Decentralize for people’s power in Arab Spring Countries

By Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir

Dr. Yossef Ben-Meir is president of the High Atlas Foundation, and nonprofit
organization that promotes development in Morocco.

To sustainably advance human development and political stability, Arab Spring
countries should decentralize to sub-national levels the resources necessary to
catalyze and implement community development. 
Increasingly, Morocco is suggested as a model for the successful
progress in the Arab Spring because of its stability, opportunities and
cultural diversity.  At the same time,
however, there are also extremely difficult internal challenges that could
undermine Morocco’s future: rural poverty, youth despondency, severe economic
disparity and the commonplace of exploited labor.


IfMorocco could effectively implement participatory development and build
democratic systems through decentralization, the model could be informative for
the people of other Arab Spring countries to achieve the kind of future they
seek.  Morocco’s development experiences
and lessons are, therefore, relevant regionally and globally.



Morocco’s relative social and political stability during the Arab Spring is in
significant measure due to King Mohammed VI’s early and consistent promotion of
human development, including from 2008 and his commitment to decentralized
government, now in Article I of the new Moroccan constitution of 2011.


However,both the correct vision for development (in which Morocco has made important
strides) and its successful implementation (which Morocco unfortunately has not
achieved as needed) are required in order to attain long-term socio-political
stability in the Arab Spring countries.



Governments- that of Iraq being an example - may be reluctant to decentralize out of a
concern that this process could promote secession and become a cause of
conflict.  However, more often it is
precisely the lack of empowerment in decision-making at the local level that
heightens political resistance, tension and sectarian conflict and violence.

 

While decentralization may also cause national politicians and bureaucrats to feel
depoliticized and less influential, the central level nevertheless remains
vital in its areas of responsibility such as macroeconomic and foreign
policies, national judiciary and security and development targets that
encourage inter-regional balance and performance.  Such centralization could also help avoid -
and counter - the pitfalls of poorly implemented decentralization, such as
reduced social protection and greater social and geographic stratification.


 


Would the sectarian turmoil and ISIS terror that exist in present-day Iraq be less -
or even absent - had the nation adopted federalism (a formalized decentralized
system) in 2006 or earlier?  As
unachievable as it seems at the present time, decentralization of power to
sub-provincial levels, as close to the people as possible, appears the only
viable way for Iraqis to feel more in control of their lives and to have even a
modest chance of experiencing the person-to-person, Sunni-to-Shiite interaction
that can, in actual fact, build localized processes of acknowledgement of each
other and shared development.  If this
were the case, ISIS would be rejected in the hearts and minds of most
people.  A form of legitimate autonomy
within an overall context of national sovereignty (similar to Morocco’s
proposed solution for the Western Sahara, its southern provinces) could have
the effect of decreasing the Shia-Sunni violence and conflict.  Decentralization is also explained to
increase the defense capabilities of the country by making military attack on population
centers more difficult.


 


As a stimulus, a decentralized human development approach would see thousands of
smaller projects at the local level that communities identify and control,
instead of fewer, large-scale costly projects with higher associated
risks.  Benefits accrue for local
communities from projects that are more quickly implemented.  In addition, such human development is finely
suited to help shorten recessions and promote growth.  The participatory premise is that the timing
of meetings, project implementation and of the overall development process rests
with the people - acting in communities.


 


Villages and neighborhoods need third party facilitators of group dialogue who apply
participatory planning methods for community assessments and
consensus-building.  Indeed, the quantity
and durability of local projects largely reflects the extent to which such
facilitators are involved in this way. 
Facilitators could be school teachers, members of civil society, locally
elected officials, university students, business people, religious leaders,
retirees or development workers - potentially anyone who is in a position to
interface with local communities and whom local people accept in that role.


 


Morocco’s National Initiative for Human Development (NIHD) administered at the provincial
level, created a framework for projects that reflect people's ideas as well as
for the training required for local communities to determine those priority
projects.  Additionally, the process of
Moroccan decentralization and the NIHD are synergistic, mutually reinforcing
each other.  The NIHD could help build
new partnerships and structures of regionalization through much greater
funding, training and projects - essentially the bricks and mortar of a
decentralized administration. 
Implementing projects in this way would create the pathways,
partnerships and institutional arrangements inherent in decentralized systems.