shaping true democracy and have to travel some political distance in this respect, beyond elections and getting elected. That is necessary for legitimacy, but it takes more than just elections to build democracy based on shared powers and political cooperation.
There are two reasons why the two major political parties have decided to gun down local governments. First, the district is the real hub of administrative powers and the key centre of social services delivery. The provincial governments run by the PPP and the PMLN in Punjab and Sindh, and the PPPs allies in Balochistan and the NWFP want greater control over districts through administrators from the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy today has lost all institutional autonomy as it has increasingly been pushed to serve the political interests of those who happen to rule at the Centre and in the provinces. It is a sad reflection on the decline of administrative institutions. While the chief ministers can handpick civilian administrators, shuffle them around and repost them, they cannot do that to an elected Nazim. Even curtailing the Nazims powers might involve political risk and spark unwanted political confrontation.
The second reason is related to the issue of centralised control over the entire province. It is very simplistic to argue that the solution to the bad governance that is a defining character of our country is to place more powers in the hands of provincial chief executives. It has not worked in the past and it is not going to work in future.
The entire struggle against Musharraf and his regime was not about creating civilian dictators but building a democratic polity. That we cannot accomplish without sustaining local government institutions and building their true democratic character.
The local government system that is soon going to be replaced by bureaucratic administrators was not without defects. There were essential controls left in the provincial capitals, like finance and administrative machinery to facilitate a Nazim aligned with the regime, and create hurdles for those who were not. And the chief ministers under the federally designed local governments ordinance could exercise powers against an elected Nazim if he took a different political line.
These flaws were wilfully inserted into the legal system governing the local governments to remote control them and make them dependent on the provincial bureaucracy and the provincial chief executive. Such levers of control in our view are against the essence of local-tier democracy.
We thought that post-Musharraf political governments would be different in dealing with democratic institutions, that they would rebuild them and not destroy them. The recent move through the presidential ordinance in consultation with the provincial governments to end the Musharraf-era local governments is not a contribution to democratic transition, quite the reverse of it.
Democracy operates at different levels, and for open and competitive politics it must have different centres with greater dispersal of power. And that is not taking place, and never will it if we have selective democracy that suits the interests of party bosses.
Continuity in democratic practices is what makes incomplete or even bad democracy get better, and over time transform into a truly people-centred, representative and responsive system.
The system bureaucratic administrators will empower the political bosses with the personalised power of appointment and removal. It may serve the political interests of the parties, but not the interest of building democracy. Our democratic transition has certainly received a major setback with the removal of local governments.
Let us remind the party bosses and the provincial chief executives that democracy is not what they can pick and choose and what essentially serves their immediate political interests. Rather democracy is about sharing power and building different layers, recognised ones in any federals system. And that is not happening.
By removing one basic and fundamental tier of democracy, we have harmed our democratic cause. The institutional flaws and bad practices in the local government system can be corrected with continuity, not by throwing the entire system out of the window.
Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk
By removing one basic and fundamental tier of democracy, we have harmed our democratic cause. The institutional flaws and bad practices in the local government system can be corrected with continuity, not by throwing the entire system out of the window
If there is anything real and basic to democracy, it is local government institutions. No genuine democrat can think of developing democratic culture and traditions without grassroots democracy. Thomas Phillip Tip ONeill Jr, a long-time Speaker of the American House of Representatives and an outspoken Democrat, emphasises how local political issues and rooting politics at the grassroots level would matter for any political aspirant in his All Politics is Local and Other Rule of the Game.
Although it was said and written in the American political context, it is a meaningful phrase and we cannot grasp its wisdom unless we know a bit about the the evolution of democracy and the development of democratic ideas in the western world. In almost every mature democratic country, including developing ones, that has chosen instrumental democracy for social and political development, local government institutions are considered the foundations of democracy.
Democratic systems are intended to have multiple institutional layers and that is for a purpose: to diffuse and separate powers. Horizontal separation of powers among institutions and vertical separation of powers among geographical units is meant to create a competitive political environment and create a spirit of accommodation and working together.
Contrarily, concentration of powers in a single institution or single unit, even if the governments were elected, would work against the spirit of democracy. And this practice in the past has damaged democracy, giving us civilian dictators. We have substantial evidence for this leadership flaw.
Why have the two major political parties, the PPP and PMLN, allowed local governments to die out, and have then come up with a proposed ordinance allowing provincial governments to appoint administrators at the district level?
The reasons that representatives of the Punjab government and others opposed to elected local governments have given are frivolous. Yes, there has been corruption in the projects implemented by the district governments, and yes, quite a few District Nazims supported Pervez Musharraf. But are these reasons good enough to not hold fresh electiosn? And it is also a thoughtless argument that a military dictator created the system of present local governments to serve his own political interests.
The idea and practice of democratic local governments is centuries old and has nothing to do with the political ideology of Pervez Musharraf or his regime. Even in our country, there have been so many attempts in the past to institutionalise local democracy, mostly by military dictators, but each time elected governments somehow thought they were useless.
Sadly our elected governments have yet to learn some basic principles of shaping true democracy and have to travel some political distance in this respect, beyond elections and getting elected. That is necessary for legitimacy, but it takes more than just elections to build democracy based on shared powers and political cooperation.
There are two reasons why the two major political parties have decided to gun down local governments. First, the district is the real hub of administrative powers and the key centre of social services delivery. The provincial governments run by the PPP and the PMLN in Punjab and Sindh, and the PPPs allies in Balochistan and the NWFP want greater control over districts through administrators from the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy today has lost all institutional autonomy as it has increasingly been pushed to serve the political interests of those who happen to rule at the Centre and in the provinces. It is a sad reflection on the decline of administrative institutions. While the chief ministers can handpick civilian administrators, shuffle them around and repost them, they cannot do that to an elected Nazim. Even curtailing the Nazims powers might involve political risk and spark unwanted political confrontation.
The second reason is related to the issue of centralised control over the entire province. It is very simplistic to argue that the solution to the bad governance that is a defining character of our country is to place more powers in the hands of provincial chief executives. It has not worked in the past and it is not going to work in future.
The entire struggle against Musharraf and his regime was not about creating civilian dictators but building a democratic polity. That we cannot accomplish without sustaining local government institutions and building their true democratic character.
The local government system that is soon going to be replaced by bureaucratic administrators was not without defects. There were essential controls left in the provincial capitals, like finance and administrative machinery to facilitate a Nazim aligned with the regime, and create hurdles for those who were not. And the chief ministers under the federally designed local governments ordinance could exercise powers against an elected Nazim if he took a different political line.
These flaws were wilfully inserted into the legal system governing the local governments to remote control them and make them dependent on the provincial bureaucracy and the provincial chief executive. Such levers of control in our view are against the essence of local-tier democracy.
We thought that post-Musharraf political governments would be different in dealing with democratic institutions, that they would rebuild them and not destroy them. The recent move through the presidential ordinance in consultation with the provincial governments to end the Musharraf-era local governments is not a contribution to democratic transition, quite the reverse of it.
Democracy operates at different levels, and for open and competitive politics it must have different centres with greater dispersal of power. And that is not taking place, and never will it if we have selective democracy that suits the interests of party bosses.
Continuity in democratic practices is what makes incomplete or even bad democracy get better, and over time transform into a truly people-centred, representative and responsive system.
The system bureaucratic administrators will empower the political bosses with the personalised power of appointment and removal. It may serve the political interests of the parties, but not the interest of building democracy. Our democratic transition has certainly received a major setback with the removal of local governments.
Let us remind the party bosses and the provincial chief executives that democracy is not what they can pick and choose and what essentially serves their immediate political interests. Rather democracy is about sharing power and building different layers, recognised ones in any federals system. And that is not happening.
By removing one basic and fundamental tier of democracy, we have harmed our democratic cause. The institutional flaws and bad practices in the local government system can be corrected with continuity, not by throwing the entire system out of the window.
Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk
