SPEAKING
FREELY Human development and the Arab
Spring By Yossef Ben-Meir
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
The durability of
national governments in the Middle East and North
Africa is now determined by the extent to which
leaders can expeditiously and effectively address
the primary cause of the Arab Spring: shameful
levels of underdevelopment of the people in the
context of abundant socio-economic potential. To
be sure, this cause is significantly reinforced by
grossly wealthy and exclusive political-corporate
ruling cliques in a region where the less brutal
of governments still seemingly lack the will
needed to promote considerable social change.
A surge in human development "through
grassroots democratic
planning of projects in
poverty alleviation, education, and health"
requires that national governments decentralize
administrative power. In this way, local
communities "working with sub-national public and
private agencies and with central level support "
will have the decision-making authority over their
own development, which is key to success.
Transferring responsibility and capability to the
local level liberates and mobilizes communities to
create initiatives that improve their lives.
Evaluations of development projects by the
World Bank, USAID, the UN, and countless others
indicate that active engagement of project
beneficiaries "as much as financing " is essential
to achieving sustainability. This is because
people's participation generates incentives for
them to maintain projects that meet their most
acute needs, and fosters trust among partners,
including government. The great challenge is to
actually achieve people's participation in
development on a broad scale.
There are
strategic development training programs and
approaches to decentralized public administrations
that directly catalyze interaction among people
and social movements to satisfy local needs.
National governments ought not to consider them a
threat because they redistribute power (including
fiscal), but rather a way to strengthen national
unity and to avoid a hastened fall if they do not
act in bold ways to create shared socio-economic
and environmental benefits for the people in
greatest need.
Based on this outlook,
Morocco " a relatively stable country during the
Arab Spring " is positioned for a development
surge and to become a model for nations. King
Mohammed VI's long stated framework for promoting
development and democracy was to bind the two
processes together so that each is advanced by way
of the other. Since his rise to the throne in
1999, he has driven this key principle in his
public statements, national development programs,
charters of elected bodies, and in his choice of
destinations throughout the country (the far
majority being new local projects). These efforts
over time have created greater levels of public
awareness of human development efforts, civil
society action, and government support and
flexibility.
The king's first announcement
in 2008 of Moroccan decentralization and in his
statements since then, present a system (now
embodied in the new constitution) for national to
communal public administrative tiers to support
local and regional development that is planned
through participatory democratic approaches.
However, the new Islamic government in Morocco has
not noticeably advanced the implementation of
decentralization, and the king this past week on
Throne Day urged them to meet this now legal
requirement.
In Egypt, the Local
Administration Law " which transfers power to
manage jurisdictions from governors to people's
representatives in the Local Popular Councils "
was drafted but has not yet been passed. The
Muslim Brotherhood should be amenable to this law,
since its recent electoral success is in part due
to their localized administration (out of
necessity) for years prior, enabling close
proximity to the people. Hamas in Gaza prior to
its rise to power was also known for its
decentralized management of human services. An
Islamic rationale to elevate decentralization to a
national system integrates the Islamic concepts of
shura (consultation), ummah (the
Muslim community), bay'ah (allegiance), and
tawhidi (oneness of God) together forming a
system of local governing as part of a worldwide
Muslim community that furthers social justice,
accountability of leaders, and empowerment of
mankind.
Fayyad's plan in the West Bank
embodies components of decentralization in order
to build political and economic self-reliance by
increasing local control. This suggests that in
the Western Sahara conflict, Morocco's proposal to
enhance autonomy of that region so that people can
manage their own affairs would be stabilizing.
Iraq, with again spiking sectarian
violence, would have done well to adopt federalism
" a formalized decentralized system " when the
idea caught attention in 2006. Decentralization
could decrease Shiite-Sunni violence and tension,
and still remains the most viable constitutional
option for long-term unity of Iraq. The King of
Bahrain's call for decentralization in 2011 rang
insincere to the public, as his Arab Spring was
already raging. Jordan has begun the process of
decentralizing.
Government budgets in the
region and international development assistance
should more heavily fund building skills in
managing local participatory development, and,
vitally, the projects identified by local
communities " which range depending on the
opportunities they face. The support of these
bottom-up democratic development processes is a
powerful measure of public diplomacy.
A
human development revolution can only save the day
for governments in the Arab Spring, and time is
not a friend. To survive, governments need to
disperse to local levels the power for communities
to create the development they seek.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their
say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
Dr Yossef Ben-Meir is a
sociologist and president of the High Atlas
Foundation, a US-Moroccan nonprofit organization
founded by former Peace Corps volunteers and
dedicated to community development in Morocco.
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