Decentralisation and its link with regional and local development ; La descentralización y su vinculación con el desarrollo regional y local
Ressource électronique: Virtual Community on Governance. In this presentation, some assumptions generally associated with the issue of decentralisation and its link with local or regional development are reviewed. While regional development processes involve three major groups of actors, namely civil society, the private sector and the local public sector, decentralisation affects the internal organisation of the government alone. On the other hand, the term 'decentralisation' covers too many different situations, which makes it necessary to look more closely at the quality and purpose of the various decentralisation processes. Finally, public and private actors at local level can carry out a variety of favourable public initiatives, with or despite decentralisation processes. It is then argued that the link between decentralisation and regional or local development is extremely tenuous. This does not mean that local and regional governments cannot play a (modest but active) role in local or regional development, on the contrary. Nor does it mean that local and regional governments cannot take advantage of the spaces created by decentralisation. However, the experiences of the last 15 years in these areas point to the shift of emphasis on decentralisation to the concept of viable society, which means that the very substance of this viability (what is the burden of the economy for what kind of State intervention) is to be described? what kind of state organisation? what levels of democracy, equity, durability?). Similarly, "regional or local" development approaches (mainly focused on spatial planning) are being re-visited from "territorial" development approaches. These open up new perspectives but also new questions for those involved in decision-making processes on a daily basis at local or regional level. ; Documents sans référence de publication ; Ressource électronique: Virtual Community on Governance. In this presentation, some assumptions generally associated with the issue of decentralisation and its link ...